June Publications

"God has a plan for all of us to be in certain places at certain times, to meet certain people, to grow, love, learn, share, teach, and uplift," muses Lexi, the narrator of Norma L. Jarrett's bighearted Sunday Brunch. At weekly postchurch lunches, Lexi and her four other successful Houston lawyer friends certainly share a lot over the buffet. Rich, beautiful Jermane is "disgustingly in love" with her husband, but infidelity rears its head; successful Angel thinks love is for fools until a routine checkup spooks her; Capri is on top of the world, but love might trip her up; meanwhile Jewel is a gold digger destined for a change of heart. But as God answers everyone else's prayers, will he forget about Lexi's? Clunky expository dialogue and leisurely pacing can't trip up this sweet, inspirational offering. (Broadway/Harlem Moon, $12.95 paper 272p ISBN 0-7679-1570-4)

Prejudice and personal problems dog an all-minority L.A. fire-fighting squad in Parry "Ebonysatin" Brown's hardcover debut, Fannin' the Flames. While coping with increasingly offensive pranks—equipment sabotage, dead rats—the members of the team must also deal with problems at home. Lloyd's wife is planning to ask him for a divorce; Jerome's wife is seriously injured in a car accident; Mychel is bent on seducing Jerome. Brown skillfully addresses workplace issues and creates a cast of appealing, believable characters. (One World, $21.95 352p ISBN 0-345-46907-0)

A cult hit in the author's native Britain, Kyril Bonfiglioli's Don't Point That Thing at Me, originally published some three decades ago, is a wickedly entertaining and veddy British account of one Hon. Charlie Mortdecai, fond of "art and money and dirty jokes and drink" and none too concerned about the laws he must break to keep himself in full possession of all of them. Add in an "anti-Jeeves" assistant named Jock Strapp, a gorgeous rich widow, a mad millionaire, a policeman who "likes hurting people, a lot" and dozens of other brilliant types—not to mention all kinds of shady deals—and the result is a sure-fire, acid-tongued winner. (Overlook, $13.95 paper 176p ISBN 1-58567-562-8)

A former squatter turned novelist takes a close look at San Francisco's seamy side as its maladjusted denizens careen against each other over the course of a single strange and magical day. When an armored Brink's truck is wrecked in front of the squalid Allen Hotel, an old woman finds herself an unexpected (and illegal) millionaire. Instructed by God to dole out the cash as proof of divine love, she meets up with drug dealers, losers, stoners and miscreants, all wheeling and dealing in a neighborhood where redemption doesn't come easy. Peter Plate (Police and Thieves; Angels of Catastrophe) paints another poetically gritty Bay City tale in Fogtown. (Seven Stories, $13 paper 176p ISBN 1-58322-639-7)

The story of a little girl who falls down an abandoned mineshaft is layered with tales of her ancestors in China, Finland and Michigan in Ingrid Hill's first novel, a jumbled, ambitious effort. Ursula, Under begins when Justin and Annie Wong take their two-year-old daughter, Ursula, on a picnic near an old mine. Her disappearance sets in motion a desperate rescue effort, the account of which is periodically interrupted by Hill's elaborate forays into the past. Unwieldy but inventive, this is a promising debut. (Algonquin, $24.95 400p ISBN 1-56512-388-3)

In this sendup of the heroic literature of Stalin's Soviet Union—"a breathtaking battle piece and erotic extravaganza in eight positively vulcanic-vulvaic chapters," as the epigraph has it—Mikhail Kononov employs every figure of speech imaginable to recount the adventures of Young Pioneer Maria Mukhina, or Midge. In The Naked Pioneer Girl, Midge valiantly services Stalin's troops during WWII and flies naked in the skies over Leningrad at night, terrorizing Hitler's soldiers. Kononov's clotted prose and ironic references will be hard for U.S. readers to navigate, despite Andrew Bromfield's resourceful translation. (Serpent's Tail, $14 paper 250p ISBN 1-85242-835-X)