Kathy Hepinstall

The House of Gentle Men

Bard

(Read an excerpt)

In this quaintly addictive tale, the house of the title is a sort of anti-bordello for women, where the male residents provide lovelorn ladies not with sex but with solace, sweetness, and romance. The adroitness with which Kathy Hepinstall carries off this surreal premise is all the more impressive given that the novel is the Austin author's first. Set in post-World War II Louisiana, the novel traces the lives of two motherless misfits: Charlotte, a voluntary mute who suffered first a rape, then the loss of her baby; and Louise, a compulsive neatnik whose father is the men's madam (or should that be "sir"?). Both women fall for his newest working boy, a troubled soldier attempting to atone for his past. As the trio search for happiness, they encounter a succession of realizations, such as "throwing scraps to a hungry dog was love; and tending a garden was love; and soaking a white shirt in bluing was love; and kissing the forehead of an aging parent who mixed small talk and prayers in crazy patterns was love — and that they were born to this love, as satin is born to the long, slow stitch."

Jim Hightower

If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates

HarperCollins

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If the gods hadn't meant us to laugh, they wouldn't have given us Jim Hightower. The rabidly populist Austinite (and former Texas ag commissioner) inspires chuckles all around as he champions workaday Americans in If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates (HarperCollins). Needless to say, the corporate and government elite he skewers will find him markedly less funny than the rabble-rouser set. Hightower's prose is as smooth and as down-home as fresh creamery butter, but his message carries the sting of a hot mustard poultice. There will not be a more entertaining — or more powerful — indictment of American politics and business this election year.

Chris Rogers

Chill Factor

Bantam

Houstonian Chris Rogers shows more poise and less noise with her third Dixie Flannigan mystery, Chill Factor (Bantam). The story, centered around a group of granny bandits who drop the dishcloth and take up armed bank robbery, tracks well and neatly wraps up with a tight curtain closer. Tough-gal Dixie loses a bit of her stridency, and she is all the more likeable for it.