"Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas," by Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher (Broadway). Thomas, the most controversial figure on the Supreme Court, is a man of contradictions. A beneficiary of affirmative action, he opposes it; the author of sometimes unfeeling legal opinions, he is compassionate in his personal relations. Merida and Fletcher, journalists at The Washington Post, conducted hundreds of interviews with Thomas' friends, relatives and colleagues; they focus most successfully on his upbringing and early experience.

"Free Food For Millionaires," by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central). This accomplished first novel, the coming-of-age story of a Princeton-educated Korean-American woman making her way in New York City in the 1990s, recalls the Victorian novels its heroine devours.

"Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower," by Zbigniew Brzezinski (Basic Books). Appraising American foreign policy over the past three administrations, Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, reprimands Clinton and both Bushes for squandering American power. Starting in January 2009, "America urgently needs to fashion a truly post-cold-war globalist foreign policy," he concludes.

"Delirium," by Laura Restrepo. Translated by Natasha Wimmer (Vintage International). In Bogota around 1983, a wealthy young woman married to a middle-aged Marxist academic descends into madness. The novel follows her husband's attempt to understand the origin of her illness and restore her memory.

"Strong is Your Hold," by Galway Kinnell (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin). This is the first collection of new work in a decade by Kinnell, who is 81. Demotic in tone and subject, the poems invoke predecessors of every age and continent, especially Virgil's "Eclogues." Writing about his wife, a dream of dead friends and "When the Towers Fell" ("rolling outward/the way, in the days of the gods, a god/might rage through the streets, overtaking the fleeing"), Kinnell walks the line between this world and the next. The book includes a CD of Kinnell reading in a steady, pleasant voice.

"Edith Wharton," by Hermione Lee (Vintage). Wharton was nearly 40 when she wrote "The House of Mirth," the novel that would make her name; she was also significant as a designer, decorator, gardener and philanthropist. Lee's remarkable biography both marshals vast amounts of information about Wharton and her circle and offers careful readings of her work.

"Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him," by Danielle Ganek (Plume). Mia is an art gallery receptionist who navigates a privileged world, resents her boss and falls for Mr. Right.

"Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation," by Zachary Karabell (Vintage). Muslim societies have historically been tolerant and pragmatic, from medieval Spain to the Ottoman Empire, Karabell says. He rejects the notion of a clash of civilizations: "If conflict is what we want to see, there is conflict. But if peace is what we are looking for, peace is there to be found."

"You Don't Love Me Yet," by Jonathan Lethem (Vintage Contemporaries). The Los Angeles indie rock band at the center of this slender novel is struggling -- its members still have day jobs -- when the bassist begins borrowing lyrics from an unwitting source, and the guitarist puts them in songs that become the group's first hits.

"For Love Of Politics: Inside the Clinton White House," by Sally Bedell Smith (Random). By now dozens of journalists, historians and partisans -- not to mention Bill and Hillary themselves -- have written accounts of the Clinton presidency, and Smith covers familiar territory. She does, however, offer some fascinating tidbits from the private papers of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

"Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. (Back Bay/Little, Brown). This account, by a former New York Times reporter and a current one, is almost uniformly negative, focusing on what they consider the Clintons' scandals and on the darker side of Hillary's personality. They assert that Bill and Hillary Clinton had a longstanding "pact of ambition" to follow each other to the White House.

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