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Bad Marie: A Novel - Marcy Dermansky $0.99

Dermansky follows her lauded debut, Twins, with a trite tail about an ex-con's unlikely re-entry to the world. After serving six years for harboring a fugitive--her bank robber boyfriend--30-year-old Marie is released and misses the decisionless ease of prison life. She finds work as a live-in nanny (nothing like a felon watching your pride and joy) for two-and-a-half-year-old Caitlin, the daughter of her childhood best friend, Ellen, with whom she has a rocky, competitive relationship. In a hard-to-believe coincidence, Ellen is married to the French author, Benoît Doniel, whose book Marie read repeatedly while in prison, and soon enough, Benoît and Marie kick off an affair and decide to run away to Paris together with Caitlin. But when Benoît's true colors are displayed before even landing in the City of Lights (thanks to another unbelievable coincidence), Marie finds herself taking on the role of a single mother in a strange land, though her travails never really impede on her relatively charmed streak. It's off-putting how heavily the plot relies on implausible twists, and Marie is too sketchily drawn to carry the full weight of the story.

86'd - Dan Fante $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Fante continues to follow in the literary footsteps of his famous father, John Fante (Ask the Dust), with another bruising autobiographical novel about his alter ego, Bruno Dante. When the publication of his short story collection is delayed indefinitely, Dante reluctantly returns to his previous career of L.A. limo driver. His boss, however, first insists that he sober up. He does, and launches into a downward cycle of recovery and inebriation. During his descent, he meets an obnoxious Hollywood producer interested in an adaptation of one of Dante's stories and an Old Hollywood matriarch who might be the key to his salvation. Fante puts Dante though many harrowing moments—waking from a blackout with a gash in his neck; having a spurned lover superglue his penis to his thigh. Like his late father, Fante views life in unsparing fashion, but he seems a little too enamored of his alter ego's downhill trajectory while offering very little insight into the source of Dante's personal demons. The result is a novel that disappointingly titillates more than it illuminates. (Oct.)

Diary of a Very Bad Year: Interviews with an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager - Keith Gessen $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Expanding on a 2007 interview in the literary magazine n+1, editor and interviewer Gessen draws together two years' worth of interviews with a despairing anonymous hedge fund manager. HFM, as Gessen calls him, didn't go to business school or major in economics, but has been working successfully in hedge funds for over a decade. With some context provided by Gessen, HFM schools readers in the stories behind the death of Bear Stearns, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the plunging dollar, the bailouts, the Madoff scandal, and, finally, the upswing. Though it's interesting to have a personal take on the tumultuous past two years—and HFM ends the interviews when the stress finally drives him to take a semisabbatical—the decision to tell this story in an interview format is tricky and ultimately unsuccessful; the choppy transcription format distances readers from the ideas at hand, and the points lose their punch. Fans of the original article will find this expansion compelling, but other readers curious about the factors behind the crash will do better elsewhere. (July)

A Common Pornography: A Memoir - Kevin Sampsell $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
A memoir in collage form, this frank but fragmented narrative chronicles the author's early life in the Pacific Northwest. Told in a series of small pieces, some less than a quarter of a page long, Sampsell follows a stream-of-consciousness series of memories centering loosely around a collection of family secrets unearthed after his father's funeral. Replicating the effects of memory, Sampsell's chronicle begins piecemeal and becomes more detailed as it goes, emphasizing the unfiltered honesty of the story and his efforts to tell it. Though it can be frustrating waiting for the pieces to add up, there's enough bathos, dysfunctional family antics and coming-of-age adventures-naked photoshoots, psychiatric hospitalizations, late-night donut shops and the tri-city New Wave scene-to keep readers turning pages. Sampsell's eye for detail and deadpan delivery envliven a dark personal history with bathos and a powerful desire for understanding.

Down and Out on Murder Mile - Tony O'neill $0.99

From Publishers Weekly
Novelist O'Neill (Digging the Vein), a recovered heroin addict and lapsed rocker, draws on his experiences for this fast-paced, compulsively readable (if occasionally self-indulgent) portrait of a young would-be rocker junkie. After most of his belongings are repossessed (or sold for drug money) and his wife Susan admits to embezzling thousands of dollars from her company to support their habit, the unnamed narrator and his wife flee Los Angeles for his former home in England. There, he tries frantically to plug back into the London drug and music scenes and struggles to get clean. Fighting violent withdrawal symptoms, living in squalor on London's infamous Clapton Road (aka Murder Mile) and grappling with a sadistic and controlling rehab doctor, O'Neill's antihero paints a grim, bloody picture of compulsive self-destruction. As veteran of half a dozen bands (including the Brian Jonestown Massacre), O'Neill gives himself too much space to voice his professional grievances, and there's a tendency to name-drop. Still, the novel's consistent tone of urgency and desperation creates a gritty world of its own that compels despite its flaws. (Nov.)