Complete book coverage for Sunday, June 21, 2009

What do they really do with all that time?

You don’t have to be a hippie to long to exist harmoniously with the planet.

Dragging the past into the present can have serious ramifications for memoirists -- and all who have crossed their paths.

Superheroes, step aside: The comic art can explore nuance and delicacy as this anthology of ‘nonfiction picto-essays’ demonstrates.

Lost in translations: an unusual collection of stories inspired by five unlikely authors.

A collection of his brilliant, funny and uncategorizable pieces is published for the first time under one cover.

Is this a book of poems about nature, or something else entirely?

Down Around Midnight A Memoir of Crash and Survival Robert Sabbag Viking: 216 pp., $25.95 “The things I remember,” writes Robert Sabbag of the night 28 years earlier when the plane he took to Cape Cod crashed in a forest outside Hyannis, “are among those things I continually have to remind myself to forget.”

In a reissue of his “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies,” we see how Banham challenged stereotypes with controversial claims about the city’s status.

Reissues include classic authors like Stephen Crane and Gay Talese; a study of the “American Nerd” and more.

Fiction weeks on list1.The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown: $27.99) A recently downsized reporter investigates a serial killer who uses his computer job to find his victims. 2 2.Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (Random House: $25) Two sisters from Shanghai encounter tragedy and heartbreak as they are sold into arranged marriages in 1930s Los Angeles. 2 3.Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown: $19.99) Bella must choose between her lover and a friend, between life and death. 48 4.Skin Trade by Laurell K.

Fiction 1.