by Andrew Ervin, Juliet Fletcher, Frank Halperin, Brian Howard, Elisa Ludwig, Andrew Milner and Alex Richmond

The Leto Bundle

Marina Warner has so dominated non-fiction dissertation on myth and cultural iconography -- from Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, on myth in visual art, to No Go the Bogeyman, revisiting notions that perennially have terrified children -- that her fourth work of fiction engages curiously easily. A young mother, Leto, the novel's axis, flies from the scorn of her ancient community after having conceived twins from a god. As we reach Albion, a present-day parallel, her path, like a trident or triptych, branches in three directions: a museum's ad campaign features her hypnotic, computer-composite face; historians open a newly acquired sarcophagus to find only a bundle of handwritten pages alluding to a mysterious female sect; three wanderers, rescued by aid workers from a war-torn city, find their way to Albion.

While the tale itself is an intertextual haven, alluding to William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Virginia Woolf's Orlando and reflecting a thousand shards of folklore and archetype, the novel is a triumph of controlled storytelling: Warner allows the reader to become conscious of acres of time passing even as Leto's evolution blooms from minute to minute.

My Big Life (in advertising)

Mary Wells Lawrence uses "aw, shucks" and lioness-aggression tactics in telling her story, which is personal and about the shaping of modern advertising as we know it today. Though being a '60s-era single mom and often the only woman in an industry (still) dominated by men is noteworthy, that's not the main thrust of this book. Though her ambition and unshakable work ethic are admirable for either gender, Lawrence is too caught up in the big picture and in love with the nuances of advertising to be only a feminist icon. Through five decades and several agencies, she wrote simple, perfect campaigns like "plop, plop, fizz, fizz," telling consumers to use two Alka-Seltzer tablets instead of one. She created copy to reinvent commercial airlines and automotive manufacturers. She toyed with tactics, daring to put two products side by side and compare them before anyone else did. And she captured an image of France (a man riding a bicycle) for their tourism campaign, and got Broadway actors to appear in commercials saying they loved New York. Many of her tricks of the trade are still being used today, but like all the great ones, Lawrence is a true original.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

By Lemony Snicket, Illustrated by Brett Helquist HarperCollins, $10.99 per book

Snicket's short, gloomy tales of the Baudelaire orphans -- Violet, Klaus and Sunny (the latter characters named for the von Bulows) -- are children's books (nine volumes so far) minus happy endings and neatly packaged lessons. In Book the First, The Bad Beginning, Snicket (actually Daniel Handler, occasional accordionist for The Magnetic Fields and author of The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth) introduces the newly orphaned trio, sent to live with distant relative Count Olaf. The Count, of course, spends the entire series dreaming up dastardly schemes to gain control of the orphans' fortune. The eldest, Violet the inventor, the middle child, Klaus the reader, and the baby, Sunny the biter, use their particular talents to finagle out of each predicament, but just long enough to give Olaf a chance to regroup. Snicket employs the "Monster at the End of This Book" method of plot advancement: If you expect things to get better, he warns often, don't read on, leaving us with little choice but to continue. With a nod to Edward Gorey (think The Gashlycrumb Tinies), Snicket introduces his younger readers to the concept that life can be one kick in the head after another, and that, if you look at it just right, an unhappy ending can be the next unhappy beginning.

Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous

At long last, here it is: the new living testament of Bill Zehme's inspired genius, an immaculate collection of showbiz portraits that demonstrates why he is the reigning lord of celebrity profilers. As far as popcult journalism is concerned, Zehme has indeed proven over two decades that it is his world, while other scribes just anemically revolve around it, hacking up publicist-stroking drivel. Blessed with a cerebral irreverence and a gift for orchestrating his pointed observations into a symphony of inimitable reportage, he is an unparallelled chronicler of the zeitgeist whose fortitude is legendary. Whether it's incorporating Warren Beatty's precisely timed pauses to his questions or getting naked with Sharon Stone (at her behest), the diligence that distinguishes his work helps to explain his singular reputation.

Intimate Strangers is a flawless portfolio of Zehme's greatest hits, wherein he assumes the role of biographical ringmaster to a freewheeling circus of the stars. Distilled from such publications as Spy, Success, Playboy, Rolling Stone and Esquire (where he is currently a contributing editor), it is an altogether engaging gallery of his numerous mini-masterpieces. Among the highlights that await the reader are revealing character studies of Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, Tom Hanks, Howard Stern, Hugh Hefner and David Copperfield, to name but a few; innovative takes on Seinfeld and The Simpsons; quirky and consistently fascinating interviews with Beatty, Madonna, Eddie Murphy and David Letterman; and a brilliant appreciation of Frank Sinatra that foreshadowed Zehme's 1997 bestseller, The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'.

In his foreword, Cameron Crowe refers to Zehme's self-description as a "humorous impressionist of popular culture." Yes, that about sums it up, but one could also conjure the conceptual phrase from a Steve Martin bit of yore as an even more apt commentary on the author: "creativity in action."

A Great, Silly Grin: The British Satire Boom of the 1960s

In an outstanding year for comedy-related books, the best one is this literate look back at the origins of much of today's political satire. A Great, Silly Grin illustrates how the hit 1960 Beyond the Fringe revue influenced British humor (Private Eye magazine, The Establishment nightclub, That Was the Week That Was on the telly) and, for a brief moment, made political satire a genuine artistic movement. This burst of creativity inspired Monty Python's Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live, but Carpenter concludes that '60s satire has also contributed to widespread public cynicism. "In those days," says surviving satirist David Nobbs, "it was a revelation that our lords and masters were capable of folly on a grand scale. Now it would be a revelation if we found that any of them weren't." Are you listening, Jon Stewart?

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

As the War on Terrorism mounted and an equally abstract patriotism settled in on 2002, criticizing the government became tantamount to saying the attacks on the World Trade Center were deserved. Then, along came Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, which boiled over with ideas most liberals were afraid to say outside their cruelty-free living rooms: The 2000 election was the result of an inept electoral system and a cultural distrust of intelligence. Civic participation in a democracy means being skeptical of the government. Vowell's relevant, entertaining essays remind us that free speech is a nation-given right and, more so, an obligation.

The Egg Code

With all due respect to the Estate of William Gaddis, beneficiaries of the posthumous publication of Agape Agape, it would be wholly irresponsible to allow this best-of-the-year roundup to go to print without a shout-out to Mike Heppner and his debut novel, The Egg Code. Why? Because it's the best book of the year. No shit. Set in the dark ages before the advent of the World Wide Web, several story lines combine to elucidate the behind-the-scenes battles waged between the competing government and private sectors attempting to rise up and lead the pending information revolution. Heppner is a bold, uncompromising author capable of negotiating the literary chasm between technological mumbo-jumbo and real emotional depth. In many ways, The Egg Code out-Gaddises Gaddis.