HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

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Welcome bulb-ilicious springtime with Jane Alison's rapturous novel Natives and Exotics (Harcourt), in which three generations of international transplants discover their true natures while those around them plunder the paradises of earth.

Also in bloom: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson hunt the possibly murderous spirit of The Italian Secretary (Carroll & Graf) that inhabits Caleb Carr's detective novel. Jennie Erdal discloses how in the 1980s she was Ghosting (Doubleday) the books, the newspaper columns, and even the love letters of a "flamboyant British publisher."

Charles Drazin edits The Journals (Knopf) of John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant's Woman. In Art and the Power of Placement (Monacelli), Victoria Newhouse (wife of Conde Nast chairman S. I. Newhouse Jr.) elegantly frames the question of how display shapes meaning. Wesley Stace (also known as John Wesley Harding) debuts with a gender-bending adventure novel, Misfortune (Little, Brown). Richard Calvocoressi's Lee Miller (Thames & Hudson) reflects the photographer's uncommon life. In 109 East Palace (Simon & Schuster), Jennet Conant casts light on the top-secret city of Los Alamos. Catherine Leroy celebrates the astonishing photographers and writers who worked Under Fire (Random House) in Vietnam. Marla Hamburg Kennedy and Ben Stiller are Looking at Los Angeles (Metropolis). Too white? Need to de-whackify your bad self? Read Amanda McCall and Albertina Rizzo's Hold My Gold: A White Girl's Guide to the Hip-Hop World (Simon & Schuster).

In short order: Al Roker and friends know it takes a big daddy to fill the Big Shoes (Hyperion) of fatherhood. Tour The Landmarks of New York (Monacelli) with Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel. Melissa McConnell debuts with Evidence of Love (Harcourt). The Franklin Affair (Random House) is Jim Lehrer's 15th novel. Ten critics and 100 architects equal 10xl0_2 (Phaidon). Marc Meyer edits the brash, controversial, and wildly gifted Basquiat (Merrell). Eric Bogosian's second novel captures New York City's Wasted Beauty (Simon & Schuster).

As it is the season of burning sacrifices, follow pork-fancying pilgrim Peter Kaminsky in search of Pig Perfect (Hyperion), a quest that leads from tailgate banquets to Mayan kitchens. Bacon equals salvation ...

Them (Penguin Press) evokes her Russian émigré parentsmother Tatiana, a fashion icon, and stepfalher Alexander Liberman, fabled editorial director of Condé Nast-who reigned over New York City's high society. In Nicole Krauss's noteworthy novel The History of Love (Norton), a 60-year-old lost work of fiction links its now elderly author—an 80-year-old Polish locksmith and a 14-year-old girl, named For one of his characters, searching for her namesake.