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Books: A shelf full of reading to last a season

Who isn't feeling battered by the weather these days? There are antidotes, of course. You can take refuge in seed catalogs and count the days till the Phillies come back.

"On Black Sisters Street" focuses on four women working in Antwerp's sex trade.
"On Black Sisters Street" focuses on four women working in Antwerp's sex trade.Read moreFrom the book jacket

Who isn't feeling battered by the weather these days? There are antidotes, of course. You can take refuge in seed catalogs and count the days till the Phillies come back.

And, as always, there are books to read. Here are some of the best - enough to keep you busy until it's time to cut the grass.

Fiction

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95). Miami native Russell leads us into the Everglades with 13-year-old Ava Bigtree as she mourns her mother while trying to keep her family together and save their business, a gator-rasslin' park called Swamplandia. (February)

The Complaints by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown, $24.99). What does a master crime writer do when he retires the character who made him famous? Rankin introduces us to his Rebus replacement, Malcolm Fox, a detective who goes after crooked cops. (March)

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (Random House, $25). The supernatural and the all-too-natural mix and mingle in a much-anticipated debut novel set in the Balkans. Obreht tells the story of a young woman trying to find the reason for her grandfather's death on a mysterious trip. (March)

Nude Walker by Bathsheba Monk (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25). In a rundown, flood-threatened Pennsylvania steel town, an unlikely love story grows out of the feud between Lebanese immigrants and the resident gentry in Monk's first novel. (March)

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95). The Swedish mystery master's troubled detective, as always his own worst enemy, investigates the death of his daughter's prospective father-in-law. (March)

What You See in the Dark by Manuel Muñoz (Algonquin, $23.95). In this debut novel, shoe-store clerk Teresa hopes to sing her way out of sleepy Bakersfield, Calif., in the late 1950s. Her romance with the hottest guy in town, whose mother owns a motel, is overshadowed by the arrival of a famous Director and Actress looking for a location to film a picture about a motel murder. (March)

The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown, $27.99). This is the major work that Wallace, author of the outstanding novel Infinite Jest (1996), left incomplete at the time of his death in 2008. Even unfinished, Wallace's last dance with irony, set in an IRS center in Peoria, Ill., comes to nearly 500 pages. (April)

When the Thrill Is Gone by Walter Mosley (Riverhead, $26.95). The thrill is definitely not gone for fans of Mosley, who brings back New York PI Leonid McGill for another outing. McGill's beautiful client is lying, his wife is cheating, his son is involved in a dubious moneymaking scheme, and his friend has cancer - the typical obstacle course for Mosley characters. (March)

On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe (Random House, $25). African writer Unigwe's American publication debut tells the story of four women who move to Belgium from Africa and end up working in the sex trade in Antwerp. When one of them is murdered, the surviving three must depend on one another for support. (May)

The Story of a Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon (Grand Central, $24.99). Simon's elegant tale of love centers on the struggles of a couple - a white woman with a speech disability and an African American man who is deaf - to stay together in a world that seems bound to keep them apart. (May)

- Michael D. Schaffer

Nonfiction

Bringing the Shovel Down by Ross Gay (University of Pittsburgh, $14.95). This book of poems by onetime Philadelphian and Lafayette alumnus Gay moves from the personal to the political, with sensitivity, music, and love. (January)

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (Alfred A. Knopf, $29.95). Physics has reached a pass of incredible uncertainty and beauty. Few guides can match the clarity, elegance, and brainpower of Greene. His theme is the increasingly prominent notion of multiple universes. Wittily acknowledging that there's much we don't (and maybe can't ever) know, he compares the various theories. (February)

The Memory Palace: A Memoir by Mira Bartók (Free Press, $25). Bartók recounts two daughters' lives, a mother's schizophrenia, and her own battle back from an auto accident and brain injury. Family and love endure. (February)

The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life by Bettany Hughes (Alfred A. Knopf, $35). Both biography and history, this brilliant book brings to life a city, a man, a time, a region, and the crucial value of a well-thought-out life. "We think the way we do because Socrates thought the way he did" - enough said. (February)

Known and Unknown: A Memoir by Donald H. Rumsfeld (Penguin, $39.95). This longtime, hardworking, controversial public servant hits hard in a combative look back. Characteristically, his book's title echoes one of his most notorious pronouncements. What a cast, what a story arc: From the Illinois House in 1965 to the invasion of Iraq in the troubled 2000s. (February)

The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life by Elijah Anderson (Norton, $25.95). Center City Philadelphia plays the starring role as Anderson shows how, in real life, we really do get along - with overlapping "canopies" that combine to make a cosmopolis. A much-needed study of how boundaries disappear, assert themselves, and melt. (March)

Spark: How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein and Kurt Anderson (Harper, $24.99). How better to learn about creativity than to talk with some of the world's most creative people. Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman, among others, weigh in. Burstein, producer of Anderson's Public Radio International show Studio 360, culled these talks from 10 years of the show. (March)

An Improvised Life: A Memoir by Alan Arkin (Da Capo, $17). The beloved actor writes a warm, wise account of acting and life: His approach to both, and how the former rests squarely on the latter. (March)

Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason by Anne Roiphe (Nan A. Talese, $24.95). Roiphe recounts how, as a young girl in the 1950s, she worshipped men, especially male authors. Parties, booze, children, and depression follow - and a way out, to discover a better self. (March)

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India by Joseph Lelyveld (Alfred A. Knopf, $28.95). An esteemed, skeptical journalist lets us know that Gandhi, a great and greatly eccentric man, never solved the snarled enigmas at the heart of India. A life of triumph, failure, and greatness shines forth. (March)

- John Timpane