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Helen, a middle-aged divorcee, is the devoted caretaker of her 88-year-old mother, Clair. But one day, her resentment toward her senile mother is overpowering; when she can no longer stand the stench of her mother’s decrepit body, Helen smothers and kills her. She drags her mother’s corpse into the cellar and calls her ex-husband to confess this ghastly act, and subsequently has sex with her best friend’s 30-year-old son.

In the next 24 hours, Sebold jumps from the family’s past and present and exposes Helen’s ties with her mentally ill mother and tortured father who’d committed suicide, all the while creating parallels between Clair and her own mother, as depicted in "Lucky,” her memoir. Helen recalls her traumatizing adolescence, and even though she breaks free from the misery of her childhood, marries, and bears two daughters, she eventually ends up divorced and living in the neighborhood in which she grew up.

We follow Helen’s psychological descent in a raw and oftentimes painful read, and Helen, as well as other characters, may be too one-dimensional for the reader to feel empathy. Still, Sebold stays true to her voice and vision, illustrating a flawed existence in a world where devotion and obligation lead to the darkest of places. Considering the depressed protagonist’s grim confession in the novel’s beginning, "The Almost Moon” may be too bleak for some.

On the brighter side, there’s Michael Chabon’s "Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure,” written in the same adventurous spirit as his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” which was inspired by Chabon’s passion for fantastic heroes and the comic book form.

In his new and entertaining tale, set circa 950 A.D. in a mythical land on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, Zelikman, a lanky, moody master of medicines, and Amram, a gigantic, graying Abyssinian soldier, survive as thieves and journey through the Caucasus Mountains, along the legendary Silk Road, and to the city of Atil.

After being hired as defenders of hotheaded Filaq, the estranged heir of the Khazar Empire, the trio joins forces with nomadic armies, encounters everything from Vikings, whores, and unusual elephants, and prepares an uprising against Buljan, Filaq’s uncle, who seized the throne.

Zelikman and Amram are put to the test, forced to become leaders of a grand revolution. Granted, the unlikely pair faces warriors, evil emperors, and magnificent battles, but the duo is armed not just with weapons, but also with wit and bravado, and keeps this story ridiculously enjoyable.

Shorter than Chabon’s previous novels, "Gentlemen of the Road” is an outrageous historical adventure that is pure fun.

This Week’s Picks Off the Shelf:

"The Almost Moon” by Alice Sebold

$25, Little, Brown and Company

304 pages

"Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure” by Michael Chabon

$22, Random House

208 pages