• My Judy Garland Life.Susie Boyt. Bloomsbury. 310 pages. $25.

Many a celebrity biographer is a rabid fan hiding behind reams of research, smothering the reader in unprocessed minutiae. But Boyt -- novelist, great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and Judy Garland fan -- doesn't disguise her ardor for the leather-lunged one in a mass of production notes and concert dates. Instead, she has written an effusive exegesis of her own obsession, offering a fresh take on fandom and fantasy, longing and humiliation, loss and joy.

Boyt also gives close readings of various albums and TV appearances; interviews Lorna Luft, Liza Minnelli and Mickey Rooney; and recounts visits to Garland's birthplace in Grand Rapids, Minn. These anecdotes will likely ring poignant for the aficionado who mourns the criminally destroyed scenes from A Star Is Born. But those with only a passing interest in The Wizard of Oz, may feel a disconnect with Boyt's daydream about ironing Garland's pillowcases. Still, Boyt is funny and self-aware, and anyone who has ever fallen sway to a book or a movie, listened to a song on repeat or succumbed to an all-consuming passion for that which cannot be consumed, will certainly appreciate Boyt's examination and celebration of her own fervor.

Liz Brown reviewed this book for Newsday.

•  In Hanuman's Hands.Cheeni Rao. HarperOne. 399 pages. $25.99.

A descendant of generations of Brahmin priests, Rao chose a tragic path to enlightenment. ''Drugs gave me the power to hear the divine in the way my ancestors had,'' he writes. His powerful memoir describes in harrowing detail Rao's troubles with crack addiction and his spiritual awakening and recovery.

As a university student in Chicago, Rao embraced drugs, sex and crime. In one heartbreaking scene, his grandmother catches him doing cocaine in her bathroom: ''It's a new kind of snuff,'' he tells her. His family eventually abandons him. At the depths of his despair, while high on crack in an alley, Rao is visited by the spirit of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, who shows him the way toward a cure. Rao's encounter with the divine elicits a new respect for the Indian stories of his youth. Little wonder that Rao, who eventually graduated from the University of Chicago and the venerable Iowa Writers' Workshop, has become such a great storyteller in his own right.

Andrew Ervin reviewed this book for The Washington Post.

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