You know, what I’ve really been missing is a book with “a Sapphic 16-year-old with a propensity towards pyromania.” Thank goodness, then, for Stephanie Grant, whose new novel, “Map of Ireland,” offers just that in protagonist Ann. Not helping matters for Ann, who is trying to get her head together about her own sexuality, is the fact that she is living in South Boston during the riots that took place during desegregation of the schools there in 1974. Some good buzz on this one, if you’re a contemporary lit fan.

For Julie Andrews fans: Richard Stirling, a British television and stage actor (in a country where that, by the way, is considered a great achievement), has released a new biography of Julie Andrews called, um, “Julie Andrews.” Stirling, who has known Andrews since 1986, offers insight based on their friendship, plus his research into 60 years of press clippings. My eyes are tired just thinking about it.

The other thing missing from my life is another book by a former member of the Nixon Administration explaining why he did the things he did. But this one, I’m happy to report, is different. This one is from L. Patrick Gray, the interim director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal. Although a lifelong Republican, Gray was viewed as an enemy by a paranoid President Nixon. His chief of staff once advised Nixon that Gray should be left to “slowly, slowly twist in the wind.” All these years later, Gray has told his side of the story in “In Nixon’s Web,” in which he breaks the silence about dealing with the Watergate scandal.

Finally, and perhaps depressingly, former Forbes and Financial Times editor Eamonn Fingleton offers his take on the future global economy with “In The Jaws of the Dragon: America’s Fate In The Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony.” How’s that for playing on your fears? Still, Fingleton is knowledgeable in the area of finance, and his book details what he sees as the challenges the Western World faces in dealing with a China that is still communist, but with an economy bolstered by limited capitalism.