Karen DeMasco '91 and Mindy Fox, The Craft of Baking Cakes, Cookies & Other Sweets. With Ideas for Inventing Your Own (Clarkson Potter). DeMasco, former pastry chef at Tom Colicchio's restaurant, Craft, and a James Beard Award winner, liberally sprinkles her collection of recipes with tips and personality. From chocolate brioche, to lemon bars, to a pine nut tart with rosemary cream, these are beautifully simple, and simply presented, masterpieces.

Ben Farmer '05, Evangeline (The Overlook Press). Inspired by Longfellow's epic poem, Farmer spins an epic tale of love in prerevolutionary America: seventeen-year-old Evangeline Bellefontaine, her fiancé torn from her by soldiers, journeys from Nova Scotia to New Orleans.

Emily Gould '03, And the Heart Says Whatever (Free Press). Gould, best known as a former editor of Gawker.com, offers up a memoir of twentysomething literary life in New York, touching on everything from status anxiety to sex with the ex, and avoiding confessional breathlessness.

Janette Thomas Greenwood '77, First Fruits of Freedom (University of North Carolina Press). A professor of history at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Greenwood has written a lovingly researched narrative of how the migration of former slaves from the South shaped the North, focusing on the integration of Worcester from 1862 to 1900.

John B. Hattendorf '64 H'97 and Bruce A. Elleman, editors, Nineteen Gun Salute (Naval War College). Noted naval chronicler Hattendorf, professor of maritime history at the United States Naval War College, co-edits this collection of essays on famous American admirals, detailing their personalities and place in history.

Brian T. Jones '97, illustrator, and Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, Quackenstein Hatches a Family (Abrams). Quackenstein the duck has no friends at the zoo, and so he decides to adopt an egg, with surprising results. Jones's lush, cartoonish illustrations set the tone for this playful take on the Frankenstein tale.

Kathleen Kirk '79, Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press). Kirk's poems pulse with love for the earth and life, while stopping the reader with lines like "September, and it's possible/ I've been wrong about everything."

Eric D. Lehman '94, Hamden: Tales from the Sleeping Giant (The History Press). Lehman traces the history of Hamden, Connecticut, home to the likes of Eli Whitney, Thornton Wilder, and Donald Hall.

John T. Lysaker '88, and William Rossi, editors, Emerson & Thoreau: Figures of Friendship (Indiana University Press). Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson's intense and wounded friendship provides a biographical and literary lens in this collection of close readings of texts and letters. Lysaker, professor of philosophy and director of graduate studies in the philosophy department at Emory University, writes that "Emersonian friendship has the power to facilitate spectacular encounters."

Donald J. Mabry '63 P'90, World's Finest Beach (The History Press). Mabry, professor emeritus of history at Mississippi State University, recounts the rollercoaster successes and tribulations of the oceanfront city of Jacksonville, Florida.

Paul Michel '79, Houdini Pie (Bennett & Hastings Publishing). In this witty adventure tale, young Hal Gates, scrabbling out a living as a baseball pitcher in rough-and-tumble 1930s Los Angeles, hears rumors of a Hopi treasure buried beneath the city and decides to join up with a geologist to hunt for it.

Amy White '87, Cat Angels: The Secret Lives of Cats (Cat Angel Press). Fans of felines often suspect there's a mysterious side to their pets. White, an award-winning musician, presents a clever book of photo-montages, introducing Ellis, the Hellion Angel, and Couch Potato Molly.