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CORAGHESSAN BOYLE'S new satirical novel, The Road to Wellville (Viking), tells the story of cornflakes inventor John Harvey Kellogg and the exotic enema craze of 1907. MURIEL SPARK discusses her work as a "black propagandist" for British intelligence during World War II, and the original Miss Jean Brodie, in her autobiography, Curriculum Vitae (Houghton Mifflin). A biographer unravels the clues left behind by a great Shakespearean actress in FRANCESCA STANFILL'SWakefield Hall (Villard). KAREN STABINER spent a year at Chiat/Day, the ad agency that unleashed the Energizer Bunny on the world, to write Inventing Desire (Simon & Schuster). Set in 1950s India, A Suitable Boy (HarperCollins) is VIKRAM SETH'S epic novel of manners. Former gang leader KODY SCOTT'S Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (Atlantic Monthly Press) was written in prison. MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE discusses the institution of closeted homosexuality in Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power (Random House). RAFAEL YGLESIAS'SFearless (Warner) follows two survivors of a harrowing plane crash. JOAN PEYSER looks at a great American composer in The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin (Simon & Schuster). Possession author A. S. BYATT offers two novellas set in the mid-1800s in Angels & Insects (Turtle Bay). Journalist PICO IYER travels to countries that "have no seat at our international dinner tables" in Falling off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (Knopf). In his novel Women and Men (Dalkey Archive), JOSEPH McELROY charts the intricate connections between two almost strangers in 1970s New York City. UMBERTO ECO tries his hand at satire in Misreadings (Harcourt Brace). And New Age guru MARIANNE WILLIAMSON shares her reflections on womanhood in A Woman's Worth (Random House).

HENRY ALFORD