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Profiles Arthur S. Link, editor of all 69 volumes of `The Papers of Woodrow Wilson'. Personality profile; Enthusiasm on the novels of Trollope and music of Wagner; History teaching career. INSET: The national shelf (documentaries)..

THE PAPERS OF THOMAS A. EDISON Volume 7: Losses and Loyalties,April 1883-December 1884 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE PAPER GARDEN An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE MERCY PAPERS A Memoir of Three Weeks [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE COMICS The Complete Collection [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE CRIMEAN WAR: A History, by Orlando Figes. (Picador, $22.) The Crimean War (1853-56), in which France and Britain sided with the Ottoman Empire in its clash against Russia, shattered almost four decades of European peace. Today, we remember fragmentary stories: the charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale. Figes restores the conflict as ''a major turning point'' in European and Middle Eastern history, one that provided the tinder for World War I. YOU THINK THAT'S BAD: Stories, by Jim Shepard. (Vintage Contemporaries, $15.) Shepard's high-concept fiction covers a bracing range of hobbyhorses and obsessions -- from ''Paper Doll'' (1986), his early novel about World War II airmen, to ''Project X'' (2004), which describes a Columbine-style shooting from the point of view of one of the attackers. The longest story in this collection explores the life of the special-effects creator of ''Godzilla.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents other recent books of interest. Included are "Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood," by Jill Watts, "Phone Rings," by Stephen Dixon, "The House of Paper," by Carlos Maria Dominguez, "Beasts of No Nation," by Uzodinma Iweala, and "Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance," by Mariana Gosnell.

Presents the afterword to Philip Roth's book `Portnoy's Complaint.' Discharge from the army; Sheet of typing paper at a table in a cafeteria; Career as grounded on a baseless premise.

To the Editor: Reviewing ''Higher Gossip,'' John Updike's posthumous collection of essays and criticism edited by Christopher Carduff, Andrew Delbanco writes that one of the complaints about Updike was that he was ''too prolific'' (Nov. 13). I once met Updike, whom I admired, and in the course of conversation said I had a question for him, one I knew was not original: ''You write so frequently and in so many different forms -- novels, essays, art and book criticisms, poems -- how do you do it?'' And he said, ''Compared with you sportswriters, I hardly lift pen to paper.'' But when he did, that was some pen, that was some paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mentions the success of several book son the New York Times bestseller list in October 2004. 'A Paper Life' by Tatum O'Neal; 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini.

FEAR OF MUSIC, by Jonathan Lethem. (Continuum, paper, $12.95.) The novelist's obsessive, passionate and personal monograph on Talking Heads' album of the same name evokes the New York music scene in 1979 -- as well as the teenage Lethem. THE ONE: The Life and Music of James Brown, by RJ Smith. (Gotham, $27.50.) Smith argues that Brown was the most significant modern American musician in terms of style, messaging, rhythm and originality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ben Macintyre contributes a weekly column to The Times of London on history, art, politics, foreign affairs -- and espionage. Although he has never written a novel, his books are filled with colorful characters, from Adam Worth (''the real Professor Moriarty'') to Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. The first volume of Macintyre's World War II espionage /trilogy, ''Agent Zigzag,'' featured a real-life criminal and double agent who played a pivotal role in the early part of the war. The second, ''Operation Mincemeat,'' told the story of a secret plan involving a corpse carrying forged papers in the run-up to the invasion of Sicily in 1943, a deception made famous by the film ''The Man Who Never Was.'' As Macintyre notes in his review of ''An American Spy,'' Olen Steinhauer's latest thriller, spying and fiction have always been intertwined. ''Spies often behave as if they're the actors in some peculiar drama of their own,'' he remarked in an e-mail. ''And their spymasters often think like novelists.'' Researching the final volume of his espionage trilogy, ''Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies,'' in the newly declassified files of M.I.5, the British secret service (which, as recently as 1997, ''did not, officially speaking, exist''), Macintyre discovered ample proof of this connection. ''The D-Day spies sound as if they have emerged from some particularly fantastic novel of the period: a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a Serbian seducer, a wildly imaginative Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming and a hysterical Frenchwoman whose obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the entire deception.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DOGMA By Lars Iyer. Melville House, paper, $14.95. Iyer's uproarious novel, the sequel to ''Spurious,'' follows the combative relationship between two British philosophers, W. and Lars, as they embark on an alcohol-soaked speaking tour of America, unable to persuade people to repent before an apocalypse they insist is imminent. ''There's something entirely lacking in us, W. says, although he's not quite sure what it is. Shame -- is that the word? Anyone else would have stopped doing what we do.'' The caustic W. never passes up an opportunity to criticize the uncouth Lars, often calling him a ''chimp.'' Yet it's tough love, W. insists. ''It is meant as a sign that he expects better. Would that he had a similar tutor! Would that he had someone to list his betrayals and half-measures!'' As they tour, often drunk and speaking to near-empty venues, they compose a quasi code of living. ''Always write as though your ideas were world-historical. And always steal from your friends. Steal from everyone! In fact, that should be compulsory: Dogma plagiarizes. Always steal other people's ideas and claim them as your own.'' W. is worried about losing his job in academia. But if he does, we can take comfort in knowing his ribald adventures with Lars will continue, as this is the middle volume of a planned trilogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When an adviser to President Obama was quoted in The New Yorker as saying that the administration's policy in Libya was ''leading from behind,'' he initiated a season of hand-wringing about American decline, as if he had announced that the president was implementing a secret plan to make a second-rate country even worse. But whether America is leading from -- or falling -- behind affects more than our foreign policy. It also affects how it feels to be an American, which is a central concern of American novelists. LEAVING THE ATOCHA STATION (Coffee House Press, paper, $15), Ben Lerner's remarkable first novel, published last year, is a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice. It is also a revealing study of what it's like to be a young American abroad. The plotting is scant. Adam Gordon, a poet, having bluffed his way into a fellowship in Madrid, makes friends, struggles with Spanish, smokes hash, wanders around, writes poetry, doubts poetry and has two low-energy love affairs. But the real action of the novel is interior. Gordon has two struggles: the classic one, to live authentically, and an aesthetic one, to represent ''the texture of et cetera itself,'' with a poetry that transcends mere snapshots of localized events and attempts to capture the hum and buzz of ''life's white machine.'' To Gordon, these struggles are the same: ''I wondered if the incommensurability of language and experience was new, if my experience of my experience issued from a damaged life of pornography and privilege, if there were happy ages when the starry sky was the map of all possible paths, or if this division of experience into what could not be named and what could not be lived just was experience, for all people for all time.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

So these two guys walk into a bar . . . and find themselves in George Pelecanos's great shaggy dog story, WHAT IT WAS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $35; paper, $9.99). Derek Strange, the African-American private eye from one series of Pelecanos novels, and his drinking buddy Nick Stefanos, the featured character in yet another Pelecanos series, get to talking about the summer of 1972, which burned itself into the collective memory of their Washington neighborhood as the summer when Robert Lee Jones (known on the street as Red Fury, after the car he bought for his girlfriend) went on a legendary killing spree. Punching in some appropriate jukebox tunes, Strange proceeds to spin this breathless yarn, which Pelecanos says he wrote ''in a fever'' last summer. When the story opens, 26-year-old Strange is fresh off the police force, establishing himself as a newly minted P.I. (Cue ''Mr. Big Stuff.'') And already he realizes that he's ''in the midst of something, a music, dress, and cultural revolution that was happening with his people, in his time.'' All he has to do is survive the casual violence of his world and live down the fashion fads of stacked shoes, bell-bottom pants and loud-print rayon shirts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nobody knows a man better than his ex-wife. So Moe Prager's ex-wife, Carmella, is wise to this veteran private eye, accepting the fact that no matter how many times he marries, his first love will always be Brooklyn. ''When you die, they should just bury you right here, under the boardwalk,'' she tells him in HURT MACHINE (Tyrus, $24.95; paper, $15.95), Reed Farrel Coleman's latest book in a series heavily saturated with local color. Since Prager has recently been told he has stomach cancer, that day may come sooner than Carmella thinks. But this stubborn old shamus is determined to do two things before his ashes are consigned to the sands of Coney Island: Attend his daughter's wedding, and find the person who murdered Carmella's older sister, Alta. Alta Conseco and Maya Watson, emergency medical technicians with the New York Fire Department, became pariahs after walking away from a dying man who was stricken at a trendy Manhattan bistro. Although Alta's death was clearly a retribution killing, her fellow E.M.T. (surely the murderer's next target) refuses to offer any explanation for their behavior. This silent treatment forces Prager to do exactly what we want him to do: Travel the length and breadth of the city talking to cops, firemen, gangsters and restaurateurs in their picturesque natural habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nobody's sure who invented the caricature. It might have been Leonardo da Vinci, whose studies of ''bizarre heads'' led his admirers to the realization that distorted aspects of physiognomy could serve a satirical purpose more directly than strict representation, or so INFINITE JEST: Caricature and Satire From Leonardo to Levine (Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University, $45), by the Met curators Constance C. McPhee and Nadine M. Orenstein, suggests. ''Scholars still puzzle over the function of these drawings, which appear to have had a comic intent,'' Orenstein deadpans in her commentary on an etching of a pair of grotesque heads copied from Leonardo. Or it might have been some kid who noticed that if you draw somebody's nose and chin bigger it looks pretty funny. This book -- whose title seems inspired by the kind of logic that would call a collection of morning landscapes ''The Sun Also Rises'' -- serves as the catalog to an exhibition at the Met that runs through March 4. It surveys caricature from the 15th century onward, although it tapers off with the years when printing technology began opening up the field. It includes only half a dozen images from the past 60 years or so, including a dead-on 2008 piece by the Dutch artist Siegfried Woldhek that constructs George W. Bush's frowning face out of six downward-trending arrows on graph paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

CHILDREN AND FIRE, by Ursula Hegi (Scribner, $25.) In the fourth of Hegi's novels to be set in the German village of Burgdorf, a schoolteacher heroine, seduced by Nazi propaganda, struggles to follow her moral compass. DAISY BUCHANAN'S DAUGHTER, by Tom Carson (Paycock, paper, $24.95.) The ''Great Gatsby'' baby grows up to be the worldly heroine of Carson's novel, and a perfect mirror of ''the American century.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcast Scheduled for this week: A conversation with authors from our 10 Best Books list; Julie Bosman with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''I need a time machine,'' the leader of a terrorist group mutters midway through DUNCAN THE WONDER DOG (AdHouse, paper, $24.95). ''Go back to Olduvai -- flood it when there's still a chance.'' In this ambitious, beautiful, mystifying first graphic novel by Adam Hines, the unhinged villain has a better reason than most to wipe humanity from the earth: She's not human. She's a Barbary macaque who goes by the name Pompeii, and she's just set off a bomb at a California university. ''Duncan the Wonder Dog'' tweaks the old song into a provocative new question: What if we could walk with the animals, talk with the animals -- and the animals fought back? This nearly 400-page volume is, according to its 26-year-old author, the first of a nine-book series. As with so many contemporary graphic novels, its high-concept story sounds like a movie pitch waiting to happen (''Dr. Dolittle'' meets the Baader-Meinhof gang) -- but in this case, the deliberate pace and embrace of elision discourage casual reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To call the work of Amy Sedaris ''quirky'' is too easy -- it's also a vast understatement. Known in some circles for her cheese balls and cupcakes just as much as for her offbeat film, television and stage appearances, Sedaris often defies definition. So does her book SIMPLE TIMES (Grand Central, $27.99), a hyperkinetic hodgepodge of ''Crafts for Poor People'' (written with Paul Dinello) celebrating traditional American handicrafts, as well as diversions like keeping pet rabbits and making mint juleps. Although the book's tag line may seem to mock the financially challenged classes, it's more likely Sedaris just wanted to announce that this is not a guide for stately Martha Stewart types with large materials budgets. Her list of ''Craft Room Necessities'' calls for affordable items like Popsicle sticks, ribbon, construction paper and ''googly eyes'' for novelties like the ''rusty nail wind chime'' and a mosaic of the soul singer James Brown made from corn, rice and beans. ''Crafting is putting ideas into action and then holding them together with an inexpensive adhesive,'' Sedaris writes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some years ago, I began spending time in the rural Southern town where my father had been raised, and I often found myself wishing for a decoder ring. Squirrels had longer tails, wisteria bloomed off schedule, and with all the diphthongs and dropped syllables, I had no idea what people were saying. The local language sprouted from the literal and cultural landscape that informed it -- its racial history and disappearing farms, the coexistence of deer festivals and meth busts, the households where people wore Carhartts without irony and put ''Queer Eye'' on TiVo. How to understand all this? An atlas would have helped. Not any atlas, mind you, but one as inventive and affectionate as Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas (University of California; cloth, $49.95; paper, $24.95), a collection of 22 maps and accompanying essays paying homage to the city where the author lives. ''Infinite City'' started as a commissioned project for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which turned to Solnit as it geared up for its 75th anniversary this year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greece and Rome are always with us: Consciously inspired by a noble ideal of the Roman Republic, America's founders created a Senate, built a Capitol and wrote under pseudonyms like Publius, Brutus and Cato; in the Federalist Papers, some of them specified the new Constitution's greatest deviation from the Roman model: ''the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity,'' from any direct role in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a book insists, ''Take art lessons from a monkey!'' the only appropriate response, if you ask me, is ''O.K.!'' Two years ago, in her Eisner Award-winning coming-of-art memoir, ''What It Is,'' Lynda Barry prodded would-be writers to pick up a pen (or a brush) and put it to paper. Her latest book, PICTURE THIS (Drawn & Quarterly, $29.95), taps into something more elemental -- the fuzzy-wuzzy part of the brain that sees elephants in clouds (or in this case, rabbits in water stains) -- and asks, ''Do you wish you could draw?'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcast Scheduled for this week: A discussion of the 10 Best Books of the Year; John Schwartz on ''Doonesbury'' at 40; Julie Bosman with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ANJUM'S NEW INDIAN.By Anjum Anand. (Wiley, paper, $24.95.) Modern, approachable Indian dishes from the British television personality who's been called ''the Indian Nigella Lawson.'' (In a good way.) AROUND MY FRENCH TABLE: More Than 300 Recipes From My Home to Yours.By Dorie Greenspan. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40.) The baking expert (and part-time Parisienne) shows how the French really eat at home: with delicious ease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Per Petterson on his novel ''I Curse the River of Time''; Susan Casey on her book ''The Wave''; Julie Bosman with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Christopher Hitchens on his memoir, ''Hitch-22''; Chris Suellentrop on Tom Bissell's ''Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter''; Julie Bosman with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Scott Turow on his new novel, ''Innocent''; John Schwartz on his children's book, ''Short''; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Adam Kirsch on Martin Heidegger and anti-Semitism; Francine Prose on Irene Nemirovsky's life and stories; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Jeremy McCarter discussing who wrote Shakespeare's plays and whether it matters; Deanna Fei speaking about her novel, ''A Thread of Sky''; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Alan Brinkley talking about his new biography of Henry Luce; Charles McGrath discussing the life of Muriel Spark; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled for this this week: David Remnick discusses his biography of Barack Obama; Norris Church Mailer talks about her memoir, ''A Ticket to the Circus''; and Jennifer Schuessler reports on best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled for this week: a conversation about two new Vietnam war novels, with Tatjana Soli, the author of ''The Lotus Eaters,'' and Sebastian Junger, who discusses Karl Marlantes's ''Matterhorn''; the Book Review's Julie Just talks about the rise of bad parents in young adult fiction; Motoko Rich presents notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler reports on best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Nell Irvin Painter, the author of ''The History of White People''; Pamela Paul on Laurie Abraham's adventures in group couples therapy; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Danielle Trussoni, the author of ''Angelology''; Joseph O'Neill on Christopher de Bellaigue's ''Rebel Land''; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Jonathan Dee, author of ''The Privileges''; Stacey D'Erasmo on Javier Marias's ''Your Face Tomorrow: Volume 3''; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Ron Suskind on Tracy Kidder's ''Strength in What Remains''; Elsa Dixler on ''The Sixties,'' by Jenny Diski; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. The podcast is also broadcast in New York as ''Inside The New York Times Book Review'' on Fridays at 6:05 p.m. on WQXR 96.3 FM. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Frank Bruni, author of ''Born Round''; Harold Evans on the future of the news industry; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. The podcast is also broadcast in New York as ''Inside The New York Times Book Review'' on Fridays at 6:05 p.m. on WQXR 96.3 FM. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Walter Kirn, author of the memoir ''Lost in the Meritocracy''; Robert Sullivan on ''Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York''; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. The podcast is also broadcast in New York as ''Inside The New York Times Book Review'' on Fridays at 6:05 p.m. on WQXR 96.3 FM. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are Steven Gaines, author of ''Fool's Paradise''; Kevin Baker on ''The Day Wall Street Exploded''; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. The podcast is also broadcast in New York as ''Inside The New York Times Book Review'' on Fridays at 6:05 p.m. on WQXR 96.3 FM. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast Scheduled to appear this week are the novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; Carl Hiaasen on his new children's book, ''Scat''; and Jennifer Schuessler with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. The podcast is also broadcast in New York as ''Inside the New York Times Book Review'' on Fridays at 6:05 p.m. on WQXR 96.3 FM. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast This week's schedule includes excerpts from a Book Review panel discussion with the novelist Joseph O'Neill, author of ''Netherland''; Liesl Schillinger, a frequent Book Review contributor; and Dwight Garner, a book critic for The Times. Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news, and Sam Tanenhaus is the host. Paper Cuts The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast: Scheduled to appear this week are Jane Mayer, author of ''The Dark Side''; Steven Heller, author of ''Iron Fists''; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts: The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast: Scheduled to appear this week are Rivka Galchen, the author of ''Atmospheric Disturbances''; Stephanie Zacharek on Jean-Luc Godard; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts: The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast: Scheduled to appear this week are Julie Salamon, the author of ''Hospital''; Kate Sekules on Michael Meyer's ''Last Days of Old Beijing''; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts: The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Podcast: Scheduled to appear this week are Joe Nocera, the author of ''Good Guys and Bad Guys''; Marie Winn, the author of ''Central Park in the Dark''; Rachel Donadio with notes from the field; and Dwight Garner with best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, is the host. Paper Cuts: The Book Review's blog covers books and other forms of printed matter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE LABRADOR PACT, by Matt Haig. (Viking, $23.95.) In ''Henry IV, Part 1,'' Falstaff much prefers survival (and a good breakfast) to honor and duty: ''What is that word honor? ... Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No.'' The demands of virtue are also a problem for Prince, the canine narrator of Haig's curiously affecting take on ''Henry,'' which tells the story of a loyal Labrador's efforts to hold his human family together. If only he follows the pact of his breed, Prince tells himself, he can save these people from themselves -- from ''all their lies and tensions and betrayals and injustices.'' His friend Falstaff, a chubby mixed-breed he meets in the park, begs to differ. ''Duty schmooty,'' he bays (or however fictional dogs utter their dialogue) when faced with Prince's insistence on ''duty over all.'' Dark, comic and quite brilliantly adult, Haig's thinking animals never stray into the sickly sweet zone. As the duplicities mount (among both species), Prince's Labrador dogma proves inadequate to the task: ''Whereas dogs can learn to suppress their instincts,'' he realizes, ''for humans there is no hope.'' THE DIVING POOL: Three Novellas, by Yoko Ogawa. (Picador, paper, $13.) Still waters run dark in these bright yet eerie novellas, whose crisp, almost guileless prose hides unexpected menace. In the title story, Aya, a high school student, is obsessed with the graceful body of a young diving enthusiast and the suffering of a child on whom she unleashes a strangely calm cruelty: ''I wanted to savor every one of Rie's tears, to run my tongue over the damp, festering, vulnerable places in her heart and open the wounds even wider.'' Another novella is the perplexing account of two sisters, one apparently keeping a record of the other's pregnancy. At first, the mother-to-be seems the more troubled, with her bizarre cravings and visits to a psychiatrist. Then again, perhaps it's the diarist we should be keeping an eye on. In the final novella, a lonely woman helps settle her young cousin into her old college residence, which has fallen into disrepair since the unexplained disappearance of a student. This nameless narrator can't stay away from the dorm or its spooky manager, who is missing a leg and both arms and says he is dying. She begins visiting every day, only belatedly wondering why her cousin never seems to be around. Stephen Snyder's elegant translations from the Japanese whet the appetite for more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]