ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS by Jami Attenberg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Serious novelist of family life, Attenberg, that the column was inexcusably late in discovering (her most recent novel, two years ago, ALL GROWN UP). This one is structured, intricately but crystal clearly, around the death of a really awful old man—awful, especially, to his family—yet it's nothing like depressing or unpleasant to live in, getting to know his wife and kids and their families as they gather. It's unflinching but wise and compassionate about this decidedly mixed bunch of deeply interesting humans; it might be said that the person we're getting to know most intimately is the author, about whom you'll have no reservations. (Just a secondary virtue, surely, but one the column tends to find especially attractive: this is a New Orleans novel. Enlivening place to spend time in, that city.)

A BOOK OF BONES: A Thriller by John Connolly (Emily Bestler/Atria). This contemporary series of crime novels that's also supernatural horror thrillers is—well, maybe not getting better every time out, but certainly never failing to prompt a thought like, Oh!—man! He never did that before!. . . This (the 17th), though completely satisfying in itself, isn't the ideal place to dive in; the series is to some extent sequential. Start with the earliest one you can find; the column first reviewed one in 1999. His readers and reviewers have been saying for at least that long, this is stunningly beautiful! and horribly scary! And, why isn't this guy even more famous (whether they mean Connolly or his brilliantly conceived and realized central character Charlie Parker)?

THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS by Lisa Jewell (Atria). A very skillful writer, clever plotter just as a basis, but also intensely concentrated within scenes and within the inner lives of a broad range of brainy characters. Dark—this isn't horror fiction, it's psychological suspense, but it gets you to believe in characters profoundly enough to make for horror when things go especially badly—or when characters turn out to be very bad, right before your eyes. This is the first of her books the column has seen, for some reason. She's British (one of her great fans is the great Ian Rankin), but this is far from her first American publication; we'll be alert for her next.

PROUST'S DUCHESS: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris by Caroline Weber (Vintage). Yes, the paperback reprint of the book the column went on about a year ago—very big, lavishly illustrated, produced evidently from the same plates that produced that hardcover. You don't have to have read Proust, certainly—it's even, in some surely unworthy ways, a kind of substitute for taking that on. Oh, and at $20.00 another one worth considering as a holiday gift!