Ann Patchett's new tragicomedy, State of Wonder (Harper), dares to send women into decidedly masculine territory—violence and corruption in the jungle—but with a 21st-century twist.

An academically brilliant but otherwise clueless narrator desperately searches for a wife. So funny you may miss this novel's slyly profound message.

This heartfelt memoir reveals how Cuban immigrant parents and a colorful Manhattan neighborhood inspired the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's dazzling fiction.

A Jazz Age tale of lust and murder that's smart, fast-paced—and as racy as the title implies.

Integration, coeducation, and the sexual revolution encroach on the smug, insular world of a New England prep school in this fiercely intelligent novel.

What's in a (fake) name? Apparently, plenty. How pseudonyms—think George Sand, Lewis Carroll—have enabled writers to express their true selves.

This reporter's journey into the study of psychopaths, and the world of one particularly nutty CEO, is both terrifying and hilarious.

The late author's brilliance sparkles in this unfinished but expansive novel (pieced together from manuscripts after his death) set in an IRS office in Peoria, Illinois.

A grieving woman decides to read one book a day for a year. Anyone who has ever sought refuge in literature will identify.

A white developmentally disabled woman and an African-American deaf man are cruelly separated from each other and their baby in this heart-tugging novel.

A beautifully illustrated and passionate book about how the Cheers star became an environmental activist, and why you might do the same.

Tom McNeal's To Be Sung Underwater (Little, Brown) is part coming-of-age story and part tale of long-lost love.

Kids, weed, and punk rock in the big, bad city.

In Parisian Chic: A Style Guide (Flammarion), French ex-model and perennial fashion muse Ines de la Fressange shows us how her countrywomen always manage to look so great. Not much news here—straight-leg jeans are timeless; invest in the perfect black dress—but the photos and drawings and notes, not to mention the leather-bound book itself, are magnifique.

One father, two mothers, two daughters: a love story.

This short, taut novel' ' is, on the surface, the story of Glen Bauer, an ordinary suburban father whose modest case of road rage turns into a game of chicken that leaves another young driver dead.