Spring books: Complete coverage for April 25, 2010

Dennis Lehane, David Mamet and many others learned a lesson from George V. Higgins’ novel “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.”

Their novels are very different, yet they draw from their experiences in a city that is constantly in transition.

These stories are marvels, in which a character’s predicament is colored by Eisenberg’s engagement with the sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking existential dilemma.

A French aristocrat and his English sidekick travel throughout the 19th century United States.

The U.S. poet laureate proves she is a classic American poet with her clarity and brevity.

A bestselling author reconstructs an assassin’s life and the events leading up to the killing of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

An educated, middle-class white woman ends up in federal prison for a drug offense.

Is it a wall or a barrier? Is it a massacre or genocide? Both authors look at language as a weapon of conflict and after-conflict.

A girl who is pressed into marriage before her teens, a young American who goes to live in a harem and a journalist who is imprisoned as a spy help illuminate the challenges.

Fiction 1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ($14.95) 2.