Paperback

The steamy book is called "Fifty Shades of Grey," and many people have never heard of it. But for those who have - boy, do they want to spread the word. "I told my mahjong group, ‘Oh my god, you have to read it,' " said Janice Abarbanel, 57, an art-jewelry maker from Sharon. The married mother of two stayed up so late reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Fifty Shades Darker," the second book in the erotic trilogy, that she vowed to take a week off to get some rest.

USELESS LANDSCAPE, OR A GUIDE FOR BOYS By D.A. Powell Graywolf, 108 pp., $22 Powell's fifth collection is a stunner. Without his giveaway stylistic stamp (those crisp twin lines, split by the hinge of a colon), there's only his unmistakably lush language to give him away here, and it's more than enough. Memory, sensuality, and time all tangle with each other — altering each other as they go. Powell takes us beyond the "salty declivities" of a Turkish bath into a wilderness of desire, a "region of want.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People By Harold S. Kushner The "Da Vinci Code" of its day, Kushner's bestseller offers lessons on coping with life's tragedies (Anchor, paperback, $9.95). The Gnostic Gospels By Elaine Pagels A pioneering, award-winning study of early Christian writings that didn't make the cut for inclusion in the Bible (Vintage, paperback, $12). A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam By Karen Armstrong An academic and former nun's comparative history of various faiths' notions about...

The voice of the narrator was what really hooked Benjamin Lally: He is mysterious; you do not really know who he is. He slips in and out of slang; he shifts locations; he drops casual and crude (and often subjective) historical tidbits. "It's very much tongue-in-cheek," Lally, head of the English department at Burlington High School, said of the best-selling and award-winning 2007 novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz. "It's a funny book and really relevant.

Boston is famed for its beans and its BoSox, to be sure, but it's also a literary city known for its books. First-time visitors can get a taste of Bostonians' eccentric social customs and distinctive speech patterns by reading two delightful 20th-century novels. John P. Marquand's "The Late George Apley" (Back Bay, paperback, $14.95) tells the story of the stereotypical proper Bostonian who is trying to cope with the sweeping changes confronting his Protestant ancestry, his Yankee economy, and his Brahmin society.

USELESS LANDSCAPE, OR A GUIDE FOR BOYS By D.A. Powell Graywolf, 108 pp., $22 Powell's fifth collection is a stunner. Without his giveaway stylistic stamp (those crisp twin lines, split by the hinge of a colon), there's only his unmistakably lush language to give him away here, and it's more than enough. Memory, sensuality, and time all tangle with each other — altering each other as they go. Powell takes us beyond the "salty declivities" of a Turkish bath into a wilderness of desire, a "region of want.

"Caleb's Crossing" by Geraldine Brooks, leads hardcover fiction this week. Tina Fey's "Bossypants" holds onto the top spot in hardcover nonfiction for another week in a row. "The Help," by Kathryn Stockett, and "A Visit from the Goon Squad," by Jennifer Egan, tie for first in paperback fiction. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot, continues to lead paperback nonfiction. For full lists, see below. Hardcover fiction 1. Caleb's Crossing.

The voice of the narrator was what really hooked Benjamin Lally: He is mysterious; you do not really know who he is. He slips in and out of slang; he shifts locations; he drops casual and crude (and often subjective) historical tidbits. "It's very much tongue-in-cheek," Lally, head of the English department at Burlington High School, said of the best-selling and award-winning 2007 novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz. "It's a funny book and really relevant.

NEW YORK - Novelist Janice Y.K. Lee is flying in a better class. “I came in here from Hong Kong and decided to treat myself and upgrade to business,’’ Lee said during a recent interview from Los Angeles, where she arrived for a promotional tour (her publisher paid for coach) for the paperback of her debut novel, “The Piano Teacher.’’ Lee received strong critical attention and respectable sales for the hardcover of her book, but she may well be the latest author published by Penguin Group (USA)

NEW YORK — Elaine Koster, a publisher and literary agent with a knack for new talent who gave a second chance to an obscure horror writer named Stephen King and took on an unknown Khaled Hosseini and “The Kite Runner,’’ has died. Ms. Koster died Tuesday at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York, according to Hosseini’s publisher, Penguin Group (USA). The cause of death was not available. She was 69. As publisher of the New American Library in the 1970s, Ms. Koster paid a then-enormous $400,000 for the paperback rights to King’s...

NEW YORK - Edmund L. Epstein, a literary scholar who, as a book editor in the late 1950s, was so taken by a well-reviewed but not especially popular first novel by a largely unknown British writer that he decided to reprint it in paperback, thus enabling the extravagant American success of "Lord of the Flies" and its author, the future Nobel Prize winner William Golding, died April 1 in Melville, on Long Island. He was 80. The cause was complications of multiple myeloma, said his daughter, Dr. Lucy Hutner.

The steamy book is called "Fifty Shades of Grey," and many people have never heard of it. But for those who have - boy, do they want to spread the word. "I told my mahjong group, ‘Oh my god, you have to read it,' " said Janice Abarbanel, 57, an art-jewelry maker from Sharon. The married mother of two stayed up so late reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" and "Fifty Shades Darker," the second book in the erotic trilogy, that she vowed to take a week off to get some rest.

Senator Scott Brown writes a gripping account of a "dead run toward a nearby bunker," while enemy fire came close enough to an Afghanistan air base "to glimpse the bright flash of light," in a new afterword to his best-selling memoir, released Tuesday in paperback. Brown, an officer in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, writes that the experience, which he says put him within 800 meters of a blast, came during a weeklong trip in August to Bagram Airfield as part of his annual training.

At age 91, Ray Bradbury is making peace with the future he helped predict. The science fiction/fantasy author and longtime enemy of the e-book has finally allowed his dystopian classic "Fahrenheit 451" to be published in digital format. Simon & Schuster released the electronic edition Tuesday at a list price of $9.99. First published in paperback by Ballantine in 1953 and as a hardcover by Simon & Schuster in the 1960s, "Fahrenheit 451" has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into 33 languages.

It's a paperback that cost 45 cents when it was brand new. It's a little more squat and wide than a traditional mass market edition, and has a red moon and a black bird on the cover. I wrote my name atop the first page with a blue Magic Marker, the ink bleeding through the thin sheet onto page three, and the letters are evidence that my mother was on to something when she would insist that our dog had better handwriting than I did. It is one of the only books from my childhood I still own. The paperback is Washington Square Press's "Great Tales and Poems of Edgar...

By Patricia Harris and David Lyon, Globe Correspondents When we wrote recently about our appreciation for the clever messages on New Hampshire license plates, we heard from Holly Sherburne. She happens to be a connoisseur of Maine plates. In fact, she notes that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators ranks Maine as sixth in the nation in the percentage of license plates that are vanity plates. Sherburne highlights about 250 of those quirky seven-letter (maximum)

WESTON, Conn. -- Ronald Mansbridge, a publisher who started the first American branch of Cambridge University Press, has died. He was 100. Mr. Mansbridge's family has confirmed that he died at his Connecticut home on Sept. 1. Mr. Mansbridge began his association with the press in the early 1930s, when he joined the New York office of Macmillan, an agent for Cambridge University Press in the United States. In 1949, he established the American branch, which he supervised until his retirement in 1970.

By Patricia Harris and David Lyon, Globe Correspondents When we wrote recently about our appreciation for the clever messages on New Hampshire license plates, we heard from Holly Sherburne. She happens to be a connoisseur of Maine plates. In fact, she notes that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators ranks Maine as sixth in the nation in the percentage of license plates that are vanity plates. Sherburne highlights about 250 of those quirky seven-letter (maximum)

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU ** (Comcast Movies: All Movies) Matt Damon spends this sci-fi romance with Emily Blunt running from a mysterious agency trying to keep them apart. Whether this movie works for you largely depends on whether you're willing to work for it. To which I say: Bring your gym clothes. Damon and Blunt are good together but to what end? Taken rather pointlessly by the writer and director George Nolfi from a short story by Philip K. Dick. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 26)

WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 C HILDREN OF THE STREET By Kwei Quartey Random House, 352 pp., paperback, $15 WHO WE ARE: And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? By Gary Younge Nation, 256 pp., $26.99 WORDS TO EAT BY: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language By Ina Lipkowitz St. Martin’s, 204 pp., $25.99 “When it comes to culinary matters,’’ Ina Lipkowitz writes, “we English speakers suffer from a...