Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy — a group of three meta-fictional detective novels published in the mid-eighties — are undisputed cult classics, but still haven’t gotten the widespread recognition they deserve. In the second installment, Ghosts, a private eye named Blue is contracted by someone named White to investigate a person called Black — and it gets weirder from there. Pick up this sturdy new hardcover and prepare to have your brain warped by one of the most brilliant mystery series ever penned.

Any classic rocker worth his salt has at least one “lost” recording circulating among his die-hard fans. For David Bowie, it’s a stunning Santa Monica performance from 36 years ago that documented his first U.S. tour — a heady time when his glitter-powered Ziggy Stardust persona was about to make Bowie’s name in the States. Widely bootlegged but only now officially available, Live is that rare “lost” album that deserves being sought out.

Science stars Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking squabbled for years over whether or not energy is destroyed in a black hole. At stake in this nerd war: our very understanding of the universe. Susskind’s new book describes the fundamental workings of black holes, drawing analogies to grade-school-level geometry, tidal pulls, and tadpoles—and it comes with handy illustrations, too. All to prove that, well, Hawking was wrong.

The restlessly creative (and constantly commissioned) composer Nico Muhly continues along his rigorously offbeat path on his second album. The title piece has mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer reciting a list of old phone numbers and addresses that she and Muhly wrote from memory; “Wonders” includes settings of a poem by King James I and an excerpt from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (circa 1356). Electronica, minimalism, and the Baroque all meet here.

Small aspiring authors thrill at the possibilities of this site, which lets writer-illustrator kids build, share, and win kudos for their picture books. And you know you'll say yes when she wants to order a printed copy. Tough-love tip: Pay for hardcover if she creates from scratch, paperback if she uses other kids’ uploaded illos or relies on Tikatok's story starters, which, like Alien Invasion, require details, endings, and art.

Just in time for this year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions comes this 40th-anniversary edition of Norman Mailer’s groundbreaking New Journalistic study of the 1968 nomination contests, with an introduction by — who else? — Frank Rich. Needless to say, the historical parallels between then and now are plenty and grim, and Mailer’s acid, disabused prose may as well have been written yesterday. Indeed, it’s lost none of its urgency. Read (or reread) his essays now.

The Romantics turns the unwritten rule that a friend's ex is off limits on its head. In the second novel by Galt Niederhoffer (A Taxonomy of Barnacles), the titular group — who earned the nickname for their various intra-clique entanglements — reunite in Maine for the very Waspy wedding of Lila and Tom (Laura's former roommate and boyfriend, respectively). The nine Yale grads simply can’t resist a snarky quip or a little behind-the-back gossip at each other's expense, and the result is, of course, highly entertaining.

The ugliest part of Queens — Willets Point, or “The Iron Triangle” — never looked so stunning as it does in Ramin Bahrani’s neo–New York–realist film. One of this city’s most assured and confident young directors, Bahrani takes a classic, street-romantic story — two young kids scrabbling to make a living in a junkyard of auto parts — and pulls astonishing performances from his debut actors. David Edelstein, for one, called it a “low-budget vérité triumph.”

In these semi-scripted video sketches, Cole Escola usually plays the funny guy (or gal—Bernadette Peters, say) to Jeffrey Self's “straight” man, wrapping up sketches with intimations of murder—he says, in true improv-class form, that “it ups the stakes.” Look for their latest bits: sitting on the phone with Brad and Angelina, waiting for the twins to be born, and singing The Facts of Life theme, and a hilarious sketch about not getting gay-married.

We’re not deeply knowledgeable about the contemporary Iraqi writing scene, but we’re willing, even eager, to learn about it, and this anthology is a fine primer. Its selections are various, including work by Christians, Jews, Muslims, and women, some currently abroad, and all introduced with helpful biographical sketches. But a hollowed-out sadness unites the stories—especially vis-à-vis the ravaged environments the characters tend to inhabit—that puts us in mind of the haunting, depopulated portraits of Giorgio de Chirico.