BOOMERANG - A travelogue, if you will, through the world’s ruined economies that is both hugely entertaining as well as immensely depressing. An Icelandic fisherman walks off the boat to become a currency trader while Greek monks play fast with state land in an overheated real estate market contributing significantly to that country’s crisis. The author of “Moneyball” follows the cheap credit as it floods the globe and fools rush in.

“I Was The Jukebox’’ by Sandra Beasley (Norton)

10. Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell

“We watch [Dubus] transform from a terrorized weakling into a bodybuilding freak so jittery with rage that he becomes a kind of messed-up superhero always looking for a good (or at least passable) reason for a fight.

Ethan Allen by Randall and Pacific Crucible by Toll

“Townie” is the story of how Dubus made the journey to his own writer’s life, and also of how he almost didn’t make it. Unsparing and occasionally brutal, but never bitter, it’s an exceptionally eloquent depiction of something many Americans have experienced in the past three years: what it feels like to be left behind.

There is an important distinction to be made between a great book and a great gift book. Last month, the curious minds at W.W. Norton published a fascinating nonfiction keeper called The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Guide to History's 100 Worst Atrocities. In its own thoughtful way, it is genius. But you couldn't, in good faith, put a bow on it.

Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone's comic about media theory is serious but never dull.

David Shrigley, Matthew White, and Stephen Greenblatt

An insightful, wittily written and drawn history and analysis of mass communications media, covering censorship in early America, media biases, the rise (and impossibility) of objectivity, changes wrought by the Internet, and much else of absorbing interest.

The author, John Hill, runs a blog called Daily Dose of Architecture. For his book he canvassed the city, including every borough, to find and profile new architecture—from the least glamorous social housing to new super tall office buildings. Beautifully illustrated; great graphics. Covers over 200 projects. Provides an impressive sense of how much has been built in New York in recent years.

The Stark River, Bonnie Jo Campbell writes of her invented central Michigan setting in Once Upon a River, "flows around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart ..." Whether upstream or downstream, Campbell's full-blooded young heroine wants to make her own way.

What the Hell Are You Doing?: The Essential David Shrigley

The Chitlin' Circuit by Preston Lauterbach and The Natural Mystics by Colin Grant.

Using his uncommon ability to make virtually any subject interesting, the author takes us on a surreal trip through some of the countries hardest hit by the 2008 fiscal tsunami — including Greece, Iceland and Ireland — and in doing so, makes understanding today’s headlines about European sovereign debt both fascinating and lucid.

This is a sleek muscle car of a memoir that growls like an amalgam of work by Richard Price, Stephen King, Ron Kovic, Breece D’J Pancake and Dennis Lehane, set to the desolate thumping of Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Mr. Dubus is the son of the writer Andre Dubus, a father who wasn’t around for most of the author’s difficult and impoverished childhood. This book could become, and I mean this fondly, one hell of a Ben Affleck movie.

Five Norton Books listed as NYT Notables: Lydia Millet, Joshua Cody, Stephen Greenblatt, Andrew Graham-Dixon, and Maggie Nelson.

Rimbaud's famous prose poems and short free verse are reborn in Ashbery's vibrant translation.

Roasting has always seemed a little like magic to me — the way you can pop a dish in the oven and then, after a decent interval and with no further effort whatsoever, pull it out in all its golden-brown perfection. Stevens is the best author I know when it comes to single techniques. She's meticulous on the science (did you know there's a perfect temperature at which a roast should rest?), smart about cooking tips, and pragmatic when it comes to ingredients. You get a standard formula when you need it — leg of lamb, roast chicken, sear-roasted salmon. But her variations are just unexpected enough to keep you coming back for more.