In The Good Fight, Sen. Harry Reid — the Senate majority leader — offers the lessons from his life, which began in a small Nevada mining town with brothels and no churches. If the book delivers as advertised, Reid as honest about his mistakes as his successes. Also new in nonfiction: The Zoo On the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank by Amelia Thomas, which centers on the Palestinian village situated closest to Israel; and Gandhi and Churchill, Arthur Herman’s book about the rivalry between the two men that he claims “destroyed an empire and forged our age.” Here’s an image of the cover, with a picture of Gandhi obviously taken after he had been on a hunger strike for some time:

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In The Crowd Sounds Happy, Nicholas Dawidoff — a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Fly Swatter — offers a coming of age story about growing up in a devastated New Haven community with a single mother and an absent father. One of the things that got him through – his beloved Boston Red Sox. Also in nonfiction is All Hands Down, in which authors Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler detail the May 1968 attack on the USS Scorpion.

In fiction, Donna Leon returns with another Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, The Girl of His Dreams. In this one, the Venice detective investigates a Catholic priest, but then gets involved with a murder investigation a gypsy girl’s body is found in a canal. And Andrew Sean Greer, much praised for The Confessions of Max Tivoli, has released The Story of a Marriage, which follows the tale of a young San Franciscan married in 1953 to her childhood sweetheart. The pair have an adopted on, but things get complicated when the husband’s former boss and lover returns and a romantic triangle forms.

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Worried about the future of the American health care system? Worry no more, friends. J. Patrick Rooney and Dan Perrin — two titans of the American healthcare industry — have just released America’s Health Care Crisis Solved: Money Saving Solutions, Coverage For Everyone. The pair argue that Health Savings Accounts are the way to go, and will eventually bring health care costs in line as people learn more about how they can save costs through healthy behavior.

In other nonfiction, Roger Lowenstein offers While America Aged, a book that predicts the next big health crisis is going to involve pension plans that already are bringing down companies like General Motors. Lowenstein is a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. And in Fixing Failed States, Ashraf Ghani (former employee of the World Bank and United Nations adviser) and Clare Lockhart (director of the Institute for State Effectiveness) argue that the world’s trouble spots can be fixed if the international community come together with national leaders and citizens to map out a practical framework for political and economic stability. Sounds ambitious, and I’m interested to find out how they plan to overcome challenges such as human greed for money and power. — something that drives a lot of the problems in failed states.

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Newt Gingrich, a man people seem to either love or hate, continues his book writing career with Days of Infamy, in which Gingrich and William Forstchen (Gingrich’s co-author on al his previous books) offer their second novel in a series set during World War II. In this one, they pick up where they left off in Pearl Harbor, this time concentrating on the Japanese side of the war.

Also new in fiction this week: Jamil Nasir’s The Houses of Time, a near-future science fiction novel about a man who experiences a lucid dream-life that begins to spill over into his real life. And in The Ancient Rain, author Domenic Stansberry offers her third story starring private investigator Dante Manusco, this one set in the aftermath of 9/11.

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New this week: “Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice From the Holocaust” is the lost diary of 14-year-old Rutka Laskier, referred to as the Polish Anne Frank. Cynthia Ozick is releasing Dictation, a new collection of four stories. The title story follows the secretaries of Henry James and Joseph Conrad and their quest for immortality. Also new is Iris Johansen’s Quicksand, her second thriller. In this one, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is on the trail of the man who may have kidnapped her daughter.

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Now here’s someone history as consigned to the dustbin. But in Shakespeare’s Wife, author Germaine Greer — a Shakespearean scholar and professor of literature — examines the life of Ann Shakespeare. She rejects most of what other scholars have said, arguing that the wife of the Bard has been misunderstood for centuries.

Also new this week is Alice Hoffman’s The Third Angel, in which the popular author — her Here On Earth was a Oprah’s Book Club selection – she focuses on the stories of three smart, strong women who all fall in love with the wrong men.

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Suzanne Finnamore, a journalist and author of Otherwise Engaged and The Zygote Chronicles, offers her first nonfiction work, and it is highly personal. In Split: A Memoir of Divorce, Finnamore writes about how her divorce affected her — from the anxiety of raising a son on her own to the pain of discovering her husband’s infidelity. But she intends the book to help those going through the same thing, with some does of reason and humor (like 10 Simple But Elegant Tips for Divorce, including “change the locks” and “keep everything beginning with consonants”.

Also new this month is River of Heaven from Lee Martin, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for The Bright Forever. In this novel, the central character is Sam Brady, a man who has kept a secret most of his life that is eating away at him. When a newspaper reporter begins to unravel some of the mystery, Brady and his brother must decide how far they will go to protect their secret.

And in nonfiction, Head Cases by Michael Paul Mason offers stories about the effects of brain injuries in various casers. Mason knows whereof he writes — from 2002 to 2007, he worked as a brain injury case manager for the Neurologic Rehabilitation Institute at Brookhaven Hospital, a job that required him to travel across the country to help survivors of severe traumatic brain injury find appropriate treatment.

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Richard Bausch — chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and all-around fabulous writer (and a Memphis boy) — offers a new, slender novel, Peace, which already is being called a “compelling meditation on the moral dimensions of war” (by Publishers Weekly). It’s about three American soldiers in the Italian countryside during the winter of 1944. The three are on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a mountain, and soon find themselves in a tense battle situation and under sniper fire. Expect a terse, thrilling book.

On the other end of the fiction spectrum, there’s Zapped, the latest Regan Reilly Mystery from author Carol Higgins Clark, daughter of Mary Higgins Clark and now a prolific and popular author all on her own. In this one, Jack Reilly is called in to investigate an art theft, while Regan Reilly must search for a disturbed young woman on the streets of Manhattan.

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Will the new world order be built around military might or who has natural resources. I’m thinking both, frankly, as those who have the military might will likely grab all the resources. At any rate, author Michael T. Klare will offer some food for thought along those lines in “Rising Powers Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.” He predicts a dangerous future in which the depletion of natural resources like oil, gas, uranium and copper will lead to violence and strange alliances.

And in another nonfiction book, Tony Horwitz offers “A Voyage Long and Strange,” in which he writes about an often overlooked era of history — the time between Columbus’ voyage in 1492 and the founding of Jamestown in 1600.

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In “Belong To Me,” author Marisa de los Santos (“Love Walked In” examines a common human trait: the fact we all have secrets. She explores this topic through the story of Cornelia Brown, an urbanite who decides to move into the leafy suburbs with her husband, Teo. While there, she meets her worst nightmare — Piper, an impossibly perfect woman living in an impossibly perfect home — and Lake, a mysterious but enjoyable new friend. De los Santos uses these three women to tell a story about love, secrets and suburban life (which, if you live in the suburbs, you know that is all we do out there).

In nonfiction, Rachel Sontag offers “House Rules,” a memoir about growing up with a tyrannical father. And in “Taking About Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive In A Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World,” author Nancy Carlsson-Paige offers tips about…well, read the subtitle, kids!

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Julia Navarro, whose “The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud” seemed a fairly decent historical mystery thriller to me, is back with “The Bible of Clay.” This time, she gives us “good girl” archaeologist Clara Tannenberg, who is in a race against evil forces (including her own grandfather) to find an ancient document which supposedly contains the story of Genesis as first told by Abraham. Complications of a religious and historical nature ensue, I’m sure. Navarro, by the way, is a Madrid, Spain-based journalist.

On the opposite end of the fiction spectrum, author of “The Reading Group,” is back with “Things I Want My Daughters to Know,” a novel about four sisters who find some joy and (most importantly) closure in wisdom left behind by their mother, who has died unexpectedly. In nonfiction, Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges offer up “Friends of Liberty, in which they introduce readers to Polish revolutionary Tadeusz Kosciuszko and his olderly, black New Englander Agrippa Hull. Both were influential friends of Thomas Jefferson.

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Three very good nonfiction titles are set for release this week.

Christian culture has been looked at from almost every possible angle, but Daniel Radish may have found a new one. In his “Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture,” Radish — who frequently contributes to The New Yorker and used to write for Spy magazine — writes about the 7 billion dollar Christian entertainment subculture. He covers everything from “witness wear” to Christian sex manuals and evangelical amusement parks. He promises to be “keen and compassionate” in his book.

In “McMafia,” British journalist Misha Glenny offers evidence that the greatest success story coming out of the great events of 1989 — fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of Russia, deregulation of international financial markets — has been the amazing success of global organized crime, from the mafia in Kazakhstan to marijuana dealers in British Columbia.

And for something a bit different, poet and philosopher Susan Griffin offers “Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy,” in which she builds on the idea that Americans are constantly waging an internal war between empirical tendencies (the need for safety and control) with our dedication to democracy (and the ideals of empathy and equality). The timing of the book seems particularly well done, given the debate at the national level during this election year.

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Cecilia Galante grew up in a religious commune, so she knows whereof she speaks in her first novel, “The Patron Saint of Butterflies.” In it, two girls grow up in a religious commune, one who loves it, the other who hates it. When they both are taken from the commune, they have to deal with the huge upheaval in their lives and their own feelings about faith and religion.

Also new in fiction is “Searching For Paradise in Parker, PA” by Kris Radish, which explores marriage through the eyes of both the man and the woman. Radish claims to be “writing about what real women are thinking,” so here’s your chance to find out.

And in nonfiction, John Arquilla explores the amount of spending — and its apparent lack of impact — on the military in “Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of The American Military.” Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., offers his thoughts on what kind of military is needed to combat terrorists.

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If you’re looking for reasons your relationship is going south, look no further than your checkbook. That’s the suggestion in “Financial Infidelity” by Bonnie Eaker Weil, a therapist who reportedly has a 98 percent success rate with couple who see her (that is to say, 98 percent of them stay together). In this book (she also wrote “Make Up Don’t Break Up” and “Adultery the Forgivable Sin” she explains that money issues are the No. 1 threat to a relationship. She gets into issues like “secret spending” and “revenge shopping,” as well a gambling and people who maintain secret bank accounts.  The book is available April 17.

In fiction, Anne Perry, who is wonderful, returns with “Buckingham Palace Gardens,” her latest in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. They are a husband and wife detective team living in Victorian England. In this one, Thomas is called into Buckingham Palace to investigate the murder of a prostitute apparently hired by one of the wealthy men staying at the palace.

Also new in fiction is Barrington Street Blues, the third novel from Anne Emery. Emery, who lives in Halifax, sets this one there, as police investigate the murders of a rich man and a poor man found dead of gunshot wounds outside a seedy bar.

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Christian Von Ditfurth is a popular writer of thrillers in Germany. Now, for the first time, one of his book is available in an English translation. “A Paragon of Virtue” is about a rich Hamburg resident who, over the years, has been stalked by someone who is killing off his wife and children. Ditfurth, a historian, often takes his stories back to some root in history, and in this case it’s the Nazi regime in Germany.

Also new this week is “Last Last Chance” by Fiona Maazel, her debut novel. It’s, um, crazy. How’s that for authoritative review? OK, you tell me — the plot involves a plague unleashed on Washington D.C., the daughter of the man accused of letting it loose, the mother of that same woman, who is a crackhead and “pagan theologian,” and throughout a theme of reincarnitation. Sweet. Reviewers are raving, mosting because Maazel — a young New Yorker who has an author photo like he’s ready to be the Next Big Thing — writes with verve and wit.

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