Hot Type

Vanities

This month Viking debuts Penguin Lives—sorry, not the sordid tales of flightless birds, but a series of pocket-size bios by writers such as LARRY McMURTRY on Crazy Horse and EDMUND WHITE on Marcel Proust that will elevate your cocktail-party patter from modestly intellectual to absolutely erudite.

Also this month: LEWIS H. LAPHAM'SThe End of the World (St. Martin's) is an incredible black box of historic you-arethere accounts of hell on earth, including a monk describing the fall of the Aztecs to the Spaniards, and a Polish poet on his fight for survival at Auschwitz. MARTIN GOTTFRIED'SBalancing Act (Little, Brown) celebrates all things Angela Lansbury, from her days as a villainess in classic films such as The Manchurian Candidate and Gaslight to the good-hearted lady dick of crime-infested Cabot Cove. From the rain forest to the concrete jungle, MARK HERTSGAARD traveled the globe to test the winds of the environmental future for Earth Odyssey (Broadway). DORIS LESSING'S futuristic novel Mara and Dann (HarperFlamingo) is the saga of a sister and brother who seem destined to trek for eternity across the drought-ravaged earth. THOM JONES once again mines the battered souls of the cantankerous and dispossessed in his new short-story collection, Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine (Little, Brown). In Reporting Live (Simon & Schuster) LESLEY STAHL delivers the dope on good old boys from Boy George to George Bush. COLSON WHITEHEAD'S highly imaginative and stylish debut novel, The Intuitionist (Anchor), plunges into the world of a black female elevator inspector who relies on her Zen-like ability to discern when someone's about to get the shaft. Serge Lutens (Rizzoli) encompasses the vast oeuvre of the fashion industry's multidisciplinary "designer of dreams," from his photography and perfumes to his interior decorating and hairstyling. In The Orchid Thief (Random House) the intrepid SUSAN ORLEAN is ushered by a charismatic plant smuggler through the wild swamps of Florida and into the rarefied society of orchidophiles. The essays in culture-crit demigod J. HOBERMAN'SThe Red Atlantis (Temple University Press) examine the idea of the Communist Utopia as muse for artists and intellectuals. The threat of a deadly doomsday disease being unleashed on the U.S. spawns terror and intrigue in VINCENT PATRICK'S page-turner Smoke Screen (Morrow). It's Barbie's world, we just live in it: witness photographer DAVID LEVINTHAL and VALERIE STEELE'SBarbie Millicent Roberts (Pantheon), a sumptuous tribute to an icon in her vintage era. In TREY ELLIS'SRight Here, Right Now (Simon & Schuster) a weed-and-cough-syrup bender ignites the hero's transformation from supersuave motivational speaker to egomaniacal cult leader. Are you battling evil H.M.O.'s, ruthless car dealers, or malevolent landlords? Then arm yourself with consumer consultant ELLEN PHILLIPS'SShocked, Appalled, and Dismayed (Vintage), an invaluable guide to composing letters of complaint that get silver-bullet results. Hmm ... the co-op board of Chester Court had better consider itself warned!

ELISSA SCHAPPELL