A man of honor

To find and follow her next mission in Brackston's City of Time and Magic, fourth in the time-traveling "Found Things" series, Xanthe must choose between the songs sung to her by a mourning brooch, a writing slope, and gem-encrusted hatpin; she also hunts for the missing Liam and seeks to block the Visionary Society from using the Spinners maliciously (50,000-copy first printing). In A Man of Honor, prequel to the 1979 megahit A Woman of Substance, Bradford tells the story of Blackie O'Neill, who travels from County Kerry to England as a young orphan and begins his rise in the world while meeting Substance's Emma Harte, still a kitchen maid (75,000-copy first printing). Jago follows up The Northern Lights, winner of the National Biography Prize, with the 17th-century-set debut novel A Net for Small Fishes, drawing on real-life events: when Frances Howard, the miserable wife of the Earl of Essex, meets the widowed Anne Turner, they form a friendship that leads to something radical (35,000-copy first printing). Driven to act after Pearl Harbor, new Steel heroine Audrey Parker and friend Lizzie join the Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron, Flying Angels who regularly wing their way into enemy territory to rescue wounded soldiers from the battlefield. Harriet Szász once appeared in vaudeville with sister Josie as The Sisters Sweet, posing as conjoined twins at their parents' behest, but when Josie betrays the scam and runs off to Hollywood, Harriet must decide what to do with her life. In-house love for Weiss's debut.

The eighth installment of Bradford's Harte Family Saga is a prequel to the first, A Woman of Substance (1979). Close followers of the Harte story will recognize Shane Patrick Desmond O'Neill, known as Blackie, as dynasty founder Emma Harte's early mentor and helper, who earns her lifelong loyalty. In 1899, Blackie, an orphan, emigrates from Ireland to Yorkshire at the age of 13. Offered a home by his kindly Uncle Patrick and his ailing Aunt Eileen, who live near Leeds, Blackie learns the building trade; he has ambitions to be an architect one day but mostly to be filthy rich. Series fans know that Emma, who shares Blackie's ambition to get filthy rich, gets her start in Leeds, but Blackie will not meet her until three-quarters of the way in. While we're waiting, Blackie encounters that Bradford staple, the older woman who relieves him of his virginity and then conveniently exits. Until about Page 150, no real excitement or suspense happens beyond minute descriptions of logistics, interiors, and English cuisine--heavy on the meat pies. At 17, Blackie is enlisted by a friend to help rescue fellow immigrant Moira Aherne from the "Ham Shank," a dangerous neighborhood. Blackie suspects, based on her upper-class accent and dress, that lovely Moira has an ulterior motive for slumming with the working class, but any hopes of Moira as a source of conflict are soon dashed. None of the privileged and beautiful people in this book harbor sinister motives because Bradford seems so intent on vindicating them. Case in point: Lord Robert Lassiter, an earl who takes up a sizable and at first seemingly unrelated chunk of the book. This handsome magnate who has parlayed his family fortune into another fortune proposes to the fetching Vanessa, 17 years his junior, while still married to Lady Lucinda Lassiter. Bradford implies that Lucinda, the mother of Robert's heir and spare, deserves to be blackmailed into a divorce. The rushed denouement obscures some genuinely interesting logistics. As a prologue to the Harte legend, very thin gruel indeed. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.