Subtitled The White House Decorating Tradition from Jacqueline Kennedy to Michelle Obama, this book has the holiday trees, centerpieces, foods, and garlands of the past 50 years. Read More >>

All of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in pictures and history, by the eminent critic Vicki Goldberg. Read More >>

In this quirky, razor-sharp novel, an IRS bureaucrat suspects his wife is cheating with a co-worker. He then volunteers to fly to Belize to track down her missing employer — and find himself in wildly strange terrain. The author, a Pulitzer finalist, is a true original. Read More >>

Dava Sobel, the bestselling author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, attempts a repeat performance with A More Perfect Heaven. This time, Sobel writes about Copernicus, the astronomer who had the temerity to suggest that the earth revolved around the sun, and about Rheticus, the student who got De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium published (as Copernicus lay dying). Read More >>

In a liberal Orange County family facing a tightening budget, their undocumented housekeeper is forced to become their babysitter. There are big mistakes and major miscommunication. Says Publishers Weekly, “Tobar is both inventive and relentless in pricking the pretentious social consciences of his entitled Americans.” The Mexican characters don’t get off any easier. Read More >>

One man’s quest to build a simple toaster—entirely from scratch, down to pulling raw materials out of the earth—turns into a fascinating, funny, nine-month adventure. Yes, he spent more than $1800 and as much time as it takes to gestate a baby, but he learned about everything from how we produce goods to the way our consumer culture operates. Read More >>

One of the most influential folk singers of the 1960s, Judy Collins knew everyone on the burgeoning scene and tells it like it was, honestly and evenhandedly (“Joni [Mitchell] can be touchy and sometimes distant, but all of us have complicated lives”). She has stories about songwriter Leonard Cohen and longtime lover Stephen Stills, about heroin and… Read More >>

Under the name of Benjamin Black, Booker-prize winner John Banville has begun a series of crime novels set in 1950s Dublin. Featuring a police pathologist called Quirke  — pot-bellied, amorous and a wine-lover — they're the best thing in crime fiction. In this latest one, the murder of a newspaper magnate takes Quirke into the murky world of Irish… Read More >>

Take one part Harry Potter, another part The Chronicles of Narnia, plus some new parts all the author’s own, season them liberally with adult themes — these are definitely not books for children — and you have this most readable, imaginative pair from author Grossman. Quentin Coldwater passes the entrance exam for Brakebills magic college and learns… Read More >>

This doorstop of a biography has it all: the women (Ingrid Bergman, Gene Tierney, Katharine Hepburn), the movies (Desk Set, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Boys Town, Woman of the Year, Inherit the Wind), and the run-ins (with directors, of course, and with Ernest Hemingway during the filming of The Old Man and the Sea). Hollywood’s greatest actor is brought to life in anecdotes and compelling detail, foibles and all. Read More >>