This story collection is one of only three books by Thomas, who died in a 1989 plane crash en route to an Ethiopian refugee camp. Fernanda Eberstadt calls it "a shrewd, dispassionate portrait of nineteenth-century Corsica" (Kessinger, $21). In the lamentably obscure French writer's most accomplished novel, a jaded colonel and his daughter journey to Corsica in search of untouched paradise, only to become immersed in international intrigue, culture clash, and a still-thriving ancient tradition of the vendetta.
is a shadowland-damp with fog, dark with night, and peopled with killers and cons" (Vintage, $14). Auden called "the great wrong place" and which Phillip Lopate dubs "the city that didn't want to be a city." Lopate loves that, contrary to its bright reputation, Chandler's Los Angeles is "portrayed as a very occult, secretive place." "Don't expect sunshine and palm trees," seconds David Ebershoff. Michael Ondaatje calls this world "a thrilling, unforgettable universe, beautifully evoked, completely real and believable-a landscape where there are great adventures and love affairs and politics and wars" (Harvest, $14). Imagine John Cheever's swimmer traveling via tree instead of suburban pool-for his entire life-and you have Calvino's fairy tale of an eighteenth-century Italian boy who climbs a tree one day and never comes down.