An executive with Google says the company will launch a new platform next year that lets readers buy books that can be accessed from anywhere, be it a personal computer, cell phone or other platform.

NONFICTION It’s a children’s story that sprang from a child’s fertile imagination, a beloved book made into what some critics deem the best movie of all time. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has been called the first American fairy tale, so a certain amount of cognitive dissonance surfaces when the reader learns that “The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum” was written by a Briton, Rebecca Loncraine.

MYSTERIES
Finding a fresh premise for a serial-killer tale must be the hardest part of writing thriller mysteries. But Linda Castillo has come up with a story of striking originality in Sworn to Silence (321 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.95). When she was 14, Kate Burkholder was living with her Amish family in northeastern Ohio when she was raped. The attack came after four gruesome sex murders and left Kate traumatized. The horrific assault played a major role in her decision to leave the Amish life four years later for Columbus, where she became a patrol officer and eventually a homicide detective.

Summer’s here, and the time is right for reading by the sea. And if your tastes in holidays and fiction run together, each of these mysteries is set at oceanside or near it — in England, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California.

On her last day at Chimborazo Elementary School, Johnequea Whitaker cracked a big, wide smile. The graduating fifth-grader was getting what she wanted, and she was getting it delivered by a couple of global superstars. A little after 9 a.m.—just a few minutes after Johnequea wrapped up her first TV interview—tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf strolled into the school in Richmond’s East End.

NONFICTION In “The Imperial Presidency” (published in 1973, during the Watergate scandal), Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. warned that the American presidency had gained too much power relative to Congress in the 20th century. His reasoning was straightforward. The 535-member Congress was notoriously slow to come to an agreement on just about anything. But the president—the decider, as our 43rd president memorably described himself—could respond quickly to the seemingly constant series of foreign policy crises that defined the American Century.

FICTION
Late 17th-century America, as depicted in Toni Morrison’s magnificent new novel, “A Mercy,“ is a volatile wilderness, a land whose destiny is still in the making. As one character remarks in one of the novel’s many beautiful passages: “Remembering how the curate described what existed before Creation, Scully saw dark matter out there, thick, unknowable, aching to be made into a world.“

NONFICTION
On April 4, 1865, just days before the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln visited Richmond, the fallen Confederate capital. As Lincoln rested for a moment before making his way through the war-ravaged city, an elderly male slave “wearing a few rags” kneeled before him, clasped the president’s hands and said, “May the good Lord bless and keep you safe, Master President Lincoln.“

Interest in the Civil War seems never to wane and may even be increasing as the conflict’s sesquicentennial approaches in 2011. And more and more books are appearing that study specific aspects of the war rather than its overall history. One such is Peter Cozzens’ Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign (640 pages, University of North Carolina Press, $35). Cozzens, the author or editor of nine books about the war, presents an account balanced between the Union and Confederate forces; previous books about Jackson’s mostly successful campaign have a decidedly Southern slant.

NONFICTION On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, University of Massachusetts professor Max Page was proofreading a proposal for an exhibit at a New York museum about a subject he knew well—the destruction of New York City. Page, who teaches architecture and history at the university’s Amherst campus, had recently published a scholarly work on slum clearance and city planning in Manhattan from 1900 to 1940—what he calls the “regular destruction of a capitalist city.“

MYSTERIES
If you’re looking for some murderous diversion after the holidays but find your budget stressed from seasonal gift-giving, cheer up. These five mysteries are all original—they are not reprints of hardcover books—and all come in the form of mass-market paperbacks, so your wallet won’t fall victim to killer prices.

. . .

Despite receiving accolades as one of the great artists of the 20th century, the modernist architect known to the world as Le Corbusier has never been the subject of a substantial biography. The silence is surprising. One would think the sheer bulk of his work—not to mention his impact on other architects—would have attracted a biographer in the 43 years since Le Corbusier’s death.

NEW YORK—Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, little known to American audiences before being named the winner of the literature prize, is getting another introduction to U.S. readers: His work is appearing for the first time in The New Yorker. “We thought lots of people would be very interested to see what his work was like,“ said New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, whose translation of the short story “The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea” will appear on newsstands Monday. “We also wanted to move fast and publish it while people still remember his name.“

JAN. 4 Book Swap: Exchange of books and/or conversation, 3-5 p.m. at Book People, 536 Granite Ave. Free. 288-4346.  JAN. 6
“With God on All Sides: Leadership in a Devout and Diverse America” by Douglas A. Hicks—Book signing and discussion, 5:30-6:30 p.m. at Library of Virginia, 800 E. Broad St. 692-3592.  JAN. 9
“The Someday List” by Stacy Hawkins Adams—Book launch party, book signing and author meet-and-greet, 6:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble-Libbie Place, 5501 W. Broad St. 282-0782.

TUESDAY “The Chief and I” by Karen Tootelian—Talk on Mattaponi chief Webster Little Eagle Custalow, 12:30 p.m. at Fountain Bookstore, 1312 E. Cary St. 788-1594.  FRIDAY
Kathleen Jorgensen, contributor to “A Cup of Comfort for Cat Lovers,“ ad Mark Kearney, author of “Twisted Obsession,“ in meet-and-greet, 1-3 p.m. at Creatures ‘n Crooks Bookshoppe, 3156 W. Cary St. 340-0277.