Books

Cookbook awards season comes to a close with plenty of new volumes to recommend.

Time to stock your shelves with a new cookbook or two. The James Beard Foundation announced its winners May 3 for its annual competition. The International Association of Culinary Professionals also announced their winners recently. Note that there are several overlapping winners from both groups, a sure sign of a must-have for your library.

Best-sellers

Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores:

Best-sellers

Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores:

Fewer Facebook users take a liking to its new Home software

SAN FRANCISCO — It may be too soon to call Facebook Home a flop.

The Romance Reader: 'The Wyoming Cowboy'

"The Wyoming Cowboy" by Rebecca Winters; Harlequin ($5.50, paperback)

Noteworthy paperbacks

Words' ancient history

When researchers from England's University of Reading recently announced they had discovered 23 "ultraconserved" words - words, that is, which appear to have come down from an ancestral language 15,000 years old - I couldn't help thinking of John D'Agata and his 2010 book "About a Mountain."

Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta discuss the magic of 'Midnight's Children'

"Midnight's Children" is Salman Rushdie's sweeping, multigenerational story of the birth of independent India and the life of the big-nosed, big-hearted protagonist, Saleem Sinai.

'Girls of Atomic City' goes behind Manhattan Project scenes

"The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II" by Denise Kiernan; Touchstone Books ($27)

New book illuminates the pitfalls widows face when returning to the dating scene

I suspect my children will want to see me throw myself on my husband's funeral pyre, the better to tie up all the loose ends.