What looked like a prelude to an amateur version of Kafka or Borges turns out to be a complex and absorbing detective novel as Daniel, obsessed by Julian, sets out to unravel the unexplained mysteries of his life. Anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out and pick up The Shadow of the Wind. Really, you should.

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Marley & Me, tenderly follows its subject from sunrise to sunset, from the ball-of-fluff stage to the heartbreaking farewell. In every chewed-up stereo speaker, busted screen door, purloined grilled cheese sandwich and bouquet of decapitated flowers, Mr. Grogan finds more about Marley to love.

More: MarleyAndMe.com | Slate.com: Truth About Marley & Me

Everyman, the latest novel from author Philip Roth, is a story about aging and illness. It chronicles a man's life -- through his sicknesses and, ultimately, his death. But, it's also a book about a man trying very hard to stay alive. Its protagonist is a New York ad man, whose ill health and disastrous marriages fill him with regret at the twilight of his life.

Reviews: New Yorker | NPR's Alan Cheuse

Books based on graphs are all the rage. First "The Tipping Point", then "The Long Tail" and now "The J Curve", an attempt to sum up in one simple graphic arguably the world's most pressing geopolitical challenge: how to turn authoritarian regimes into stable, open democracies. The world has seemed a riskier place of late. Mr Bremmer's analyses of many countries, China, Russia and Iran, in particular—each of which he places on the authoritarian left side of the J curve—convincingly make the case that it is going to get riskier.

McCarthy establishes himself here as the closest thing in American literature to an Old Testament prophet, trolling the blackest registers of human emotion to create a haunting and grim novel about civilization's slow death after the power goes out. Definitely worth a weekend read.

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