The leavers A novel

SOMEBODY WITH A LITTLE HAMMER: Essays, by Mary Gaitskill. (Vintage, $16.) In her first collection of nonfiction, Gaitskill, ever prescient, tackles everything from date rape to politics to her own creative process. Gaitskill borrows from Anton Chekhov for the collection's title; in a way, the essays serve to remind "that unhappy people exist, that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws." THE LEAVERS, by Lisa ??. (Algonquin, $15.95.) Ko's novel opens with the disappearance of Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant in the Bronx. Deming is adopted by a wellintentioned white family, but he is soon called back to China to investigate the mysteries of his life. This novel of migration is a story of belonging, home, loss and identity. THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION: A Literary History of the Beats, by Allen Ginsberg. Edited by Bill Morgan, with a foreword by Anne Waldman. (Grove, $20.) Between 1977 and 1994, Ginsberg gave 100 or so lectures about the cultural movement he helped lead. Morgan has condensed these addresses, organizing them around the figures Ginsberg discusses: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Ginsberg himself. THE BARROWFIELDS, by Phillip Lewis. (Hogarth, $16.) An Appalachian family's saga is at the center of this debut novel. Henry Aster grows up in North Carolina as the son of a brilliant, troubled man, but once he leaves for college his ties to home become ever weaker, and he breaks his promise to remain close to and protect his younger sister. Years later, Henry grapples with the specter of his father's alcoholism and other demons. The tale is ultimately one of a troubled's family redemption, and of the miracle of forgiveness. THE FIRST LOVE STORY: Adam, Eve, and Us, by Bruce Feiler. (Penguin, $17.) A reconsideration of the Genesis story attempts to scrub away its sexist taint, instead casting Eve as a curious and modern woman, and her relationship with Adam as a healthy, dynamic marriage. Our reviewer, Rich Cohen, called the book "the literary equivalent of breathing life into a figure made of clay." FAST: Poems, by Jorie Graham. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) Graham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, explores the erosion of the body, the environment and even the nation, in writing from a time of trauma: Her parents were dying, she was receiving cancer treatment and the country was in tumult. Our reviewer, Adam Fitzgerald, called the collection "an autopsy of self and nation in the face of overwhelming loss."