Doubleday

It doesn't get much better for an author and publisher than when Newsweek bases a cover story on their new book and Time gives it generous attention the same week. But considering Raymond E. Brown's weighty subject matter and hefty list price, it will take more than great publicity to spur impressive sales. It will take time and faith, both of which Doubleday professes to have in ample supply.

David Rakoff, a humorist whose cynical outlook on life and culture earned him the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor, died Thursday in New York City after a long illness. He was 47. The statement from Doubleday and Anchor Books announcing his death did not give a cause, but Rakoff had long written about his battles with cancer. He won the Thurber prize - named for legendary humorist James Thurber - for "Half Empty" (2010), his third collection of essays. They veered from sarcastic to poignant and expounded on such topics as optimism, mortality and the bohemian myth of artists.

"I'm more androgynous," says Portia Doubleday, "because men are supposed to be more spatial, women more literal -- I'm a tomboy." The 21-year-old actress is speaking of her academic pursuits -- she's studying psychology and considering pre-med because "I've always had a more spatial mind, mathematical, than literal." But it's not likely anyone is going to mistake the athletic young woman with the blue saucer eyes and flowing blond tresses for a boy. She looks like a cross between Natasha Lyonne and Lily Cole.

Calico Joe A Novel John Grisham Doubleday: 198 pp., $24.95

Frank The Voice James Kaplan Doubleday: 786 pp., $35

The Silent Land A Novel Doubleday: 263 pps., $23.95

Bob Dylan in America Sean Wilentz Doubleday: 390 pp., $28.95

Calico Joe A Novel John Grisham Doubleday: 198 pp., $24.95

Tell-All A Novel Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday: 192 pp., $24.95

The Confession A Novel John Grisham Doubleday: 422 pp., $28.95

Damned A Novel Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday: 248 pp., $24.95

Robopocalypse A Novel Daniel H. Wilson Doubleday: 349 pp., $25

The Silent Land A Novel Doubleday: 263 pps., $23.95

Venice: Pure City Peter Ackroyd Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: 416 pp., $37.50

Reading Jackie Her Autobiography in Books William Kuhn Nan A. Talese/Doubleday: 351 pp., $27.95 Jackie as Editor The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Greg Lawrence Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's: 320 pp., $25.99 Dear Mrs. Kennedy The World Shares Its Grief, Letters November 1963 Jay Mulvaney and Paul De Angelis St. Martin's: 224 pp., $19.99

Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America Eugene Robinson Doubleday: 255 pps., $27.95

A Week in December A Novel Sebastian Faulks Doubleday: 392 pp., $27.95

In his book "Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America," Washington Post columnist and MSNBC commentator Eugene Robinson has finally come up with a resonant term for the black urban poor: Abandoned. It's simultaneously blunt-force and poetic, accusatory and entirely objective, journalistic but also sympathetic to a crisis among this particular group of black folks that Robinson declares we no longer have the luxury to ignore (recession-racked America no longer has the luxury to do many things, so this feels timely)

The Confession A Novel John Grisham Doubleday: 422 pp., $28.95