Carol Sklenicka’s biography and a long-overdue “Collected Stories” spotlight Carver’s growth as a writer and illuminate his poisonous relationship with the editor Gordon Lish.

So much of what is known of China’s beating Communist heart is guesswork. But not for the spy novelist.

Stories rooted in horror, fable and fairy tale, by the Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

In this novel, British and American spies clash in the buildup to the Beijing Olympics.

Collected columns denouncing the Bush wars and tax cuts and recounting the fits of nerves that President Obama coolly overcomes.

In this novel, a girl’s disappearance sets off ripples of grief in a small South Dakota town.

Bracingly devoid of triumphalist homily, Andre Agassi’s is one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete.

A historical novel about the ferocious Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest and the slaves who followed him.

A thorough, well-wrought political history of James K. Polk’s presidency and the triumph of Manifest Destiny.

Paperback books of particular interest.

Questions for, quibbles with and tributes to the sometimes inscrutable protagonist of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Recently reviewed books of particular interest.

I’m a sucker for tales of extreme weather, so my curiosity was piqued by Linda Howard’s “Ice,” new at No. 8 on the hardcover fiction list.

Humanitarians are fiercely divided about what helps poor people. It’s clear that doing good is harder than it looks.

Books by Janet Skeslien Charles, Robert Hicks, Anita Diamant, N. M. Kelby and Rebecca Stott.

A writer revisits the 1918 battle that left its mark on his grandfather.

The lives — as well as the livers — of the characters in Will Self’s beguiling linked stories are in very bad shape indeed.

A history of memoir, from St. Augustine to James Frey.

A love of Iran underlies a scholar’s memoir of surreal interrogation and solitary confinement in Tehran.

Jonathan Safran Foer uses his literary gifts to give the reader some very visceral, very gruesome descriptions of factory farming and the slaughterhouse.