Booklist Review

The Benrey team's Little White Lies is about Britisher Pippa Hunnechurch, a one-woman head-hunting firm who falls into the habit of embellishing resumes. It works, she finds, and she has a glib partner in crime, the overly ambitious Marsha Morgan. But then Marsha drowns, her death is followed by another, and all of a sudden the police are interested in Pippa's fibs. A Christian friend tells Pippa she has to come clean, but doing so will damage the prospects of her current clients, not to mention her own career, and thus Pippa faces the deepest crisis of her life in this likable, often witty tale. In The Maiden of Mayfair, first in her Victorian Tales of London series, Blackwell evokes Dickens rather than the Brontes in her portrait of young Sarah Matthews. Sarah is the ward of the St. Matthew Methodist Foundling Home for Girls in Drury Lane. Although the orphanage is grim, she's lucky, for abandoned children are everywhere and often perish in the streets. And soon Sarah is rescued by a rich widow who suspects Sarah may be her granddaughter, the daughter of her profligate son. Blackwell's Victorian romances can seem tame even for the Christian market, although her period detail is always fine, and this series looks to be livelier than some of its predecessors. Bly, the best-known writer of Christian westerns, has so many series currently under way that it's hard to keep up with them all. But his Belles of Lordsburg series, with its unusual setting and Bly's trademark wit in good form, begins well with The Senator's Other Daughter. Rebelling against the comfortable but stifling life imposed by her father, a U.S. senator, Grace Denison flees to a woebegone town in New Mexico, where she works as a late-night telegraph operator for the railroad. A local hero, Colt Parnall, courts her, and initially Grace thinks him too crude for her time. But once she climbs off her pedestal, Grace finds herself in Lordsburg, a town much in need of a woman's touch. And Colt starts to look better. Byers puns his way though a send-up of quantum physics assumptions that there is no causality in the universe with his clever, witty The Life of Your Time. The story, such as it is, concerns sixth-grader Percival Weckbaugh of Central City, Missouri, a polite young man in an impolite world. Percival begins to wonder about the meaning of life when a random number, whom Byers introduces as the character 1314, rebels against the forces of Blind Chance and Chaos and causes several coincidences. Each of these coincidences corresponds with crucial moments in the lives of Byers' several small-town characters, all of whom are lovingly drawn. These postmodern goings-on result in a sort of cross between Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams (1993) and Alice in Wonderland, as well as great satirical fun, in this highly original, nimble tour de force. Relying on scholarship to sort out the contradiction between John and the Synoptic Gospels, and making some educated guesses to fill gaps, Johnson tells in simple but affecting prose the straightforward story of Jesus the great teacher, The Gospel of Yeshua. Nothing is certain in this subgenre, but Johnson's can comfortably join similar efforts: Fulton Oursler's Greatest Story Ever Told (1949), Frank Slaughter's Crown and the Cross (1959), and more recently, Walter Wangerin's Book of God (1996). Another new series, Yukon Quest, begins with Peterson's Treasures of the North, set during the Alaskan gold rush of 1897. Because of the financial difficulties of her father, Chicago debutante Grace Hawkins is about to be forced into marriage with rich Martin Paxton. Martin is a villain so crudely drawn he might as well be called Snidely Whiplash, particularly when Grace heads north of the border, to Alaska, to escape him, and Martin follows. Grace's governess, Karen Pierce, is more convincing, as are Peterson's portraits of the Tlingit Indians, whose way of life is threatened by the gold rush. Peterson pairs with legal thriller writer Bell for City of Angels, first in the Shannon Saga series about Kathleen Shannon, an orphan with connections. She journeys to Los Angeles in 1903 to live with her rich aunt and, she hopes, study law. Male lawyers put up obstacles, but her investigative skills win their grudging admiration. Thomas' Singsation is the second entry of Warner Books' new Christian imprint, Walk Worthy. It's about the maturation of a young African American gospel singer, Deborah Anne Peterson. She's discovered in her backwater Georgia congregation by a hometown boy, Triage Blue, who's made good in the big world as a rapper and movie actor. Triage lines up Deborah as a backup singer with a rhythm-and-blues band, but Deborah knows her talent is for God's glory and is soon distressed by the compromises confronting her if she wants to succeed commercially. Thomas' story is entertaining but predictable, and never as convincing as Reid Arvin's Wind in the Wheat (1994), much the same story from the point of view of a young white singer. In The Trial, small-town attorney Kent ("Mac") MacClain, in despair over the death of his wife and two sons, is about to commit suicide. Then the phone rings, and he's handed a public defender's role in what is alleged to be the murder of a young woman from a prominent local family. The defendant is a drifter who can't remember what happened, but circumstances clearly point to his guilt. Mac is aided by a pretty out-of-town widow, a Christian psychologist with a son. She quickly goes to work both on Mac's head and on his heart in this seamless thriller from the reliable Whitlow.