By David Abrams

The dog days of summer are fast approaching and while some folks will be reaching for mass-market beach books (not that there’s anything wrong with that), publishers have good news for readers who want something a little more substantial to go along with their sand and suntan lotion. Here are some of the upcoming releases in literary fiction (with a few nonfiction titles sprinkled in) that I’ve got my eye on:

• Exiles by Ron Hansen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; May): Shipwrecked nuns. Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. The author of Mariette in Ecstasy. I am so there.

Random sample (the novel’s opening lines): “Wednesday, December 8th, 1875. A soft confetti of snowflakes was fluttering down upon Wales. The higher windowpanes were gardens of frost. His right hand still twined a rosary, its anesthetic routine of prayers his nightly defense against sleeplessness. Lying in bed in his nightshirt and black woolen stockings, Hopkins recited his Morning Offering, then stood to use the chamber pot.”

• The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller (Penguin Press; May): The author of Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of her African childhood, turns her attention to roughnecks on Wyoming oil rigs.

Random sample:  “Here is Colton H. Bryant at eight years old pedaling so pitiful fast through the streets of Evanston, Wyoming, that his legs look like egg-beaters. He has white-blond hair and he’s tanned the color of stained pine and even at this speed — even at a distance — you can see the color of those eyes. They’re such a stunning shade of blue that they register as an absence, like a washed, empty sky.”

• Pelican Road by Howard Bahr (MacAdam/Cage; May):  Two trains — a freighter and a luxury passenger train — head toward each other on Christmas Eve, 1940. Both engineers are distracted, haunted men, and catastrophe seems imminent. Howard Bahr has written about the Civil War in The Judas Field and other novels, and now he moves forward in time to a subject he knows something about: He once worked as a brakeman and yard clerk at railroads in the South and Midwest.

• Inventing Niagara by Ginger Strand (Simon and Schuster; May): The book combines history, kitsch and Strand’s personal obsession with the falls. Grab your barrels and swimming caps, this looks like a good one!

• A Dangerous Age by Ellen Gilchrist (Algonquin Books; May): I’m a long-time fan of Gilchrist (especially her story collection Victory Over Japan) so I’m curious to see how she approaches the war in Iraq and its effect on families left behind in this novel.

Random sample: “It’s down to Bobby getting on an airplane and flying into a war zone, where he might be killed at any moment, no matter how much he tries to tell me he will be in safe places getting sand out of the steering apparatus of machines. Let machines fight the wars. That’s all I know for sure that I believe. I should be one of those nuts who write the Pentagon all the time and tell them how to run the war.”

• Now the Hell Will Start by Brendan I. Koerner (Penguin Press; June):  The true, harrowing story of a “reluctant soldier, who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle during World War II” (according to the publisher’s press release). The book combines racism, murder and flesh-eating insects with a manhunt through the jungle. Read the book now, see the inevitable movie later.

• Abbeville by Jack Fuller (Unbridled Books; June): Naming the central character George Bailey and setting a novel about spiritual rebirth in a small Midwestern town seems to be a calculated move to appeal to the It’s a Wonderful Life lovers in the crowd, but it might just work. Just as long as there are no angels ringing bells on Christmas trees.

• More Than It Hurts You by Darin Strauss (Dutton; June): I’m an unabashed fan of Strauss’ first novel, Chang and Eng, and (to a somewhat lesser degree) his second, The Real McCoy. Both were sly, smart approaches to the historical novel and to this day I think about the delicate, memorable way he wrote that sex scene between the Siamese twins and their wives. Now Strauss jumps to the 21st century with his new novel to tell a story about modern parenting and Munchausen Syndrome.

Random sample (opening sentence):  “Fifteen minutes before happiness left him, Josh Goldin led his summer intern by the elbow to share in the hallelujah of a Friday afternoon.”

• Painting by Numbers by Jasper Fforde (Viking; July): Not Thursday Next, not a Nursery Crimes mystery, but something new from our favorite off-beat Welshman. This time he creates a world where color dominates society. The hero, Eddie Russet can only see in shades of red until he meets an alluring lady who turns out to be a Grey Nightseer. If anyone can make this work, it’s Fforde.

• Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s by Philip K. Dick (Library of America; July): If you’re a fan, you already have this date circled in red on your calendar. Jonathan Lethem edits the volume, which contains Martian Time Slip, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and A Scanner Darkly.