HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

In the middle of my life I found myself in a dark wood ... The fiendishly talented V.F. contributor Nick Tosches's thrilling novel In the Hand of Dante (Little, Brown) concerns a manuscript of Vie Divine Comedy and its theft by the man summoned to authenticate it, a writer named Nick Tosches.

Also this month: Wear a mask and handle with rubber gloves as V.F. contributing editor Michael Shnayerson and Mark Plotkin reveal the deadly rise of smart, drug-resistant bacteria in The Killers Within (Little, Brown). Napalm, enemy capture, sex, and death—the fearless women reporters who covered Vietnam swap hard-core in-the-line-of-duty stories in War Torn (Random House). Beset by fears of failure and desperate to redeem himself, a father drags his family to Elba in search of fortune in Joanna Scott'sTourmaline (Little, Brown). LL Cool J crosses over to deliver his literary rap in his debut children's novel. And the Winner Is... (Scholastic). Ace provocateur and V.F. contributor A. M. Homes's new story collection is full of Viings You Should Know (HarperCollins). In A Reader's Manifesto (Melville House), polemicist B. R. Myers stomps up and down on the American literary hierarchy, denouncing writers such as DeLillo and Proulx as pretentious twaddlers. In To Reach the Clouds (North Point Press), artiste of the air Philippe Petit tells how he defied law and logic when he fantastically traversed a high wire suspended between the Twin Towers in 1974. Photographer Andrew Moore goes insiae navana (v nromciej 10 capture msionc arcnueciure and unlikely landmarks. In Cuba Confidential (Random House) Ann Louise Bardach chronicles the high-noon standoff between Miami and Havana. Stephen Fried follows a Main Line Philadelphia temple's search for Vie New Rabbi (Bantam). Souvenir hunters uncover a suspicious unmarked grave in Jim Lehrer's murder mystery No Certain Rest (Random House). In Grace (Edition 7L), Michael Roberts and Grace Coddington follow Coddington's swinging career and her 30-year pursuit of fashion fabulousness at Vogue. The complete archives of photographer and Norma Jean confidant Andre de Dienes are resurrected in the extraordinary posthumous photo-memoir Marilyn (Taschen). Hurrah, it's not fruit or razorblades—it's Jerry Seinfeld'sHalloween (Little, Brown). Tony Hawk, skateboarding legend and prince of the half-pipe, keeps a diary of life on the road, often literally, in Between Boardslides and Burnout (ReganBooks). Take a roll down memory lane with Gideon Bosker and Bianca Lencek-Bosker's striking Bowled Over (Chronicle). In Vie Conversations (Knopf) Michael Ondaatje talks about the art of editing film with Academy Award-winning film and sound editor Walter Murch. Painter Christiane Kubrick, married for 42 years to the notoriously private director of Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, shares all but the bearskin-rug shots in Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (Bulfinch). Now, that's hell on earth.

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