And so it begins.
USA Today’s 10 Talkers, offered with publication date, ‘talking points’ and a tiny excerpt each, includes books by Wally Lamb, Bob Woodward (The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008), Toni Morrison, Candace Bushnell, actor Alec Baldwin (A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey through Fatherhood and Divorce), the Laura Bush novel American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, TV talk show host Bill O’Reilly (A Bold, Fresh Piece of Humanity — a memoir), Philippa Gregory, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper (a memoir of growing up aristocratic in Liberia), and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t.
Bloomburg’s Muse Arts notes that “It’s going to take a big novel to compete with the U.S. election this fall, and publishers are eager to supply one. Three of the most heavily garlanded American writers — Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and John Updike — are leading the charge on bookstores.” Others on the list include late Chilean-Mexican novelist Roberto Bolaño, John le Carre, Julia Glass, Kathleen Kent and Candace Bushnell.
The Washington Post previews 116 fiction and non-fiction fall books, with month of release and short summary.
New York Magazine offers several articles about various forthcoming titles, including Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, about slavery; new novels by Philip Roth and John Updike; The Good Thief, a ’semi-Gothic’ by Hannah Tinti; Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, short-listed for the Booker Prize; Roberto Bolaño’s posthumously published 2666; 3 books about addiction or mental illness; Marilynne Robinson’s Home; and a quick rundown of about 25 more books due out in Sept., Oct. and Nov.
Hillel Italie’s Fall Books Preview (AP) offers a few titles that presidential candidates Obama and McCain might enjoy, plus a scantily annotated list of other new books that might be big this season, including Case Histories, a new literary crime thriller by Kate Atkinson; E. Annie Proulx’s new story collection, Fine Just the Way It Is; Christopher Buckley’s Supreme Courtship, “a satire of the judicial branch;” Sister Souljah’s sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever; Anne Rice’s memoir about her Christian faith, Called Out of Darkness; Barack Obama’s Change We Can Believe In, “a policy book and collection of speeches;” Thom Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded; several books about Abraham Lincoln; a new children’s series ‘The 39 Clues,’ with “10 planned novels by 10 different authors, packaged with multimedia games, contests and trading cards, enhanced by a movie deal with Steven Spielberg;” Christopher Paolini’s Brisingr in the ‘Inheritance’ fantasy series.
Carla Maria Lucchetta in the Ottawa Citizen lists lots of books by Canadian authors and publishers for the fall, including books by Austin Clarke, Rohinton Mistry, Nino Ricci, Miriam Toews, former PM Paul Martin (political memoir), Margaret Atwood (not fiction but rather Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, “which looks at debt as a central motif in religion, literature and society”), Farley Mowat (writing in Otherwise about “the beginnings of his environmental activism, between 1937 and 1948″), Brian McKillop (the first biography of the writer-journalist Pierre Berton), Joan Barfoot, Andrew Pyper (The Killing Circle, “a literary thriller about a serial killer who strangely resembles a character out of the imagination of a member of a Toronto writer’s group”), Danielle Younge-Ullman, Neil Bissoondath, Alice Munro (stories), Shani Mootoo, Donna Morrissey (What They Wanted, set again in a small Newfoundland village), Mary Henley Rubio (The Gift of Wings, the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery), David Suzuki (his Green Guide), more.
Oscar Villalon at the SF Chronicle, in a column that strangely mixes books and sports, lists forthcoming fiction and non-fiction by month of publication, suggesting that Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 is “the most eagerly anticipated novel this fall.” He also highlights books by Philip Roth, Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth McCracken (memoir), Michael Greenberg, Diane Johnson, John Updike, Walter Mosley, John Barthes, and Amitav Ghosh.
Buzz Sugar offers a Falls Books Slideshow, within which is featured This Must Be the Place, a debut novel by Anna Winger; The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan (who wrote Marley & Me); Wally Lamb’s new novel, The Hour I First Believed; Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley; In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal, another debut novel; The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory, focusing on Mary, Queen of Scots; It Still Moves by Amanda Petrusich, about America and its music; Toni Morrison’s new novel, A Mercy; The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti; and A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar, a “coming-of-age story about a Muslim girl growing up in Kuwait, Egypt, and Texas.”
North Jersey.com’s Fall Books List is a simple list of fiction and non-fiction titles. Some that don’t appear on many other lists are David Baldacci’s Divine Justice, Just After Sunset by Stephen King (short stories), Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire (Wicked), The World Is What It Is by Patrick French (the authorized biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul), Here’s the Story by Brady Bunch actress Maureen McCormick, Tried by War by James M. McPherson (reviewing the military leadership of Abraham Lincoln), Mike’s Election Guide 2008 by Michael Moore, an 800-page biography of John Lennon by Philip Norman, an authorized biography of Warren Buffett by Alice Schroeder, and Ted Turner’s memoir.
Newsweek’s Guide to the Fall’s Hottest Reads name, among others, Reagan in Hollywood by Marc Eliot; Goldengrove, fiction by Francine Prose; The Irregulars by Jennet Conan about Roald Dahl as a British WW II spy; The Hemingses Of Monticello, Jefferson-related biography by Annette Gordon-Reed; Chicago, a novel by Alaa al Aswany about Egyptian expats after 9/11; George, Being George, oral reminiscences about longtime Paris Review editor George Plimpton.
The Wall Street Journal has an online ‘pullout’ of the heaviest hitters this fall, which include 4 titles in contemporary fiction, 3 in historical fiction, 1 in crime/mystery (Michael Connelly’s Brass Verdict), 2 in fantasy/sci fi, and 5 non-fiction titles.
EarlyWord has spreadsheets of fiction and non-fiction fall titles. They make note of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta, coming out in December, as well as Rizzoli’s All the World’s Birds and Tom Gjelten’s Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause.