IN SHORT

The stories in Yu Hua's Boy in the Twilight (Pantheon) mine the lives of ordinary folks in small-town China. The ghosts of family and place occupy Diane Johnson'sFlyover Lives (Viking). Richard Powers's novel Orfeo (Norton) rose out of the myth of Orpheus. With One More Thing (Knopf), funnyman B. J. Novak adds hilarious essayist to his long list of credits. Subway historian Doug Most clocks The Race Underground (St. Martin's). Lucie Whitehouse'sBefore We Met (Bloomsbury) is full of lies. Dorothy Gallagher salutes the myth, the legend, Lillian Heilman (Yale). Novelist Penelope Lively shares her passions for archaeology, reading, and writing in Dancing Fish and Ammonites (Viking). The hero of Okey Ndibe'sForeign Gods, Inc. (Soho) is a New York City cabbie. Gabriel Sherman calls out the bullies at Fox "News" for being The Loudest Voice in the Room (Random House). Robert Harris's new thriller is An Officer and a Spy (Knopf). Deborah McKinlay delights with That Part Was True (Grand Central). Unexpected love is at the heart of Anna Quindlen'sStill Life with Bread Crumbs (Random House). Bill Eppridge'sThe Beatles: Six Days That Changed the World (Rizzoli) is fab. Eric Helms, Pied Piper of The Juice Generation (Touchstone), shares his juiciest recipes.