HOT TYPE

Mark Haddon made his name writing children's books and became a crossover sensation with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and The Red House (Doubleday)—an adult novel set in Wales about a tortured family holiday, narrated equally in the voices of children and adults—plays to all his strengths.

It's been said that being related to a writer is like having an assassin in the family, or perhaps a caricature artist. Colm Toibin's essays in New Ways to Kill Your Mother (Scribner) target how writers' relationships with their families— from Tennessee Williams to Jane Austen to John Cheever—have influenced their work. With typical swaggering genius and ribald wit, Padgett Powell in You & Me (Ecco) delivers two loquacious, Godot-style philosophers who swap lies and pontificate on sex and liquor while offering perspicacious insights into the absurdity of human nature.

On the 50th anniversary of Norma Jean's death, Lois Banner explores the paradoxes of Marilyn (Bloomsbury). Keith Badman follows Marilyn Monroe (Thomas Dunne) as she spirals down into her final years. Novelist Adam Braver is by Monroe's side on the last weekend of her life, spent at Frank Sinatra's Tahoe resort, in Misfit (Tin House). J. I. Baker's mystery, The Empty Glass (Penguin), stars an L.A. coroner who, using Marilyn's "Book of Secrets," unlocks a conspiracy beyond imagination.

Gary Marmorstein scores the tortured, bittersweet life of closeted composer Lorenz Hart in A Ship Without a Sail (Simon & Schuster). Nick Hornby gives readers permission to just "read what you enjoy, not what bores you," in More Baths, Less Talking (McSweeney's). Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy explain how and why things bounce back in Resilience (Free Press). Rachel L. Swarns weaves the lives of Michelle Obama's black, white, and multi-racial ancestors into a rich American Tapestry (Amistad). The hero of Betsy Woodman'sJana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes (Henry Holt) is a spunky, fiftysomething Scotswoman. Cathi Hanauer'sGone (Atria) offers a compassionate, clear-eyed vision of what is gained and lost in a contemporary marriage when the wife and mother begins gaining power outside the home. Novelist Jennie Fields draws on the private life of Edith Wharton in The Age of Desire (Pamela Dorman). Ben Macintyre'sDouble Cross (Crown) smokes out the D-day spies. Guy Lawson untangles Wall Street's wildest con in Octopus (Crown). Jefferson Morley reconstructs the race riot of 1835 in Snow-Storm in August (Nan A. Talese). Vaddey Ratner's privileged Cambodian heroine comes of age In the Shadow of the Banyan (Simon & Schuster). Bob Reiss navigates the power struggle between The Eskimo and the Oil Man (Business Plus) in Alaska. Marcus Samuelsson'sYes, Chef (Random House) delights in his life of "chasing flavors." Artist Leanne Shapton meditates on her life underwater in Swimming Studies (Blue Rider). Everything from the family farm to the country goes to hell in Katie Kitamura'sGone to the Forest (Free Press). Jillian Medoff'sI Couldn't Love You More (Five Spot) is a daringly sympathetic portrait of a stepmother forced to make an impossible choice. Ladyfriendly Luisita Lopez Torregrosa relives an intimate affair Before the Rain (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Ooh la la.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL

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