The Browser: A quick look at recent releases

This highly accomplished, multilayered novel opens in 1943 in Hungary, as a little girl named Éva Farkas, the daughter of a young Jewish woman and her married lover, both doomed in different ways, is smuggled in a flour sack to her father's relatives in Romania. There she is raised by an aunt and uncle who rename her Anca. Her parents, past and language are wiped out, both for her immediate safety and to her everlasting sorrow. Éva grows to be a tough, proud, complicated woman whose life is primarily one of heartbreak and hardship, and yet later in life, after communism ebbs, she returns to Hungary, reconnects with her lost identity and even finds love in a most unlikely corner. This richly imagined, haunting story is written with a deep knowledge of the history of Hungary and Romania during and after World War II, and Anca-Éva is one of the more complex characters you'll encounter in a work of historical fiction.

PAMELA MILLER, NIGHT METRO EDITOR

Billed as "A True Story of Vengeance and Survival," this tale of men and beasts is as gripping as any suspense novel. It begins with a poor Russian hunter being mauled by a Siberian tiger and ends with a plea for preservation of this most elusive and endangered animal. In between, Vaillant weaves the story of Yuri Trush and members of his Inspection Tiger team, which investigates attacks by tigers as well as crimes committed by poachers. Vaillant ably sets the scene for this tale of revenge: spirit-crushing poverty for Soviet newcomers in a bitterly cold land, an ever-shrinking territory for a formidable feline, and a voracious (mostly Chinese) market for every tooth, hair and organ of that symbol of virility and strength. He also convincingly portrays the tiger as an animal capable of extending mutual respect toward taiga natives -- and just as capable of stalking human prey with precision, determination and no mercy whatsoever.

KATHE CONNAIR,

COPY EDITOR