"State of Denial," by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster). In the third installment of his Bush at War trilogy, Woodward retreats from the celebratory tone of the earlier volumes. Relying as usual on background interviews with Washington heavyweights, but uncharacteristically inserting himself into the text, Woodward describes a president who cannot face facts surrounded by courtiers who won't confront him.

"Golden Country," by Jennifer Gilmore (Harvest/Harcourt). Two intertwined Jewish families over a period of some 40 years are the focus of Gilmore's exploration of what it means to achieve the American dream. One of the characters in this first novel has mob ties and makes dirty money; another invents a cleaning product. What is success? What are its costs? What role do invention, self-invention and dramatic representation play?

"Forgetfulness," by Ward Just (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin). When a Frenchwoman out for a walk in the Pyrenees is murdered, her husband, an American expatriate who has done some work for the CIA, revisits his past and the possibility that his activities may have caused her death. Just's 15th novel which, despite its title, is really about remembering, moves easily between affairs of state and domestic life.

"In Defense of Globalization," by Jagdish Bhagwati (Oxford). A professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Bhagwati assembles evidence that reducing barriers to trade and investment generates social as well as economic benefits. Attempting to engage and persuade elements of the antiglobalization movement, Bhagwati writes clearly and with charming cosmopolitanism.

"The Dissident," by Nell Freudenberger (Ecco/Harper Perennial). The protagonist of this first novel is a Chinese painter on a yearlong fellowship in Los Angeles. Cultural misunderstandings abound as he moves in with a Beverly Hills family and teaches at a private girls' school.

"Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster). Carter, our 39th president, believes the news media are uncritically sympathetic to Israel and that Americans should be offered a fuller picture.

"Nancy Culpepper: Stories," by Bobbie Ann Mason (Random House). This volume collects all of Mason's fiction about its title character, who escaped her parents' farm in Kentucky for college and graduate school and marriage to a photographer. But when she inherits the farm in the mid-'90s, after the death of her parents, she feels the pull of the heritage she once so easily discarded.

"The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History," by Jonathan Franzen (Picador). In six autobiographical essays, Franzen, who won the National Book Award in 2001 for "The Corrections," takes up such subjects as the dynamics of his Christian youth group in the 1970s and the experience of learning German.

"The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams: Volume II, 1945-1957," edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler (New Directions). Between 1945, when he enjoyed his first great success with "The Glass Menagerie," and 1957, when he was preparing "Sweet Bird of Youth," Williams, despite drinking, pill-popping and a penchant for dangerous sex composed most of the plays for which he is likely to be remembered.