FICTION: CHOKE, by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday)

Check out this unbelievable book by the extremely creative and original author of The Fight Club. The premise of this story sounds very funny at first glance - it is about a guy named Victor Mancini who comes up with this hysterical scheme to come up with the dough to take care of his elderly mother: he pretends to choking on food in a restaurant, and the person who saves him feels such a sense of accomplishment, that he or she sends him tokens of appreciation in the form of cash. A seemingly simple and harmless practical joke, yes, but multiply this by hundreds of times, and our man Victor can now enjoy quite a good living. Add in Victor's visits to drug dens, sex addict help groups, and on occasion, his Alzheimer's stricken & seriously delusional mother, and you have a frighteningly original and entertaining novel by an author who is getting better with each book.

NON-FICTION: JOHN ADAMS, a Biography by David McCullogh (Simon & Schuster)

So much has been written about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that you'd almost think that there was no President in between the two. Up until now, that is. In David McCullogh's definitive new biography, John Adams finally gets his due and even more: McCullogh portrays the 2nd President as a man who outshines and outclasses his very famous successor. Seriously underrated as a formidable influence in the forming of the United States, his life has been very meticulously researched and described in this wonderful book by McCullogh. In many ways, this effort, which is currently number one on The New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller list, tops even his previous Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Harry S. Truman. Like he did in the earlier work, McCullough makes his fondness of his subject known throughout this fascinating work.