BOOKS . . . "OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez plows familiar seas in his new short novel (Knopf; 147 pages; $21), a return to his imaginary region of Macondo, a section of Colombia's Caribbean coast that hold the essence of Latin America's ruinous history. Garcia's musings on Spanish austerity, religious authority, classical humanism and African animism provide continuing proof, says TIME critic R.Z. Sheppard, that "Garcia is the master of putting a lot of story into a small space."