In her second novel (after This One Is Mine), Semple pieces together a modern-day comic caper full of heart and ingenuity. Eighth-grader Bee is the daughter of Microsoft genius Elgin Branch and Bernadette Fox, a once-famous architect who has become a recluse in her Seattle home. Bee has a simple request: a family cruise to Antarctica as a reward for her good grades. Her parents acquiesce, but not without trepidation. Bernadette’s social anxiety has become so overwhelming that she’s employed a personal assistant from Delhi Virtual Assistants Intl. (who makes “$0.75 USD/hr.”) for tasks as simple as making dinner reservations. How will she survive three weeks on a boat with other live human beings? Maybe she won’t; a day before the trip, Bernadette disappears, and Bee gathers her mother’s invoices, e-mail correspondence, and emergency room bills in the hopes of finding clues as to where she went.The result is a compelling composite of a woman’s life—and the way she’s viewed by the many people who share it. As expected from a writer who has written episodes of Arrested Development, the nuances of mundane interactions are brilliantly captured, and the overarching mystery deepens with each page, until the thoroughly satisfying dénouement. Agent: Anna Stein, Aitken Alexander. (Aug.)

The title is apt to describe Galilee Garner, the prickly protagonist of Dilloway’s second novel (after How to Be an American Housewife). “Gal” has been on dialysis since she was diagnosed with kidney disease as a child and, by her own choosing, has distanced herself from others. She lives a solitary life in central California, her free time spent breeding competition roses and teaching high school biology at a private Catholic school. Her sole friend, Dara, whose frilly ’50s style makes her look like a character from the musical Grease, teaches art at the same school, but Gal’s self-centeredness creates a rift in their relationship. Gal’s autonomy is challenged when her teenage niece Riley arrives unannounced when Riley’s flighty mom, Gal’s sister, goes to Hong Kong on business. Having Riley around slowly softens Gal, drawing her focus away from herself. There’s no mystery that Dilloway’s metaphor, the care needed to keep a rose thriving, is meant to evoke the needs of a child, a friendship, or someone suffering a chronic illness. Dilloway’s tale is slow in reaching the sweet part of Gal’s hardened heart, and this lack of empathy will push some readers away. Agent: Elaine Markson, Markson Thoma. (Aug.)

Try as he might, author, journalist, and radio host Andersen (Reset) never quite captures the female voice of law professor Karen Hollaender, who, in the process of publishing her memoirs, makes a stunning revelation about her past. Anderson does, however, successfully depict the political and social turmoil of the mid 1960s as Karen revisits the radicalizing angst that led her and her trio of male friends to devise a plan that would indelibly alter the course of history. As teenagers in their Chicago suburb, Karen, Alex Macallister, and Chuck Levy spent hours staging James Bond fantasies. Tracing their transformation into budding ’60s student radicals, Andersen credibly shows why so many smart young privileged people became passionate about social justice, embraced anarchy and insurrection, and in many cases ended up snitching for the U.S. government. The author’s observations from a baby boomer’s perspective, about differences between the post-9/11 world and the 1960s, along with an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at intelligence and its role in both the past and present adds pizzazz to a tale that falters because of an unconvincing narrator. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (July)

In his new story collection, Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe) draws from both sci-fi and literature to conjure a world of emotionally stunted people, unable or unwilling to cope with reality and the love or loss that it entails. With somewhat mixed results, the book charts eclectic territory, from a zombie in a megamart to a new pharmaceutical drug that generates a sense of purpose, and explores retreats from reality and emotion. In “Standard Loneliness Package,” Yu imagines a technology that transfers guilt, heartbreak, and other bad feelings onto the employees of an “emotional engineering firm” based in India. In “Adult Contemporary,” which recalls George Saunders, a man trying to buy a new life realizes that he’s a character in someone else’s story. Less successful stories delve into the workings of fiction itself; Yu wrestles with ethics as he imagines himself as a character struggling against his author in “Human for Beginners.” At their best, the tales amusingly send up American consumer culture, but Yu’s fondness for self-reference and literary games leads to some dead ends. While Yu’s imaginative allegories are mostly too obvious to be genuinely thought provoking, they’re nonetheless an impressive sendup of contemporary life. Agent: Gary Heidt, Signature Literary Agency. (July)

From a distance, Netzer’s confident debut is the tale of “an astronaut lost in space, and the wife he left behind.” At its core, it is the story of the power of love to overcome the great accidents of the universe. Sunny was born totally hairless. Her husband, Maxon, is a rocket scientist, and together they have an autistic son named Bubber. It appears they live a normal suburban life in Virginia— Sunny wears a long blond wig and Bubber is medicated to keep him calm. But after Maxon leaves for a space expedition, a car accident reveals Sunny’s hairlessness to her friends and neighbors. Being outed causes Sunny to re-examine her life, and she begins to come to terms with herself as different but special. Meanwhile, Maxon’s expedition is jeopardized when a tiny rock “that had been hiding behind the moon” slams into his spaceship. As he and his crew struggle to survive, and Sunny embraces her family’s peculiarities, Netzer deftly illuminates the bonds that transcend shortcomings and tragedy. Characterized by finely textured emotions and dramatic storytelling, Netzer’s world will draw readers happily into its orbit. Agent: Caryn Karmatz Rudy, DeFiore and Company. (July)

In Maso’s first novel since 1998’s Defiance, a mother’s fears for her young daughter are revealed through dreams and surreal events woven haphazardly between reality and illusion. After a great wind, an enormous winged creature appears in the house; mother and child are unsure whether it is kind, malicious, a bat, or an angel, but the mother knows that her move to the idyllic valley of her childhood to shield the child from life’s dangers has failed. “Life and Death before our eyes shall vie for the Mother and Child,” the godlike Vortex Man proclaims. Together and separately, they traverse the magical arrivals and departures of the Grandmother from the North Pole, the grief of September 11, the sleeping left ventricle of the child’s Aunt Inga; “Each beat of the heart is triggered by a surge of calcium ions that cause millions of overlapping filaments in a heart cell to pull against each other and contract.” In exploring the intricate mother-child bond, Maso overly romanticizes suffering and grief, detracting from the lyrical prose and leaving her book feeling unanchored. Still, this plotless but not directionless novel beautifully contemplates the treachery of the world that motherhood exposes, and the child’s ignorance of it. Agent: Georges Borchardt. (July)

Warren’s U.S. debut is a delicate exploration of the inner lives of the inhabitants of smalltown Juliet, Saskatchewan, located on the edge of a Canadian desert. Local banker Norval Birch is weighed down by a demanding wife, a pregnant teenage daughter staring down the barrel of a shotgun wedding, and a burdensome understanding of the townsfolk’s debts. Lee Torgeson, an adopted 26-year-old and reluctant rancher, struggles to come to terms with the land he has just inherited from his adoptive family, and the blank family history the vast expanse represents. Middle-aged and widowed, Marian lives with her brother-in-law, Willard, the quotidian talk between them suffused with unspoken affection that might revolutionize their relationship. Finally, haunted by the specter of poverty, Blaine and Vicki Dolson fight to maintain their marriage and the family farm, all the while caring for six kids. Though Warren attempts to meaningfully interweave these stories, she is too subtle, making the connections frustratingly opaque. Still, Warren clearly has an intimate understanding of smalltown life, and infuses Juliet with plenty of heart. Agent: Ron Eckel, Cooke International. (July 5)

This unflinching biopic of a French collaborationist and his family through the eyes of young Marie, born in 1942, shines as much for its depictions of her father, Albert, and the fascist leader Doriot as for its subtle contextualizing of this dark episode in French history. Men like Albert’s authoritarian father, Louis, brilliantly rendered, were hard-working patriots and war heroes whose fervent anticommunism aligned them with Pétain and his “National Revolution” and ultimately resulted in much suffering. Marie’s loyal, pious mother Alice is a touching archetype—a devoted apolitical woman who never grasped what her husband was up to when he joined the notorious FPP and went on to become Doriot’s right-hand man. Though the prose is often stiff, and historical documents, such as passages from Albert’s trial diary and newspaper quotes, seem like an easy way to avoid dealing with the sordid implications of Albert’s political engagement on a more personal level, this groundbreaking book, published in France in 1974, is a thrilling, uncompromising, and disturbing foray into French fascism. This heartfelt first English translation by Mathews is long overdue. (July)

As this overly philosophical novel begins, the Investigator arrives in a strange, unnamed city with a mandate to look into “a most unusually high” suicide rate at the Enterprise, an organization worthy of both the adjectives Orwellian and Kafkaesque. There, he encounters the Waiter, the Policeman, the Night Clerk, and so on, and is met at every turn with petty bureaucracy, mindless conformity, and a surreal indifference to his needs. Frustrations mount until the Investigator cracks and, in an orgy of violence, destroys his already awful hotel room; though this leaves him feeling “perfectly happy,” what follows is a truly hellish existence. Claudel’s slim parable about the plight of contemporary existence cannot be considered an heir to classics like 1984 or The Metamorphosis. Though written in 2010, the Investigator’s world is more reminiscent of Eastern Europe before the fall of communism than of 21st-century life. There’s no subtlety or ambiguity; nothing is left to the imagination, from the lives of the characters to the ideas Claudel intends to illuminate. Few readers will be able to draw any parallels between the author’s vision and contemporary society. (July 10)

Fales-Hill (One Flight Up) channels Jane Austen in a bawdy sendup of today’s landed gentry: a mixed-race couple and their four gorgeous daughters, all striving and conniving for a happily-ever-after. Broke and reeling from a messy divorce, second-oldest Bliss and her own daughter, Bella, return to the Washington, D.C., “little house of horrors” where Bliss grew up; craven younger sister Diana becomes the star of a reality TV husband hunt; oldest sister Victoria balks at another marriage proposal; and promiscuous baby sister Charlotte vents her girls-gone-wild proclivities. Even their pretentious Jamaica-born mom, Forsythia, takes advantage of her adoring but indifferent British husband’s long leash. But the hilarious hijinks of the Harcourts hides more poignant truths about these strong-willed women. Of course, there’s never a doubt that Bliss will find love in an unexpected place, or that Diana will get what she deserves, Victoria will accept a long-stifled truth, and Charlotte will wise up. The bigger surprise is the touching insight into the gnawing pain deep within each woman, especially social-climbing Forsythia, whose “fierce, blind love” would sacrifice everything for Bliss. Fales-Hill whips an old-fashioned comedy of manners into a stylish, sharp-edged satire. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (July 3)