The browser: A quick look at recent releases

What's better than a love story? How about a true love story? How about a whole bunch of true love stories? Former Minnesotan John Bowe (now of New York), along with a staff of editors, has collected dozens of stories from people across the country. If there's an overriding theme to this book, it is of love's enormous power -- to push, prod, change, humiliate, thrill and infuriate. "Us" includes stories of unrequited love, illicit love, gay love, teenage love and enduring love, all in the words of the interviewed. This oral history approach makes for uneven reading -- some of these people do go on, and you can only read so many sentences like these: "And I was like, 'Shut up! I told her I liked you and she was a crappy friend and dated you. Don't blame me for you being a [jerk] and her being a whore!'" But it also adds to the veracity.

It is the details -- sad, vivid, amusing -- that make the stories. Like the Louisiana man who will never forget the first time he saw the love of his life, because Sally Jesse Raphael had a really good show that day. Or the Minneapolis woman who broke out the windows of her own car because her boyfriend wouldn't let her drive it. Taken together, these stories are almost overwhelming in their emotions -- betrayal, depression, giddiness, confusion, fury. So many intense feelings, all rolled up together and classified under the convenient heading of love.

LAURIE HERTZEL

BOOKS EDITOR

Lauren and Roger Heller have just enjoyed dinner at a tony Georgetown restaurant when Roger suddenly remembers he has left his car keys at the table. He dashes back to retrieve them, and while he is gone someone brutally attacks his wife. Just another Washington mugging? Not by a long shot. When Lauren recovers, she finds that Roger has disappeared. She seeks help from his estranged brother, Nick, a top investigator with one of those high-powered Washington intelligence firms whose clients include senators and CEOs, governments and clandestine agencies. Nick is a tough guy, a Yale dropout who enlisted in the Special Forces during the first Gulf War, and he specializes in digging up secrets that Wall Street and Washington insiders would rather keep hidden. About the only thing Roger and Nick have in common is their father, a disgraced Wall Street financier who's serving 25 years for fraud. Lauren has a teenage son, Gabe, by a previous marriage, and Nick, who enjoys a tenuous relationship with the withdrawn and geeky kid, is determined to protect him and his mother from harm. But other forces are at work, and they are out to find Roger regardless of the collateral damage. Author Joseph Finder, a master at spinning a sophisticated yarn of high-level intrigue muscled up with low-level thuggery, is in rare form here. The plot is rich with odd twists and gruesome crimes, and just when the reader thinks the puzzle has been solved, Finder sends the tale careening in another direction. It's a kind of sudoku for thriller connoisseurs. Wonderfully entertaining!

MICHAEL BONAFIELD