Saunders's (Pastoralia) idiosyncratic voice makes an almost perfect accompaniment to children's book illustrator Smith's (The Stinky Cheese Man) heightened characterizations and slightly surreal backdrops in this unconventional fairy tale for grownups. Saunders describes the setting, the town of Frip, as "three leaning shacks by the sea," which Smith represents as oblong two-story towers in brick red, ocean blue and mint green situated on irregular plots of land with sinewy trees against a yellow sky that suggest a Daliesque eerieness. The 1,500 gappers, spiky little creatures with multiple eyes, feed on the goats that graze the shacks' backyards; by habit, they split into three groups to attack all three properties at once. One day, the gappers decide that henceforth they will concentrate all their efforts on the goats at only one house, the one closest to the seaÄinhabited by a girl, Capable, and her grieving, widowed father. Soon, the two unafflicted families begin to tell themselves that they are superior to Capable and her father ("Not that we're saying we're better than you, necessarily, it's just that, since gappers are bad, and since you and you alone now have them, it only stands to reason that you are not, perhaps, quite as good as us"). Of course it's only a matter of time until everybody's luck changes. The Saunders-Smith collaboration is inspired. Smith adds witty touches throughout, and Saunders's dialogue features uncannily amusing deadpan repetitions and platitudinous self-exculpations. Saunders is much too hip to bring this fable to an edifying ending, but things do conclude as happily as is possible in the morally challenged, circumscribed world of Frip. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo; author tour. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In a last-ditch attempt to convince his TV producers to run a story on alternate realities, Davis Conrad decides to film the professor who convinced him that such realities exist. Along the way, after a strange accident he can't remember, Davis finds himself fleeing police by hopping into a VW van straight out of the 1960s. The group he's with, dressed in tie-dye and peace symbols, head for a motel laundry room, where they've heard that a miracle will occur. As he lays eyes on an unnamed baby boy, Davis flashes back to a sterile white room, where he seems to be hooked up to machinery. Then, he realizes two things: he's actually popping in and out of an alternate reality where people will think he's crazy if he says anything, and all of the Bibles he can find don't include the New Testament. And the child in the alternate reality? His name is Eli, and he is just starting to prove to one and all that he is the Son of God. Myers (Blood of Heaven) seems to start out in circles but sets up a thought-provoking plot revolving around a simple question: What if Jesus came now for the first time? With this thrilling and ominous tale, Myers continues to shine brightly in speculative fiction based on biblical truths. Highly recommended. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Myers, author of the apocalyptic trilogy comprising Blood of Heaven (1996), Threshold (1997), and Fire of Heaven (1999), likes to work speculative science into his theological considerations. Here he deals with the question of alternative universes: Would a messiah need to appear in each, saving them all? A TV producer, Conrad Davis, lies in a coma after an automobile crash but seems also to live again in a Santa Monica nearly the same as the one he's accustomed to. But now it's the 1960s, and his ex-wife of both universes, always religious, is drawn to a charismatic young teacher named Eli. The reader learns that Eli was born humbly, to a homeless girl, and the 1960s meld into the present, where Conrad produces a show not unlike The Jerry Springer Show. Thus, Eli seems a gimmick at first, until people discover that he really is the Son of God. And he must repeat history: rise to prominence as a champion of the poor and oppressed, be opposed by established religion (represented by a corrupt televangelist), die, and be resurrected. Possibly this happens in one alternative world after another. But it could be that all of it is Conrad's near-death experience, in which he affirms in one universe the messiah he rejected in another, and, thus, as a Christian, he is readied for death. In any event, the always surprising Myers has written another clever and provocative tale. --John Mort