12 Delights of Christmas

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McEwan followed his 2002 masterpiece Atonement with this robust meditation on evil, fear and--unusually for him--happiness. His main character is Henry Perowne, a prosperous London neurosurgeon with a loving family and a handsome town house. He's a contented man, or he would be if his well-being weren't edged with the anxieties that trouble most of us after 9/11. On the single day on which this book takes place, with the streets of London jammed by a massive demonstration against the impending Iraq war, he crosses paths with a belligerent stranger. Before this haunting novel makes its intricate peace with the world, they will meet again, the hard way. --By Richard Lacayo

BEASTS OF NO NATION

Uzodinma Iweala

142 pages; $16.95

In this harrowing first novel by Iweala, a 23-year-old recent Harvard grad, a young boy is swept into a pitiless world. In an unnamed West African nation, the boy, called Agu, is seized by a band of rebel soldiers and initiated into their way of life. Soon enough he learns to loot, burn and butcher other humans like a man, all the while struggling not to become a heartbroken monster. He tells his story of unspeakable terror in a halting, not quite comprehending voice that will stay with you for a long time. --R.L.

MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS

Kelly Link

273 pages; $24

The first story in Magic for Beginners concerns an enchanted handbag. Open it one way, and you find a village that was hidden inside it long ago for safekeeping. Open it another way, and you're pulled into a dark land guarded by a dog with no skin. Link's stories are kind of like that handbag. At first blush they look like charming yarns about divorce and TV shows, but they're haunted by dark spirits and dark emotions--loss, anger and despair. They play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and J.K. Rowling, and Link finds truths there that most authors wouldn't dare touch. --L.G.

THE MARCH

E.L. Doctorow

363 pages; $25.95

It's the autumn of 1864, the final months of the Civil War, and General William Tecumseh Sherman is leading 60,000 Union troops in his fearsome march across Georgia and the Carolinas. As Sherman's men humble the Confederate countryside, hundreds of runaway slaves follow along. The author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate returns to the vexed territory of the past and comes back with a novel in which Sherman's advancing column and the thousands of lives caught up in it become the force of history itself. --R.L.

NONFICTION

1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS

Charles C. Mann

480 pages; $30

It's a convenient fiction that American history starts with Columbus. In 1491, Mann tells the story of a lost world of vast, glittering, wealthy cities, sophisticated cultures and an agricultural economy built without the aid of horses or, largely, the wheel--all destroyed by the epidemics initiated by contact with Europe. The Indians whom the Pilgrims encountered were only the last survivors, refugees from a civilization that had already collapsed. --L.G.

THE ASSASSINS' GATE: AMERICA IN IRAQ

George Packer

467 pages; $26