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h, November . . . There's a bite in the air, the sound of wishbones' being snapped, the acrid smell of burning—it could be leaves or copies of To Renew America. This month, it's a parade of biographies rife with raging libidos and bad attitudes. Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Knopf) is MORTON N. COHEN S salacious sashay through the looking glass of this genius wit and fancier of wee lassies' lives. LYLE LEVERICH'S Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (Crown) explores the enigmatic and eternally troubled playwright's early years. HARRISON KINNEY'S James Thurber (Holt) recalls the tumultuous life and times of the pride of the Buckeye State. Pansexual romps and bouts with alcoholism permeate PHILLIP HERRING'S daring Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes (Viking).

Lost men on psychic journeys star in two of the best new novels: a bewildered pianist tries to recollect his past in KAZUO ISHIGURO'S The Unconsoled (Knopf), and a philosophical romantic finds himself shipwrecked in UMBERTO ECO'S latest, Die Island of the Day Before (Harcourt Brace). From the war that gave us terms such as "credibility gap" and 'silent majority" comes STANLEY I. KUTLER'S Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (Scribner). Let there be no ambiguity where straight shooter DAVID BRINKLEY'S new book concerned; it's his Memoirs (Knopf). FAYE DUNAWAY makes sense of her existence in Looking for Gatsby: My Life (Simon & Schuster). BARRY UNSWORTH'S bewitching Morality Play (Doubleday) set in 14th-century England. From Balenciaga to Beene, LAURA JACOBS explores the fine art of high fashion in The Art of Haute Couture (Abbeville). DMITRI NABOKOV edits The Stories Vladimir Nabokov (Knopf), a collection his beloved papa's short fiction. Ahoy, all you seamen-loving er sailor story, PATRICK O'BRIAN'S The Unknown Shore (Norton). JOHN TAURANAC celebrates King Kong's favorite jungle gym in The Empire State Building: A History (Scribner). ROBERT WOOLLEY, Sotheby's pre-eminent auctioneer, takes us behind the scenes of the world's most famous auction house in Going Once (Simon & Schuster). And it's official: CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS secures his place in hell with The Missionary Position: The Ideology of Mother Teresa (Verso). Thank heaven somebody finally put that wench in her place.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL