MOTHER/DAUGHTER CONFLICTS plus the perils of minor celebrity status add up to thoughtful, edgy women’s fiction.

IRREVERENT, WELL RESEARCHED lightning tour through behavioral economics shows why things cost what they do.

FLUFFY ROMP CENTERS around hard-luck 40-something New York socialites turned high-class call girls; silly fun. SOLID B

THE BEST LAID PLANS
Random House Publishing Group
2011

WACKY META-MYSTERY is also a parody of dysfunctional collaborations, authors undermining each other. Good fun!

MOODY, PICARESQUE TALE of disillusion, politics, finance, and love set against Bolivia’s 2005 elections.

REALITY-BENDING EXPERIMENTAL novel offers moments of simple poetry, enigmatic doublings in cool graphic design.

FASCINATING PERSONAL ACCOUNT of a journalist’s experience of “recovering” false memories of childhood abuse.

INTIMATE BUT NOT GOSSIPY memoir of a writer’s complex time with her mentor/quasi-mother-in-law, Susan Sontag.

SNARKY, ODDLY SWEET memoir of a young woman’s days in the nerds-gone-Damon Runyon world of sports betting.

LIGHT-HEARTED COMPENDIUM of facts about science and superstition in ancient Greece and Rome is surprising fun.