In her eleventh collection of poems, Pulitzer-Prize winner Gluck tackles the circle of life, as in "A Night Spring," where she writes: They told her she came out of a hole in her mother but really it’s impossible to believe something so delicate could come out of something so fat-her mother naked looks like a pig. Buy it here.

Power, money, expansive family compounds-Friend’s family, like so many other American Wasps, had it all. In this memoir meets family saga, Friend describes the height of his family’s wealth, as well as its decline in the 1960s. Buy it here.

"We are not just reinventing ourselves," writes Amy Ferris in her hilarious midlife crisis memoir, "we are in fact reinventing the entire fucking wheel . . . and some, like me, are doing it in the middle of the night." Ferris can’t sleep (thank you menopause) so she spends her evenings fantasizing about George Clooney, Googling old boyfriends, scouting five-star spas destinations and, of course, writing this very book. Buy it here.

Renowned scientist Jane Goodall brings us inspiring news about the future of the animal kingdom in her new book, which includes her first-hand account of experiences in the field as well as fascinating survival stories about the American Crocodile, the california Condor, the Black-Footed Ferret and more. Buy it here.

Odessa, Ukraine is the humor capital of the former Soviet Union, but in an upside-down world where waiters earn more than doctors and Odessans depend on the Mafia for basics like phone service and medical supplies, no one is laughing. Especially, Daria, a secretary who moonlights as an interpreter at a match-making agency that hooks up lonely American men with desperate Odessan women. Will Daria settle for security in America and marry one of her clients (like her grandmother wants), or will she end up with Vlad, a sexy, irresponsible mobster? Buy it here.

In the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, two days before her 14th birthday, there is a tragedy in the house next door to Lindiwe Bishop-her neighbor has been burned alive. The victim’s stepson, Ian McKenzie, is the prime suspect, yet he is soon released and returns home. Lindiwe can’t hid her fascination with this boisterous and mysterious white man, and they strike up an odd and exciting friendship. Buy it here.

As a boy, Daniel Rooke was always an outsider. Determined to make a new beginning, he enters the marines and travels to New South Wales as a lieutenant on the 1788 First Fleet. As his countrymen struggle to control their cargo of convicts and communicate with the native tribes, Daniel constructs an observatory to chart the stars and begin the scientific work he prays will make him famous. But soon Daniel come to intimately know the Aboriginal people, and forges a remarkable connection with one child that will change the course of his life. Buy it here.

In this suspenseful true story, journalist Bartlett befriends John Charles Gilkey, an obsessed book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of rare books from book fairs, stores and libraries, and Ken Sanders, the self-appointed "bibliodick" who is driven to catch him. This is the story of how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes and how Sanders ultimately caught him. Buy it here.

When a young war reporter learns her idol, a famous war correspondent, has committed suicide, she uproots her life in Boston and heads to Paupa New Guinea-the world’s least explored frontier-where he was last seen alive. Buy it here.

French women don’t give a damn: they don’t expect men to understand them. They don’t care about being liked or being like everyone else. They generally reject notions of packaged beauty. They accept the passage of time; celebrate the immediacy of pleasure; like to break the rules; and prefer having a life to making a women. Here’s what you can learn from them. Buy it here.