A DEATH IN WHITE BEAR LAKE <i> by Barry Siegel (Bantam: $5.99, illustrated).</i>

Siegel’s account of the tangled story that led to the murder conviction of Lois Jurgens holds the reader’s attention with the malign fascination usually attributed to a viper’s gaze. Despite a documented history of psychiatric problems, Jurgens was allowed to adopt children, including a baby named Dennis whom she savagely abused for three years and finally killed. Twenty-two years later, when Dennis’ birth mother goaded officials in White Bear Lake, Minn., into investigating the case, they uncovered a tale of barbaric cruelty and official mismanagement, if not deliberate malfeasance. Siegel stresses the contrast between the wholesome appearance of the small Minnesota town, an apparent stronghold of traditional family values, and the evil that lurked beneath its surface. Jurgens was not a slum-dwelling heroin addict or a sicko in leather but a respectable, middle-class, churchgoing matron. Her equally respectable relatives and neighbors saw the bruises and scars on Dennis’ body and did nothing. Justice finally was served when Jurgens was convicted of third-degree murder. Sadly, this small boy’s terrible death was not an isolated case but an all-too-common example of the cruelty that thousands of children endure in America.

PETERSON FIRST GUIDES: Birds by Roger Tory Peterson; Clouds and Weather by John A. Day and Vincent Schaefer (Houghton Mifflin: $4.95 each, illustrated).

Two installments in an attractive new series of pocket-sized, introductory nature guides. Peterson sparked a revolution in nature guides for general readers by emphasizing the major, easily identifiable features of birds: wing patterns, crest, field markings, eye striping, etc. These features are clearly labeled in the illustrations to facilitate quick checking. The clear, readable text in the volume on weather is supplemented by exceptional meteorological photographs. Other titles in the series include Astronomy, Insects, Shells, Wildflowers and Mammals, any and all of which are sure to please naturalists of all ages.

WILDLIFE by Richard Ford (Vintage: $9).

In this highly praised novel by author of “Rock Springs,” a young man struggles to come to grips with the realization that his parents are mortal, fallible humans rather than the more perfect illusions he’s cherished. At 16, Joe Brinson watches his father devolve into an aimless drifter after he loses his job as the golf pro at the local country club. His flighty, disillusioned mother hopes to find emotional and financial security by initiating an affair with the local rich man, a small-town big shot abandoned by his wife. Ford’s understated prose captures the bleak loneliness of a teen-ager rudely deprived of the family that provided his only feelings of security.

NEWTON’S MADNESS: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology by Harold Klawans (HarperPerrenial: $8.95).

A popular writer of both fiction and nonfiction, Klawans describes his most interesting cases as if they were murder mysteries. The study of neurology involves some of the most delicate mechanisms in the human body: the brain and its attendant network, fragile tissues that are virtually irreparable if damaged. Klawans’ knowledge of biochemistry and physiology enables him to link such seemingly disparate elements as a patient who can’t stop fidgeting, the legend surrounding the tarantella and the rare disease of Huntington’s chorea. An incorrectly diagnosed case of Parkinson’s disease reveals why the Walls of Jericho came tumbling down. In more speculative essays, Klawans solves the mystery of Sherlock Holmes’ withdrawal from cocaine addiction and hypothesizes that Sir Isaac Newton suffered from heavy-metal poisoning inadvertently acquired during his extensive experiments in alchemy.

SHE WAS A QUEEN by Maurice Collis (New Directions: $12.95, illustrated).

While serving as a British magistrate in Rangoon, Maurice Collis fell into official disfavor for fraternizing with the Burmese and Chinese residents, and was posted to the obscure port of Mergui. He used his idle time there to gather material for this novelization of the life of the 13th-Century Burmese ruler, Queen Saw. Her impressive career contains all the elements of Oriental fantasies: great emeralds and pearls, elephant hunts, fawning courtiers, palace intrigues, exotic harem beauties, opulent pageantry. Although she was a commoner by birth (her father was a minor landholder), the ineptitude of her feckless husband, King Narathihapate, forced her to become the power behind the throne. She ruled ably and peacefully until the king foolishly attempted to defy the emissaries of Kublai Khan. Saw’s powerful character enabled her to survive the subsequent Tatar invasion and retire in comfort to her native village.

AN ALBUM OF CURIOUS HOUSES by Lucinda Lambton (Chatto & Windus/Trafalgar Square: $24.95, illustrated).

Lambton surveys some of Britain’s more eccentric residences, which range from Gargantuan 19th-Century Gothic wood-and-stained-glass fantasies to a small stone house shaped like a giant pineapple, built for the Earl of Dunmore in 1761. Although the aesthetic vision may be somewhat muddled, the workmanship these houses display is often astounding. The marble Indian Hall at Elveden evokes the finest elements of Mogul architecture, while the extravagant chinoiserie decorations in Claydon House remain a tour de force of the wood-carver’s art. (This level of workmanship can be seen even in such dotty ornaments as the feather friezes at A La Ronde in Devon.) Readers who have endured the sight of some of L.A.’s more dubious architectural excrescences may feel that complaining about the eccentricity of these houses seems like caviling.

IT’S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD, BUT YOU CAN SEE IT FROM HERE by Roger Welsch (Fawcett: $4.95).

Welsch attempts to cash in on the current vogue for small-town humor in this strikingly unfunny collection of tales set in the hamlet of Centralia, Neb. A retired professor of folklore, Welsch states that he has learned “to appreciate, to appreciate profoundly the importance, the charm, the beauty, and the value of the typical.” Unlike Garrison Keillor, who seems to love the people of Lake Wobegon, Welsch patronizes the characters he calls Lunchbox, Goose, Uncle Vic, Worm, etc. Posing as one of the everyday folks, he cranks out faux cracker-barrel humor like a Manhattanite who drops his final g’s and prefaces every statement with “Land o’ Goshen” while weekending in Vermont. Welsch is best known for his “Postcards From Nebraska” on “Sunday Morning With Charles Kuralt”; this one should be labeled “return to sender.”