Fiction

1. “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $25.95). A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.

2. “Double Cross,” by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $27.99). Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, a police detective, confront a Washington killer.

3. “The Shooters,” by W. E. B. Griffin (Putnam, $26.95). An Army officer on the trail of a missing drug enforcement agent is undermined by the military and intelligence communities.

4. “World Without End,” by Ken Follett (Dutton, $35). Love and intrigue in Kingsbridge, the medieval English cathedral town at the center of Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth.”

5. “T is for Trespass,” by Sue Grafton (Putnam, $26.95). Kinsey Millhone must contend with a woman who has stolen a nurse’s identity in order to take advantage of Kinsey’s neighbor.

Nonfiction

1. “In Defense of Food,” by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, $21.95). A manifesto urges us to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

2. “I Am America (And So Can You),” by Stephen Colbert, Richard Dahm, Paul Dinello and Allison Silverman (Grand Central, $26.99). The wit and wisdom of the mock pundit of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”

3. “Born Standing Up,” by Steve Martin (Scribner, $25). Martin recalls his years as a stand-up comedian, from the early 1960s to 1981.

4. “An Inconvenient Book,” by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe (Threshold Editions, $26). The conservative TV and talk-radio host offers his solutions to problems including global warming, poverty and political correctness.

5. “BOOM!,” by Tom Brokaw (Random House, $28.95). The retired news anchor recalls and assesses the 1960s.