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FICTION

The Handmaid's Tale , by Margaret Atwood (Fawcett Crest, $4.95). It is sometime in the future. Fundamentalists have taken over the government and suspended the Constitution. The new rulers of the United States (now called the Republic of Gilead) now base the law on the belief that everything in the Bible is literally true. Too many couples in this brave new world are infertile, thus women who have proven themselves able to bear children are especially prized. Offred, the narrator of this novel, is a Handmaid, her only duties to become pregnant by the Commander in whose home she lives. But Offred can remember life as it was before, and though she tries to resign herself to her fate, she decides to tell her story, even if it is only to herself, as a way of witnessing.

Just a Shot Away , by James Grady (Bantam, $3.95). James Grady's Six Days of the Condor featured spies, the CIA and a hero on the run from strangers who were trying to kill him for reasons he didn't know. This new novel, set in Baltimore, is a little more down to earth. It begins with the murders of four people -- a Vietnamese woman, a businessman, an accountant, and a disc jockey -- in an undergound parking lot. Detective Sergeant Devlin Rourke, assigned to investigate the killings, can find little to tie together the four victims. Rourke does find a witness -- Rachel Dylan, a waitress in a seedy restaurant. But the killer is determined to eliminate Rachel, and so Devlin must -- in addition to tracking down the killer -- try to keep another murder from occurring.

Corregidora

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Eva's Man , by Gayl Jones (Beacon, $7.95 each). Harsh and unsentimental in its portrayal of the legacy of slavery and the oppression of black women, Gayl Jones' Corregidora was the subject of much criticism and discussion when it was first published in 1975. The novel is the story of Ursa Corregidora, a blues singer haunted by the memory of the slavemaster who was both her grandfather and her great-grandfather. Though her grandmother has impressed on her the need for "making generations" to bear witness, there is no respite from brutality for Corregidora; the novel opens with her made sterile after a fight with her husband. Eva's Man opens in the aftermath of another act of violence -- the narrator, Eva Medina Canada, has murdered her lover. Now, imprisoned, she remembers her life, and tries to come to terms with it.

NONFICTION

A Short History of African Art , by Werner Gillon (Penguin, $12.95). Werner Gillon's introduction to this volume ends with the following statement: "We cannot ignore the contribution of African art to twentieth-century art and aesthetics, any more than we can ignore African music in a history of jazz, or indeed, modern music." This profusely illustrated history begins with an introduction that considers influences such as Islam, the migrations of the Bantu and the European arrival on African visual arts. Gillon then goes on to consider the earliest African art forms yet found, and to examine, region by region, the art of Africa. The variety of art forms discussed here is astounding -- not merely stone and wooden sculpture, but pottery, embroidery, metal work and ceremonial weapons.

The Long March: The Untold Story , by Harrison E. Salisbury (McGraw-Hill, $7.95). In October 1934 the First Front Army of the Chinese Communists began a 6,000-mile retreat that was to last a year and pass through some of the the roughest terrain in the world -- the Chinese backcountry. Of the 84,000 who began the march, only 4,000 arrived in northern Shaanxi with Mao Zedong. Fifteen years later they were the masters of China, having conquered both Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and the Japanese. This is the perhaps somewhat romanticized story of the Long March, which, however, surely ranks in fame with Xenophon and the March of the Ten Thousand.

The Map Catalog , edited by Joel Makower (Vintage/Tilden, $14.95). Map lovers will be fascinated by this guide to every kind of map available from governmental and commercial sources. The major sections are land, sky and water maps -- which further break down into many, many subsections, e.g., aerial photographs, agricultural, antique, bicycle, census, city, topographical etc. Yet another section discusses map products (such as globes). Address and phone numbers of sources are provided. The introduction predicts that computers will revolutionize mapmaking by making digitally determined representations of elevations.

Signal Through the Flames: Mitch Snyder and America's Homeless , by Victoria Rader (Sheed & Ward, $10.95). Victoria Rader spent three years studying the Community for Creative Non-Violence, the Washington, D.C.-based advocates for the homeless whose best known spokesman is Mitch Snyder. In addition to conventional academic or journalistic research, she entered into the work of CCNV -- cruising the streets in freezing weather hoping to convince men and women to come to a shelter. The result is a powerful portrait of the workings of CCNV and its charismatic, sometimes even flamboyant leader, and his commitment to the poor.

The Flamingo's Smile

by Stephen Jay Gould (Norton, $8.95). The latest collection of Gould's essays on natural history -- with special emphasis on the peculiar adjustments made by evolving creatures -- leads off with a piece about the odd expression found on the face of the flamingo in one of Audubon's most memorable images. But the real beauty in this book is Gould's now-famous scientific explanation of why there are no more .400 hitters in baseball. The answer has to do with the tendency of systems to produce extremes in their infancies only to settle down into more confined boundaries as they mature. Gould has also added a postscript in which he approves of perhaps the most controversial strike ever called: the perfect-game-ending call in the last game of the 1956 World Series, when Don Larsen threw one that was plainly a little high and outside and umpire Babe Pinelli gave him the benefit of the doubt. Unexpected digressions like this make reading Gould on science as enjoyable as a field trip on a balmy day.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Echoes of Valor , edited by Karl Edward Wagner (Tor, $2.95). Mighty-thewed warriors, lissome princesses, unspeakably evil sorcerers, pillaging hordes, voluptuous slave girls, fiends from Hell -- here are all the familiar friends of heroic fantasy. Any reader, armed not with a sword but with a sense of fun (and a suspension of disbelief), will enjoy these three classic novellas: Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stranger," Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit" and Henry Kuttner's "Wet Magic." All are presented in definitive versions, with expert introductory essays by editor Wagner.

Speaker for the Dead , by Orson Scott Card (Tor, $3.95). In the highly-praised Ender's Game, 6-year-old Andrew "Ender" Wiggin thought he was playing computer war games. But the games were in earnest, and he was being trained to fight aliens that threatened earth. This continuation of Ender's story takes place some 3,000 years later, with Ender summoned to the planet of Lusitania to Speak the deaths of two scientists killed by an intelligent species living on the planet. Ender himself (responsible for the death of an entire race of intelligent beings -- the sole other intelligent race humans had found in the galaxy) is hated and feared by the colonists, who are torn between the need for conciliation and the desire for revenge. And Ender must solve the mystery of the deaths and the alien race before he can fulfill his duty of Speaking for the dead.

The Green Pearl , by Jack Vance (Berkley, $3.95). As always with Vance, the diction and descriptions are superb -- sentences as formal and courtly as a royal progress, action set in a society as complicated as our own. The blend makes for delicious storytelling, as if Voltaire had written tales of sword and sorcery. This historical fantasy, a sequel to Lyonesse, follows the machinations of two kingdoms as they vie for power in the Elder Isles, their tools political chicanery, the service of valiant and unscrupulous agents and the employment of spells and magic. Ignore the cover and just surrender to the hypnotic cadence of Vance's voice.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.