A+E

Charles Frazier, Thirteen Moons. Fiction. The cover prepares you for what is clearly a gritty, ugly tale of dead-end life among the mean trees of some preindustrial hellhole, where life is cheap and still being marked down. (Random House, $26.95.) House, $26.95.)

Bill O'Reilly, Culture Warrior. Rant. More like buffet warrior, judging from the expanse of blue-jacketed torso spreading across this cover! That steely squint warns, Buy this book or suffer my loofah! (Broadway, $26.)

Bob Woodward, State Of Denial. Current events. Man, that's one serious font. Those sharp serifs prod you to pick up this book. Bernstein would kill for such a font. What's the book about? Only Woodward knows. (Simon & Schuster, $30.)

Elizabeth George, What Came Before He Shot Her. Mystery. Some desperate pleading, possibly a bit of maniacal cackling. Mystery solved! Only this question remains: Couldn't HarperCollins afford a photographer who can focus? (HarperCollins, $26.95.)

They have drug-sniffing basset hounds.

They don't take kindly to their simple small-town ways being mocked by Hollywood liberals.

They will not hesitate to extradite your sorry ass from California for an unpaid speeding ticket.

They take Nevada Day very seriously.

They like Studio 60 about as much as we do.

Not Fit for Quentin's Thumb

Reservoir Dogs (by Eidos, for PlayStation 2, Xbox; rated M) (2 stars) Since Reservoir Dogs is predominately a movie about four guys talking in a warehouse, your first impression might be that it's a poor choice for a video-game adaptation. First impressions are often the right ones. Eidos takes the route of showing us how each Crayola-named criminal made it from the heist to the hideout, basically by letting you shoot your way through a series of mundane, repetitive, cop-filled levels.

Light Grail

The Da Vinci Code: Special Edition Gift Set (rated PG-13; $80.95) (3 stars) If, like me, you are one of the very few people who's yet to fall prey to the media hype surrounding Dan Brown's quasi-religious best-seller and Ron Howard's budget-busting adaptation, there will be precious little to be gained from jumping into the debate with the purchase of Columbia Pictures' elaborate boxed set (deeply discounted to $51.87 by some merchants). Nor will the no-frills full-screen version provide much insight into the theory that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were more than just Bible buddies, and their descendents are living in a bunker behind Mel Gibson's Malibu bungalow (or something). Absent the purchase of Brown's novel, the most bang for your buck will derive from the two-disc "Special Edition" ($29.96/$14.95), which includes a dozen featurettes, a DVD-ROM puzzle and character biographies. However, while I'm perfectly willing to believe that Audrey Tautou is of divine lineage—and Ian McKellen could merit an Oscar nomination for portraying a Smurf—there isn't much to recommend Tom Hanks' occasionally confounding interpretation of Dr. Robert Langdon. The "Giftbox" adds a working cryptex and "Robert Langdon Journal."