New & Noteworthy Paperbacks

MAKE ME WORK By Ralph Lombreglia. Penguin, $9.95. Working is exactly what the protagonists of these stories don't like to do. Usually male, they are emotional refugees from the 1960's, longing for an innocence they never had. The book's nine tales, often delving into these men's relationships with women, "are both funny and profound," Louis B. Jones said here last year.

A FEAST OF WORDS: The Triumph of Edith Wharton By Cynthia Griffin Wolff. Merloyd Lawrence/Addison-Wesley, $15. Originally published in 1977, this biography has been expanded and revised to incorporate new material that has since become available, including letters written by Edith Wharton to her lover, Morton Fullerton. Intended to be the "private story" of Wharton's life, it shows how writing helped free her from the conventions that confined women of her era -- and that she often criticized in her work. Our reviewer, Maureen Howard, found the book "immensely satisfying." She added, "It is impossible to single out one reading of a text in this gifted work as the most distinguished." OLD NEW YORK: Four Novellas (Scribner Paperback, $11) is a Wharton collection just restored to print. Set in the mid-1800's, it includes "The Old Maid," which concerns the consequences of a young woman's decision to allow the illegitimate child she bore in secrecy to be adopted by her best friend. This story "is the finest contribution to our fiction made by any author in many years," Lloyd Morris said in The New York Times in 1924. The scene shifts in WHARTON'S NEW ENGLAND: Seven Stories and "Ethan Frome," edited by Barbara A. White (Hardscrabble Classics/University Press of New England, $14.95), a compilation of pieces about Wharton's other home. The emotions she evokes are often as cold as the winters in Starkfield and Hillbridge, two of her fictional Massachusetts locales. THE HEART THAT BLEEDS: Latin America Now By Alma Guillermoprieto. Vintage, $13. These 13 essays explore the class inequalities and economic instability that have made Latin America's democracies tenuous -- and the entire region vulnerable to both drug lords and dictators. Last year our reviewer, Michael Reid, called the author's reporting "scrupulous and often courageous." IN THE CITIES AND JUNGLES OF BRAZIL, by Paul Rambali (Owl/Holt, $12.95), focuses on Latin America's largest nation, from its impoverished street children to its warring politicians. Reading the book "seems proof that the world is still big enough to deliver surprises," Rand Richards Cooper said here last year. THE RIFLES. Volume 6 of "Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes" By William T. Vollmann. Penguin, $11.95. The latest in the author's series of novels about North American history focuses on the plight of the Inuit. It draws parallels between the lives of two men: Adm. Sir John Franklin, who died trying to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840's, and a 31-year-old contemporary novelist who resembles Mr. Vollmann. Last year our reviewer, James McManus, said that we "see North America with more complex empathy for those peoples that have been, for the most part, supplanted." SIGNS OF LIFE: The Language and Meanings of DNA By Robert Pollack. Houghton Mifflin, $10.95. A professor of biology explains the inner workings of the cell, and how all human traits are transmitted. DNA, he says, is like an encyclopedia, in which genes are the sentences and their chemical bases the alphabet. The author "is what keeps science writers awake nights: a scientist who really writes," Ann Finkbeiner said here last year. A tiny but powerful enemy of human DNA is the focus of THE INVISIBLE INVADERS: Viruses and the Scientists Who Pursue Them, by Peter Radetsky (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $13.95). The author deals with the discovery of many of these infectious agents, from the rabies virus to H.I.V. In 1991 our reviewer, Harold S. Ginsberg, said he "has managed to provide engrossing reading for nonscientists and scientists alike." I KILLED HEMINGWAY By William McCranor Henderson. Picador USA, $12. A down-and-out writer and erstwhile literary scholar is sent by his publisher to meet an old man who claims that he killed Ernest Hemingway and made it look like suicide. The relationships between master and apprentice, father and son, and truth and fiction are all scrutinized in this story, which is "complex, amusing and palpably symbolic," Robert Grudin said here in 1993. DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI By Tsai Chin. St. Martin's, $10.95. A Chinese actress whose many stage and film roles have included Suzie Wong in the 1950's and 60's and Auntie Lindo in "The Joy Luck Club" in 1993 recounts her life. She emphasizes the betrayal and murder of her parents during the Cultural Revolution and what she feels is her own betrayal of her heritage early in her career. In 1990 our reviewer, Beth Duff Sanders, called this a "captivating account," in which the author "has skillfully interwoven . . . glamour and despair." TRACING IT HOME: A Chinese Family's Journey From Shanghai, by Lynn Pan (Kodansha, $14), combines biography and history, as a journalist relates her parents' and grandparents' experiences in China and the loss of the family fortune to the Communists. Her work is "living, unpretentious and moving," one critic said in 1993. THE CIRCUS OF THE EARTH AND THE AIR By Brooke Stevens. Harvest/Harcourt Brace, $12. This first novel compares life to a circus: both tend to include tightropes and disappearing acts. The plot revolves around a man looking for his wife, who volunteered for a circus performance and has literally vanished. Last year our reviewer, William Ferguson, said it "reads like a love letter to that most exotic of lives." LAUREL GRAEBER

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.