HOT TYPE ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Yikes! Richard A. Clarke's nail-biter suspense novel Breakpoint (Putnam) irrefutably proves that there is nothing like being America's pre-eminent counterterrorism expert to goose up your book with real terror.

TERRIFYINGLY TALENTED: John Heilpern looks back with fondness at the original Angry Young Man, British playwright John Osborne (Knopf). In On the Wealth of Nations,P. J. O'Rourke mucks through Adam Smith's quintessential work (Grove). John Newhouse'sBoeing Versus Airbus (Knopf) zeroes in on the highstakes, high-flying dogfight. Kim Todd'sChrysalis (Harcourt) pins down the life of the insectadoring naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. Corruption! Murder! Pappadam! The Godfather goes Indian in Vikram Chandra's big, rambunctious novel Sacred Games (HarperCollins). In Vendela Vida'sLet the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (Ecco), a woman tracks her violent past all the way to Lapland. Photographer Jason Schmidt catches Artists (Steidl) such as Ed Ruscha and Matthew Barney in the intimate act of creation. Former jarhead Anthony Swofford fires off a round in his debut novel. Exit A (Scribner). By turns elegiac and bluesy, passionate and playful, poet Kevin Young'sFor the Confederate Dead (Knopf) prizes African-Americans' glories and grief. Novelist John Sedgwick picks the family scabs in his memoir In My Blood (HarperCollins), a hagiography of six generations of his insane Boston Brahmin clan.

IN HASTE BUT WITH ALL FONDNESS: Louis Begley'sMatters of Honor (Knopf) is elegant. Tom Sancton'sThe Armageddon Project (Other Press) is a page-turner. Patricia Marx's debut novel. Him Her Him Again the End of Him (Scribner), is a riot. Poet Karl Kirchwey'sThe Happiness of This World (Putnam) is suffused with sadness. Novelist Ann Hood'sThe Knitting Circle (Norton) is a heartbreaker. Rupert Everett's autobiography. Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins (Warner), is sinfully cheeky. Adria Bernardi'sOpenwork (Southern Methodist University) is served Italian-style. Natalie Danford's maiden voyage. Inheritance (St. Martin's), is lovely.

ALSO THIS MONTH:V.F. soothsayer Michael Lutin'sSunShines (Fireside) spreads golden happiness. Richard Schickel, Stephen Bogart, and George Perry raise their glasses to Bogie (St. Martin's). Charlotte and Peter Fiell compile the best of Domus (Taschen). John Wilmerding, Joachim Pissarro, and Robert Pincus-Witten paint Robert Indiana (Rizzoli).

In Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin), filmmaker David Lynch describes how he hooks the squirmy ideas which lurk at the murky bottom of his consciousness. I am your candycolored clown...