Griel Marcus -- The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice

Love culture critic Greil Marcus or hate him, you must admit his style is unique. Classic Marcus sentences are Marcus books writ small -- blending possibilities, contradictions, allusions and previously unimaginable connections. The medium is the message. How better to demonstrate the tangled web of our culture than through hypertext in hardback? The Shape of Things to Come suits its time better than any previous works. Before, Marcus dazzled but didn't illumine -- unless you knew each of his cultural touchstones, and not many did. Now, when he references "On a Note of Triumph," Norman Corwin's end-of-WWII radio play, you can go listen to it on NPR.org. You can find Twin Peaks episodes on YouTube.com. Even if you don't buy how Marcus connects these and more, it's fun to hunt down his source material. How does Marcus connect it all? He says America made a covenant through its great founding documents. The covenant said we would live up to high ideals of freedom of justice -- but we never have. Just as in the Hebrew Scriptures prophets showed up to rebuke Israel when it broke its covenant with God, artists from Bill Pullman to Heavens to Betsy to Philip Roth have used a prophetic voice to reveal our shortcomings. Marcus asserts America's covenant is with its citizens, not with any divine authority, but he weakens his argument when he quotes prophetic voices of earlier eras (like Thomas Jefferson's "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just"). Plus he makes a major mistake with a well-known Bible quote. Why would he use the word "prophecy" in his title if he were going to fumble theological language? (Angela Pancella) Grade: B

Max Brooks -- World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

MAX BROOKS -- WORLD WAR Z: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR (CROWN)

There was a point, after we'd gone several chapters deep in Max Brooks' new novel, that my wife asked me to stop reading to her. "It's too much," she said. "I mean, god, it's a lot more graphic to hear it than it is to see the films." She was speaking of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, the terrifying chronicle of humanity's last stand against the ultimate plague. The disease reanimates the dead, drives them to eat the living and infect them, swelling the zombie ranks. The result is a self-replicating enemy, one that is self contained, never rests and independent of command or supply lines. The outbreak begins in rural China and slouches towards South Africa, Europe, the United States and Bethlehem. The living are gratuitously consumed and there's plenty of graphic verbiage, but the real currency of the book is the fear in one narrative after another. It pushes the refugees from the land into the water on lifeboats -- any boat -- fleeing a sinking world. A crew of a stolen Chinese sub waits out the crisis under the waves. Others flee to the north, where the ice paralyzes the dead. Israel initiates a quarantine, walling them off from the hell outside. The unconscionable plan of an Apartheid war criminal shapes international response and, as the tide is turned and the living retake the Earth, everything turns upside down. Cuba becomes the dominant capitalist democracy and Russia a theocratic state. Like the oral histories of Sept. 11, it's a shocking account of a trip through hell and the voices tell of the best and worst in the hearts of man. But World War Z is somebody else's war and fiction allows us to be honest with ourselves in ways the news never will. (Stephen Carter-Novotni) Grade: A

Cormac McCarthy -- The Road

CORMAC MCCARTHY -- THE ROAD (KNOPF)

Cormac McCarthy's latest novel fires an early warning shot. It's the near future and the unimaginable has happened. Yet certain details are spare, sketchy and only peripherally revealed. The Road recounts the desperately improbable survival of a father and his young boy in the blackest -- figuratively and literally, as everything's burned -- of post-apocalyptic circumstances. They trudge on foot through ash-covered, barren landscapes toward "the coast." No human civilization remains; animals are extinct, food, clothing and shelter are scarce and survivors are rarely seen -- and when they are, they're probably a pack of cannibals. It's dog-eat-dog, Darwin time: "Darkness implacable ... The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." Themes of good and evil permeate the story, with the young son's concerns about doing what's right ("Are we still the good guys?") and tempering his father's flagging capacity for human sympathy outside their own domain. The characters' development reaches a critical mass solely through the father and son's conversations. Commonplace details -- their names, exact whereabouts, physical characteristics and ages -- are never revealed. They could be anyone; their paternal-filial bond is what's relatable. Another of the novel's strengths is its selective reminders of what no longer exists, subtly tuning readers in to this visionary wake-up call. The boy asks his father what a "neighborhood" is. With his signature omission of all quotation marks and most apostrophes, McCarthy's prose flows elegantly and reads smoothly. The structure shifts between succinct dialogue exchanges -- punctuated by countless "okays" from the boy -- and hauntingly descriptive prose that reads like the finest poetry. The Road is bleak, gripping and achingly beautiful. (Julie Mullins) Grade: A

Louise Welsh -- The Bullet Trick

LOUISE WELSH -- THE BULLET TRICK (CONONGATE U.S.)

For her second novel Louise Welsh devised a humpback thriller with two climaxes of similar weight and impact. Hence she had to create a narrative tactic that would string out the suspense and bunch the punches toward the end of her book. And she damn near succeeded, risking some effect-before-cause confusion. It all becomes moderately clear once you sort out that the Glasgow scenes from the back half of the story are interleaved with the London and Berlin scenes that make up the front half. Magician William Wilson's career has gone to hell. While working a cop's retirement party with a pair of stripper-hookers in London, he comes into accidental possession of information about an old murder, information that is as dangerous to possess as it is puzzling. Then he's booked into a grubby erotic cabaret in Berlin. The blood-drenched illusion he performs there with a beautiful, mysterious assistant leads to a tricky murder that might or might not be an illusion. Earlier, actually later, Wilson is implicated in a murder in Glasgow that sets up the book's double-bang denouement. Welsh's writing is economically atmospheric, setting one sleazy scene after another, enlivening each character and knot in the plot with a comfortable amount of detail. And her anti-hero is quite properly anti-heroic in a comedie noire sort of way. (Tom McElfresh) Grade: B+