Weekend picks for book lovers

What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for book lovers include a new biography of singer Aretha Franklin, plus two "Best American 2014" collections.

Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz; Little, Brown, 528 pp.; non-fiction

If Aretha Franklin is as protective of her privacy and her image as David Ritz's biography depicts, then one expects the Queen of Soul will be royally peeved by Respect.

Ritz sees his new book as a "companion piece" to Franklin's 1999 memoir, From These Roots, which Ritz co-wrote. She controlled the content.

Respect is free from its subject's finicky airbrushing. And yet, as the book's asserts, this is no gaudy Kitty Kelley-style tattle-teller. It's an unfailingly solicitous account of a life that, whatever its tribulations, conflicts and complications, has always somehow been redeemed by Franklin's musical calling.

The life story itself is full of shadows and mysteries, beginning with Aretha's — or as family and friends frequently call her, "Ree's" — childhood and teen years as a singing and piano-playing prodigy.

USA TODAY says ***½ out of four. "Comprehensive, illuminating."

The Best American Mystery Stories 2014; Laura Lippman, editor, Mariner, 354 pp.

For Gone Girl-style psychological suspense, there's Megan Abbott's "My Heart Is Either Broken," which centers on a missing child. If you're feeling noir-ish, "A Good Marriage" by Ed Kurtz is just black as all get-out.

USA TODAY says ***½. "A satisfying sampler of strong voices describing fully imagined worlds."

The Best American Comics 2014; Scott McCloud, editor, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 361 pp.; fiction

Sample the sci-fi brilliance of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' "Saga." For teens, there's Raina Telgemeier's coming-of-age "Drama."

USA TODAY says ***. "Keeps raising the bar for comics as an art form."

Gray Mountain by John Grisham; Doubleday, 384 pp.; fiction

Working for a legal aid clinic, young attorney Samantha Kofer runs up against Big Coal in Appalachia.

USA TODAY says ***½. "Events take shocking turns, characters take great risks, and lawyers take off their gloves."

Lincoln and the Power of the Press by Harold Holzer; Simon & Schuster, 768 pp.; non-fiction

Holzer colorfully details how Honest Abe was something of a Great Manipulator, skillfully managing the press of 19th-century America in his efforts to end slavery and save the Union.

USA TODAY says ***½. "Mines a worthy vein in the study of Lincoln's link to modernity."

Contributing reviewers: Gene Seymour, Martha T. Moore, Brian Truitt, Dennis Moore, Matt Damsker