July Publications

Blackboard bestseller Felicia Mason (For the Love of You, etc.) traces various dramas among the members of the Triumphant Voices of Praise gospel choir in Testimony. Choir leader Roger has been burning himself out, waiting for their elusive big break. He must deal with his own demons as he juggles his charges, including Margaret, the snobby diva who has designs on him; Glenna, the woman with a checkered past and a grave illness; his cousin Tyrone, whose marriage is at a crossroads; and Scottie, who may be running numbers or worse. Plot and dialogue often feel contrived, but Mason scores points for resisting an easy, feel-good ending. National advertising. (Dafina, $24 256p ISBN 0-7582-0059-5)

Dee Paxton is 28, recently widowed and pregnant when she applies for a job at a fabric shop in the Mexican neighborhood of her West Texas town at the opening of Frontera Street by Tanya Maria Barrientos. Dee's Mexican-American co-worker, Alma, pegs Dee as a stuck-up white woman, but when Dee collapses at the store, Alma finds herself obliged to care for her for a few days. Single-mother Alma gradually warms to Dee, as Dee comes to appreciate and love the Mexican-American culture of their border town. The plot is contrived and the story slow moving, but Barrientos's genuine affection for her characters and West Texas border life shines through. (NAL, $12.95 paper 272p ISBN 0-451-20635-5)

An 800-year-old bed bears silent witness to centuries' worth of naughty shenanigans in Once Upon a Pillow, a collaboration between veteran romance writers Christina Dodd (In My Wildest Dreams) and Connie Brockway (The Bridal Season). The epic opens in 13th-century England with a crusading knight and his fast-talking, murderous maiden bride and culminates with a present-day social history grad student who gives tours through the medieval manor house where the bed is the star attraction; she longs to acquire it—or at least give it a whirl—herself. (Pocket Books, $12 paper 320p ISBN 0-7434-3680-6)

June Publications

Twelve stories and a novella comprise William Eisner's frank and imaginative second book, Done In by Innocent Things. In the evocative "An Afternoon at the Movies," an unnamed narrator watches his mother and father's courtship in "grainy, stark black and white," willing his mother not to do what he knows she has already done; in the darkly comic "Fountain of Youth," a sex act with an Asian prostitute gives an aging widower miraculous vitality. A husband finds his place in his wife's memory usurped by an old flame in "Arthur," and an accountant tired of dull living decides that crime just might pay in "Heist," the collection's opening novella. The author of The Sévigné Letters places diverse characters in varying and vital moments, as secretaries and engineers, young women and senior citizens confront fate, love, sex and death in cleanly crafted stories that snap with energy. (GreyCore [2646 New Prospect Rd., Pine Bush, N.Y. 12566], $23 221p ISBN 0-9671851-6-5; June)

Published to critical acclaim last year in the U.K., Sheepshagger, the amazing second novel from Niall Griffiths (Grit), is as raw and unsettling as its title. Ianto is an orphan, raised by his grandmother in the Welsh countryside. Ugly, withdrawn and semiretarded, he is the classic outcast, finding solace first in nature, later in drugs and the company of a few mates. The ramshackle family farm is sold and his fury at his displacement ultimately impels him to murder. Griffiths's prose matches the savage intensity of his protagonist: stoned reminiscences by Ianto's friends are woven with flashbacks (both wondrous and horrible) of Ianto's childhood and the events leading up to the murders, creating a chilling portrait that is nearly mythological in its intensity and pathos. (St. Martin's/Dunne, $23.95 272p ISBN 0-312-30073-5)

A retired major-league baseball player slips into prescription drug abuse and violence in Roadrunner, an engaging second novel by Trisha R. Thomas (Nappily Ever After). When Dell "Roadrunner" Fletcher attacks his scriptwriter wife, Leah, Officer Angel Lopez answers her call for help. Angel falls for the lovely Leah, but he is also an old Roadrunner fan. Then Dell disappears, and Angel inserts himself into the lives of Leah and her young son with suspicious speed. Thomas is a talented storyteller, and this sophomore effort packs a punch. (Crown, $22.95 288p ISBN 0-609-60584-4)

Jerky, hard-boiled prose spells out the story of a smalltime Mediterranean shipping family in The Ravenglass Line by David Crackanthorpe (Stolen Marches). Bailed out of a Marseilles prison by his younger brother, Hugo, Jason Ricardo finds himself assigned to guard duty—of his own mother, who is associating with a shady Hungarian refugee-smuggler and putting Hugo and Jason's inheritance at risk. If interfering in his mother's life weren't enough, Jason can't seem to help putting the moves on his brother's beautiful wife. This salt-cured thriller is broodingly atmospheric, but too choppy to be entirely enjoyable. (Review [Trafalgar Sq., dist.], $15 paper 288p ISBN 0-7472-7045-7)