Notable Books of the Year 1991

HARLOT'S GHOST. By Norman Mailer. (Random House, $30.) Mr. Mailer's whopping (1,328 pages) novel, full of real as well as imaginary people, takes an epic-size look at world and national events over the last few decades from the point of view of three aristocratic Yankees who work for the C.I.A.

HEAT: And Other Stories. By Joyce Carol Oates. (William Abrahams/Dutton, $21.95.) The best of the stories in this collection effectively confine great chunks of rage and hatred on the psychological, internal level.

AN HONORABLE PROFESSION. By John L'Heureux. (Viking, $19.95.) Mr. L'Heureux's 13th book is a risky combination: a thriller, a philosophical, melodramatic novel of sexual possession, a satire of small-town mores in New England.

HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS. By Julia Alvarez. (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $16.95.) This collection of interwoven stories by a Dominican-American writer captures the immigrant's experience of being on the threshold between alienation and assimilation.

HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT. By Whitney Otto. (Villard, $18.) This intricate little first novel about a women's quilting circle in central California is at once a history of social change, a tribute to an art form mostly reserved for women and a demonstration of how individual lives fit together in a community.

HUNTING THE WILD PINEAPPLE. By Thea Astley. (Putnam, $19.95.) No one fares very well in these compassionate but dark-edged stories by the prolific Australian novelist.

IMMORTALITY. By Milan Kundera. (Grove Weidenfeld, $21.95.) Mr. Kundera's thoughtful, somewhat daunting novel of reflection and discourse is full of stylistic and narrative felicities.

IN THE CENTER OF THE NATION. By Dan O'Brien. (Atlantic Monthly, $21.95.) Set in South Dakota, this eloquent novel revolves around issues both ecological and humane -- the unsettling of the land, the values of the loners who undertake a rancher's life.

THE INDIAN LAWYER. By James Welch. (Norton, $19.95.) This fine fourth novel by Mr. Welch (himself a Native American) is his first to follow the complex relationships of whites and Indians into the world of white-collar professionals.

INHERIT THE MOB. By Zev Chafets. (Random House, $19.) A hilarious novel in which a respectable journalist's uncle Max dies, leaving him the last of the great American Jewish gangs.