Here's what stood out in the new Harcourt catalog:

An Ocean of Air by Gabrielle Walker - A contributing editor to New Scientist magazine, Walker "peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets". She goes back to Renaissance times to tell the story of the Italian who discovered how heavy air is, and also includes an inventor who nearly destroyed the ozone latyer, a reclusive mathematical genius, a one-eyed barnstormer and an impoverished American farmer who "carved equations with his pitchfork on a barn door."

This sounds like Paul Collins essay writing to me - a collection around a theme that tells the stories of long forgotten but fascinating historical figures.

Sugarcane Academy by Michael Tisserand - I mentioned this title while going through the Harcourt Children's catalog and I'm still interested to see how this school was created and what happened to these kids who survived Katrina.

Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote - it seems like there have been a lot of dog books lately (or maybe I'm just noticing them all of a sudden), but this title about a man who brings home a dog from a camping trip sounds a bit different. The author "realized that Merle's native intelligence would diminish by living exclusively in the human world. He put a dog door in his house so Merle could live both outside and in." The book apparently includes a look at the latest animal behavior research and insights into the humans and dogs. I have no idea how it will read, but it does sound different.

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks - This sounds like a YA book to me - I'm not sure why it's listed as adult (and it's this sort of thing that always seems to confuse the YA/adult distinction). "Cadel Piggot has a genius IQ and a fascination with systems of all kinds. At seven, he was illegally hacking into computers. Now he's fourteen and studying for his World Domination degree, taking classes like embezzlement, misinformation, forgery and infilitration at the institute founded by criminal mastermind Dr. Phineas Dakkon."

Cadel apparently falls for Kay-Lee and starts to question the morality of what he's doing. It's described as "engrossing thriller with darkness and humour, freaks and geeks...". I don't know - this could be great if done well and it could be a sad 007 ripoff with an Oliver Twist twist if done badly. I'm riding the fence here, will decide soon if I should go with it or not.

In other literary news (sort of), O at Home takes a look at Maureen Dowd's Georgetown home, a place described by Aaron Sorkin as "a cross between the New York Public Library and the House of the Rising Sun". It sounds fun and a bit of surprise for Dowd.

Also, the NYTBR takes a look at Stephen King and seems to be puzzled by him. (Why or why?) To wit:

Stephen King has written more than 40 novels over the past 32 years, and his new one, ‘‘Lisey’s Story,’’ makes its debut at No. 1 on the fiction list, elbowing aside Mitch Albom. But until this week, King had never been on the cover of The Times Book Review unless he was writing about someone else’s work. This publication, like many, hasn’t always known what to make of King’s fiction. When his first novel, ‘‘Carrie,’’ was published in 1974, it was reviewed in, of all places, the Book Review’s crime column, which was then written by The Times’s classical music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, under the pseudonym Newgate Callendar. (He liked ‘‘Carrie.’’) King’s second novel, ‘‘ ’Salem’s Lot,’’ wasn’t reviewed here, and his third, ‘‘The Shining,’’ was reviewed (jeeringly) along with a gothic novel no one remembers any longer. King’s fourth novel, ‘‘The Stand’’ — my nostalgic favorite; I can’t bear to reread lest it not live up to my adolescent sense of its absolute grandeur — was dismissively reviewed in the Book Review in 1979, alongside a novel by F. Lee Bailey, in a column called ‘‘Genre Items.’’ The reviewer’s summary of its contents: ‘‘Pow! Splat! Bam!’’ Jeez

Can't we just call him a great American writer and be done with it? I did receive Lisey's Story for my birthday, btw and I will report back when I read it.