Set in a madly grasping modern Budapest, literary critic Ervin’s debut mines very different ways of achieving personal and artistic freedom in three neatly polished, interlocking tales. In “14 Bagatelles,” world-renowned Hungarian composer Harkályi Lajos, a WWII concentration camp survivor who emigrated to America at 15, returns to Budapest for the premiere of his opera, The Golden Lotus, and finds the city shockingly hostile, criminal, and deeply anti-Semitic. “Brooking the Devil” follows the plight of a young black American GI, “Brutus” Gibson, rescued from skinheads by Harkályi, who is framed by his superior officer. Set up on a dangerous gun-running mission, Gibson recognizes his two choices: submit or refuse and risk court-martial. Finally, in “The Empty Chairs,” a second violinist in the Budapest orchestra, a young American expatriate performing Harkályi’s opera on the night of the premiere, deviates wildly from the score in a surprising and transformative reaction to the work--to the conductor’s horror and the composer’s great delight. With dexterous sensibility and fluid prose, Ervin’s protagonists find liberation from the onerous strictures of Budapest’s Nazi and Communist past. (Sept.)

The war between the Haters and the Unchanged rages on in the follow-up to Moody's taut horror/suspense debut Hater (2009). When readers last saw Danny McCoyne, he and a bunch of his fellow Haters had just escaped certain death in a facility set up by the Unchanged, the people who were not affected by whatever it is that causes the Haters to feel an urgent need to kill those who are not like them. Now, several months later, war has broken out, with the Haters running free in the countryside while the Unchanged have withdrawn to cramped refugee camps in major urban areas. The Unchanged have greater numbers, a semi-functional society and a military on their side, while the Haters have single-minded focus, brutality and an unquenchable lust to kill going for them. Which isn't to say that some Haters-Danny included-can't still use their brains. Danny is currently on a quest to find his daughter, Ellis, who, unlike his wife and two sons, is also a Hater. Then, he is captured and tranquilized by a small group of Unchanged. He wakes up chained, under the "care" of Joseph Mallon, an Unchanged who attempts to train Danny to keep his need to kill in check. Mallon's techniques seem to pay off. Eventually, with some effort, Danny can just manage to be unrestrained in the same room as Mallon without killing him, which is a significant accomplishment for a Hater. Mallon decides that Danny is ready to meet Sahota, the man in charge. But can a Hater really stop hating? If Moody's Hater books follow the familiar zombie story of civilization rent to tatters by mindless, bloodthirsty former humans, they turn it on its ear by speaking with the voice of one of the zombies rather than one of their victims. Readers have seen a pre-Hater Danny head off to his dead-end job, get frustrated with his kids and engage in other everyday activities. That, along with Moody's spare prose, makes the book's scenes of brutal violence all the more affecting. Lean, relentless and terrifying.