UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle (Dutton). I have these blind spots, said the books-and-publishing observer about to announce a new #1 bestseller by an author I never heard of who has written two of them before. Yes, the new most famous, etc., replacing I forget which earlier one. As a writer, she's a memoirist—writes her life, a domestic life, essentially, though with colorful variations—and how she feels about it all, and those she loves (and others). As a human, she might be a saint if she weren't so, well, human (among other things, given to sinning as well as the sort of careless mistakes we all make) and yet she is charming without straining and as responsible as she is foolish, and constructive, and convincingly honest. The books come three or four years apart, so clearly she doesn't consider her every random observation priceless (but she is a great observer, understated but acute). What she is, is a joyful slave not to the compulsive practice but the art and craft of noticing herself and others and talking about it all. Get to know her, if you aren't already way ahead of me. With the rest of the functionally literate population.

THE BOY FROM THE WOODS by Harlan Coben (Grand Central). A multi-award winning writer of suspense fiction, actually not quite at his very best in this stand-alone thriller—maybe even over-inventive—but still better than almost anybody else in this great bunch we have now. Anyway, worth it for his central character, who surely deserves a series of his own.

K: A HISTORY OF BASEBALL IN TEN PITCHES by Tyler Kepner (Anchor). Paperback reprint of last year's best baseball book. I've been saving it for opening day, so time to—wait, what!?!…Readable, very smart; Three-Finger Brown is here, Mariano Rivera's here. And nobody's out there on any actual mound, until God alone knows when.

BLACK WIDOW by Leslie Gray Streeter (Little, Brown). And yet another memoir, close-focused on both grief and joy—also by a writer, an entertainment journalist and that shows, almost entirely as a virtue; she manages to be dead serious about a tragedy—alive to it, might be said. This is another writer you'll be glad I introduced you to.

POSSESSED BY MEMORY: The Inward Light of Criticism by Harold Bloom (Vintage). In case you've wondered if this brilliant, demanding critic ever liked anything—he loved plenty. This elegiac collection of his last writings (first published last year, the year of his death), looking back through his very long reading and critic-ing life, may warm you as it must have warmed him in the writing—and also surprise you in other ways (as he always did).