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Novel
He feels the boy's small body go rigid, his apprehension heighten to a nearly audible pitch; Leavitt imagines the clear, high tone of a tuning fork struck in midair ... Suddenly he understands, and he hears what the boy hears. Planes. Thrumming overhead, closing fast. There's no way out.
--Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips (Alfred A. Knopf, $24)
Psychology
In lands of plenty, in the lap of luxury, in the fast lane, we're stuck doing-over and over-things we do not want to do. Stuck in places we do not want to be. Stuck with people we do not want to see. Stuck with stuff … No population anywhere has ever been so free as we. And yet-somehow we all feel stuck.
--Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On by Anneli Rufus (Tarcher/penguin, $23.95) Photography
You probably do not get more American or more mythic than to locate yourself at Fourth of July Creek Ranch in Custer County with the Sawtooth Mountains in the distance and the River of No Return flowing through your pastures.
--River of No Return, Photographs by Laura McPhee, foreword by Robert Hass (Yale University Press, $60)
Education
They wanted students to call them at home if they had any questions about their assignments ... Some students used pay phones on the street outside their apartments ... There was only one phone in the teachers' apartment, so they took turns answering, usually ten to twenty calls a night.
--Work Hard. Be Nice: How Two Inspired Teachers Created America's Best Schools by Jay Mathews (Algonquin, $15.95)
Movies
Film posters retain an appeal and mystique that no advertisement for fruit-flavored vodka or cell phone services will ever be able to capture ... The promises they make are almost invariably broken by the films they promote, but as you pass them you cannot help but feel a certain frisson.
--Art of the Modern Movie Poster by Judith Salavetz et al., Text by Dave Kehr (Chronicle, $75)
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