Persian Nights, Diane Johnson (Knopf). “Chloe Fowler...

Persian Nights, Diane Johnson (Knopf). “Chloe Fowler spends her Persian Nights in sensuality, but not before her experience deepens into mystery, exposing the underside of her whole existence.” A “taut, compelling novel” (Donne Raffat).

Staring at the Sun, Julian Barnes (Knopf). “A religious book disguised as a game of wit and detour.” In Jean Serjeant, 99 years old in the year 2021, “Barnes has given us a sketch for a kind of saint of the near future” (Richard Eder).

That Eye, the Sky, Tim Winton (Atheneum). “The great strength” in this novel, about leftover hippies from the ‘60s who live near the forest, “is in the way the grotesque contrasts and parallels in human life are spread out, examined and accepted” (Elizabeth Jolley).

The Genius of China: 5,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention, Robert Temple (Simon & Schuster). “An almost unbelievable story of inventions and scientific discoveries that were made in China hundreds of years before they were made in the West” (Lee Dembart).