Fiction

1. “Knife of Dreams,” by Robert Jordan (Tor/Tom Doherty, $29.95). Book 11 of the Wheel of Time fantasy series.

2. “The Lincoln Lawyer,” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $26.95). A Los Angeles criminal defense attorney takes a case that proves more complicated and dangerous than he expected.

3. “Blue Smoke,” by Nora Roberts (Putnam, $25.95). An arson investigator whose family suffered a fire when she was a child is menaced by a sociopath.

4. “Consent to Kill,” by Vince Flynn (Atria, $25.95). A spy is the target of an international conspiracy spawned by the father of a terrorist he killed.

5. “A Wedding in December,” by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown, $25.95). Seven former schoolmates reunite for a wedding and remember the tragedy that drove them apart.

Nonfiction

1. “The World is Flat,” by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.50). A columnist for The New York Times analyzes 21st-century economics and foreign policy and presents an overview of globalization trends.

2. “The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion (Knopf, $23.95). The author’s attempts to come to terms with the death of her husband and the grave illness of their only daughter.

3. “My FBI,” by Louis J. Freeh with Howard Means (St. Martin’s, $25.95). The director of the FBI from 1993 to 2001 describes his career.

4. “The City of Falling Angels,” by John Berendt (Penguin, $25.95). The author of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” investigates a fire in Venice.

5. “Freakonomics,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Morrow, $25.95). A maverick scholar applies economic thinking to everything from sumo wrestlers who cheat to legalized abortion and the falling crime rate.

– The New York Times