There's some promising novels testing the early, brisk 2008 waters a little more boldly than the screaming January ninnies thus far -- running a mini-gamut of sorts from better-than-expected blockbusters like John Grisham to tasty morsels such as Pat Barker's latest and a debut novel from Tod Wodicka that's garnering high critical praise. It almost makes me believe that as new releases snowball into the stores I just might get my hopes up for the bookselling season, that, to para-steal from Wodicka, "All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well." Okay, click your heels three times...

FICTION:

The Reserve by Russell Banks

Seduction, scandal, and dark family secrets propel Russell Banks’ newest book as the John Dos Passos Prize winner, whose notable novels include 1985's Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter from 1998, begins his new work — part love story, part murder mystery — in an Adirondack Mountain retreat, known as the Reserve. It is here that Boy should’ve never met Girl: the tempestuous heiress Vanessa Cole encounters the left-wing — and married — artist Jordan Groves, and the crooked path of true alternating love and clash of wills runs ever-awry. Especially as Vanessa’s father unexpectedly dies on the same day — never a good sign — further shaking loose some psychological support beams, while firming up some familial plots and recriminations against Vanessa, followed by some countermeasures best served cold. Following all of this strife, it’s no wonder that Banks then had to up the ante by moving the The Reserve's novelistic operations to war-torn Spain and Nazi Germany…

Life Class by Pat Barker

One of Britain's most acclaimed contemporary novelists, Booker Prize-winner Pat Barker returns to the World War I setting of her award-winning Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration; The Eye in the Door; and The Ghost Road) for Life Class, a story of relationships and hope altered and redirected by a calamitous world events. Central to the novel is Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke, two students at London's Slade School of Fine Art, along with Kit Neville, a promising young painter. Paul begins an affair with Teresa Halliday, an unstable artist's model, and Kit pursues Elinor, but at the onset of hostilities Paul and Kit volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross, while Elinor remains in London to concentrate on her painting, each confronting the war's overwhelming effect on artistic values and love that will never be the same. With Life Class, Barker returns to the subject of the harrowing psychic damage World War I has caused British society, while she explores the experience of love and the role of art in a time of war.

The Purrfect Murder by Rita Mae Brown, Sneaky Pie Brown, Michael Gellatly (Illustrator)

The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone

The Appeal by John Grisham

The Sorcerer King (Faerie Path Series #3) by Frewin Jones

Sizzle and Burn by Jayne Ann Krentz

Light of the Moon by Luanne Rice

The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Tod Wodicka

NONFICTION:

Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time by Valerie Bertinelli

Temples on the Other Side: How Wisdom from Beyond the Veil Can Help You Right Now by Sylvia Browne

Conartist: 30 Years with the Los Angeles Times by Paul Conrad, Paul Conrad (Illustrator), Shelby Coffey (Introduction), Norman Lewis Corwin

Iceman: My Fighting Life by Chuck Liddell, Chad Millman by

India: An Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya

Windows on the White House: The Story of Presidential Libraries by Curt Smith