Best books … chosen by Rebecca Curtis

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. (Vintage, $14) Philip Marlowe, a down-and-out private dick with a shabby office and no love life, is hired to track down an old buddy who’s mysteriously disappeared. The novel’s got plenty of guns and alleys, but it’s also about male friendship. I defy anyone to read it and not want more Chandler.

The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel edited by Walter Morison (Norton, $17). This collection contains the famed “Red Cavalry” series, in which Babel writes about riding with a Russian Cossack regiment, as well as the “Childhood” stories, the last of which was written a few years before Babel was arrested by Stalin and shot by a firing squad. The “Childhood” stories follow a hot young Jewish guy as he slums around St. Petersburg, taking low-level newspaper jobs to get by. Many men write about hanging out with prostitutes, but Babel is the only one who nails it.

The Poison Plum by Les Roberts (Les Roberts, $25). A conspiracy novel—about the U.S. government, which in the 1950s really did get help from an ex-Nazi scientist in setting up a lab on an island off the coast of Connecticut to cultivate diseases as bio weapons. The problem? Many believe that ticks carrying Lyme disease hopped across the water, allowing Lyme—a potentially deadly ailment—to become the second-fastest-growing infectious disease in the country. The real story is frightening enough; Roberts’ novel makes it gripping.

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Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant (Pen­guin, $14). A son of peasants goes to 1880s Paris to make his mark in the publishing world. How? He uses his charms on ladies. A hilariously dark and surprisingly contemporary novel.

The War by Marguerite Duras (New Press, $15). This memoir is the tale of Duras’ work in the underground resistance in Nazi-occupied France. Duras, a journalist, writes beautifully. Her clear prose draws an unsparing portrait of betrayal.

Exit Ghost by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin, $26). In Roth’s most recent novel, a reclusive old writer comes to New York to try to get his prostate fixed so he won’t have to wear Depends. He runs into an ex-lover, gets embroiled in inheritance and publishing schemes, and tries (despite impotence) to seduce a married, 30-year-old hottie. No one skips metaphor and eschews sentimental blather like Roth.