The Night Before Valentine's Day by Natasha Wing, illustrated by Heidi Petach (Grosset & Dunlap; $3.49; ages 4-7). This slender paperback has its Cincinnati illustrator flying high. Why? It hit No. 6 on the New York Times' Children's Paperback Books Best Seller list this week. Children all over town prepare for, then celebrate, the holiday in a jaunty poem patterned after the “Night Before Christmas.” Look for the hearts that Ms. Petach has managed to insert into even the most unlikely of places.

        Bald in the Land of Big Hair by Joni Rodgers (HarperCollins; $24). The novelist details her fight against, and recovery from, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in this honest but humorous book. She tackles everything from body image to sex. Signing: 7 p.m. Thursday, Books & Co., 350 E. Stroop Road, Kettering (937) 298-6540.

        Ticket Home by James Michael Pratt (St. Martin's; $23.95). Mr. Pratt's new novel takes place in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and centers on twin brothers who fall out after falling in love with the same woman. One gets her, the other doesn't, and their relationship is forever altered. Signing: 7 p.m. Monday , Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Edwards and Madison roads, Norwood, 396-8960.

        The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (Putnam; $25.95). Monday is the release date for the first novel in five years from Ms. Tan (The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife). An ailing woman writes about her childhood in China as a method of remembering and documenting her past. At the same time, her daughter, a self-help book ghost writer, is struggling to understand her mother and her own troubled romance. Mark the calendar now for Ms. Tan's signing 7 p.m. March 6 at Books & Co., 350 E. Stroop Road, Kettering, (937) 298-6540.

        — Sara Pearce

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