HOT TYPE

FANFAIR

It is the nature of women's friendships to be intense and complicated, more so even than their love relationships. Witness the four former besties brought face-toface at their 20th Harvard reunion, in Deborah Copaken Kogan's destined-to-be-a-classic The Red Book (Hyperion), a sharply funny, cleareyed examination, in the vein of Mary McCarthy's The Group, of the power and burden of privilege, the reality of being a modern woman, and the lasting bonds of female friendship.

In Heidi Julavits's fantastic novel The Vanishes (Doubleday), the scorching jealousy a young seer inspires in her aging diva mentor provokes a psychic attack, forcing her to re-experience her mother's suicide and flee for New York City. In Pocket Kings (Algonquin), Ted Heller's recklessly funny, sparky satire of our obsession with the virtual world, a _ A MEM0"> burned-out novelist catches fire in the world of online poker and finds bluffing his way through life and love isn't all that easy. Seven Africans waiting to be smuggled into Spain by a shiftless trafficker reveal their motives for fleeing in Mahi Binebine's brave, nakedly autobiographical suspense novel, Welcome to Paradise (Tin House), translated by Lulu Norman and introduced by V.F.'s own Anderson Tepper. Werner Herzog, Iraq-war documentaries, the voices of videogame characters—Tom Bissell's essays reveal what happens in the Magic Hours (McSweeney's) of creating art. New stories from the Israeli fiction writer Etgar Keret, described as "part Kafka, part Vonnegut," arrive in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (FSG Originals), translated by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, and fellow novelist Nathan Englander.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL