IN SHORT

Comic genius Stephen Fry tells on himself in The Fry Chronicles (Overlook). Penelope Lively takes a chance on How It All Began (Viking). Novelist Ayad Akhtar spins an American Dervish (Little, Brown). Alan Bennett publishes Smut (Picador). Hilma Wolitzer seizes on An Available Man (Baliantine). Andrew Marr paints a royal portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in The Real Elizabeth (Henry Holt). Henry Alford, prince of politesse, inquires, Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? (Twelve). Susan Bernofsky translates Robert Walser'sBerlin Stories (New York Review Books). The late Richard Seaver passes through The Tender Hour of Twilight (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). William Shawcross debates wartime values in Justice and the Enemy (PublicAffairs). William Bratton and Zachary Tumin warn us all to Collaborate or Perish! (Crown Business).