Books: 811

“Quant”
Anthony Bidulka
Bon Vivant Books
$22

Bidulka’s final “Russell Quant Mystery.” Quant is at his parents’ farmhouse in Howell, Saskatchewan. Hardy, Ukrainian mom Kay’s memory is failing; resistant, she must soon have safer lodgings. A call from Kay’s recently widowed friend CeeCee pulls Quant into the cloud surrounding Clem’s death. Did he commit a crime, then suicide? Foul play? The town is torn. Quant takes the case, and folks from the previous “Quant” stories (plus other Bidulkas) make cameo appearances: Father Len, Merrie Bell, Adam Saint, Baj, Sister Genowere, Ethan Ash, the town of Beautiful. Don’t recognize them? Try “Amuse Bouche,” read all nine. Quant, a decade married to JP Taine, mourns turning 55, that Kay’s called him “Thomas,” his father’s name, yet Quant solves the mystery. Kay recognizes her “sonsyou.” A fine farewell — or introduction.

“Fruit Fly”
Josh Silver
Crooked Lane
$29.99

A queasy, uneasy read — one feels a voyeuristic participant rather than a distant reader in this tale of dueling users. Mallory Maddox wrote one glorious novel, but now, seven dry years into a Saharan writer’s block, she needs a hook on which to hang another. Leo? A young addict sleeping under bridges, selling himself to survive? Mallory needs Leo’s story; feral Leo, needing cash and sensing a wealthy mark, is pliable to a point. The two dance and feint, Mallory now feeling, as its discoverer, that she owns Leo’s story. In the background is Mallory’s charismatic Irish husband, kindly but overpowering, who has previously had her committed, and is also a known author from whom Mallory must keep everything secret. Other secrets threaten. Will you join in the dance?

“Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész”
Patricia Albers
Other Press
$39.99

Perhaps the most famous and influential photographer you’ve ever not known. André Kertész (Born Andor Kohn, 1894 in Budapest), a conscript in WWI, photographing the Eastern Front on glass plates, moved to Paris in the mid-1920s, and used early Leicas, catching images in edges, angles and shadows. He moved to America in 1936, but it was not a happy fit with the brasher, cruder American view of subjects. Author Albers spent 12 years researching, and the result is a nuanced biography of a complex, sometimes combative, frequently heartfelt personality. “Everything is photograph,” consider his image taken in artist Piet Mondrian’s home: a flower in a pot, a bit of staircase and rail, the artist’s hat on a peg. So much revealed, condensed into so spare a frame.

“The Summer of Grace”
Karen Jones
Brother Mockingbird
$18.99

Tidewater, Va., 1951. 10-year-old Gracie sits crying, hugging Brown Hound. The two are being sent down south for the summer: Gracie and Brown are “too rowdy” for her neurasthenic mother, who rules the roost. At the North Carolina farm, Gracie meets grandmother Emily, great-Granny Jane, and her cousin Jane, also 10, but daringly free. There is also dark-skinned Marcell, housekeeper, retained, though she often isn’t sober, who is the focus of gossip among local church ladies. Marcell is the center of a secret never discussed. Marcell also hates dogs. Scheming to help Marcell stop drinking, the girls learn the secret of its source. A coming-of-age tale, encased in a mystery, with the skill to convey to today’s readers the internalized wounds of the Deep South.