Hot Type

Every spring, the repetition of the cycle of life is heralded by an eruption of narcissus; the publishing-world equivalent is an explosion of fiction. In Jennifer Gilmore's timely, riveting, and heartrending novel The Mothers (Scribner), an infertile couple’s sanity and marriage are tested by the domestic open-adoption process. The disaster-obsessed hero of Nathaniel Rich's scarify prescient and wholly original novel, Odds Against Tomorrow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), finds calculating the costs of natural catastrophe and war for greedy corporations easier than mastering his fears. Rachel Kushner's fearless, blazing prose ignites the 70s New York art scene and Italian underground of The Flamethrowers (Scribner). In Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf), Fiona Maazel brilliantly imagines a cult that promises to cure loneliness. Highly decorated literary hero James Salter burnishes his reputation with All That Is (Knopf ). Two sisters, a widow and a bankrupted divorcee, re-invent their lives in Elinor Lipman's charming comic novel The View from Penthouse B (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Amy Brill shines in her sparkling debut novel, The Movement of Stars (Riverhead), inspired by the work of a 19th-century female astronomer. The wonderful Meg Wolitzer slyly outs the secret envy we feel when our best friends succeed in The Interestings (Riverhead). Jill McCorkle's much-buzzed-about Life After Life (Algonquin) is as clever, bighearted, and wise as you could wish. Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Riverhead) is a novel disguised as a self-help book. Kit Reed's The Story Until Now (Wesleyan University Press) unleashes new and classic stories bred by a radiant imagination.

Also this month: Sarah Erdreich looks to the future of the pro-choice movement in Generation Roe (Seven Stories). Rhoney Gissen Stanley, with Tom Davis, flashes back on high times with the King of Acid in Owsley and Me (Monkfish). Charles V. Bagli dishes on the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village deal and more in Other People’s Money (Dutton). Fierce sexual desire, jealousy, the transient nature of happiness—all of Vladimir Nabokov's obsessions are present in his earliest major work, the play The Tragedy of Mister Morn (Knopf ). Just seems natural, doesn’t it?

ELISSA SCHAPPELL

IN SHORT

Eve Golden reels through the life of silent-film star John Gilbert (University Press of Kentuckyj.The inimitable William H. Gass'sMiddle C (Knopf) is pitch-perfect. Deborah Cohen unbuttons Family Secrets (Oxford). Bernhard Rieger joyrides in the VW bug, The People's Car (Harvard). Lynne Olson views pre-W.W. II America as Those Angry Days (Random House). Denyse Beaulieu combines a history of scent with heady top notes of her personal history in The Perfume Lover (St. Martin's). In Paris Reborn (St. Martin's), Stephane Kirkland recalls how the City of Light got its luster. Simon Morrison composes the marriage of the Prokofievs, Lina and Serge (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). David Graeber'sThe Democracy Project (Spiegel & Grau) reconsiders the past, and looks at the future, of democracy. Rod Dreher'sThe Little Way of Ruthie Leming (Grand Central) pulls hard on the heartstrings. Nicky Haslam's Folly de Grandeur (Rizzoli) inspires. Glenn Frankel provides the backstory on John Ford's timeless film The Searchers (Bloomsbury). Shereen El Feki's Sex and the Citadel (Pantheon) pulls back the veil on the shifting sexual attitudes in the Arab world. Mary McCartney serves Food: Vegetarian Home Cooking (Sterling Epicure). William Friedkin reveals The Friedkin Connection (Harper). Hannah Rothschild dines out on her rebellious great-aunt, The Baroness (Knopf).