NONFICTION

MARCH

"Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" by Anne Lamott (Riverhead). A very funny and poignant writer gives her prescription for dealing with our anxiety-saturated world.

"Start Smart: The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke" by Suze Orman (Penguin Press). Ah, how we wish we'd read something like this when we were young, fabulous and stupid. Financial advice for the loan-saddled, credit-card-maxed-out 25- to 35-year-old set.

APRIL

"Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983-2005" by Margaret Atwood (Carroll & Graf). The Canadian Booker Prize-winner ("The Blind Assassin") holds forth on matters both personal and literary.

"Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature" by David P. Barash, a UW psychology professor, and his daughter Nanelle Barash (Delacorte), a student of literature and biology at Swarthmore. Barash and his daughter explore the deeper evolutionary meaning behind our attachment to Madame Bovary's adultery, Othello's jealous rage and Tom Sawyer's adventures.

"Three Nights in August" by Buzz Bissinger (Houghton Mifflin). The author of "Friday Night Lights," an indelible portrait of high-school football, returns to the world of sports to examine a pivotal three-game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs, focusing on Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

"Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" by Jonathan Eig (Simon and Schuster). Newly unearthed correspondence lends texture to a new telling of the story of Gehrig, the great New York Yankee felled by the disease that is now named for him.

"My Life So Far" by Jane Fonda (Random House). A woman who has led an exceedingly interesting life recounts her Hollywood upbringing in an A-list acting family, her acting career, her three marriages and her activism.

"The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The influential New York Times editorial columnist analyzes the emergence of an increasingly interconnected world and offers prescriptions for how governments and societies can adapt to it.

"On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II" by Jack Hamann (Algonquin). Seattle author Hamann revisits the World War II-era killing of an Italian prisoner of war at Seattle's Fort Lawton. Forty African-American soldiers were charged with storming the barracks the night of the murder; three were charged with the murder itself, despite the fact that they were "most assuredly innocent," according to the publisher.

"58 Degrees North: The Mysterious Sinking of the Arctic Rose" by Hugo Kugiya (Bloomsbury). A national correspondent for Newsday and former Seattle Times reporter revisits the deadly sinking of the Arctic Rose, and explores how and why the 15 men on the Seattle-based fishing trawler might have met their sudden end.

"Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima" by Diana Preston (Walker & Co.). The author of "Lusitania" chronicles a half-century of discoveries about atomic power, from Curie's discovery of radium to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

"Being Perfect" by Anna Quindlen (Random House). The Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist (now writing for Newsweek) and novelist ("One True Thing") dispenses advice on how to avoid "the perfection trap."

"Garlic and Sapphires" by Ruth Reichl (Penguin Press). The third installment in the prolific food writer's memoirs (previous two: "Tender at the Bone" and "Comfort Me with Apples"), in which she relates how she created various alter egos (Molly Hollis, retired school teacher from Birmingham, Mich.) to disguise her identity as the New York Times restaurant critic.

MAY

"Pioneer Square: Seattle's Oldest Neighborhood," edited by Mildred Tanner Andrews (University of Washington Press). A new history weaves first-person accounts, photographs and several perspectives to tell the story of the place where modern Seattle began.

"Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage" by Stephanie Coontz (Viking). An Evergreen State College professor (and the author of "The Way We Never Were") explains how marriage evolved from "loveless, arranged unions" to "the sexualized, volatile relationships of today."

"The Roof Rack Chronicles: An Honest Guide to Outdoor Recreation, Excessive Gear Consumption and Playing with Matches" by Ron Judd (Sasquatch). How to camp well, from the Seattle Times columnist and "Dave Barry of the hiking set."

"Coach: Lessons on Baseball and Life" by Michael Lewis (Norton). The author of "Moneyball" recalls a coach who trusted him at a crucial moment and affected his life for years to come.

"1776" by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster). One of America's foremost popular historians ("John Adams," "Truman"), two-time Pulitzer Prize winner McCullough tells the story of the year the United States was born.

"More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason" by Nancy Pearl (Sasquatch). The further literary adventures of Pearl, "America's Favorite Librarian," who since retiring from Seattle Public Library has had time to assemble another collection of reading recommendations — this one has 1,000 in 150 categories.

"Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song" by David Rothenberg (Basic Books). This book moves beyond the traditional explanations for bird song — territoriality, sexual display — and toward the notion that birds sing ... because they like to. Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy, is also a composer and jazz clarinetist.

"Where Mountains Are Nameless: Passion and Politics in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" by Jonathan Waterman (Norton). The author, who has tracked and paddled thousands of miles in the refuge, blends the history, science and political struggles over the prospect of opening up the refuge to oil.

JUNE

"Losing Moses on the Freeway: America's Broken Covenant with the Ten Commandments" by Chris Hedges (Free Press). Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, war correspondent and author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," looks at America through the lens of the Ten Commandments, concludes that American society is in "moral ruin" and challenges readers to take a look at the disconnect between their supposed values and their actual lives.

"The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America" by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster). A dual biography of two of the American West's most enduring legendary figures, by the "Lonesome Dove" author.

"Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese-American Community" by David A. Neiwert (Palgrave Macmillan). Seattle journalist Neiwert tells the story of the Japanese farming community that settled around then farm-town Bellevue, their World War II internment and "the racist schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after the war."

"The Genius Factory: The Secret History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank" by David Plotz (Random House). One for the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category: The story of a "genius sperm bank" that collected the sperm of Nobel Prize winners and other accomplished donors, and the outcome for more than 200 children fathered in that manner (19 by the same man!) before it closed in 1999.

"A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit (Viking). The author of "Wanderlust: A History of Walking" and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winner for "River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West" writes a book about "losing yourself in the pleasures of experience."

"Coffee: A Dark History" by Antony Wild (Norton). The author, a "coffee trader and historian," tells the story of the brew's obscure beginnings in East Africa, its growth as an imperial commodity and its predicament today, as coffee chains spread "like wildfire" but coffee-producing countries grapple with prices at unprecedented lows, unemployment, abandoned farms, enforced migration and social disruption.

JULY

"The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas, False Lights, and Plundered Shipwrecks" by Bella Bathurst (Houghton Mifflin). The author of "The Lighthouse Stevensons" (about Robert Louis Stevenson's lighthouse-building ancestors) continues in a maritime vein with this account of Britain's coastal dwellers who lured ships deliberately to their doom and then scavenged the wreckage.

"What It Used to Be Like: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver" by Maryann Burk Carver (St. Martin's Press). A memoir by the first wife of literary icon Raymond Carver, from their teenaged romance to their marriage with two children and their nomadic life as Carver built his career.

"Alec Guinness: The Authorized Biography" by Piers Paul Read (Simon & Schuster). The life of one of the world's most well-known and talented actors, from his debut in "Great Expectations" to his Oscar for "The Bridge on the River Kwai" to Ben Kenobi in "Star Wars."

AUGUST

"Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix" by Charles R. Cross (Hyperion). The Seattle biographer of Kurt Cobain (the critically praised "Heavier Than Heaven") takes on the brief but dramatic life of Hendrix, from his childhood in Seattle's projects to his rock-star ascent to his death in 1970.

"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann (Knopf). A "groundbreaking" study of new research that indicates that more people lived in the Americas in 1491 than in Europe; that some of their cities were greater in size than European cities and that the indigenous societies were older and far more advanced than previously thought.

"Eudora Welty: A Biography" by Suzanne Marks (Harcourt). A life of the prize-winning Mississippi writer ("The Golden Apples," "The Optimist's Daughter"), written with access to her correspondence with her contemporaries (Katherine Anne Porter, E.M. Forster, Elizabeth Bowen) and aspiring to be the "definitive and authoritative account" of her life.

"Michelangelo's Mountain: The Quest for Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara" by Eric Scigliano (Free Press). Seattle author Scigliano looks at Michelangelo's passion for the marble of Carrara, Italy, and his creation of three sculptures from it as a way to re-examine the social, political and personal forces that shaped Michelangelo's work.

Mary Ann Gwinn is The Seattle Times' book editor. Michael Upchurch is The Times' book critic.

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