This Week in Calendar

Irene Wanner reviews “Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu” by Laurence Bergreen.

Jane Ciabattari reviews “Refresh, Refresh,” stories by Benjamin Percy.

Tim Rutten reviews “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House” by Valerie Plame Wilson.

The following reviews are scheduled:

Laurel Maury reviews “The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman” by Nancy Marie Brown.

Allen Barra reviews “I Live for This! Baseball’s Last True Believer” by Bill Plaschke with Tommy Lasorda.

On the Web

This week at latimes.com/books:

Sonja Bolle’s Word Play focuses on children’s books with a factual bent. Among these titles, to be sure, is a novel -- “George’s Secret Key to the Universe” by physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy -- but it’s a novel in which science plays a major role. Bolle also looks at books by Satoshi Kitamura, Alan Madison, Nadia Shivack, Keiko Tobe and Peter Sis. What’s important, she suggests, is how these books give kids a sense of the variety of the world.

Lists and blog: Look for expanded bestseller lists and our guide to local literary events, as well as Jacket Copy, latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy, our books and publishing information blog.