The Plain Man

Englehart follows 1981's The Point Man and 2010's The Long Man with a fairly ordinary thriller given life with injections of a magical theory influenced by Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati and Mayan mythology. Max August and his fellow alchemists battle a right-wing cabal called the FRC, which has run the American government throughout the Bush/Cheney era and now struggles to maintain control after Obama's election. The stage for the fight, conducted in both the physical and magical planes, is the circus-like atmosphere of Wickr, a thinly disguised Burning Man festival. Englehart's work on Captain America, The Fantastic Four, and Superman has given him a terse, quick-moving prose style ("Listen, about last night%E2%80%94" "Had to be done." "Yeah, it did. But I never wanted to hurt you"), and plenty of supernatural action and pop culture references will please his comics-reading fans. (June)