The Kinetics (Music)

The Kinetiks’ new album, “Science is Magic,” is a bricoleur’s rock-and-roll manifesto. Recorded and mixed by Stuart Sullivan (of Meat Puppets fame), these eight tracks are a carnival-ride fusion of disco, ’80s pop-punk, darker ’90s themes. It’s a fun, synth-filled distortion fest that channels a Pixies-esque modulation between loud and soft, invitation and rejection. The melodies are as contagiously idiosyncratic as the music is straightforward — everything centers on Spencer Goertz-Giffen’s range of vivid vocal personas and penetrating electric guitar work.

The first track, “Planet Future,” begins with a call-to-arms dialogue between bassist Phil Gratz and drummer Jason Kniep. Like a giant apocalyptic machine coming to life, “Planet Future” builds quickly, climbing fifths until, at once, Goertz-Giffen’s heavily punctuated guitar pokes through, driving the song down — as if being dropped from a plane — and tangles all the way to earth with Rani Waugh’s soaring psychedelic synth lines.

— Jason Barrett-Fox

‘Nanny Returns’ (Books)

Seven years ago, the best-selling novel “The Nanny Diaries” introduced us to Nan Hutchinson, an intelligent and compassionate nanny. Through her eyes, readers watched wealthy New Yorkers focus on their social lives and neglect the emotional needs of their children — including little Grayer, the son of Nan’s employers, Mr. and Mrs. X.

Now (in fictional story time) it’s 2008, a decade later. Nan is 33, married and building a business as a consultant. Her nanny days would seem to be long behind her. But fate sweeps her back into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. X and to Grayer, now a surly teenager who follows family tradition by treating her like dirt.

It gets worse, as we meet the parents at the pricey private school Nan comes to work for. And even Nan’s girlhood friends from her private-school past, now well-off young mothers, behave no better. To the grown-ups in this world, children seem to be little more than annoyances. And don’t get them started on nannies.

Authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus tell a fast-moving tale, full of callous and over-the-top behavior by their wealthy targets. It’s fun to read as long as you don’t think about what this world does to the kids and spouses. (Yes, it’s fiction, but it can still make your blood boil.)

In any case, if you don’t happen to be rich, it sure lets you feel morally superior.

‘Too Much Money’ (Books)

Dominick Dunne, the author, television personality and Vanity Fair reporter who covered the trials of Claus von Bulow, O.J. Simpson, William Kennedy Smith and Phil Spector, returns to the Manhattan playgrounds of the staggeringly wealthy in his new — and last — novel, “Too Much Money,” which was in the last stages of editing when he died in August at 83.

Here we are reacquainted with the now grayer — yet apparently no more wiser or less status-obsessed — denizens of his 1988 book, “People Like Us.” That means the return of the nouveau riche strivers Ruby and Elias Renthal, ladies-who-do-nothing-but-lunch like Lil Altemus and, of course, Gus Bailey, Dunne’s fictional alter ego journalist.

The book opens with Gus in a miserable place on all fronts: He has cancer, he’s being sued for slander by a congressman over the disappearance of a young Washington intern, and a book he is writing about the mysterious arson death of a billionaire has the widow upset and vengeful.

As Gus navigates his various troubles, other plot lines emerge: Elias Renthal, whom we last saw serving time for insider trading, is released from prison and scheming to regain his perch in New York society. (When his wife is told he must inform the parole board whenever he takes out his private jet, Ruby is horrified: “Does that mean we have to act humble? Dear God, wait until you hear about the party I’m planning to give.”)

After a slow windup, all the plots come to a fast, satisfying conclusion.