The poet Brenda Shaughnessy uses humor to reveal the absurdities of language and people.

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A biography of the writer whose name was synonymous with etiquette.

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A new history of the United States from 1815 to 1848 brings out the eccentric aspects of the period.

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New visual books about the ?creative revolution? in advertising, the typography of Jan Tschichold; Alexander Calder?s Paris years; and cave art.

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In Diane Johnson?s Moroccan novel, wealthy Westerners coexist with an Islamic culture.

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This memoir by the composer John Adams is a collage of memory, criticism, theory and ruminations on creativity.

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In this ingenious sequel to ?The Witches of Eastwick,? the three title characters, old ladies now, renew their sisterhood, return to their old hometown and contrive to atone for past crimes.

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A jaundiced fictional look at politics as practiced ? make that malpracticed ? in New York.

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In Jos

Lately, women horror writers have been doing some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre.

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In separate memoirs, the writers behind ?Basic Instinct? and ?Interview With the Vampire? explain their return to Catholicism.

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Alison Light details the complicated relations between Virginia Woolf and her household help.

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The chairman of Lake Wobegon?s Independence Day celebration has an extramarital fling.

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Jules Feiffer is a great cartoonist who boldly bent his medium to adult purposes long before it was commonplace to do so. This anthology gathers his Village Voice strips from 1956 to 1966.

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In Irvine Welsh?s latest novel, a Scottish detective heads to Florida for some R & R — only to stumble across a child sex ring.

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The history of a family and its Cuban-born, Puerto Rico-based, now worldwide liquor giant.

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In a war of treason and rebellion, Lincoln had the insights that kept the United States and its military on the right course.

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Ottavio Cappellani?s novel portrays a Sicily of avant-garde Shakespeare, regional dishes and, of course, Mafia feuds.

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With his marriage collapsing, the hero of Jim Harrison?s new novel sells his farm and hits the road.

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Joseph Epstein?s slim biography of Fred Astaire is a survey of a master?s sweep.

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In John le Carr

Why has Goldman Sachs survived as its peers crumble around it? In this corporate history, Charles D. Ellis credits its culture.

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The Inquisition, the Salem trials, the Red Scare: a survey of witch hunts over the past two millenniums.

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Barton Gellman?s biography paints Dick Cheney as the master manipulator of the Bush administration.

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Julia Glass?s new novel focuses on the complicated emotions ? love, hate, envy, grief ? that form between female siblings.

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