Wolfe, one of the genre’s finest stylists, offers up a story that combines Lovecraftian atmosphere with elements of a noir detective story, and a dark romance—all set against a science fiction background, roughly one hundred years from now.

The main characters are Gideon Chase, a brilliant investigator whose powers border on the magical; Bill Reis, a returnee from the planet Woldercan who has uncanny but dangerous powers; and Cassie Casey, an actress who ends up involved with both. The story begins as a US president (who somewhat resembles the second Bush) attempts to hire Chase to investigate Reis, whom the government believes to be a spy. Chase sets a price that the president balks at; nonetheless, at the beginning of the second chapter, Cassie gets a note from Chase offering to make her rich—and a star—if she will help him in an investigation.

The story then turns into a series of encounters between Cassie and the two men—each of whom she finds vastly attractive, and each of whom has much to offer. Cassie finds herself suddenly possessed with the kind of charisma that makes her the object of all eyes—the magic of star power. But she is also caught up in sinister webs of intrigue, from both Chase and Reis.

Without any clear explanation, Cassie goes through a series of strange, violent events. Creatures similar to Lovecraft’s night gaunts come to her window; the plot of a show Reis has written for her somehow seems to be happening in real life. Eventually, events come to a climax on an isolated Pacific island where the natives worship her as a queen, and where emissaries of a sinister undersea deity emerge, evidently hoping to abduct her.

Wolfe plays the Lovecraftian themes lightly, evoking eldritch horrors but never entirely letting them take over the story. Instead, he lets Cassie’s love for the two powerful men in her life have the emotional center of the story. The plot builds with the apparent logic of a detective story; but just as the reader gets ready to seize on one set of clues, Wolfe changes direction and leaps into a new set of complications. Ultimately, the story has a dreamlike structure in which supernatural powers, incredible reverses of fortune, sudden danger, vast wealth, and exotic backgrounds are melded into a whole that transcends its incongruous parts.

Wolfe is one of the very few writers who could bring off such a tour de force. Highly recommended.

This debut novel takes place sometime after the bulk of the human race has disappeared into the Singularity. The remaining population on Earth has turned to group consciousness, built around small telepathic “pods,” each member of which contributes a particular talent.

The story follows one particular group, which calls itself Apollo Papadopolous. Its five members—Strom, Meda, Quant, Manuel, and Moira—have been raised together, and we meet them on a training mission in deep winter. An avalanche buries the camp of an adjacent team, and Strom goes to try to help; then another avalanche buries Apollo’s tent, and Strom believes himself orphaned. But his physical strength—his salient quality—enables him to save both teams, and in the process he discovers a group of bears that appear to have formed a pod—though nobody believes him when he reports it.

Sent to recuperate from its ordeal, the pod encounters another crisis, this time seen through the eyes of Meda, the group’s interface with others. A survivor of the pre-singularity human community, Malcolm Leto seduces Meda, planning to use her to convert others to his plan to recapture the high technology left behind by those who have escaped into the Singularity. This time, the rest of the team intervenes to save her.

Their next test is in space. They are sent to an orbiting station to learn piloting, as candidates to captain a starship. Now they seem to have drawn still another kind of unwanted attention, as they are singled out as possible subversives by military operatives. With the help of another pod, they escape back to earth—but find themselves the objects of a government manhunt.

Escaping, they must confront the mystery of their origin. But in facing their challenges, they learn to meld themselves more completely into a single unit—a true symbiosis of five talents and five individual consciousnesses. Melko provides a credible mechanism for the creation of the pod, and portrays a future in which its existence makes sense.

One of the few recent works that builds on the idea of Sturgeon’s landmark novel, More than Human. This is an impressive first novel for Melko.

Kress’s latest is probably best described as a near-future techno-thriller, with a touch of Stephen King.

The story takes place in Tyler, a small town in Western Maryland, a once-rural area that’s turning into a bedroom community for Washington. A recent arrival in town is Tessa Sanderson, recently separated from the FBI after the accidental death of her husband, an Arab-American businessman. As the book begins, she gets a phone call from her old boss. He says that her husband’s name has turned up in email intercepts; maybe she can shed light on it. Tessa, who knows the Bureau cut her loose because of her husband’s nationality, is uninterested in cooperating. More anti-Arab paranoia, she figures.

 In the same town, a number of dogs have suddenly turned vicious, attacking their families. Jess Langstrom, Tyler’s animal control officer, has never seen anything like it. The attacks are coming from normally docile breeds, and a large number of the victims are children. The situation quickly overwhelms the local hospital and the public safety officers. What do you do when every dog in town—a country town, where many older residents are used to letting their dogs run free—must be treated as a potential killer?

Langstrom’s response is to lose himself in work, making sure that every animal is accounted for. When the feds come in, recognizing that the situation threatens to overwhelm the local authorities, he becomes a pawn for government agencies with their own power-seeking agendas. But his knowledge of the turf means they can’t entirely reject his advice and expertise. He keeps working, even as the threat seems ready to spiral out of control.

Meanwhile, Tessa becomes aware that the email messages sent to her husband have the Arabic word for “dog” repeated several times. Afraid to contact her old bosses, she begins her own search through the web of his old acquaintances, trying to find who has contacted him—and what, if anything, it has to do with Tyler’s emergency. Not surprisingly, it turns out to have everything to do with it.

Kress builds the plot piece by piece, dropping clues that hint at the way things are going to turn out but never let the reader see quite far enough ahead to guess the outcome. Tessa, putting her old tradecraft to work, begins to sort out the malevolent plan behind the epidemic of canine violence. Eventually she puts together the traces of evidence that lead her to a solution—and a confrontation.

Kress builds the tension and sheer terror of the situation with great effect, keeping the reader off guard even when the solution seems to be in sight. The conclusion is eminently satisfactory—and by no means too pat. Fine work by one of our most versatile professionals.