HARD- AND SOFTCOVER PLEASURES

PAPERBACKS THE KITCHEN'S GOD'S WIFE Amy Tan (Ivy Books, $5.99) An upscale saga, Tan's new best-seller is a richer, darker work than her wildly successful The Joy Luck Club. A... MAXIMUM BOB Elmore Leonard (Dell, $5.99) Leonard, in his mystery-writing prime, examines the dastardly conspiracies surrounding a 27-year-old probation cop, a murderous parolee, and a redneck judge. A-...THE M.D.: A HORROR STORY Thomas M. Disch (Berkley, $5.99) Six- year-old Billy Michaels finds a caduceus-the symbol of the medical profession-that gives him the power to charm or curse. As Billy's pranks with it turn to evil, The M.D. brilliantly earns its subtitle: a horror story. A... A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD Michael Cunningham (Bantam, $6.99) The story of three refugees from broken homes who briefly find a kind of comfort together. When the time comes for people to remember the age of AIDS, they can open this book. A+ HARDCOVERS THE IMPERSONATOR Diana Hammond (Doubleday, $20) Hammond's story of an attractive social and sexual chameleon twists its plot often enough to make it a quintessential beach read. A...JAZZ Toni Morrison (Knopf, $21) Jazz isn't called Jazz because it's about music, but because its prose is the verbal equivalent. The springboard for Morrison's music is the murder by a 50-year- old cosmetics salesman of his teenage mistress. A... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: VOLUME ONE 1884-1933 Blanche Wiesen Cook (Viking, $27.50) It has always been easier to think of Eleanor Roosevelt as more a monument than a woman. Cook's biography gives the most impressive American woman of our century flesh. B+... CLOCKERS Richard Price (Houghton Mifflin, $22.95) A gritty, darkly funny novel about the New Jersey drug trade. Price clearly knows his stuff. B+...DEN OF THIEVES James B. Stewart (Simon & Schuster, $25) The business book of the year, this eminently readable tome chronicles the rise and fall of the junk- bond and leveraged-buyout empires. A