THE NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS | Mario Acevedo | Rayo | Former infantryman Mario Acevedo manages to seamlessly blend several genres in his smooth, wryly funny debut novel. Nymphos starts off as a war thriller: enlisted grunt Felix Gomez is just trying to survive in Iraq when he mistakenly shoots a civilian girl who bleeds to death before his eyes. Overcome with guilt, he allows an Iraqi vampire to turn him into one of the undead as punishment. By the next chapter Gomez has harnessed his new powers to get work as a private eye; soon an old friend at the Department of Energy gets wind of his prowess and calls him in to investigate a mysterious outbreak of (woo hoo!) nymphomania that’s sprung up amongst the DOE’s female employees.
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Vellum is a poetic exercise more dependent on language than character or plot, but despite its amorphous, cosmic theme (which, Duncan says, is simply “people die”), the tender moments between friends, lovers, and even enemies make it a very human story that infiltrated my dreams, which is kind of creepy. | Patrick Daily
TO HELL WITH ALL THAT: LOVING AND LOATHING OUR INNER HOUSEWIFE | Caitlin Flanagan | Little, Brown | Where to start with Caitlin Flanagan? A working mom who condemns other working moms for seeking creative fulfillment–or, God forbid, income–outside the home, Flanagan believes that feminism ruined everything for families. Still, she can’t deny that domestic work is often mind-numbingly boring. Her solution? Hire staff!
