Andrei Codrescu may be a refugee from communist Romania, but the NPR commentator has been talking and writing about New Orleans, his adopted hometown, for two decades. Now his “hometown” essays have been gathered together, along with a half-dozen post-Katrina observations, in “New Orleans, Mon Amour.” (Algonquin, $14)

Perhaps it’s a telling sign that there are no whales in Whale Harbor, the fictional Florida setting for N.M. Kelby’s dark, comic “Whale Season.” But there is a poker-playing serial killer who says he’sJesus, a cheerleader turned strip-club owner and other zany characters in this trip to and beyond Hiaasen country. (Random House, $23)

Satirist Max Barry (“Jennifer Government”) points his pen at corporate culture in his novel “Company.” At first, it’s a mystery what Seattle-based Zephyr Holdings, with a CEO no one’s ever seen, actually does – until new employee Stephen Jones reports to work and discovers he’s being trained to sell training materials to other Zephyr departments. (Doubleday, $22.95)

The newest biography of our 16th president, “Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power,” focuses mainly on Lincoln’s presidential campaign (no 30-second TV spots!) and his years in the White House. Author and Oxford University professor Richard Carwardine is the first Brit to be awarded the Lincoln Prize for 19th-century history. (Knopf, $27.50)

Russian writer Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate,”a novel about the Siegeof Stalingrad, was banned by the Soviet government, but smuggled to and published in the West. Now “A Writer at War,” a compilation of his dispatches and WWII-era notes on the Red Army’s Eastern Front, offers a frontline view of our allies in that war. Grossman, who died in 1964, offers matter-of-fact reporting on the horrors of Treblinka, letting the events speak for themselves. (Pantheon Books, $27.5)