Sunday books: coverage for August 8, 2010.

A uniquely Southern California take on the African American experience uncovers deep insights.

The account of a young man imprisoned for protesting after the 2009 Iran election is not without flaws but cannot be ignored.

Dave Robicheaux treads familiar ground, but about those unexpected plot twists...

A British science writer presents intellectual history of the upending, in the 1920s, of classical, Newtonian physics.

‘The Grand Design’, ‘Once Before Time’ and ‘Chasing the Sun’

Memory — whether cultural or biological or personal — is the driving force of this suite of stories.

This thriller has murder and an ode to marijuana, but its effect is rarely mellow. Here is a wickedly funny if not entirely successful or consistent blast of a book.

Also: ‘Notes From the Night’ by Taylor Plimpton; ‘The Typist’ by Michael Knight

The literary tradition of detective duos continues in George Mann’s ‘The Osiris Ritual.’