LIFE ITSELF: A Memoir, by Roger Ebert. Grand Central, $15.99. In this kaleidoscopic personal history, Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-­winning film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times - and for 23 years the dueling co-host of ­"Siskel & Ebert" - ambles through his working-class childhood in Illinois; his early days in Chicago's hard-boiled newspaper world; memorable encounters with actors and directors; and his devastating battle with cancer. HEFT, by Liz Moore. Norton, $15.95. Arthur Opp is a morbidly obese recluse who hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Kel Keller is the teenage son of Arthur's old flame, a fish out of water with his own struggles. Moore's novel tells the stories of these two thoughtful souls, adrift in life but slowly being drawn to each other. CATHERINE THE GREAT: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie. Random House, $20. Massie has been chronicling Russian royalty for much of the last 50 years; his previous books include "Nicholas and Alexandra" (1967) and the Pulitzer-winning "Peter the Great" (1980). Here he presents a sweeping narrative of the minor German princess (1729-96) whose ambition, wiles, luck and strategic marriage helped her become Empress of All the Russias. PURE, by Julianna Baggott. Grand Central, $9.99. Children fight for the planet's redemption in Baggott's postapocalyptic adventure - the first book of a projected trilogy - in which a series of detonations has all but destroyed the world. A handpicked few were given refuge in the Dome; those left outside were not so fortunate, fused by the intensity of the explosions with animals, with objects, with the earth itself. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED: A Portrait of the New India, by Siddhartha Deb. Faber & Faber, $15. "A country that has seen a sudden infusion of wealth and a rapid disengagement with its past tends to throw up people who are traveling very quickly and seem to have no clear antecedents," Deb writes of the restless subjects in this sensitive profile: from the Gatsby-like entrepreneurs who represent "the new India" to the itinerant laborers toiling as desperately as ever. WE OTHERS: New and Selected Stories, by Steven Millhauser. Vintage Contemporaries, $16. Written over a span of three decades, from Millhauser's earliest work to the richly detailed title story, these are tales of Old World phantoms, all-American menace and childhood wonders. In the Book Review, Jonathan Lethem called this collection "a career capstone on behalf of a writer good enough to receive the honor." Grove, $15. A Vietnam veteran and the author of the war novel "Matterhorn" (2010), Marlantes brings a forceful candor to this memoir-based meditation, which devotes chapters to a constellation of related ideas, including killing, guilt, lying, loyalty, heroism and homecoming. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, $14.95. In the fifth installment in this Bangkok-based crime series, someone is doing a roaring trade in human organs, and it falls to Burdett's Buddhist cop, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, to put an end to it.