Random House, $26. A neuroscientist frustrated in his research, and with a messy personal life, explores his own oppressive consciousness in Doctorow's cunning but serious novel. STARTING OVER: Stories, by Elizabeth Spencer. Liveright, $24.95. Nine stories from this extraordinary writer, age 92, are set in the South and concentrate on family bonds. ORFEO, by Richard Powers. Norton, $26.95. Powers puts us into the mind of his protagonist, an aging avant-garde composer who attempts to splice musical patterns into living cells. THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin. Metropolitan/Holt, $30. A historian's powerful reconstruction of the story of Africans who mutinied on the ship taking them to slavery. WHY WE TOOK THE CAR, by Wolfgang Herrndorf. Translated by Tim Mohr. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, $17.99; ages 14 to 17. Two German teenage boys take a road trip in this exuberant novel. THOMAS JEFFERSON: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything, written and illustrated by Maira Kalman. Nancy Paulsen, $17.99; ages 5 to 8. A breezy and offbeat life of the third president. RUTHERFORD B. WHO WAS HE?: Poems About Our Presidents, by Marilyn Singer. Illustrated by John Hendrix. Disney-Hyperion, $17.99; ages 6 to 8. Entertaining rhymes and pictures. FLYOVER LIVES: A Memoir, by Diane Johnson. Viking, $26.95. Johnson, who writes frequently about France, probes her Midwestern roots. An unhappy immigrant recalls a hopeful Soviet summer as a camp counselor.