Fall usually is a book lover’s delight as the publishing houses save most of their best releases to take advantage of the post-summer lull and the gearing up for the holiday gift-buying season. Last year, for example, saw new books from the likes of Tom Wolfe, John Updike, Philip Roth, Marilyn Robinson, Cynthia Ozick and Ha Jin, and that was just in fiction.
This year pickings are a little slim, but there are a few big names hitting both the fiction and nonfiction shelves. And two novels from first-time authors that promise to continue to draw in readers over thefall already have been released – “The Historian,” by Elizabeth Kostova, and “The Widow of the South,” byRobert Hicks.
But coming in the next few months are novels from E.L. Doctorow, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zadie Smith, Paulo Coelho, Amy Tan, Scott Turow, Myla Goldberg and Neil Gaiman.
In nonfiction this year, look for titles from Frank McCourt, Stephen Hawking, Garry Wills, Dava Sobel, Jonathan Harr, H.W. Brands, Simon Winchester and John Berendt.
Here is a sampling of what you can expect, alphabetized by author:
Fiction
“The Zahir,” by Paulo Coelho (HarperCollins, 304 pages, $24.95) An international bestselling author’s war correspondent wife disappears with a man who could be her lover. (Sept.)
“Slow Man,” by J.M. Coetzee (Penguin, 208 pages, $24.95) When a strictly independent man loses a leg in an accident, he finds he must depend on others. (Sept.)
“Predator,” by Patricia Cornwell (Penguin, 416 pages $26.95) The intrepid forensic scientist Kay Scarpetta is back with her usual team to solve another perplexing case. (Oct.)
“The March,” by E.L. Doctorow (Random House, 384 pages, $25.95) Doctorow uses the Civil War march through Georgia of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman as a backdrop for a story of generals and soldiers, slaves and owners, blacks and whites. (Sept.)
“The Sunflower,” by Richard Paul Evans (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $19.95) When a woman’s wedding is called off, she and a friend go on a mission to Peru. (Oct.)
“Anansi Boys,” by Neil Gaiman (William Morrow, 432 pages, $25.95) Gaiman, author of “American Gods,” brings another magical tale that, as Publishers Weekly says, is a “brilliant mingling of the mundane and fantastic.” (Sept.)
“Wickett’s Remedy,” by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday, 336 pages, $24.95) The author of the popular “Bee Season” returns with a historical novel that follows the life of a young Irish woman in South Boston. (Sept.)
“Get a Life,” by Nadine Gordimer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 160 pages, $20) The author, a Nobel laureate, offers a tale of a South African ecologist who learns he is a danger to others after undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer. (Dec.)
“Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf, 112 pages, $20) The Nobel laureates first fiction in a decade is about a 90- year-old man who decides to give himself “a night of love.” (Oct.)
“Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” by Anne Rice (Knopf, 352 pages, $25.95) Sure to be controversial, the novel by the author of the Vampire Chronicles traces the life of a young Jesus. (Nov.)
“Shalimar the Clown,” by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 352 pages, $25.95) Rushdie uses his wit and prodigious writing talent to tell the story of what happens when religions and politics turn violent. (Sept.)
“On Beauty,” by Zadie Smith (Penguin, 320 pages, $25.95) This is Smith’s take on what makes adult tick in the 21st century and a follow to her two previous novels, “White Teeth” and “Piece of Flesh.” (Sept.)
“Saving Fish From Dying,” by Amy Tan (Penguin, 496 pages, $26.95) Eleven Americans on vacation in Burma leave their resort for a tour and disappear. (Oct.)
“Ordinary Heroes,” by Scott Turow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 320 pages, $25) A man knows something about his father’s World War II past, but as he digs deeper into his dead father’s past, he finds some strange events. (Nov.)
Nonfiction
“The City of Fallen Angels,” by John Berendt (Penguin, 320 pages, $25.95) Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” was a runaway bestseller about Savannah, Ga. Now he turns his eye and wit on Venice, Italy. (Oct.)
“The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of the Making of a Global Terrorist,” by Peter L. Bergen (Free Press, pages, $26) Terrorism specialist Bergen interviews people who knew the terror mastermind to find out what makes him tick. (Oct.)
“Andrew Jackson: A Life and Times,” by H.W. Brands (Doubleday, 704 pages, $45). The author of “The First American” is back with the story of one of the country’s most popular presidents. (Oct.)
“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon and Schuster, 528 pages, $35) (Oct.) Goodwin describes how Lincoln chose his closest rivals for the presidential nomination in 1860 to be part of his war cabinet. (Oct.)
“The Lost Painting,” by Jonathan Harr (Random House, 288 pages, $24.95) The author of “A Civil Action” returns with the story of a lost Caravaggio painting titled “The Taking of Christ,” which was last seen about 200 years ago. (Nov.)
“A Briefer History of Time,” by Stephen Hawking, with Leonard Mlodinow (Bantam, 176 pages, $25) An updated and more tightly edited version of the author’s megaselling “A Brief History of Time.” (Sept.)
“Teacher Man: A Memoir,” by Frank McCourt (Scribner, 352 pages, $26) The popular author of “Angela’s Ashes” describes his coming of age as a teacher and writer. (Nov.)
“The Planets,” by Dava Sobel (Viking, 256 pages, $24.95) After using her gift of turning scientific concepts into something readable and interesting in “Longitude” and “Galileo’s Daughter,” Sobel now turns her sights on our solar system. (Oct.)
“Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War,” by Anthony Shadid (Henry Holt, 448 pages, $26) The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post pieced together the story of ordinary Iraqis during war. (Sept.)
“Henry Adams and the Making of America,” by Garry Wills (Houghton Mifflin, 448 pages, $30) Wills read all nine volumes of Adams’ history of the United States and says other historians did a disservice by reading only a few. (Sept.)
“A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906,” by Simon Winchester (HarperCollins, 480 pages, $27.95) A geologist, Winchester (“The Professor and the Madman”) tells us all about earthquakes, using the great San Francisco quake as a jumping-off point. (Oct.)
Staff writer Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
