The Must List 2006: Books

MUST READS

JED RUBENFELD
The Interpretation of Murder

AGE 47
WHY HIM This Yale law prof has created a compelling, expertly crafted murder mystery with his debut novel. The Interpretation of Murder blends historical figures Freud and Jung into a fictional crime story based on an actual Freud case study.
DOING HIS HOMEWORK Carefully researched detail is just one reason Interpretation is shaping up to be this year's Historian. ''People have really started to expect to learn history as they are reading novels,'' says Rubenfeld, a constitutional-law expert who wrote his thesis on Freud. ''I think readers have a lot of fun when they think they can trust an author and learn a lot from a book even when they're being entertained.''
NEXT Interpretation is out Sept. 5. There could be a sequel, but for now academia remains his realm.

RAE MEADOWS
Calling Out

AGE 35
WHY HER The Madison, Wis.-based author's sharp first novel combines the au courant theme of Mormonism with the timeless allure of the world's oldest profession.
NOW THAT'S A HOOK This tale of a New York ad exec-turned-Salt Lake City call girl comes with another selling point: Meadows herself was an escort-service phone manager while earning her M.F.A. at the University of Utah. But just a phone manager. ''When I was at a book expo recently, there were people who gave me a wink, like, 'Oh, this is fiction... but not really,''' she laughs.
CAST TRACK ''I would love to see Zooey Deschanel play [the protagonist] if it were a movie.''
NEXT Calling Out hits shelves on June 27; she's also working on a novel about a woman's obsessive relationship with a teenage killer.

CLIFFORD CHASE
Winkie

AGE 48
WHY HIM Of all the anti-Bush books out there, none is as wonderfully strange as Chase's debut novel, ''a satire, a fairy tale, and a realistic family drama,'' according to the author. It concerns the long life of a teddy bear (yes, a teddy bear) who is arrested and put on trial as a terrorist.
THIS TOY'S LIFE Turns out the stuffed animal is based on Chase's real, 81-year-old bear, Winkie, which was originally owned by his mother (who called it Marie). ''I started back in '96, trying to explore the way children experience stories,'' says Chase. ''Then, back in early 2002, I felt rather lonely in my views about the Bush administration and had the need to let loose in my own writing.''
NEXT Winkie is in stores July 18. His next book is in the works. ''Both my parents died over the past year, so there's a lot to write about.''

EMILY BARTON
Brookland

AGE 36
WHY HER In her gorgeous second novel, which came out earlier this year, Barton breathes life into 18th-century Brooklyn with the richly detailed saga of a woman who designs a fictional bridge. ''I was fascinated by the Brooklyn Bridge,'' says Barton, ''but David McCullough's The Great Bridgeis so phenomenal I didn't feel there needed to be another long text about that bridge.''
NO PLACE LIKE OM Writing is tough, but Barton has a fallback: ''People who know me through the literary community say, 'How can you teach yoga?' And people come to the yoga studio and say, 'I had no idea you were a novelist!' Of course, these things are perfectly commensurate.''
NEXT Another book, although she's keeping mum: ''I can't talk about something that's still so nebulous and fragile.''