AHEAD OF THE CURVE Two Years at Harvard Business School By Philip Delves Broughton

BACARDI AND THE LONG FIGHT FOR CUBA The Biography of a Cause By Tom Gjelten

SUPREME COURTSHIP By Christopher Buckley

AMERICAN SAVIOR A Novel of Divine Politics By Roland Merullo

THE LOST SPY An American in Stalin's Secret Service By Andrew Meier

Satire, shiny visions of the future, superheroics, a parallel world and cartoon-family angst -- there's something for everyone in these graphic fictions.

With a fresh, wry voice, Meghan O'Rourke can make the quotidian sound strange, the same way Joseph Cornell could assemble a magical collage by pasting magazine clippings into out-of-context compositions. In "Descent," the speaker's own birth begins with a metaphoric shock:

Madam President is a clever picture book portrait of a little girl who fantasizes about what it would be like to be president.

7 P.M. Writer and professor Moustafa Bayoumi discusses and signs his new book, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America , at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-364-1919.

Those food alarmists, Paul Roberts and Raj Patel, cheered on by reviewer Judith Weinraub (Book World, Aug. 17), yearn for a return of victory gardens and lament the failure of our food system. They give me indigestion.

Rankings reflect sales for the week ended August 17, 2008.

FOR THE THRILL OF IT Leopold, Loeb and the Murder That Shocked Chicago By Simon Baatz