Reality shows got nothin' on these hardcovers

April can be the cruelest month, especially if it keeps snowing. Hopefully by the time you read this, the tulips are twirling in a balmy breeze.

The borough's bookclubs are poking back up into reality, too; with a thinly veiled memoir by a Nobel laureate who married both his aunt and his first cousin -- not at the same time! -- and two full-on non-fictions that are stranger than the material in most novels.

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks (2010)
Rebecca Skloot

Have you ever wished for immortality? You might think about it again after reading the mesmerizing story of a young mother who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s. In the hospital, a piece of her tumor is removed and scientists were able for the first time to grow a line of cells that to this day are ubiquitous in biological research labs throughout the world. The HeLa cells have been used in every conceivable experiment including rides in space, exposure to nuclear bombs, the polio and Hepatitis-B vaccines, AIDS research and cosmetics design.

The most unbelievable story is about the Lacks family. Henrietta's children and grandchildren are still mired in poverty, and their realization that their mother's cells spawned a multi-billion dollar industry does not sit well with them. This is a great selection for book clubs that want to explore science, race, and the trail of experimentation with tissue after it leaves the body as well as before.

Henrietta's oldest daughter is misused by science and the rest of the family doesn't have any knowledge of their mother's contribution until years after her cells are taken. In fact, Henrietta never gave her permission for her cells to be used in experimentation at all. It might interest readers that patients still are not notified about what happens to their tissue samples and neither must they give their permission. Skloot, a science journalist, does a fine job of writing this account, which she calls creative non-fiction because it reads so well as a story.

Aunt Julia and the Script Writer (1977)
Mario Vargas Llosa

When last year's Nobel Prize winner was 18 years old he married his aunt, 32 year old Julia. In this novel that hews fairly close to the true events from his perspective, Vargas Llosa uses real first names including his own. Most of his realitives stopped talking to him for a while, but they did all recover in time for his eventual divorce from Julia and second marriage, to his first cousin.

That's for another novel. This one tells of his misbegotten youth and it's a real hoot. Not only does it give you details about this brilliant writer's early life, it intersperses chapters from a soap opera writer, who begins to confuse his serials by the end of the book. This is a great introduction to the author, who actually ran for president of Peru a few years ago. (He lost, but that gives him more time to write.)

The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice de Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll (2010)
Paul Spicer

On January 24, 1941 Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, is shot in Kenya on the way home from his mistress' house. This telling of the never-solved scandal takes you from the roaring 1920s through the 1940s, across Africa, Europe, and the United States in a whirlwind of infidelity, drugs, and drink.

The heart of Spicer's tale is Alice de Janze, a beautiful young American who enters the fast and fashionable world of 1920s Paris. With her bobbed hair and pre-treatment bipolar disorder, she parties with Isak Dinesen, Prince George and others, some fictionalized by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After the birth of her two dauthers, her dedicated husband takes her to Kenya where symptons disappear due to the light and exotic atmosphere. Alice isn't completely cured in Spicer's telling, and her mood swings include guns, lovers and a belief that her boyfriends will join her in heaven if she shoots them first. The courts never decided the case but Spicer certainly convicts her in print.