Hosseini’s stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy’s parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid ‘90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium.

In seventeenth-century China, Peony, a sheltered and obedient young girl, is allowed to see the controversial opera The Peony Pavilion as part of her sixteenth-birthday celebration. During the performance, which takes three evenings to complete, she meets and falls in love with a mysterious young man. Already promised in marriage, she mourns for the love she cannot have, only to discover as she is dying that her stranger is her betrothed, Wu Ren. After her death, the burial rituals are unfinished, and she cannot go to her ancestors. Instead, she haunts her lover and uses Ren’s new wife to write commentary on the opera to try to reach him, beginning a long and harrowing journey toward fulfillment and eternal rest. See brings the Chinese culture of the Manchu dynasty to life, using the wedding and burial customs to further the plot. Her novel takes on the feel of ancient writing and rivals The Peony Pavilion in romance and political commentary. But through it all, she manages to make her characters real and sympathetic and the plot twists compelling

This account of a Chinese family’s adventures in America over the course of a century offers a tapestry of immigrant life

Shamus-winner Fulmer (The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues) delivers another compelling tale of music and murder. In 1962 Philadelphia, a struggling young boxer’s life is changed forever when he comes to the rescue of PI Sal Giambroni during a mugging in a South Philly alley. Giambroni offers welterweight Eddie Cero a job, and after reluctantly accepting, Eddie finds he has a knack for investigative work. He turns his attention to the unsolved disappearance of Johnny Pope, lead singer of the Excels, a once-popular rock group. Eddie finds himself falling for Pope’s sister, Valerie, a jazz singer at the Blue Door Club, though she fiercely resists his attempts to uncover the truth about her brother. Fulmer expertly portrays the racial tensions of the era as Eddie, a white man, navigates his relationship with Valerie, a black woman.

Storyville, New Orleans, the most historic red-light district in the United States, where the music of Jelly Roll Morton and “King” Buddy Bolden is ushering in the jazz age, provides the stage for this riveting and provocative debut mystery of sex, alcohol, drugs, insanity and murder. When two prostitutes are found murdered and marked with a black rose, Tom Anderson, political boss and the “King of Storyville,” calls in Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr. While the death toll mounts, St. Cyr doesn’t want to believe that all indications point to his childhood friend, Buddy Bolden. Bolden, who has risen to fame with the “jass” music of his horn, has become more than erratic in his behavior. As St. Cyr watches his friend self-destruct, he wonders if Buddy is indeed the killer. The author vividly describes early 20th-century New Orleans, from the large and elegant houses of the madams to the infested rooms of the crib girls that reflect the distinct and rigid caste system of the day. After a frustrating investigation, the pieces of the puzzle come together in a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Fulmer’s use of historical figures such as Tom Anderson, Buddy Bolden, piano player Ferdinand LeMenthe (who would later be known as Jelly Roll Morton), E.J. Bellocq, the photographer of New Orleans whores, and the famous madam Lulu White authenticate an already believable and spellbinding story, which will echo in the reader’s mind like the mournful notes of good blues. Agent, Laura Langlie. (Nov. 1)Forecast: With Italian rights sold to Rizzoli, blurbs from Jeffery Deaver and James Sallis, as well as a regional author tour, this first novel should generate a lot of buzz and generous sales.

In this departure from his New Orleans novels featuring Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr (Rampart Street, etc.), Fulmer paints the sprawling vitality of 1920s Atlanta with broad strokes. Joe Rose, an itinerant love ‘em and leave ‘em–style thief of uncertain racial extraction who moves uneasily in both black and white Atlanta, finds himself in the middle of a murderous mess that highlights the city’s rampant racism and corruption as well as the stark contrasts between privilege and poverty. A white cop guns down a Negro gambler, Little Jesse Williams, while a jewelry robbery mars a Yuletide party at one of Atlanta’s finest mansions on the other side of town. Joe gets caught in a vise operated by a brutal detective, Capt. Grayton Jackson, intent on “solving” the crime in the quickest way possible. Little Jesse expires over the course of days, Joe promises to discover why he was shot and the odious Jackson squeezes Joe to recover the stolen jewels or pay the price for the crime. Occasionally florid writing clouds this otherwise vital effort from Shamus-winner Fulmer. (Jan.)

New Orleans as it once was and may never be again is the rich and poignant setting for Fulmer’s latest (Chasing the Devil’s Tail; Jass). After a long absence, the series hero, Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr, has returned to the red-light district of Storyville a changed man. He’s skinny and apathetic; to saloon owner Tom Anderson, St. Cyr’s friend and mentor, he seems haunted. Tom—Storyville’s “proud monarch, lording over the madams in their grand mansions, the sporting girls in both fine upstairs rooms and dime-a-trick cribs, the rounders and gamblers and sports, the criminals petty and heeled, the saloon keepers who served them and all the other characters in Storyville’s shifting cast”—attempts to re-engage St. Cyr (and see if the detective’s still got his juice) by encouraging him to solve the murder of a wealthy businessman whose body has just turned up on the eponymous street, one of Storyville’s meanest. St. Cyr finds himself coming alive again as he digs up troubling facts that no one, especially the police, wants him to unearth. Five more men will die and St. Cyr will be in mortal danger before justice is served. St. Cyr is a great character, and the fascinating city and its larger-than-life denizens intrigue as much as the complicated plot

For readers of the phenomenal bestsellers Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, a stunning new novel from Lisa See about two sisters who leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles.

May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl’s parents arrange for their daughters to marry “Gold Mountain men” who have come from Los Angeles to find brides.

But when the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel’s Island (the Ellis Island of the West)where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. And when May discovers she’s pregnant the situation becomes even more desperate. The sisters make a pact that no one can ever know.

A novel about two sisters, two cultures, and the struggle to find a new life in America while bound to the old, Shanghai Girls is a fresh, fascinating adventure from beloved and bestselling author Lisa See.

After two stand-alones, Fulmer returns to his Valentin St. Cyr series, set in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. St. Cyr, the Creole detective, has sworn off his life as a fixer for Storyville boss Tom Anderson, hoping to cement his relationship with former prostitute Justine. Then bodies start turning up around Storyville’s high-class brothels, and St. Cyr is drawn back into his old life. But are the murders only catnip to lure the Creole into a deadly trap? Fulmer tends to rework familiar themes—St. Cyr’s determination to escape Storyville, for example—but his feel for atmosphere and his increasingly subtle hand with character development keep the series from going stale. The latter is particularly evident this time in Fulmer’s more rounded portrayals of the aging Anderson, his run as de facto mayor of Storyville nearly over, and the steel-willed Justine, the one-time prostitute determined to find a new life, even it means giving up St. Cyr. Early on, this series’ main appeal was its setting, but now it can hold its own with the most character-driven of historical mysteries. —Bill Ott

In the red-light district New Orleans, players of the new music they call “jass” have been turning up
dead.
To Storyville detective Valentin St. Cyr, it’s no surprise. These characters, mostly lowdown “rounders,”
walk on the wild side, working their rowdy music through the night and spending their days in excess
that sets the tone for a hundred years of American musical mayhem to follow.
Anyway, the Creole detective has his own problems. With his woman Justine drifting back to the life of
a sporting girl, the last thing he needs is some tawdry distraction.
But this is Storyville, and nothing is ever quite as it seems. Once Valentin is persuaded to investigate, he
discovers that the deaths are not random at all, because every one of the victims once played in the same
band. Four are dead, and the only one left alive has gone into hiding.
As he digs deeper, Valentin becomes convinced that a certain mysterious woman is the key to the
mystery. He’s digging too deep, though, and soon Tom Anderson, “The King of Storyville,” police
lieutenant J. Picot, and even the Chief of Police want him off the case. It’s all the proof he needs that
there is something larger and darker at the heart of this sordid business.
Indeed, this is a tale of dark secrets that lurk in the shadows of the New Orleans nights, under the painted
faces of the sporting girls, and especially behind the loud, wild music that echoes up the scarlet streets.
“Jass” is a compelling sequel to David Fulmer’s award-winning and critically-acclaimed “Chasing the
Devil’s Tail” – an even deeper and darker journey into the bloody and raucous miasma called Storyville.