Debra Bricker Balken, John Marin: Modernism at Midcentury (Yale, $40). The catalogue of the Portland Museum’s superlative exhibition of Marin’s late paintings and watercolors, which runs through Oct. 10, is itself a first-class effort, a penetrating study of a great painter whose work is no longer widely known save to students of American modernism. Might a Marin revival be in the offing? Between this show and the watercolor retrospective now on display at Atlanta’s High Museum, it’s starting to look like a real possibility. Read Balken’s book and find out what you’ve been missing (TT).

Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler (Yale, $50). This is the first full-scale single-volume primary-source English-language biography of Mahler, and it’s a winner. Don’t be fazed by its seven-hundred-page length–the style is straightforward, the structure clear and sensible, and Fischer never gets bogged down in superfluous detail. If you’ve read Mahler Remembered, Norman Lebrecht’s important collection of contemporary reminiscences, and want to learn more about the great composer-conductor, start here (TT).

Gene Bertoncini (Bar Henry, 90 W. Houston St., 646-448-4559, Mondays at 7:30-10:30). After a distressingly long hiatus caused by the closing of Le Madeleine three years ago, the great jazz guitarist now has another regular New York gig. If you don’t know Bertoncini’s playing, go here and marvel at the liquid tone and supple romanticism of his solo style. Then go to Bar Henry and hear him in person–often (TT).

Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer (Picador, $15 paper). A bewitchingly clever historical thriller in which the lives and work of Peter Warlock, Constant Lambert, and Carlo Gesualdo are blended into the hair-raising tale of an unworldly music critic who writes an opera libretto for a flint-hearted composer who returns the favor in the most malevolent way imaginable. The author (better known in pop-music circles as John Wesley Harding) has done a virtuosic job of fusing fact with fiction, and the result is one of the few novels with a musical setting in which the background is rendered accurately. Absolutely not for musicians only, though those who already know the dramatis personae will be dazzled by the sure-footed skill with which Stace has put their real-life stories to novelistic use (TT).

Wolf Kahn: Color and Consequence (Ameringer McEnery Yohe, 525 W. 22, up through July 16). New paintings by an underappreciated modern master, a Hans Hofmann pupil who renders the American landscape in high-key colors that recall the luminous palette of Pierre Bonnard. The result is a deeply personal style in which abstraction and representation are so closely intertwined that they can’t be teased apart (TT).

Richard Stark, Butcher’s Moon (University of Chicago, $15 paper). The best of Donald Westlake’s pseudonymous thrillers about Parker, the toughest burglar who ever lived, in which he goes up against an entire big-city crime syndicate–with a little help from a lot of friends. Out of print for years and years, Butcher’s Moon is the ultimate Parker novel, best read as an installment in the series as a whole but comprehensible and wholly satisfying on its own (TT).

The Essential Rosanne Cash (Sony Legacy, two CDs). Thirty-six tracks from one of America’s most creative singer-songwriters, chosen by Cash herself. An ideal one-stop introduction to her work, especially when heard in tandem with Composed, Cash’s 2010 memoir (TT).

Play Dead (Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal, closes July 24). Teller’s wonderfully creepy off-Broadway theatrical spook show has posted its closing notice, so if you haven’t seen it yet, go while you still can. The illusions are spectacular, the humor delicious. Two pieces of advice: (1) If asked to go onstage, say yes. (2) Wait until after the show to eat dinner (TT).