In his newest work of speculative fiction, World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award-winner Gregory introduces the dysfunctional Amazing Telemachus Family, all but one of whom possess some variation of a seventh sense. The outlier is grandfather Teddy, con man and cardsharp. His deceased wife, Maureen, was a true psychic, as is his son Buddy. His older son, Frankie, is telekinetic, his daughter, Irene, a human lie detector. Her young son, Matty, takes out-of-body journeys. The author uses this mix of fantasy and family life to present a multigenre mash-up that includes a couple of romances, scams, a coming-of-age tale, government duplicity, gangsters with guns, and, not least of all, genuine magic. Narrator Fliakos vocally underlines Teddy's love for Maureen, Frankie's frantic attempts to avoid the wrath of mobster Nick Pusateri, Irene's difficulty living in a world of liars, Buddy's inability to cope with his knowledge of the future, and the poignancy of Matty's sweetly sad love for his cousin, and the greasiness of CIA Agent Smalls's deal with the family. In flashbacks, Fliakos gives Maureen the voice of the most caring, dependable psychic wife a fast-talking wheeler-dealer could want. A Knopf hardcover. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Here, a savory mix of disparate ingredients are blended into a perfectly delicious dish of a novel. Stir in psychic powers and family drama, throw in the essence of a 1980s coming-of-age film, with a sprinkling of heist plot and mob action. The voices of the -Telemachus family are compelling, whether following Matty and his awakening powers; his mother, Irene, through the difficulties of loving people when she knows their every lie; or Buddy, who is lost in precognitive visions. VERDICT Come for the magic, the family relationships, or the mysteries of the Telemachuses themselves. Readers won't be able to put down this compelling literary fantasy. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

MRS. FLETCHER, by Tom Perrotta. (Scribner, $26.) Perrotta's skillful seventh novel succeeds in ways that will be pleasingly familiar to his admirers. It is the sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will ever read. BROKEN RIVER, by J. Robert Lennon. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) This crafty, seductive novel, Lennon's eighth, is not quite a ghost story, but it does involve a mysterious entity called the Observer. Abudding novelist's research into the murder that took place in the house where her family has moved attracts the attention of the killers. SOUTH POLE STATION, by Ashley Shelby. (Picador, $26.) A painter spends a year at the South Pole as part of a National Science Foundation program in Shelby's ramblingly entertaining first novel. The back stories of the ensemble cast provide a vivid notion of what it's like to live in the dark, frigid landscape. THE ART OF DEATH: Writing the Final Story, by Edwidge Danticat. (Graywolf, paper, $14.) This slim, absorbing volume is part of Graywolf's "Art Of" series. Danticat examines the guises death has assumed in works by Tolstoy, Camus, Morrison and others, and movingly recalls the death of her mother. DEVILS BARGAIN: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency, by Joshua Green. (Penguin Press, $27.) Green's deeply reported and compulsively readable account of this fateful political partnership shows how the pair grasped that much of what was supposed to matter in politics no longer did. WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, by Robert Wright. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) This provocative and informative book uses evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience to examine the practice of mindful meditation at the heart of Western Buddhism. NEW COLLECTED POEMS, by Marianne Moore. Edited by Heather Cass White. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35.) In this elegant, big volume, containing the original versions of Moore's poems arranged in the order of her books, we watch her develop her complex style. Moore is a poet apart, and this is a good excuse to discover her. MOVING KINGS, by Joshua Cohen. (Random House, $26.) Two Israeli soldiers come to New York to work for a moving company that evicts delinquent tenants in a novel that touches on religious and political issues. SPOONBENDERS, by Daryl Gregory. (Knopf, $26.95.) A family of psychics fallen on hard times is the subject of Gregory's seventh novel. Funny and charming, with a rollicking and quick-paced plot, it explores what it means to harbor such gifts. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Behold the Amazing Telemachus family: mother, father, and three children (Frankie, Irene, and Buddy) and their varied powers make up a phenomenal traveling show. Alas, the Telemachuses' fame fades into oblivion after they are discredited on live television. Patriarch Teddy, a talented con man, pretends to be a soothsayer to take on anyone he can squeeze money out of-including the Chicago Mafia. Beautiful Maureen, an honest-to-goodness psychic with a heart of gold, worked for the CIA during the Cold War. After her death, the children, now motherless, inherit strange but powerful abilities-and their genetically inherited talents continue down the line to Irene's son, Matt. All of the characters, gifted in some way, are also cursed by their powers. Multiple members of the lovably flawed Telemachus family narrate this complex but highly relatable tale, which spans several decades. Gregory takes his time developing the story, but readers are rewarded when everything coalesces beautifully at the end. VERDICT This raucous, mind-bending, time-jumping tale is hilarious and occasionally touching and will appeal to teens who appreciate quirky family characters like those in Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest.-Tara Kehoe, formerly at the New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, Trenton © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Matty Telemachus knows he comes from an unusual lineage. As the grandson of the Great Teddy Telemachus, he also knows he has a gift. Famous for their magic and sleight-of-hand skills, the Telemachus family used to be the toast of talk shows and late-night television. With Teddy's con-artist gifts, Maureen's skills at astral projection, Buddy the clairvoyant, and Irene the human lie detector, the family enjoyed fame and fortune. When a visit to the Mike Douglas Show goes horribly wrong, the family quickly falls from grace. An onslaught of outside forces, including the CIA and the Mafia, threatens to undo the clan, and it is young Matty's job to help them rediscover their true skills. Gregory (We Are All Completely Fine, 2014) tells the story of a family blessed with unique abilities who must learn to find the extraordinary in their everyday lives. Fans of Katherine Dunn's Geek Love (1989) will be delighted to meet another quirky family making their way in the real world while living far-from-ordinary lives.--Gladstein, Carol Copyright 2017 Booklist

In a nimble and substantial novel, Gregory (Harrison Squared, 2015, etc.) delves into the lives of the members of the eccentric and psychically gifted Telemachus family.On a summer day in 1963, Teddy Telemachus, a flamboyant and charming con man, card shark, and devotee of sleight of hand, cheats his way into a government study about psychic abilities. He meets Maureen McKinnon, a genuine psychic of enormous and mysterious power, and immediately falls in love with her. They get married, have three children with particular psychic gifts, and become famous as the Amazing Telemachus Family until a combination of televised embarrassment and personal loss begins to unravel their lives. Thirty years later, the Telemachus family's lives are in tatters and sliding ever further into the dreariness of debt, unhappiness, and possible mental instability when the 14-year-old Matty Telemachus plunges them back into a world of cleverly plotted and swiftly paced adventure. Gregory's novel deploys a cast of odd, damaged, enormously likable characters in a complex story that gracefully balances the outrageous melodrama of Chicago mobsters and shadowy government agencies with the ordinary mysteries of family dynamics. Each of the characters, even when absurdly cartoonish, has a precise energy and depth that makes him or her irresistible. The chapters shift between their points of view, revealing different threads of the story with masterful control and giving the novel an illusion of gleeful messiness and the argumentative, frequently poignant feeling of a family gathering. While the novel revels in elements that entertaincriminal capers, magic, nostalgia for the internet chat rooms and computer paraphernalia of the 1990sit never shies away from the real emotion of digging up the lies and illusions that sink into every family history. Readers will emerge from the fray sure they know each Telemachus down to the smudges on their hearts. A skillfully written family drama that employs quirk and magic with grace. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.