Flagg highlights a little-known group in U.S. history and generations of families in an appealing story about two women who gather their courage, spread their wings and learn, each in her own way, to fly (I Still Dream About You, 2010, etc.). After marrying off all three of her daughters (one of them twice to the same man), Sookie Poole is looking forward to kicking back and spending time with her husband and her beloved birds. She's worked hard throughout life to be a good mother to her four children and a perfect daughter to her octogenarian mother. Lenore Simmons Krackenberry's a legend in Point Clear, Ala., and has always been narcissistic, active in all the "right" organizations, and extremely demanding. She's also become increasingly bonkers, a disorder that seems to run in the Simmons family. Throughout much of her life, Sookie's never felt as if she's measured up to Lenore's exacting standards, and she's terrified she, too, might lose her marbles. Then, Sookie receives an envelope filled with old documents that turn her world and her beliefs about herself and her family topsy-turvy. Her emotional quest for answers leads Sookie down a winding yet humorous path, as she meets with a young psychiatrist at the local Waffle House and tracks down descendants of a Polish immigrant who opened a Phillips 66 filling station in Pulaski, Wis., in 1928. What she discovers about the remarkable Jurdabralinski siblings inspires her: Fritzi, the eldest daughter, developed a unique idea to keep her father's business operating during difficult times, but her true passion involved loftier goals. During World War II, she used her exceptional skills to serve her country in an elite program, and two of her sisters followed suit. Finding inspiration in their professional and personal sacrifices, Sookie discovers her own courage to make certain decisions about her life and to accept and take pride in the person she is. This is a charming story written with wit and empathy. The author forms a comfortable bond with readers and offers just the right blend of history and fiction. Flagg flies high, and her fans will enjoy the ride.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

THERE ARE PLENTY of women among the ranks of genre authors, but not many like Sara Paretsky, whose intellectually lively mysteries featuring her gutsy Chicago private eye, V. I. Warshawski, are fired by political causes and feminist social issues. Her latest, critical mass (Putnam, $26.95), hits a nerve with its historical back story about a Viennese atomic physicist named Martina Saginor, "a great scientist who had a gender handicap" and disappeared during World War II - a character inspired by the brilliant but unsung Austrian physicist Marietta Blau. The fictional Martina was last seen as a slave laborer, sent to a concentration camp after working at a German weapons lab in the Austrian Alps. Her young daughter, Käthe, escaped the camps via the Kindertransport, along with a childhood companion, Lotty Herschel. Now an elderly doctor practicing at a Chicago clinic, Lotty has heard alarming news about Käthe's 20-year-old grandson, Martin, who seems to have inherited his great-grandmother's scientific genius and has now gone missing from the energy technology firm where he worked. As a further challenge to V. I., who has taken the case as a favor to Lotty, Martin's mother is a hopeless drug addict who hasn't been seen since she escaped from a meth house where a murder was committed. The drug subplot is an unnecessary complication in an already busy story told in two parallel narratives set in different countries, running on separate timelines and involving four generations of characters. But if the plot mechanics are unwieldy, the character of Martina is the serene center of this fractured universe. Turned out of her job at the Radiation Research Institute, betrayed by a spiteful Nazi student, abandoned by the Nobel Prize-winner scientist who fathered her child, starving and hallucinating in a prison camp, Martina has nothing but science left to console her. "Physics can be just equations and formulas and graphs," writes Paretsky (who was coached in the subject by her husband, a particle physicist who taught at the University of Chicago). "But physics is also a place where you send your mind chasing after the infinite, searching for the harmonies that lie at the heart of nature." Paretsky makes us feel both her own love for science and her fury at the way women like Martina have been denied the pursuit of their passion. FEMINIST OUTRAGE ALSO fuels the politically pointed novels of the Danish writing partners Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. DEATH OF A NIGHTINGALE (Soho Crime, $26.95) finds Nina Borg, the righteous Red Cross nurse in this series, caught up in another moral quandary. Natasha Doroshenko, a Ukrainian woman who once found refuge at the Red Cross crisis center after taking a knife to her abusive Danish fiancé, is now wanted by the Copenhagen police for his murder. Two officers with the Ukrainian secret police are also hunting Natasha, who's suspected of killing her husband back in Kiev. Standing up to these authorities, Nina is determined to find Natasha, prove her innocence and reunite her with her daughter. Sad as it is, Natasha's story is almost upstaged by a related narrative set in a famine-stricken village in Ukraine in 1934 and involving the desperate choices made by two sisters too young to understand the consequences. Nina is all heart and her efforts to bring justice to women like Natasha are heroic. But compassion isn't enough to solve the social evils that marginalize and then destroy the weak and the helpless. STEVE WEDDLE'S WRITING ÍS downright dazzling in country HARDBALL (Tyrus Books, cloth, $24.99; paper, $16.99), a first novel told in intertwined stories that present a shattering portrait of a depressed rural area on the Arkansas-Louisiana border that seems to be reverting to its wilderness state. Several of the narratives are seen through the eyes of Roy Alison, fresh out of prison and looking to start a new life. But things have changed since he's been away: There's no work, drugs are rampant, families are breaking up, people are losing their homes to the banks, children are giving themselves up to casual cruelty and the boys who went off to war are dying. In this climate of despair, it doesn't take Roy long to hook up with his scary cousin Cleovis to pull off a string of crimes that somehow make him feel alive in this land of the living dead. IT'S REALLY PUSHING it to Call Fannie Flagg's latest novel, the ALL-GIRL FILLING STATION'S LAST REUNION (Random House, $27), a "comic mystery," as her publisher does. Call it, rather, the mystery of Sookie Poole's true identity. Sookie is one of those guilelessly entertaining Southern gals who live only in the author's books. Having spent all her life in Alabama under the critical eye of her tyrannical mother (now there's a character who deserves killing), Sookie is stunned to learn that she isn't who she thinks she is. After a lifetime of looking in the mirror and seeing "a Southern Methodist English person," she discovers that she's actually "an illegitimate Catholic Polish person." Sookie's detective work, tracing her new identity, takes her all the way to Pulaski, Wis., and into the lives of four ebullient sisters who ran their father's gas station during World War II. Honestly, who wouldn't want to be part of that family? ?

Structured much like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Flagg's latest novel alternates between the pedestrian life of Sookie Poole, a timid middle-aged southern woman and that of her brash, adventurous ancestry, a quartet of polish sisters who ran a filling station and flew planes during WWII. The cataclysmic event that unites these narratives is Sookie's discovery that she was adopted. Her journey into the history of her biological family is excruciatingly slow, but the history-particularly of the WASPs, a division of all-female pilots who flew support missions for the Air Force and were written promptly out of history after the war ended proves more entertaining and helps redeem the plot. The language is accessible and much of the backstory is delivered via letters, rendering the voices of the characters authentic, even if they are a bit stock-the archetypal aging southern lady heroine, for example, has a wacky new-age best friend, an overbearing mother, and a Yankee psychiatrist. Readers looking for nuance will not find it here, but there are plot twists, adventure, heartbreak, and familial love in spades, making this the kind of story that keeps readers turning pages in a fever. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Alabama sweetheart Sookie Poole has been a loving wife, a caring mother, and, most important, a patient daughter. Her formidable yet ailing mother never seemed to approve of her as a child. Now approaching 60, Sookie receives some unexpected news about her past that has her questioning both her family history and her mother's constant cold shoulder. While searching for answers, Sookie uncovers Fritzi Jurdabralinski, the eldest of four Polish sisters who ran an all-girl gas station during the 1940s in Pulaski, WI. During World War II, Fritzi became a Fly Girl, transporting military aircraft as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). After learning of Fritzi's adventures, Sookie is inspired to reexamine her own life. VERDICT Yet again, Flagg (I Still Dream About You) delivers a book full of heartwarming charm that is sure to provoke lighthearted laughter. A complex story told simply and honestly, this is an easy read and another treat for Flagg fans. [See Prepub Alert, 5/13/13.]-Shannon Marie Robinson, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Aging daughter of the South Sookie Simmons Poole has trudged along cheerfully through life under the shadow of her overbearing mother, Lenore. Faced with empty-nest syndrome, Sookie knows she won't be too bored, since Lenore lives right next door and still has her mail delivered to Sookie's house. When a mysterious letter arrives, Sookie questions everything she ever knew about her family, and her story soon dovetails with that of a proud Polish family from Wisconsin. The Jurdabralinskis' gas station was nearly shuttered when all the area men joined up during WWII, but the family's four girls bravely stepped up. Eldest daughter Fritzi was already a great mechanic, having been a professional stunt plane pilot in the 1930s. When Fritzi joins the WASPS, an elite but downplayed female branch of the U.S. Air Force, the story really comes to life. Flagg's storytelling talent is on full display. Her trademark quirky characters are warm and realistic, and the narrative switches easily between the present and the past. HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Flagg's fans won't be disappointed in this one, and there's a lot to be said for giving tribute to the real-life WASPs (the official records of the force were classified and sealed for nearly 35 years). Great possibilities for nonfiction pairings abound for book clubs.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2010 Booklist