SARGE: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver, by Scott Stossel (Other Press, $19.95.) Idealistic and indefatigable, R. Sargent Shriver (1915-2011) created, among other organizations, the Peace Corps, Head Start and, with his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the Special Olympics. And he did so while steering a difficult course between independence and loyalty to the Kennedys. Stossel's authorized biography marches through the 20th century - the Depression, World War II, the assassination of John F. Kennedy - tracing Shriver's maturation from a young naval officer to a political and social figure who touched the lives of millions. A legacy of mysticism haunts three generations in Holman's seductively eerie novel, which moves back in forth in time, from the Appalachian Mountains in 1940s Virginia to present-day New York. A SINGULAR WOMAN: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother, by Janny Scott (Riverhead, $16.) Scott, a reporter for The New York Times from 1994 to 2008, travels from Kansas to Hawaii to Indonesia in an effort to account for the disparate forces that shaped Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-95) and, by extension, her son. Through interviews with Dunham's relatives, friends and colleagues, "Scott pursues a more perplexing and elusive figure than the one Obama pieced together in his own books," Eliza Griswold wrote here. PARADE'S END, by Ford Madox Ford (Vintage Classics, $19.) First published as four separate novels between 1924 and 1928 ("Some Do Not . . . ," "No More Parades," "A Man Could Stand Up - " and "The Last Post"), Ford's tetralogy revolves around a Yorkshire gentleman and explores the world of the English ruling class as it descends into the chaos of World War I. Culled from Ross's work as The New Yorker's music critic, this nimble collection examines classical work, historical and contemporary, as well as rock. "Ross veers effortlessly from Mozart to Radiohead, from Kurt Cobain to Brahms," Alan Light wrote in the Book Review. EMILY, ALONE, by Stewart O'Nan (Penguin, $15.) Eighty-year-old Emily Maxwell, the matriarch of O'Nan's 2002 novel "Wish You Were Here," is widowed and preoccupied with the inexorable approach of her own death. But when her sister-in-law (and social lifeline) suffers what looks like a stroke, Emily dusts off her husband's car and finds herself open to the world again. Our reviewer, Joanna Smith Rakoff, called "Emily, Alone" "O'Nan's best novel yet." REALITY IS BROKEN: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal (Penguin, $16.) McGonigal, a game designer, sees a thirst for community in the rise of online multiplayer games, and suggests ways the power of virtual games can be leveraged to address real-world concerns - from depression to climate change. Translated by Ann Long (Picador/Sarah Crichton, $16.) In this thriller a hypnotist comes out of professional exile to help catch a killer who has wiped out three members of a family, leaving a traumatized 15-year-old boy as the lone surviving witness. Kepler is the pen name of a Swedish husband-and-wife writing team.