Slavery and the Civil War, which played such transformative roles in Virginia’s past, continue to reverberate in the commonwealth’s present and will do so into the distant future. So it’s no surprise that books on the subjects appear with regularity. These four take precise subjects and enhance the reader’s knowledge of generalities as well as of specifics.

Books recounting the histories of Virginia’s counties crop up with regularity, but few achieve the beauty and breadth of Martha W. McCartney’s Nature’s Bounty, Nation’s Glory: The Heritage and History of Hanover County, Virginia (376 pages, Heritage and History of Hanover County Inc., $49.95). Among the county’s notable residents were Patrick Henry, who practiced law at the still-standing historic courthouse; Dolley Madison, one of the nation’s most popular first ladies; Henry Clay, a native of Hanover who went on to fame as a senator from Kentucky; and Edmund Ruffin, who some believe fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are rightly known as two of the most gifted authors of their generation—and two of the most different. Fitzgerald’s prose was more elegant; Hemingway’s was tougher. But their careers and their lives moved along parallel lines. Scott Donaldson, the Louise G.T. Cooley Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, explores the two writers through a series of essays in Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days (494 pages, Columbia University Press, $32.50).

His “The Confessions of Nat Turner” stayed on the best-seller lists for weeks in 1967 and eventually earned him a Pulitzer Prize. More than a decade later, “Sophie’s Choice” attracted readers by the thousands and was made into a memorable movie starring Meryl Streep. Newport News native William Styron is considered one of the 20th century’s major novelists—American or otherwise—and his biographer, James L.W. West III, adds to the Styron legacy with Letters to My Father (238 pages, Louisana State University Press, $28).

With the end of summer comes the promise of cooler, cloudy weather—the perfect kind for curling up under a throw with some good fiction. Four authors provide some potential reads.

. . . Josh Weil, a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains who divides his time between New York City and a cabin in rural Southwest Virginia, knows the hills and the border territories of the Old Dominion well.

Virginia’s history offers endless possibilities for writers, and these two books take as their subjects topics dear to the heart of buffs.

. . . James Madison is rightly considered the Father of the Constitution. As president, he continued the Virginia Dynasty. His wife, the former Dolley Todd Payne, became the nation’s first prominent first lady. Her adventures in saving a White House portrait of George Washington when the British were attacking the nation’s capital is the stuff of which tales of heroism are made.

Richmonders know Eugene P. Trani primarily as the man who directed the major expansion of Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus and reputation. Fewer know him as a gifted scholar of history. He’s the author or co-author of several books, the latest of which examines a topic that remains key and relevant today. Distorted Mirrors: Americans and Their Relations With Russia and China in the Twentieth Century (461 pages, University of Missouri Press, $49.95)—co-written with Donald E. Davis, a professor emeritus of history at Illinois State University—examines the topic through the views of a variety of Americans, including Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; philosopher John Dewey; journalists Edgar Snow and Theodore White; novelist Pearl Buck; and diplomat Henry Kissinger.

Work: It’s a blessing at times, a bane at others. But unless you were born rich and choose to live idly, you have to do it. Matthew B. Crawford examines the subject in Shop Class at Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (246 pages, The Penguin Press, $25.95). Crawford advocates an end to the artificial separation between the work of the mind and the work of the hand, and “Shop Class at Soulcraft” promotes the honor of the manual trades.

Perhaps it’s provincial and prideful to say, but Virginia’s historic gardens rank among the world’s finest and most beautiful. And that doesn’t just happen. In Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservation Work of the Garden Club of Virginia, 1975-2007 (275 pages, University of Virginia Press, $49.95), writer Margaret Page Bemiss and photographer Roger Foley document the research and restoration work that has gone into making these remarkable places what they are.

Spirituality comes in many forms and fills many roles. Three new books look at the topic from various perspectives.

. . . Religion has played an important role in American society—from the Mayflower’s passengers seeking the freedom to worship as they chose, to the rise of the religious right in the 1970s.

I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.—Edgar Allan Poe

. . . Beauty, indeed. Four Virginia poets—two well-known, two not so, offer anthologies that make summer a time to savor the poetic as well as lighter reading.

. . .

For a lifelong Richmonder, a move to the West Coast can be a culture shock equal to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. For FBI forensic geologist Raleigh Harmon, it can be as dangerous, too, as she finds in The Rivers Run Dry (324 pages, Thomas Nelson, $14.99), the second in Sibella Giorello’s mystery series. The first book, “The Stones Cry Out,“ was set in Richmond, where Raleigh cracked a case in spectacular fashion but fell afoul of her control-freak boss, who had her transferred to Seattle. Shortly after arriving in Washington state, Raleigh is faced with the disappearance of a young hiker, whose parents want their daughter found and will pull all their considerable political strings to make it happen.

In 1973, Petersburg added to the Virginia history it had long been making by becoming the first city in the state to elect a majority-black City Council in modern times. That distinction, as well as many others, is among the history that Amina Luqman-Dawson recounts in African Americans of Petersburg (128 pages, Arcadia Publishing, $21.99).

They were Virginians, cousins and among the most consequential leaders of the United States. But Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall differed profoundly in their politics and greatly disliked each other. It all came to a head in the seminal legal case of Marbury v. Madison, in which the Marshall Court established the bedrock principle of American law, judicial review, and in so doing established the judiciary as co-equal with the executive and legislative branches of government.

Four Virginia writers were among those honored by the Arts & Education Council last month by the Fellowship of Southern Writers at the 2009 Conference on Southern Literature. The conference was held in Chattanooga, Tenn. Rita Dove and Eleanor Ross Taylor, both of Charlottesville, were inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Claudia Emerson of Fredericksburg received the 2009 Donald Justice Award for Poetry, and the 2009 George Garrett New Writing Award was given to Kevin McFadden of Charlottesville.