"Divisadero," by Michael Ondaatje (Vintage International). This novel by the author of "The English Patient" braids together three stories full of parallels and resonances. On a Northern California farm, two girls grow up with their father and an adopted farmhand whose love for one of the sisters leads to an act of violence with lasting consequences. She becomes a literary historian obsessed by a French poet who vanished mysteriously. And she moves to the French countryside, where she falls in love with a guitar-playing Gypsy who turns out to be the poet's more-or-less adopted son.

"Inventing Human Rights: A History," by Lynn Hunt (Norton). We know that our concept of human rights has its roots in the 18th-century Enlightenment, but how did those "truths" come to appear "self-evident"? And "how did these men, living in societies built on slavery, subordination and seemingly natural subservience, ever come to imagine men not at all like them and, in some cases, women too, as equals?" Hunt asks.

"The Sea Lady: A Late Romance," by Margaret Drabble (Harvest/Harcourt). In Drabble's 17th novel, a couple -- he a marine biologist, she a feminist scholar of gender -- come back together, after shunning each other for 30 years, when they both receive honorary degrees from the same university.

"Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa," by Padraig O'Malley (Penguin). This biography of Maharaj -- an anti-apartheid activist for nearly 40 years who served in Nelson Mandela's government -- is also a portrait of South Africa, with special attention to recent developments.

"Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil" (Harvest/Harcourt), by John Ghazvinian. Ghazvinian describes his travels through 12 countries where the United States is competing with China for access to the continent's resources; for most Africans, however, "the curse of oil is a hydra-headed monster."

"The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945," by Saul Friedlaender (Harper Perennial). The second volume of Friedlaender's history skillfully interweaves individual testimony with a broad depiction of events, treating historical controversies fair-mindedly and examining virtually every printed source in English, German and French. 8

"The Big Girls," by Susanna Moore (Vintage). A women's prison north of New York City is the setting for this novel by Moore, who has often written about desire and danger. A woman who has murdered her two small children and a prison psychiatrist who battles her own demons are the main characters, as Moore focuses on the brutality that goes on in the prison and the brutality that has shaped the women's lives.

"In the Driver's Seat," by Helen Simpson (Vintage Contemporaries). The stories in Simpson's fourth collection focus with tenderness and mordant wit on the childhood grief and adult desperation of middle-class family life.

"Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and Realities of Dieting," by Gina Kolata (Picador). Kolata, a science reporter for The Times, reviews a host of studies showing that people who follow diets manage to keep off very little weight, and that genetics play a large role in determining body size.

"Consequences," by Penelope Lively (Penguin). Personal and historical events weave together as Lively's 17th work of fiction follows three generations of women from the 1930s to the 21st century, with meetings and exchanges and consequences for all.