Aug. 5 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, and the publishing industry is dropping a lot of books to mark the day.

There’s a new feminist-tinged biography by Lois Banner (Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox) that seems sensible and acute, although Banner flirts with some wild, borderline ludicrous conspiracy theories before more or less settling on accidental overdose as the probable cause of death.

Then there are two novels about Monroe, one called The Empty Glass by J.I. Baker, told from the point of view of the deputy coroner who investigates her death, and Marilyn’s Last Sessions, a French novel by Michel Schneider about the relationship between Monroe and her therapist Dr. Ralph Greenson. All these books seek to solve the riddle presented — not by Monroe’s death, but by her life.

Similarly, Gary Marmorstein’s A Ship Without a Sail is certainly the most comprehensive biography of Lorenz Hart we are likely to have. Any biographer of Hart’s is going to encounter difficulties — a tormented gay alcoholic, Hart didn’t leave a lot of letters behind, or, in fact, much beyond his beautiful lyrics and a lot of memories of a man who resisted being helped. Marmorstein fills the gaps by focusing on the work and the way Broadway shows come together — or don’t.

John Cage was a composer of an entirely different sort, and Kay Larson’s Where the Heart Beats examines Cage and his partner Merce Cunningham through the prism of the Zen Buddhism that certainly freed up their creativity and may very well have saved their lives.

Memoirs offer up two contrasting alternatives: Marcus Samuelsson’s Yes, Chef is the story of his rise from Ethiopia to the status of a world-renowned chef. Conversely, The Long Walk is Brian Castner’s story of his three tours of duty in the Mideast as a bomb disposal officer. The former is a story of triumph, the latter is a story of survival, but in circumstances that constitite triumph.

A different kind of non-fiction of some local as well as environmental interest is Death at Sea World by David Kirby, which starts with the death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau and broadens into an inquiry into the costs of infantilizing huge, emotionally complex mammals for the entertainment of tourists.

The novels of Bruce Wagner have carved out a small but firm niche as portraits of anomie amongst the monied set of Los Angeles. Wagner makes Bret Easton Ellis look like Charles Dickens. His latest, Dead Stars, is about the denizens of what Wagner calls Kardashianworld, a land of thin fame that narcotizes its inhabitants — especially those who are already more conventionally narcotized — as well as those obsessed with it.

A novel of a more confirmative sort is Howard Anderson’s Albert of Adelaide. Albert is a duck-billed platypus who’s broken out of the Adelaide zoo and encounters a rich roster of characters as he searches for a freedom and meaning denied him by captivity. It’s a lovely novel, and the resolute but sensitive Albert may be a hero for our time.