Fat Charlie's life is about to turn upside down. It all starts ordinarily enough; Rosie, his fiancée, suggests that he invite his father to their wedding. He hasn't seen his roguish father since his mother was in the hospital dying. Even then his father managed to embarrass him, something he's been doing ever since Charlie can remember and is positive it will happen at his wedding if invited. Fat Charlie isn't even fat -- it's just a nickname his father gave him and like everything that his father does or says, it has stuck with him for a lifetime. You could say that Fat Charlie Nancy has huge father issues.

Like any other young man who is about to marry, he does what his fiancée asks and calls the only person who is likely to know where his father is, his childhood next door neighbor old Mrs. Higgler. It turns out that his father has recently died (embarrassingly while on a karoke stage) and the funeral is about to take place so Fat Charlie goes on leave from his job and jumps on a plane from England to Florida.

Some 4000 miles later, a couple wrong turns in the rental car, and the fact that the "garden of rest" is located behind a Walmart, Charlie misses the funeral service, but Mrs. Higgler has saved "a shoveful of dirt" for him to say his goodbye. Actually, she sent the gravedigger home and saved the whole task for Charlie to do. After he buries his father, they go back to Mrs. Higgler's home for some food. He's too late again. All of his father's drinking buddies are out drinking. The group of old neighbor ladies are packing away the food in tupperware. Though these ladies do insist on giving him a pile-high plate to help him in his grief.

"Mrs. Higgler was older than Mrs. Bustamonte, and both of them were older than Miss Noles, and none of them was older than Mrs. Dunwiddy. Mrs Dunwiddy was old, and she looked it. There were geological ages that were probably younger than Mrs. Dunwiddy. As a boy, Fat Charlie imagined Mrs. Dunwiddy in Equatorial Africa, peering disapprovingly through her thick spectacles at the newly erect hominids."

Later that afteroon when they are at his father's house, Mrs. Higgler tells him two shocking bits of information. First, when she claims his father was a busy man, Charlie thinks she's got to be joking, the man never worked a day of his life, he was bad husband and a bad father. But Mrs. Higgler reprimands him and says that you can't judge him like a regular man, "You got to remember, Fat Charlie, that your father was a god." Convinced that Mrs. Higgler is crazy, he points out that would make him a son of a god, so why doesn't he have special powers? He is so unlucky, he has never even won a measly work lottery. And, in all seriousness, she drops the second bit of news, "Your brother got all the god stuff." Fat Charlie doesn't remember having a brother.

If you have read American Gods, then you already guessed that Fat Charlie's father is the trickster Anansi, originally a West African spider-god. Yes, gods do really die (at least for awhile) and Mr. Nancy is in a Florida grave. This story is about his boys, but like all stories it is still Anansi's, and like many of his tales, Tiger is involved. "It wasn't the first time Tiger was made a fool of by Anansi, and it wouldn't be the last time," as the narrator states after telling us one of the many traditional-style Anansi fables. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mrs. Higgler tells Charlie that if he wants to meet this brother, then just tell a spider.

She didn't warn him of the consequences.

So he tells a spider, "If you see my brother, tell him he ought to come by and say hello." He has a dream that he is somebody he always wanted to be and the next morning, the doorbell rings and Charlie is face-to-face with a man he recognizes but has never met. His brother introduces himself as Spider, follows Charlie upstairs to his apartment and Charlie simply accepts the impossible. "Impossible things happen. When they do happen, most people just deal with it."

Spider is everthing that Charlie is not. In the same way that his father has always embarrassed him, Spider is always pushing forth mischief and mayhem and all aspects of Charlie's life are affected: his apartment, his job and the final straw, Rosie. Spider is actually dating Rosie. Only Rosie doesn't know he isn't Charlie. She's just surprised how much she likes Charlie all of a sudden; that she never really noticed him like this before.

So Charlie decides to seek the help of the four old ladies in Florida. He assumes if Mrs. Higgler knew how to call his brother, then she must know how to get rid of him. Things are not that easy and he ends up on the otherside making a deal that he shouldn't. And that's when events really go astray.

Anansi Boys is a much lighter read than American Gods, though that might have more to do with which god is at the center of each story. Certainly, Mr. Nancy is a trickster and any story with him would be lighter (but don't mistake this for being without depth). Odin, the central god in American Gods, is the god of war and death; naturally that book is darker, though in my opinion, entirely readable, as Odin is also the god of poetry and wisdom. It is to Gaiman's credit that the tone of each novel is fitting to its god.

You certainly do not need to read American Gods first, but once you read Anansi Boys, you will want to pick up American Gods. I can attest to that since I read Anansi Boys first (a fast engrossing read on the long flight to China) and then dug right into American Gods (a slower read with many quotable quotes worth a re-read or as I joked as to why I hadn't finished it during the long flight home "it has a lot of words." It really is a great, great book; highly recommended). I don't think I have to say anything to anyone who did read American Gods, as you have probably have already read Anansi Boys by now or at least have it on your personal holiday wish list. I can't imagine that you'll want to wait until it comes out in paperback. Anansi Boys is serious fun.

• Amazon readers rating: from 236 reviews

Read a chapter excerpt from Anansi Boys at the author's website

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Shadow Moon has just served three years in prison - years spent because he took the blame for his wife, Laura’s, part in a bank robbery. All he wants to do now is live the quiet life, get his old job back, and be with Laura. But of course, this can’t happen - a car accident robs him of his wife and his best friend Robbie, as well as his illusions about his marriage, since Laura was unfaithful with that best friend, who was also going to give him a job. When Mr. Wednesday, a self styled grifter and rogue offers him employment, Shadow accepts because there really is nothing else for him to do.