Fiction

1. “Simple Genius,” by David Baldacci (Warner, $26.99). Two former Secret Service agents investigate a scientist’s murder while one battles her own demons.

2 “The Children of Hðrin,” by J. R. R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin, $26). In Middle-earth, an evil lord wants to destroy his rival’s children.

3. “The Woods,” by Harlan Coben (Dutton, $26.95). New evidence about a case of murder and disappearance at a summer camp 20 years earlier forces a county prosecutor to confront family secrets.

4. “The Good Husband of Zebra Drive,” by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $21.95). The eighth novel in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

5. “I Heard that Song Before,” by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster, $25.95). A woman marries a childhood acquaintance suspected of several murders.

Nonfiction

1. “Einstein,” by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, $32). A biography based on newly released personal letters.

2. “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?,” by Lee Iacocca (Scribner, $25). The former C.E.O. of Chrysler protests the lack of political and business leadership on issues like health care and energy policy.

3. “Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’,” by Paula Deen with Sherry Suib Cohen (Simon & Schuster, $25). A memoir with recipes from the Southern cooking impresario (Food Network shows, restaurants, cookbooks, magazine).

4. “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22). A former child soldier from Sierra Leone describes his drug-crazed killing spree and his return to humanity.

5. “The Black Swan,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House, $26.95). The role of the unexpected.

– The New York Times