RECENT & READABLE

Awakening, by Jean-Baptiste Rossi. Attraction and love between an adolescent boy and a nun; a remarkable first novel by a French teen-ager (TIME, Feb. 4).

Nell Gwyn: Royal Mistress, by John H. Wilson. A brisk and scholarly biography of Charles II's famous doxy (TIME, Feb. 4).

Leonardo da Vinci, by Antonina Vallentin. Excellent biography of one of the most gifted men who ever lived; first published in the '30s and reissued now for the 500th anniversary of his birth (TIME, Jan. 28).

The Confident Years (1885-1915), by Van Wyck Brooks. Fifth and concluding volume of Critic Brooks's guided tour of U.S. literature (TIME, Jan. 7).

Barabbas, by Par Lagerkvist. The story of a reprieved cutthroat who was haunted to the end by the memory of Golgotha; a fine novel by the 1951 Nobel Prizewinner (TIME, Dec. 3).

Closing the Ring. Volume V of Winston Churchill's incomparable history of World War II (TIME, Nov. 26).

The Conformist, by Alberto Moravia. Italy's best novelist unravels the character of a Fascist (TIME, Nov. 12).

LIFE'S Picture History of Western Man. A vividly illustrated panorama of a thousand years of Western civilization (TIME, Nov. 5).

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