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Who wrote The Book of Love (Ecco)? This month, it’s Roger Rosenblatt; by interspersing romantic verses with personal and fictional vignettes, he composes a symphony of cimore. In her novel The First Bad Man (Scribner), the magnificent Miranda July explores surreal galaxies of love, loneliness, sexual perversity, and motherhood. Mysteriously immune to the pandemic devastating her country, the heroine of Laura van den Berg's marvelous Find Me (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) seeks the mother who abandoned her. An imperiled young immigrant is concealed within a truck stashed away with human cargo in John Vaillant'sThe Jaguar’s Children (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), while a brother and sister run away from home to cross the Mexican-American border in Amanda Eyre Ward'sThe Same Sky (Ballantine). Esther Freud builds a character out of Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Mr Mac and Me (Bloomsbury). Reggie Love charts his move from basketball Power Forward (Simon & Schuster) to President Obama’s body man. Daniel Handler keelhauls the ordinary outlaw-iamily-atsea tale in We Are Pirates (Bloomsbury). Katie Cappiello and Meg Mclnemey combat sexism in SLUT (Feminist Press). Mimi Sheraton makes a bucket list of 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die (Workman). Frances Vieta'sLove in the Land of Barefoot Soldiers (Yucca) is set in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion. Rachel Cusk'sOutline (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a discomfiting meditation on female erasure and invisibility. Revolutionary Russian-Jewish choreographer Feonid Yakobson comes alive in Janice Ross'sLike a Bomb Going Off (Yale). The linked stories in Arthur Bradford'sTurtleface and Beyond (Farrar Straus and Giroux) are beautifully bent, generous, and funny.

The late African-American poet Amiri Baraka saves us with SOS (Grove). Kate Mayfield relives her childhood as The Undertaker’s Daughter (Gallery). A Borges poem sparked Yasmina Reza'sHappy Are the Happy (Other Press). The greatest villain in Okey Ndibe'sArrows of Rain (Soho Press) is silence. Alexandra Fuller recovers from divorce in Leaving Before the Rains Come (Penguin Press). Christopher Scotton's coming-of-age debut, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth (Grand Central), is grounded in the Kentucky Hr mountains. 1

ELISSA SCHAPPELL

IN SHORT

Deborah Voigt insists, Call Ate Debbie (Harper). Stephen Marche's businessmen are plagued by The Hunger of the Wolf (Simon & Schuster). Mohamedou Ould Slahi'sGuantanamo Diary (Little, Brown) will leave you shell-shocked. Nick Hornby charms with Funny Girl (Riverhead). Lynsey Addario answers the call in It's What I Do (Penguin Press). Katherine Heiny's protagonists long to be Single, Carefree, Mellow (Knopf). Bill Browder issues a Red Notice (Simon & Schuster). V.F. contributing editor Michael Callahan goes Searching for Grace Kelly (Mariner). Andrea Chapin's Shakespeare is The Tutor (Riverhead). Edward Burns titles himself Independent Ed (Gotham). Paula Hawkins rides with The Girl on the Train (Riverhead). Phyllis Lee Levin studies The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams (Palgrave Macmillan). Gail Godwin's life is Publishing (Bloomsbury). Emma Hooper introduces Etta and Otto and Russell and James (Simon & Schuster). David Treuer'sPrudence (Riverhead) channels the W.W. II Midwest. Cynthia Weil rocks V rolls in I'm Glad I Did (Soho Teen). Nicholas Carlson gambles on Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahool (Twelve). Johann Hari spotlights the war on drugs in Chasing the Scream (Bloomsbury).