Texas Pages

Some of the fresh and tasty literary selections available this week:

* 7th Heaven (Women’s Murder Club), by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $27.99). A terrible fire in a wealthy suburban home leaves a married couple dead and Detective Lindsay Boxer and her partner Rich Conklin searching for clues.

* His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey (Knopf, $24.95). Che — raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother — is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late 1960s. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long-haired teenage neighbor, and soon Che too is an outlaw: fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippie commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland.

* The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff (Hyperion, $24.95). Ms. Groff’s much-anticipated novel spans two centuries: partly a contemporary story of a girl’s search for her father, part historical novel, and part ghost story, it’s ultimately the tale of how one town holds the secrets of a family.

* Stranger in Paradise, by Robert B. Parker (Putnam, $25.95). Police Chief Jesse Stone faces his most fearsome adversary in the latest addition to the celebrated series. The last time Jesse Stone, chief of police of Paradise, Massachusetts, saw Wilson "Crow” Cromartie, the Apache Indian hit man was racing away in a speedboat after executing one of the most lucrative and deadly heists in the town’s history.

* One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life , by Kerry and Chris Shook (WaterBrook, $19.99). What if you only had one month to live? How would you make each day meaningful? How would you relate to others differently? What would you do to make the rest of your life really matter?

And on the flip side …
* The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, by David Shields (Knopf, $23.95) Mesmerized — at times unnerved — by his 97-year-old father’s nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion.

Central Dallas Ministries' Urban Engagement Book Club will discuss Dowell Myers' "Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America" on Thursday, beginning at noon. Here's a release with details:

Your humble books editor is sipping a cup of French Market coffee with chicory, longing for a plate of properly made beignets, and wishing everyone a happy Fat Tuesday.

As you might guess, the topic of the day is a solicitation of favorite New Orleans literary experiences. For someone who spent some youthful years in a suburb of Nawlins (Abney Elementary, class of '77, or maybe '78 -- go Spartans, or was it Trojans?), I'm shamefully underread on the state's classics, aside from a long-ago reading of "All The King's Men." Which, as I recall, helped me understand those bullet holes they maintain as a sort of shrine to Huey Long at the capitol in Baton Rouge.

So I'll put in my plug for a bio that's not really about the city, but its most famous citizen. Laurence Bergreen's "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life" contains some vivid descriptions of life in turn-of-the-century Storyville. You get the hard, ugly reality of the city's poverty and its most glorious hero all wrapped up in one package. (It should also lead you to invest heavily in his recordings, which, frankly, make life worth living.)

I would hardly present it as the last word on the subject, though. I'm sure you have your own thoughts. Throw me some ideas, mister. (Lacking ideas, you are free to suggest where to find a plate of beignets or a king cake.)

Here's The NBCC’s "Good Reads—Winter List," recommended titles from 600 voters, including celebrity authors Annie Proulx, Jonathan Raban and more. You'll find full details at the Critical Mass Web site.

And don't forget to join me, along with Tom Dodge, Ben Fountain, Walton Muyumba and Isabel Nathaniel while we discuss great reads and how we discover them 7 p.m. Feb. 12 (that's a week from tonight) at Barnes & Noble, 7700 West Northwest Highway.

Fiction

1. Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

3. Diary of a Bad Year, by J.M. Coetzee

4. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

5. Zeroville, by Steve Erickson

Nonfiction

1. The Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross

2. Brother, I’m Dying, by Edwidge Danticat

3. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks*

5. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein*

Poetry

1. Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang

2. Time and Materials, by Robert Hass*

3. Gulf Music, by Robert Pinsky*

4. The Collected Poems, 1956–1998, by Zbigniew Herbert

5. Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow

*Asterisks indicate a tie vote.