Readers of The Sisters Brothers will hardly be surprised to learn that it has been optioned for a film. After all, the fast-paced, gun-slinging Western is cinematic in scope, while its terse and comically stilted dialogue is reminiscent of recent film homages like No Country for Old Men and True Grit.

But Patrick deWitt's follow-up to his acclaimed debut Ablutions is also a thrilling, smart and surprisingly touching read—the kind of book that translates to the big screen precisely because it's so visual and visceral.

The brothers of the book's title are Eli and Charlie Sisters, professional hit men who travel the frontier carrying out the underhanded orders of their enigmatic boss, an off-screen baron known only by the name "The Commodore." At the novel's start, The Commodore sends them to assassinate Hermann Warm, a man whose crimes neither trouble nor interest the pair. They know only their assignment, and set out from Oregon City in search of their target.

As the brothers make their way through Indian Territory, prospectors' campsites, noisy whorehouses and finally into the heart of California Gold Rush country, the two emerge as very different men. Charlie, the oldest, is a bloodthirsty alcoholic, content to live by the laws of the Wild West and without remorse for his deeds. Meanwhile, Eli, the novel's thoughtful and funny narrator, proves a more sensitive soul—exhausted and conflicted by his way of life, befuddled yet entranced by women, self-conscious about his rotund physique and touchingly delighted by his most recent acquisition: a toothbrush.

Though the book is more episodic (think murderous trappers, gold-gathering schemes and encounters with bears) than plot-heavy, it is always compelling and surprising. When the brothers finally come upon their mark, he is hardly what they expected. Luckily they're in the habit of rolling with the punches—a technique that will cause readers to follow suit.

SIBLINGS FOR HIRE
Patrick DeWitt's one-of-a-kind Western, The Sisters Brothers, has the trappings of a classic but an attitude that's decidedly contemporary. Charlie and Eli Sisters are brothers and guns for hire. When they're enlisted by a wealthy settler to locate and eliminate a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, they leave Oregon for California, embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. In the foothills of the Sierras, they find Warm's prospecting claim, but along the way they encounter a variety of obstacles, including a group of crazed fur trappers, a witch and a bear. Their adventures are recounted by Eli, whose commentary infuses the novel with sensitivity and humanity. Shedding new light on old myths about frontier life, DeWitt's book has plenty of action, and his sharply etched characters, though rooted in tradition, stand firmly on their own.

REMEMBER THIS
S.J. Watson's electrifying debut, Before I Go to Sleep, has all the makings of a classic thriller. At the center of the novel is Christine, an amnesiac who has lost her memory after a strange accident. Each day, her husband, Ben—whom she no longer recognizes—must supply Christine with the backstory of their life together. At the prompting of her doctor, Christine begins writing in a journal, an exercise that will hopefully spark her memory. When Christine discovers that she's written the words "Don't trust Ben" in her notebook, she feels the ground beneath her feet shift yet again. Faced with fresh misgivings about the past as well as the present, Christine finds herself struggling to navigate a daily existence that's marked by danger and doubt. Should she rely on Ben? And what, exactly, was the nature of her accident? Watson, who lives in London, writes with the assurance and polish of a seasoned author in his gripping first novel.

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS
The Weird Sisters, Eleanor Brown's wonderfully appealing first novel, tells the story of a trio of sisters, each named by their eccentric scholar-father for a character from Shakespeare. Raised in Barnwell, Ohio, a quiet college town, Rosalind, Cordelia and Bianca Andreas spent their childhood engrossed in books and listening to their pater quote the Bard. Once out of the nest, though, the girls have very different experiences: Cordelia hooks up with a painter in New Mexico and gets pregnant, while Bianca has legal and financial troubles in New York. Meanwhile, Rosalind, the levelheaded oldest, remains faithfully in Barnwell, working as a math teacher. When the sisters learn that their mother has cancer, they return home for an unexpected reunion. Their time in Barnwell proves to be a period of awakening as they learn all over again the importance of family. Brown's characters, like her prose style, are fresh and original.

A calmly vicious journey into avarice and revenge.

The unusual title refers to Charlie and Eli Sisters, the latter of whom narrates the novel. The narrative style is flat, almost unfeeling, though the action turns toward the cold-blooded. It's 1851, and the mysterious Commodore has hired the Sisters brothers to execute a man who's turned against him. The brothers start out from their home in Oregon City in search of the equally improbably named Hermann Kermit Warm. The hit has been set up by Henry Morris, one of the Commodore's minions, so the brothers set off for San Francisco, the last-known home of Warm. Along the way they have several adventures, including one involving a bear with an apple-red pelt. A man named Mayfield is supposed to pay them for this rare commodity but instead tries to cheat them, and the brothers calmly shoot four trappers who work for him. Charlie is the more sociopathic of the two, more addicted to women and brandy, while Eli, in contrast, is calmer, more rational, and even shows signs of wanting to give up the murder-for-hire business and settle down. But first, of course, they need to locate Warm. It turns out Morris has thrown in his lot with Warm, a crazed genius who has seemingly discovered a formula that helps locate gold—so much so that he can get in a day what it takes panners a month to glean. When they finally get to the gold-panners, the brothers wind up joining them, removing literally a bucket of gold from the stream. The caustic quality of Warm's formula leads to disaster, however, and Indians show up at an opportune moment to steal the gold.

DeWitt creates a homage to life in the Wild West but at the same time reveals its brutality. 

Eli Sisters is feeling grumpy; brother Charlie has been declared lead man on their next assignment from the Commodore. But it's a job, so off they ride to Sacramento with the aim of killing a gold miner the Commodore wants out of the way. As they track their quarry, encountering an odd assortment of whores, drunks, and visionaries, Eli begins to have qualms about the bloody life he leads. Both homage to the classic Western and knife thrust to its dark underbelly, this novel has a quirky, deadpan exterior and a hard-beating heart. Rabid in-house enthusiasm and film interest; John C. Reilly is attached to produce and star as Eli.

This engrossing novel, set during the gold rush years of the 1850s, begins as a gritty, unapologetic homage to pulp Westerns (with perhaps a nod to Cormac McCarthy as well). In the final pages, however, as the hired guns at the center of the story are forced by circumstances to rethink their lives, the novel turns into something much more philosophical, existential, and extraordinary. The protagonists are two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, widely known for their brutality. They are sent from Oregon City to California to kill an enemy of their boss, the mysterious Commodore. DeWitt (Ablutions) brings the saloons, the ratty frontier towns, and the West itself vividly to life here, and the large cast of colorful characters are skillfully drawn. It's the concluding pages, however, that give the novel its surprising integrity and power. It becomes, in effect, a different kind of novel, profoundly literary, and devoted to serious philosophical meditation. VERDICT Recommended for fans of Westerns and literary fiction.—Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Dewitt's bang-up second novel (after Ablutions) is a quirky and stylish revisionist western. When a frontier baron known as the Commodore orders Charlie and Eli Sisters, his hired gunslingers, to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, the brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually to Warm's claim in the Sierra foothills, running into a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers. Eli's deadpan narration is at times strangely funny (as when he discovers dental hygiene, thanks to a frontier dentist dispensing free samples of "tooth powder that produced a minty foam") but maintains the power to stir heartbreak, as with Eli's infatuation with a consumptive hotel bookkeeper. As more of the brothers' story is teased out, Charlie and Eli explore the human implications of many of the clichés of the old west and come off looking less and less like killers and more like traumatized young men. With nods to Charles Portis and Frank Norris, DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and, perhaps unexpectedly, moving. (May)