THEIR DOGS CAME WITH THEM  by Helena María Viramontes (Atria Books). In the Sixties the building of the freeways cut off East Los Angeles from the rest of the city and tore apart many of its neighborhoods. The Chicano residents felt they were being invaded. Viramontes, a professor in Cornell's creative writing program and winner of the Luis Leal Award and the John Dos Passos Prize, depicts the lives of four strong archetypal Chicanas-- Turtle, Tranquilina, Ermila, and Ana--who respond to the chaos and violence that has been visited upon them and attempt to make sense of a world of "sorrow so wide, it was blinding."

AN ILLUMINATED LIFE  by Heidi Ardizzone '89 (W.W. Norton). Belle da Costa Greene lived in multiple social worlds. Born into Washington, D.C.'s African American elite, she invented a Portuguese grandmother and passed for white. In 1905, J. P.Morgan hired her to oversee his collection of rare books and manuscripts. Her work made her a celebrity in New York and the European art world, and the confidante of famous men, including art historian Bernard Berenson. In the course of her forty-year career, Belle transformed the Pierpont Morgan Library from a rich man's hobby into one of the foremost libraries in the world.

THE BALLOONIST  by Stephen Poleskie (Frederic C. Beil). Thaddeus S. C. Lowe is considered to be the father of the U.S. Air Force for his work as the chief aeronaut for the Union Army (and most shot-at man) during the Civil War. He straddled several disciplines, and was an inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur who also developed an innovative mountain railway and resort near Los Angeles. Poleskie likes to blur boundaries as well. The Cornell professor emeritus of art, who has staged aerial performance pieces in a biplane, uses his extensive flying experience to paint a sympathetic portrait of the aviation pioneer.

STYLE IS MATTER  by Leland de la Durantaye, PhD '02 (Cornell University Press). In an interview in Strong Opinions, Nabokov said, "I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel." In de la Durantaye, Nabokov has his reappraiser. The assistant professor of English and American literature at Harvard argues that Nabokov's style is "not merely smooth and elegant form, but a moral stance reflected in moral choice. Style was, for Nabokov, an idea of art where moral form and moral content were indissoluble."

PRETTY IS  by Elizabeth Holmes, MFA '87 (Dutton). Erin daydreams when she should be studying. Just as she is about to enter sixth grade in her small North Carolina town, her world crumbles. Her socially awkward older sister embarrasses her, and Erin is afraid that people will think she's like her. Snubbed by her former best friend, Erin exacts revenge, but her plan backfires and she must earn forgiveness from her family and friends. Holmes, the author of two collections of poetry, describes the social minefield of middle school in her first young adult novel.