In fiction, you could do worse than “Sweetness in the Belly,” a Book Sense pick about a young Muslim woman living in London and struggling to fit into English society. Nathaniel Philbrick won a National Book Award for his “In the Heart of the Sea.” He’s back with “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War.” Just out in paperback is Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”; he takes on the tragedy of Sept. 11. Coming next month is local author John Dunning’s latest mystery, “The Bookwoman’s Last Fling: A Cliff Janeway Novel.”
FICTION
Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb, Penguin, 352 pages, $23.95|The story of a Muslim woman named Lilly, the daughter of hippies murdered in Africa, as she tries to fit into London society.
Brandenburg Gate, by Henry Porter, Grove/Atlantic, 448 pages, $24|Porter sets this thriller in 1989 in the weeks leading up to the fall of the Berlin War. With twists and turns, he has produced a fast-paced, intriguing spy yarn.
How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, by Kaavya Viswanathan, Little, Brown, 320 pages, $21.95|A top-notch, ultra- serious young woman wants to get into Harvard but decides that to do so she needs to learn how to have more fun.
NONFICTION
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War, by Nathaniel Philbrick, Viking, 480 pages, $29.95|Forget what you learned in grade school. Philbrick tells us of the journey over the seas and all the hardship and heartache the Pilgrims suffered in the New World.
Worlds to Explore: Classic Tales of Travel & Adventure From National Geographic, edited by Mark Jenkins, National Geographic, 464 pages, $23|Fifty stories culled from the pages of the magazine from the 1890s through the 1950s show how exploring changed over the years.
The Last Season, by Eric Blehm, HarperCollins, 352 pages, $24.95|The story of Randy Morgenson, a 28-year backcountry ranger and avid outdoorsman who disappeared in 1996 in Kings Canyon National Park in California.
PAPERBACKS
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, Mariner, 326 pages, $13.95|About 9-year-old Oskar Schell, who is on a mission to find the lock that matches the mysterious key left by his father who died in the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, by Geoffrey C. Ward, Vintage, 492 pages, $16.95|Here is the first biography of Johnson – the first black heavyweight world champion – in 15 years. Johnson was a polarizing figure and spent time in jail for violating the Mann Act.
Jonathan Edwards: America’s Evangelical, by Philip F. Gura, Hill and Wang, 284 pages, $15|Considered one of the founding fathers of American religion, Edwards was America’s most influential evangelical, and his revivals in the 18th century set the standard by which others are judged.
COMING UP
The Bookwoman’s Last Fling: A Cliff Janeway Novel, by John Dunning, Scribner, 352 pages, $25, May|Janeway, a former police detective turned antiquarian book dealer, returns to policeman form when he finds a client is dead, and he is nearly killed as well.
Blood Mask, by Lauren Kelly, Ecco, 256 pages, $24.95, May|This is the third Joyce Carol Oates novel under her pseudonym and concerns the story of a shy teenager who, along with her aunt, apparently is abducted by fundamentalist Christians.
If the Creek Don’t Rise: My Life Out West With the Last Black Widow of the Civil War, by Rita Williams, Harcourt, 336 pages, $23, May|Williams relates her life with her Aunt Daisy, who was born in the early 1900s and who married a 79-year-old veteran of the Civil War.
