Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

In this week's Salon, Laura Miller looks at an exquisite new novel about delusions and the weather. She writes, "Last December," explains the narrator of "Atmospheric Disturbances," Rivka Galchen's droll, exquisite first novel, "a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife." The speaker is Leo Liebenstein, a New York psychiatrist, and the wife is Rema, an Argentine considerably younger than her husband. Confronted with this ingenious impostor (she's so good he briefly contemplates the possibility that one of her feet might really be his wife's), Leo is initially nonplused. Soon, however, he formulates a plan: find the real Rema. His search spans continents, entails a possible career change and enlists the help of a patient who says he can manipulate the weather. Read the review here.

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden

Deirdre Madden's fiction is getting better and better. This seventh novel is, like its predecessor, Authenticity, shaped around an art form. With Authenticity, it was painting; this time it's acting. Molly Fox's profession is central to the theme of identity. The novel's three main characters are at odds with their background and upbringing, and each has managed to forge a more appropriate identity. Read the review here.

Outlaw Journalist by William McKeen

Most journalists seek to inform, says Joel Drucker in SF Gate. Consider the understated prose of John McPhee, imparting geologic data in the sensible manner of a college instructor. But Hunter S. Thompson wanted to transform, urgently seeking to create a candid and arresting prose style that would evoke the spirit of his times. If a bit too cozy with its subject, who is referred to by his first name, William McKeen's biography, "Outlaw Journalist," is an accessible look at Thompson's personal life and his eternal struggles to earn a living and leave a legacy. Read the review here.

The Others by David Guterson

Ben Naparstek writes in The Age that David Guterson's disturbed mother often warned him that people weren't who they appeared to be. Her paranoia about the identities of people contained a germ of truth, however. In his new novel, The Other, Guterson considers how people are shaped by their repressed alternate selves. The Pacific Northwest was the setting of his debut novel, Snow Falling on Cedars (1994),and after a couple of less successful novels, Guterson returns to his native landscape for The Other. Read the review here.