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"Last Night at the Lobster," by Stewart O'Nan (Penguin). The protagonist, Manny, the general manager of the New Britain Red Lobster, which is forced to close five days before Christmas by corporate headquarters. The novel is a minute-by-minute account of his final day at the restaurant and of his love for his ex-girlfriend and other employees.

"Young Stalin," by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Vintage). This biography, prodigiously narrated, focuses on the early life of Josef Djugashvili. Montefiore sees the violence in Stalin's home life and the culture of the Caucasus as influencing his embrace of terror..

"The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982," edited by Greg Johnson (Ecco/Harper Perennial). Culled from more than 4,000 single-spaced typewritten pages, its editor says, this book reveals the writer in action. Oates records her love for her husband, their pleasure in nature, her admiration for other writers and, always, the primacy of her work: "If I wonder where my personality really exists, in what form it best expresses itself, the answer is obvious: in the books. ... The rest is Life."

"The Wreck of the Medusa: The Most Famous Sea Disaster of the Nineteenth Century," by Jonathan Miles (Grove). Theodore Gericault's painting "The Raft of the Medusa" created a sensation; now it hangs in the Louvre. Miles engagingly describes the disaster at sea that inspired Gericault and the painting's role in post-Napoleonic French politics.

"The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction," by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami. Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Modern Library). "Hamzanama" was a popular oral epic, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of medieval Persia. William Dalrymple praised this "interpretation so fluent that it is a pleasure to sit down and lose oneself in it."