Books spring eternal

Shiny, slippery midwinter and spring book catalogs are pouring in, promising deliverance for winter-weary Minnesotans. Here are some titles by local authors -- veterans and new voices -- you can look forward to:

• "Swallow the Ocean," by Laura Flynn (Feb. 1, Counterpoint, 304 pages, $23). Flynn, who grew up in San Francisco, honed her writing skills at the University of Minnesota, where she now teaches. She writes the story of how she and her spirited sisters survived their mother's spiral into schizophrenia.

• "Madness: A Bipolar Life," by Marya Hornbacher (April 9, Houghton Mifflin, 288 pages, $25). Hornbacher first grabbed readers by the collar with "Wasted" (1998), her shockingly frank account of anorexia and bulimia. Now, with the same forthrightness, she tackles the reason behind her disorder: Type 1 rapid-cycle bipolar disease.

• "The Romanov Bride," by Robert Alexander (April 21, Viking, 320 pages, $24.95). With "The Kitchen Boy" and "Rasputin's Daughter," Alexander cornered the market on his own genre: the Russian history thriller. In this one, he contrasts the lives of the Grand Duchess Elisavyeta (Ella), a member of the Romanov court, and Pavel, a villager whose young wife is killed by Tsarist soldiers.

• "The Plague of Doves," by Louise Erdrich (April 29, HarperCollins, 320 pages, $25.95). Sister Godzilla, a formidable nun who first appeared in a 2001 short story in Atlantic Monthly, gets an unforgettable encore in this powerful tale of several North Dakota families -- Ojibwe, German, French and biracial -- forever tied by a horrific crime committed in 1911.

• "The Latehomecomer," by Kao Kalia Yang (April, Coffee House, 320 pages, $14.95). Vang's family members were among the thousands of Hmong driven from the hills of Laos into refugee camps during the Vietnam War. The Carleton College graduate, who came to Minnesota when she was 6, follows through on her "terrible urgency" to immortalize their story. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.

• "Open Line," by Ellen Hawley (May, Coffee House, 288 pages, $14.95). Hawley, a longtime editor for the Loft Literary Center, mines her own moonlighting experiences for this cautionary sendup of a talk-radio host who poses an outrageous question: What if the Vietnam War was a hoax?

• "Shelter Half," by Carol Bly (June, Holy Cow!, 304 pages, $15.95). The veteran of the short story switches to the long form in this novel set in northern Minnesota that opens with a double crisis: a man helping a wounded hunter stumbles on the corpse of a young woman.

Mosley's moving on

Farewell, Easy Rawlins. Hello, Leonid McGill. In a deal signed with Riverhead Books, author Mosley will write two novels that feature McGill, an African-American sleuth in New York City who first appeared in the short story "Karma," and a third literary novel. "Blonde Faith," Mosley's 10th and last book featuring Easy Rawlins, was published this fall by Little, Brown, and featured by the Talking Volumes regional book club, a partnership of Minnesota Public Radio, the Star Tribune and Loft Literary Center.