Please send notices to book.calendar@latimes.com or fax to (213) 237-5916 at least 16 days before publication. Please put the event date and author name in the subject line. Read more

Bonk The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Mary Roach W.W. Norton: 288 pp., $24.95 WHAT Mary Roach won’t do for a book! In her delicious “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” Roach hung out with severed heads in a dissection lab, sniffed around a body farm (more politely known as a forensic anthropology facility) and studied smashed corpses donated for automobile-crash research – all to aid her investigation of an aspect of existence most of us prefer to ignore Read more

Fiction 1. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen ($13.95) 2. Read more

Havanas in Camelot Personal Essays William Styron Random House: 166 pp., $23 IN the months before he fell into his final, fatal illness in the fall of 2006, William Styron compiled a number of essays, lectures and occasional pieces that he had written over the previous 20 years of his life. “Havanas in Camelot” is the result of that foraging process, and while it’s a minor-key achievement in this great novelist’s career, it is nonetheless a modest delight. Read more

THE recent death of Heath Ledger called attention to the fact that his final completed role, as the Joker in the upcoming Batman film, “The Dark Knight,” is a dark interpretation – a far cry from the amused, ironic figure Jack Nicholson played in 1989. Ledger, however, is hardly the first to explore the character’s psychotic side. Read more

Fiction weeks on list1.Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf: $25) Stories of American-born children and their Bengali parents straddling cultures.2 2.Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown: $26.99) Two cops become ensnared in a femme fatale’s nasty div Read more

AN icon is many things to many people, but you don’t usually see all of it in one place. During the memorial for Norman Mailer at New York’s Carnegie Hall last week, I met an actor, director and licensed tour guide named Noel Young, who wondered whether Rip Torn would be there. Read more

Fiction 1. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen ($13.95) 2. Read more

Lavinia A Novel Ursula K. Le Guin Harcourt: 280 pp., $24 URSULA K. LE GUIN can’t easily be pegged. Her ample body of work includes science fiction novels and stories, poems, essays, books for children and much else beside; yet it’s difficult to know who or what she is. Read more

Willie Nelson An Epic Life Joe Nick Patoski Little, Brown: 568 pp., $27.99 MY favorite Willie Nelson story is of the young harmonica player who wanted to be in Nelson’s band so much that he’d drive to shows just for the chance to sit in on stage. Nelson liked the guy’s soulful sound and figured the leader of their struggling group had hired the harmonica player. Read more

Quiet, Please Dispatches From a Public Librarian Scott Douglas Da Capo: 330 pp., $25 SO many jobs, so little time: Two professions (rather like that of book critic) appealed to me when I was young: librarian and nun. In “Quiet, Please,” Scott Douglas has given us closet librarians an appreciation of what that job entails. Read more

Dog Man An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain Martha Sherrill Penguin Press: 240 pp., $25.95 AKA was a noble beast, a proud creature with the quiet command of the Sphinx. When I stroked this sturdy companion of dear friends in Los Angeles, his chestnut-colored eyes never wavered from mine. Read more

Fiction weeks on list1.Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf: $25) Stories of American-born children and their Bengali parents straddling cultures.2 2.Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown: $26.99) Two cops become ensnared in a femme fatale’s nasty di Read more