Writers under surveillance The FBI files

KAFKAESQUE By Peter Kuper and Franz Kafka. (Norton, $19.95.) Kuper has been adapting Kafka's stories in graphic novel form since 1988. This book gathers 14 of them, including "In the Penal Colony" and "A Hunger Artist," placing the work in a contemporary setting so that Kafka, that master critic of the modern world, can comment on issues like civil rights and homelessness. stan smith By Stan Smith, foreword by Pharrell Williams. (Rizzoli, $55.) The Stan Smith tennis sneaker, named after the former world No. 1 tennis player Stan Smith, has maintained cult status since it was first introduced over four decades ago. This book celebrates the sneaker's reach, from mentions in rap lyrics to its appearance in Bollywood movies, the white horse By Mary McCartney. (Rizzoli, $55.) McCartney, a photographer who grew up in the Sussex countryside, focuses here on one white stallion, Alejandro, and the intimate relationship between horse and rider, writers under surveillance Edited by JPat Brown, B. C. D. Lipton and Michael Morisy. (MIT Press, paper, $24.95.) Obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the F.B.I. files in this collection monitor writers considered by the government to have been subversives. Many of the intellectual heavyweights are here, from Hannah Arendt to Susan Sontag to James Baldwin. Amy wiNEHOusE Photographs by Blake Wood, text by Nancy Jo Sales. (Taschen, $40.) Wood's images of the singer, especially of her relaxing on the beach at St. Fucia, show a human, private side to contrast the self-destructive public persona. "Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry's LITTLE BLUE truck begins, as so many of the great thrillers do, on a quiet country road, far from any sign of danger or menace, ft is fall. The truck is stopped at a stop sign, but no one is behind the wheel. And the truck has eyes. Suddenly there are toads. So many toads. One is winking at you. Or is it winking at the truck, which is moving now? It doesn't matter. There's no turning back now. Ominous signs abound. The wind picks up. A cow appears, and a pig and sheep. Is that a raccoon in the tree? Now it's starting to rain. The stage is set for a villain unlike any other in the canon of epic poems for children: a surly dump truck. Things get messy. There's comeuppance for the evil dump truck. An important lesson is learned. The 3-year-old, for whom the book was intended, demands to know, for the 700th time, the difference between a toad and a frog. And he wants you to read it again, for the 701st time." - JASON STALLMAN, EDITOR OF "THE WEEKLY," ON WHAT HE'S READING.