Hot Type

Leonard Cohen, whose smoky, sulfur-charged lyrics could rip the leaves off trees, enlivens gloomy October in IRA B. NADEL'S Various Positions: A Life Leonard Cohen (Pantheon).

Also this month: CARL BERNSTEIN and MARCO POLITI'S His Holiness (Doubleday) charts the ascension and reign of Pope John Paul II. Say it ain't so! EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN tears away the meticulously constructed glossy veneer of Armand Hammer and reveals a manipulative and corrupt creep in the compelling Dossier (Random House). The American Southwest's Sonoran Desert sits for its portrait in LEE FRIEDLANDER'S The Desert Seen (D.A.P.). HELEN SHEEHY'S Eva Le Gallienne (Knopf) is a curtain call for one of the 20th-century theater's most bohemian and freespirited (read: lesbian) actresses. If you fear being crucified on the cross of bad fashion, then ALAN FLUSSER is your savior, and Style and the Man (HarperCollins) your new testament. Simplicity-minded architect JOHN PAWSON shares his view of the world in Minimum (Phaidon). From inside the Hollywood Fishbowl LYNDA OBST gives us a shark's-eye view of the industry in Hello, He Lied (Little, Brown). The Power to Harm (Viking) is JOHN CORNWELL'S frightening investigation into why a print worker on disability went postal and poured lead into 20 of his co-workers. A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary (Faber and Faber) reveals the work and play habits of the cult music star. Marilyn Monroe, tragic goddess of love, is once more immortalized, this time Niagara-era, in JOCK CARROLL'S Falling for Marilyn (Friedman/ Fairfax). The Times Square Gym (Evan Publishing) is a sweaty paean to all the beautiful bruisers (including Ali and Tyson) who trained in the famous ring, with photographs by JOHN GOODMAN and text by PETE HAMILL. JENNIFER DUNNING celebrates the remarkable life of the spiritual and creative godfather of black modern dance in Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance (Addison-Wesley). From gorgeous vineyards to peculiar, wizardly winemakers, The Grapes of Ralph (Harcourt Brace) is the world of wine as seen through the kaleidoscope eyes of gonzo illustrator RALPH STEADMAN.

On the Fiction front: A young black preacher struggles to save a mysterious African woman, and himself, from being devoured in a race war in JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN'S fiercely beautiful and deeply affecting novel The Cattle Killing (Houghton Mifflin). Childhood and Vietnam are just two of the hells visited in TOBIAS WOLFF'S powerful short-story collection The Night in Question (Knopf). In MONA SIMPSON'S wry and tender novel A Regular Guy (Knopf), a daughter searches for a father who split from their commune to become a famous entrepreneur. Forget therapy, try a Ouija board: when a Jewish mother goes bonkers, her son channels his dead dad for answers to her madness in DAVID BLACK'S An Impossible Life (Argonaut). Actor ETHAN HAWKE attempts the writing thing with a "first love" novel, The Hottest State (Little, Brown). And, finally, Footsucker (Overlook), the soleful new novel by devilishly arch GEOFF NICHOLSON, is a stiletto straight to the heart for all foot fetishists. Pump it up, Manolo!

ELISSA SCHAPPELL