WONDERFULLY ENTERTAINING HISTORY, anthropology, and sociology of tools for cooking and eating. Smart fun!

FAST-PACED MYSTERY YARN has a fine flavor of the 1890s San Francisco underworld and an appealing sleuth duo.

THE MAGIC OF CENTRAL PARK takes center stage in this New York fable, a quirky picture book for grown-ups.

AN INDIAN JOURNALIST researches the lives of the men who tried and failed to kill him. Complex, engrossing!

NESTED TALES OF gay men and single mothers, complex characterizations, rich historical context…good stuff.

VIVIDLY DRAWN PORTRAIT of a writer’s hardscrabble childhood and her charismatic, deeply troubled mother.

ENTERTAINING AND ENLIGHTENING look at how mathematics and statistics are used (and misused) in the courtroom.

A MIDLIFE MIDLIST WRITER’S howl of pain in the form of a memoir.  Admirably honest, yet somehow unappealing.

INTERESTING LOOK AT how ideas, products, and media “go viral,” with in-depth data from studies and interviews.

EVERY PARENT’S NIGHTMARE—child abduction—spun into a mythic, poetic tapestry by Joyce Carol Oates.