I Was Amelia Earhart, by Jane Mendelsohn (Vintage, $10).
In this deft and sensuous novel, the author imagines what might have happened if Earhart had not disappeared on July 2, 1937, when her Lockheed Electra flew into a cloud bank off the coast of New Guinea.
Water Witches, by Chris Bohjalian (Scribner, $13).
The forces of progress, tradition and magic collide in this comic novel, set in the Vermont countryside, about a group of female dowsers who can track underground water with sticks and who try to thwart a ski-industry lobbyist bent on tapping the area’s beleaguered rivers for fake snow.
The Latino Reader: From 1542 to the Present, edited by Harold Augenbraum and Margarite Fernandez Olmos (Houghton Mifflin, $16).
The first anthology to present the full history of our Latino literary tradition; includes memoirs, essays, poetry, fiction and drama.
Omensetter’s Luck, by William H. Gass (Penguin, $12.95).
A reissue of Gass’ 1966 novel exploring the relationship of the title character, a serenely good man, and a wretched preacher who is driven mad by violent thoughts.
All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo: World’s Greatest Railroad Buff, by Rogers E.M. Whitaker and Tony Hiss (Kodansha International, $16).
A witty compendium of great train rides, from Manhattan to Wales, Casbah to the Caspian Sea, in a greatly expanded edition of the 1974 classic by two writers for The New Yorker.
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, by David Quammen (Touchstone $17).
An intelligent examination of why some of the world’s most wondrous wildlife–from the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands to the California condors–are headed the way of the dodo, that immense, ostrich-like creature that once lumbered across remote Madagascar but that now exists only as a museum skeleton.
Painted Desert, by Frederick Barthelme (Penguin, $11.95).
A young, computer-addicted couple decides to flee cyberspace for a jaunt through the real world in this amusing sendup of popular culture.
Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, by David M. Oshinsky (Free Press, $12).
A noted historian’s account of Mississippi’s unspeakably cruel Parchman State Penitentiary, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s era of civil rights.
Captain James Cook, by Richard Hough (Norton, $15).
A fascinating life of the British navigator-explorer whose harrowing 18th Century voyages around the world revealed new information about geography and biology.
