Picture This

Image credit: William Claxton: Piero Ribelli

ZOO YORK: AN ANIMAL LOVER'S VIEW OF MANHATTAN Piero Ribelli (Castle on the Hill, $20) Puppies pull a baby carriage. A potbellied pig takes a stroll past Lincoln Center. A calico cat stares out at the vast Manhattan skyline from his lamp-lit apartment window. A roach sits belly-up... well, not all of Ribelli's photos of New York's smaller citizens are endearing. The perfect stocking stuffer, stuffed with scenes of horseplay and monkey business.

SINATRA: AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT OF A VERY GOOD YEAR John Dominis, text by Richard B. Stolley (Stewart Tabori & Chang, $30) Suffering from winter blues? Then self-medicate with a dose of Ol' Blue Eyes. The crooner turned 50 years old in 1965; he turned his back on the press long before that. Judging from these 150 extraordinary black-and-white pictures taken that year -- of Sinatra drinking, flirting, singing, and swinging -- Life magazine lensman Dominis must have been a very good boy to score such sweet access. The best photo? A shot of Sammy Davis Jr. tenderly palming Sinatra's drink-slackened jaw.

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY William Claxton, introduction by Graydon Carter (powerHouse, $65) Claxton is most famous for his pictures of early jazz giants. Just check out the shot of Chet Baker, looking sweet and sculpted in a fitted white sweater. (''He looked like an angelic boxer,'' remembers Claxton, ''a tough guy with a pretty face topped with a slick '50s pompadour.'') But the jazz lover also captured the vulnerability of a young Mia Farrow, the silliness of Terry Southern, the smugness of Joni Mitchell, and many more famous faces.

A BOOK OF BOOKS Abelardo Morell, preface by Nicholson Baker (Bulfinch, $60) A close-up of three stacked dictionaries. A wide shot of a library. The heartbreak, and visual splendor, of a book damaged by water. Sprinkled among these fine, handsome pages are musings from famous bibliophiles like Jane Austen and Pablo Neruda. Here's Eudora Welty on her long-standing love affair: ''I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms....'' She surrendered. So will you.