Halfway through “Highway Thirteen,” her ingenious, scalp-tingling collection of linked stories, Fiona McFarlane serves up “Democracy Sausage,” composed of an eight-page sentence, narrated by Chris Biga, an Australian politician standing for election in 1998.

Just days before, another Biga, named Paul, was arrested for a series of murders committed during the 1990s south of Sydney. Chris wears a button that proclaims “No relation” as he works a barbecue grill outside a polling site. He frets that he may lose the race because of the coincidence, lamenting the killer’s “right to participate in the process of my name, the democratic process, my blackened name.”

The charred lives of those affected by Biga’s spree form the crux of “Highway Thirteen” as McFarlane moves stealthily between timelines. The last story, “Lucy,” opens in 1950 while “Podcast” unfolds in 2028, tracing the impact of his crimes across decades and continents.

The author slices and dices chronology with the nimble hands of an Iron Chef. Each protagonist connects to Paul Biga: his next-door neighbor and former teacher; a British ex- pat in Texas, whose sister vanished years earlier while hiking Down Under; a retired cop who’d cracked the case. They’re separated by time and space, but they all know, or know of, Biga.

McFarlane’s technique is flawless: She drizzles a light irony amid the book’s fine- grained surfaces, focusing raptly on her characters and how they’re upended by a lanky young man who preys on hitchhikers and tourists, luring victims into a white truck.

McFarlane makes the correct call, keeping Biga shadowy: Throughout the collection, he’s a mere taxi driver who keeps cockatoos in an aviary, keeps his violence under wraps.

“Highway Thirteen” is a Cubist collage of grief and suspense, grand betrayals and cryptic desires. It entertains even as it plunges headfirst into unspeakable evil. — Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The least interesting thing about Ellie Palmer’s romance novel “Four Weekends and a Funeral” may be the romance.

That’s not to say it’s uninteresting, but it does tick a lot of tropes: the heroine’s love of Hallmark Christmas movies; the standoffish love interest; and the unnecessarily convoluted/outlandish plot device that keeps the heroine and her love interest apart.

Alison Mullally is as an employee of a “niche transportation consulting firm” in St. Paul, Minnesota. When her newly ex- boyfriend Sam Lewis unexpectedly dies, mourners at his funeral think she was still in a relationship with him.

Alison lets the impression stand, figuring there is no harm in the little white lie, but then Sam’s sister asks her to continue pretending for reasons to do with Sam’s mother. The deception is complicated further when Sam’s parents ask Alison and his best friend, Adam Berg, to clear out Sam’s apartment over four weekends.

“Four Weekends and a Funeral” sometimes teeters toward the cliché, but to say it is standard romantic fare isn’t exactly, well, fair. The writing is lively, and the wintry setting is good fun. But the book really shines in its serious moments, and what could be more serious than being a carrier of the BRCA1 mutation?

Alison’s story begins after she’s had a double mastectomy to mitigate her cancer risk. How she navigates life and love in the aftermath shakes up generic expectations.

It’s especially touching when Alison finally faces this colossal thing that has happened to her, what it means for her future and how it might change the way she sees herself. Will she eat, pray and love her way through it to the other side? Or maybe there’s a better way, one that is more akin to who she really is. It’s very much worth a read to find out. — Maren Longbella, Minneapolis Star Tribune