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For everyone who resolved to read more books this year — hands, please? — here are 10 intriguing titles to get you started. All are in bookstores and libraries now or are coming soon.

Next month, look here for 10 new titles.

(ENLARGE)
Pulitzer Prize winner Norman Mailer is back with a story about the lives of Hitler's descendants.
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No excuses.

• "The Castle in the Forest" by Norman Mailer (Random House, $27.95). In his first novel in 10 years, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner imagines the lives of three generations of the family of Adolf Hitler.

• "Killing Johnny Fry" by Walter Mosley (Bloomsbury, $23.95). The master of the literary crime novel continues to re-invent himself with this sexually explicit story of a man who seeks revenge against a cheating girlfriend in, um, unsettling ways.

• "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature" by Linda Lear (St. Martin's Press, $30). The biographer of environmentalist Rachel Carson relates the life story of the author and illustrator of classic children's books and creator of Peter Rabbit.

• "The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival" by Stanley N. Alpert (Putnam, $24.95). A former federal prosecutor tells in gripping detail how he was kidnapped from a New York sidewalk in 1998 and how he lived to tell about it.

• "Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy" by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books, $26). After capturing the collective despair of the working class in "Nickel and Dimed" and "Bait and Switch," journalist Ehrenreich goes to the other extreme.

• "My Name Is Iran: A Memoir" by Davar Ardalan (Henry Holt, $24). A senior producer with NPR News tells the story of three generations of women torn between two homelands: America and Iran.

• "Alternadad: The True Story of One Family's Struggle to Raise a Cool Kid in America" by Neal Pollack (Pantheon, $23.95). A semi-reformed party-loving hipster dad gives in to the goofiest, most all-consuming love of all — for his son, Elijah.

• "The Terror" by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown & Co., $25.99). In May 1845, John Franklin and a crew of 129 men set out to chart the mysterious Northwest Passage; two months later, they disappeared forever. This doorstopper of a novel — 769 pages — picks up where history left off.

• "Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America's Favorite Addiction" by Jake Halpern (Houghton Mifflin, $23). After reporting on Hollywood for NPR's "All Things Considered" for years, Halpern shares his insights on our culture's obsession with celebrity.

• "On the Wealth of Nations" by P.J. O'Rourke (Atlantic Monthly Press, $21.95). Speaking of celebrity obsession —only humorist O'Rourke, author of "Parliament of Whores" and "Give War a Chance," could use Paris Hilton to explain free-market philosopher Adam Smith.