Excerpt: 'How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have'

John Gray, the author of the "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" relationship series, now presents an innovative program for achieving personal success.

Excerpt: 'American Rhapsody'

A brilliant, unnerving, hugely entertaining look at our political culture, our heroes and villains, "American Rhapsody" will delight some and outrage others, but it will not be ignored.

Excerpt: 'My Only Story'

An unconventional love story frames this graceful, funny, and moving novel by Monica Wood. Rita, a hair stylist in her twenties attuned to the suffering of others and the ways that she can help, meets John Reed who, she observes, though not yet out of his thirties, "... seemed old, the way all sad people do."

Excerpt: 'In Praise of Public Life'

In a vigorous defense of public life, Senator Joseph Lieberman defines the duty, the honor and the privilege of public life in the face of Americans' perennial cynicism about it.

Excerpt: 'A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You'

A great short story has the emotional depth and intensity of a poem and the wholeness and breadth of a novel. Amy Bloom writes great short stories. Her first collection, "Come to Me," was a finalist for the National Book Award, and here she deepens and extends her mastery of the form.

Excerpt: 'The Dream of Spaceflight: Essays on the Near Edge of Infinity'

In the tradition of Loren Eiseley, Arthur Koestler and Lewis Thomas, Wyn Wachhorst is a great rarity: an author of truly lyrical essays on science and technology. "The Dream of Spaceflight" is a luminous meditation on the meaning of space exploration.

Excerpt: 'Wainewright the Poisoner: The Memoir of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright'

With a brilliant blend of creative imagination and scholarly sleuthing, Andrew Motion evokes the double life of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright -- artist, forger, possible murderer -- in a tour de force of the biographer's art.

Excerpt: 'Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance'

On the death of France's most glorious king, Louis XIV, in 1715, few people benefited from the shift in power more than the intriguing financial genius from Edinburgh, John Law.

Excerpt: 'Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx'

Stefan Kanfer's biography of Groucho Marx reveals a life of sadness and professional dissatisfaction underneath the sharp-edged wit.