Novel

"Necessary Madness," by Jenn Crowell, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 208 pages, $21.95At first, I tried to will myself into forgetting that that author of "Necessary Madness" was 17 when her manuscript was accepted for publication. I wanted to have the experience her editor purportedly had, of reading the book and discovering the author's tender age after the fact.Then I realized that Putnam has no intention of letting anyone read this novel in such blissful ignorance. The galley arrives with a note on the cover from the CEO, Phyllis E. Grann ("It is a smart, touching love story by a gifted young writer ... a very young writer.

Title: "Fima"Author: Amos Oz; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de LangePublisher: Harcourt, Brace and Co.Length, price: 322 pages, $22.95Efraim Nisan, or "Fima" for short, is the protagonist of Israeli author Amos Oz's funny, wistful and beautiful new novel. He is both a schlemiel and a schlimazel. He's the guy who spills his tea and the guy it lands on.At age 54, a resident of Jerusalem, he's been divorced for more than 20 years, but he's hopeless at keeping house for himself. He resembles an aging adolescent whose promise is behind him rather than ahead of him. As a youth, he was a brilliant student and a blossoming poet, but he lacked an essential something -- )

Red hot across the pond (and very warm over here), Joanna Trollope's novels are becoming a staple for English readers and Anglophiles everywhere. They top best seller lists, get adapted for "Masterpiece Theatre," and handily invoke the ghosts of her Victorian ancestor Anthony Trollope and other able 19th-century chroniclers of domestic manners. The younger Trollope's voice beckons the reader with all the easy affability, common wisdom and topicality of a smarter-than-average TV Movie of the Week.

She's irrepressible and adventurous. Spunky and talkative. And terribly lovable. She's Anne of the children's classic novel Anne of Green Gables. Pumpkin Theatre presents an original stage adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's book this weekend and next weekend at the Hannah More Arts Center in Stevenson. Local playwright David Rawlings Brown penned this adaptation of the story about the young orphan who manages to work her way into everyone's heart. Molly Jackson stars as Anne. Liz Boyer Hunnicutt and Robert Riggs play Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, the sister and brother who take the young girl into their home.

In Hollywood, aspiring screenwriters are taught to pitch their stories in short bursts of snappy prose. If you can't knock the moguls off their feet in 75 words or less, you might as well shred your script and get a real job. In recent years the book business has also fallen under the spell of the "high concept" story, and that's a real boon for authors who want to write screen treatments disguised as novels.At first glance, Sena Jeter Naslund's "Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer" (Morrow, $28, 666 pages)

SCANDALOUS RISKS. Susan Howatch. Knopf. 386 pages. $21.95. In "Scandalous Risks," Susan Howatch's fourth novel about the Church of England, the author herself takes a risk. Begun in 1987, these thought-provoking glimpses into mankind's moral and ontological quests have been told through the perspectives of various male Anglican priests. But "Scandalous Risks" unfolds through the eyes and heart of a laywoman, and not just any laywoman but the daughter of a lord -- an atheist lord. The time: the '60s.

"Pushing the Bear," by Diane Glancy, Harcourt Brace & Co. 241 pages. $22.Is it possible to admire a book and not particularly like it? Throughout "Pushing the Bear," the first novel by poet-essayist Diane Glancy, I found myself full of solemn awe for her scholarship and the stark images in her plain, powerful language. And I noted with approval the book's meticulous pacing as it followed the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears - the great length of Tennessee, the relatively quick passage through Kentucky and Illinois, the long push through Missouri.

In the summer lull before publishing's big autumn push, some August novels, ranging in style from conventional to offbeat to downright bizarre, ought not to be overlooked.***Fans of veteran writer Stephen Birmingham ("The Auerbach Will," "Our Crowd") will feel at home in his newest book, "The Wrong Kind of Money" (Dutton. 320 pages. $24.95). Set among New York's ritziest purlieus, this family saga follows the fortunes of the Lieblings, a Jewish dynasty whose patriarch, Jules, made his fortune with a liquor-distilling empire called Ingraham's.

Barbara Michaels started her writing career in the mid-1960s by following such best-selling modern Gothic novelists as Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt. The Gothic craze may have come and gone, but Ms. Michaels, the nom de plume of Frederick author Barbara Mertz, endures. "Houses of Stone" is the 26th novel of romantic suspense by this prolific author, who also writes traditional mysteries under the pseudonym Elizabeth Peters."Houses of Stone" is Ms. Michaels' affectionate tribute to the Gothic genre, as well as a gentle rebuke to the male literary establishment that refuses to take "women's books" seriously.

Ordinary Heroes Scott Turow Farrar, Straus and Giroux / 368 pages When someone tells a story, the first instinct is to accept it at face value and not look too closely at how well it holds up. All it takes is a single event to cast doubt on the entire story from start to finish. Scott Turow's new novel (his first since 2002's Reversible Errors) wears the outward trappings of a spirited wartime tale - and does so quite well - but he's more interested in the lies people tell to spare their loved ones pain, and the secrets they keep in order to survive another day. Material like this should have made for a standout effort, but the result ends up curiously unfulfilling.