Origin, by Diana Abu-Jaber ($13.95)

Is it part of our human design that we automatically try to categorize what we see? We don't have to spend energy re-creating the wheel every time if we can safely slot what we sense and experience into good-bad, funny-sad, rewarding-painful, for instance.

In Origin, this question of category has a fascinating answer: Who or what is Lena Dawson? The protagonist of Diana Abu-Jaber's 2007 novel is distant and befuddled by her senses. Abu-Jaber gives us abundant descriptions of what Lena sees and how that makes her feel. The descriptions are lush and complex. Abu-Jaber describes in hallucinogenic terms what thoughts the objects trigger in Lena. Lena has difficulty with social interactions. She stutters or her sentences trail away, and what seems clear in her head rarely translates smoothly when spoken. Is she autistic? Has she been abused and is now withdrawn? The answers are not definitive, because the questions are flawed. Nevertheless, we initially struggle to contain her personality.

Winter has a death grip on Syracuse, New York. Images of snow, ice, a blanketing whiteness fill most of the book. Lena herself is frozen in her own little world. She is a fingerprint analyst for the police. Her apartment is disintegrating and bare. Her social life is in similar straits. Her work world has definite boundaries and an on-off complexity: either the fingerprint belongs to "x," or it doesn't. Lena hides in plain sight in the dead of winter. Without a serious disturbance, it is likely she will remain this way, even were spring to come, until the day she dies.

This is the serious disturbance: babies are dying of SIDS in statistically awkward numbers. Intuitively, Lena feels that someone is murdering them. The babies belong to families from all areas of town, and from all levels of social and economic means. In a surprising revelation, Lena believes she is part of the equation, although she has had no children. She struggles, mentally and physically (wrapped in coats, hospital sheets, embracing arms, illusory vines, a gorilla mother's arms), to bring her subconscious feelings into a legally viable accusation.

Lena's background is intriguing right from the start. Her memories obsessively focus on how she survived a plane crash and was raised in a tropical rain forest by a mothering ape. When she was returned to "civilization," she was fostered by a couple in Syracuse. Her foster mother is prickly and fragile. Lena has gotten to the point in her life when she needs -- like food and water -- to know about her origin. It seems that the way to her own personal answers is to step out of her work cocoon into the real world.

Lena must venture into a real crime scene. She must battle a nosy, persistent reporter. She feels strangely aligned with a schizophrenic who lives in her building. Her knuckleheaded estranged husband, who left her for another woman -- actually, several other women -- wants to come back into her life. A detective is showing romantic interest in her. A co-worker is behaving suspiciously. Lena must overcome this stressful jumble to make herself whole.

Abu-Jaber, with her striking and poetic prose, uses the wintery motif well. As Lena proceeds with the case and an understanding of herself, the world around her begins to thaw and her ability to speak her thoughts improves. Lena goes from trying to be what everyone else wants her to be -- and not succeeding very well -- to allowing her real self to emerge. It takes her most of the book to finally say, "It's about me."

Here's a taste:

That evening after work, the moonlight is flat and silvery as fish bones; it floats in the darkness, a cage of ribs. There's something weird in the air, in that bone of a moon. The wind flashes through the fabric of my coat, freezing me. At the door to my apartment, it feels as if something is standing just on the other side of the door. I put my hand out and watch it turn the knob. There's nothing on the other side of the door, of course.

You will either really like this book, as I did, or it will annoy the heck out of you; Lena's character drives this book.

The Man from Beijing, by Henning Mankell (hardcover, $25.95)

Chinese ideology aside, this is a very interesting standalone novel for Mankell. And despite the title, some of the action takes place in Mozambique, where Mankell resides part of the year. It's certainly the most peripatetic novel I can remember Mankell writing, with scenes taking place in Sweden, England, China, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. If Mankell had deleted the overly long explanation of current Chinese backroom politics, the novel would have been far less than the 363 pages, and the story would have been tighter. I read far more about Chinese affairs -- probable or improbable -- than was good for me. I'm not saying that what Mankell said wasn't important and worthy of discussion; it just was too long for a crime novel.

Why the civics lesson? Hatred can go back a long way. Inequity can be institutionalized. Revenge can simmer for generations. It wasn't right how Chinese immigrants were treated when working on American railroads 150 years ago. It wasn't right that Chinese peasants were treated as disposable labor for centuries. It wasn't right that students died in Tiananmen Square. It isn't right that poor people have starved, that families have been separated in order to survive. Mankell has emblazoned all these wrongs in the pages of The Man from Beijing. Almost lost in the process is a pretty good story.

At the center of the story is a Swedish judge, Birgitta Roslin. When a tiny Swedish village is massacred in the night, Roslin discovers she is related to a few of the victims. Using a great deal of literary shenanigans, Roslin accidentally discovers a connection to a man from Beijing. When she coincidentally travels to China with a friend, she continues to investigate, although the Swedish police have declared the case closed. When she coincidentally shows a picture of a man to one of the few people who could identify him -- just how many people live in China? -- she shines the spotlight on herself. Now the assassin could be after her. Actually, it's not hard to swallow the coincidences. Even Roslin's arrogant character ("Just tell her the judge is calling. That's all you need to know.") and bumbling interviews, don't interfere with how interesting the tale is.

Mankell's book begins with a horrible crime, elements of which seem fantastic or supernatural, but Mankell brings the crime back down to the very human emotion that drives the perpetrator. The little tales, in this case compared to the history of modern China, that he tells tug at your heart.

Master of the Delta, by Thomas H. Cook ($13.95)

Jean picked this book as one of last year's top books, but it took me this long to get around to reading it.

Cook gets me every time. Pulls the wool over my eyes, the chair out from under me, and the rug out from under my feet. As I read it, I think I know where Thomas H. Cook is taking his story, but it never goes there. Even when I know he will twist away from what I think the story is about -- even when I KNOW that -- it turns even further away, and I'm fooled once again.

Cook is the Master of the Southern Tragedy. Ominous notes ring throughout the book, sounding louder as he slowly reveals the victim and the perpetrator. He is the master of using the present to look at the past. We know right from the start that the narrator, Jack Branch, testified at a trial in the 1950s. Is he testifying as the accused? The layers must slowly peel away before Jack's part is revealed. Perhaps Cook is the Master of the Southern Onion.

Jack is the youngest member of one of the old aristocratic families of the Louisiana Delta. There are privileges accorded to such members. They are beyond reproach and sometimes beyond the law. His aristocracy notwithstanding, Jack has chosen to become a teacher at the local public high school. He teaches students who come from "The Bridges," the white trash area of town. One of his students, Eddie Miller, is the son of a convicted murderer. In Jack's class, Eddie uses a class assignment to write about his own father.

As much as Jack is a product of a sheltered, privileged upbringing, he believes himself to be without class prejudice. His dream is to save a student, to open up a world of possibilities to the poor young man, in the best Dickensian way. Eddie is that poor young man. And if he isn't a "poor young man" when Jack starts to mentor him, he soon will be, thanks to Jack. Eventually, Jack's family's history becomes entangled in Eddie's tale, and Eddie becomes involved with Jack's fragile father.

Things go downhill, then uphill, then downhill again. Roller coaster, Cook style. A well-written roller coaster.

And for the longest time, Cook doesn't even tell us what the crime is. We just listen to the ominous bell tolling for someone.

Cook is the master of the southern onion and suspense.

A Rather Curious Engagement, by C. A. Belmond ($14)

It's a little too sweet at times, but for the most part, it's a charming, disarming story of a poor girl who meets a boy AND gets a boatload of money, not by getting the boy but by using her smarts.

A Rather Curious Engagement is the second book in a so-far three-book series. In the first book, A Rather Lovely Inheritance, heroine Penny Nichols discovered the boy, Jeremy Laidley, right under her own nose -- he's a relation through marriage -- and the money was pretty much found under the same nose. So in this book, Penny and Jeremy must decide how to spend the money, and it's serious money, folks. Get the brain cells which deal with vicarious pleasure fired up, because we readers get to cruise along with P&J as they deliberate life's big and little choices.

First item: fix decaying but interesting London domicile. Second item: fix decaying but interesting inherited French villa. Third item: buy yacht.

P&J's financial advisor solemnly advises them to buy something frivolous. (Can I get an advisor like that?) Penny thinks more along the lines of a new pair of shoes, but Jeremy goes for the gusto. Apparently he has always wanted to sail around the Mediterranean. And, of course, you need a yacht to do that. Nothing ostentatious, just your run-of-the-mill sloop with rare wood inlays and crew of four. And antiques curio cabinet. And hidden drawers. And a secret aquamanile called "Beethoven's Lion."

It wouldn't be as much fun if P&J didn't do something "worthwhile" while showing us how to live the good life, so they accept a commission to find "Beethoven's Lion," an antique that the previous owner of the yacht somehow lost. P&J turn out to be pretty down-to-earth and nice. They revel in their fortune but don't go overboard, literally or figuratively. C.A. Belmond takes great pains -- too many pains, if you ask me -- to point out that P&J are related only by marriage. Got that -- they can be romantically involved because they are not related by blood. Once you get that, you can settle somewhere cozy to read this cozy. It's The Shell Seekers with less drama and a teensy bit more mystery.