AMERICA's most famous literary wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, was an accomplished author in her own right, as confirmed by The Collected Writings (Abacus $136). The book opens with her only completed novel Save Me The Waltz and includes semi-autobiographical short stories, articles and a revealing selection of letters to Scott.
No matter how many wildlife books you've read or documentaries you've seen, it is impossible not to be impressed by Jonathan Scott's volume Kingdom of Lions (Kyle Cathie $425). A former winner of the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the year, Mr Scott's pictures of the animals of Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve are breathtaking, capturing them at play, hunting, sleeping and ''child-minding''.
The accompanying text combines facts about the animals with the struggle of the Masai pastoralists to preserve their culture and the right to their land.
Neil Jordan's films include Mona Lisa and The Crying Game, his novels Night in Tunisia and The Dream of a Beast (both Vintage $72). They were first published in 1976 and 1983 respectively, and both are now available again. A good opportunity to follow his writing progress.
Here's an essential work for fans of the Marx Brothers who still miss some of those one-liners despite watching the movies again and again. Now the scripts to Monkey Business, Duck Soup and A Day at the Races are available in one volume entitled simply The Marx Brothers (Faber $153).
The story of a real-life all-American hero, General Norman Schwarzkopf, is told in Peter Petrie's bestseller It Doesn't Take a Hero (Bantam $82). The title comes from a TV interview in which Desert Storm leader ''Stormin' Norman'' said: ''It doesn't takea hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men going into battle.'' Instructions From the Centre (Sceptre $153) comprises excerpts from top secret documents sent from the KGB headquarters in Moscow to London during the decade culminating in the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev. KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was the man sending the classified material right up to his escape from the Soviet Union in 1985.
