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Looking ForwardFrom high-profile bios to funny business, 30 books we can't wait to see
SCHOOL'S BACK in session, and our assignment for this fall preview was to pick the 30 books we're most looking forward to reading, published now through the dark days of December. It's a select list, with high-profile authors that include John le Carré, Richard Ford, Stephen King and Alice Munro, and high-octane biographical subjects such as Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell. Jonathan Franzen, author of "The Corrections," writes about himself. So do Gore Vidal and Bill Bryson. That said, we'll confess: The volume we are most looking forward to is Roz Chast's "Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006," the collected works thus far of the incomparably funny New Yorker cartoonist, out from Bloomsbury in November. Five hundred cartoons — one for every day of the year, and two when you can't restrain yourself. Here's the list: FICTION September "Moral Disorder" by Margaret Atwood (Doubleday). Linked short stories resembling "a photograph album — a series of clearly observed moments that trace the course of a life, and also the lives intertwined with it." By the Man Booker Prize-winning author of "The Blind Assassin." Hear the editor's top picks "The Mission Song" by John le Carré (Little, Brown). The master spy/suspense novelist tells the story of an Irish-Congolese interpreter who works for businesses, hospitals, diplomats and spies, and who discovers Very Bad Things having to do with Central African warlords and British intelligence. October "One Good Turn" by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown). The British author follows up her wonderful whodunnit "Case Histories" with a sequel that continues the offbeat adventures of detective Jackson Brodie, in Edinburgh during the city's famous arts festival. "Restless" by William Boyd (Bloomsbury). The ever-inventive British writer ("Any Human Heart," "The New Confessions") tries his hand at an espionage novel — about a young woman who learns that her mother, far from being a "respectable English widow," is a Russian-emigré-turned-World-War-II-spy. "Echo Park" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown). Harry Bosch, everybody's favorite lone-wolf Los Angeles detective, continues to work for the Open-Unsolved unit of the LAPD, and becomes unglued when he realizes he missed a clue in a 1995 case that could have prevented nine murders. "The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford (Knopf). Remember real-estate agent Frank Bascombe, the voice of Ford's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Independence Day"? Frank is back, now 55 years old, and contending with "health, marital and family issues" that come to a head during a Thanksgiving get-together overshadowed by the disputed presidential election of 2000. "Thirteen Moons" by Charles Frazier (Random House). The author of the unlikely best-selling 1997 novel "Cold Mountain" has finally written another book. This one tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who joins the Cherokees in their fight to preserve their homeland and culture. "What Came Before He Shot Her" by Elizabeth George (HarperCollins). George, now a part-time Puget Sound resident, shocked her enormous fan base in her last book by violently dispatching a key character. This book is a follow-up — the complex tribulations of three orphaned children serve as back story to the seemingly random murder of a Scotland Yard detective's wife on her own front steps. "The Stories of Mary Gordon" (Pantheon). More than 40 stories by the author of "Pearl" and "Final Payments," including 22 previously uncollected tales. "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King (Scribner). The widow of a best-selling novelist finds herself having to face her husband's demons two years after his death. "The Willow Field" by William Kittredge (Knopf). Kittredge, a Montana resident and a respected Western memoirist ("A Hole in the Sky"), turns fiction writer with a debut novel spanning American Western history "from the settlers, cowboys and gamblers who opened up this country to the landholders and politicians who ran it." "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf). The prize-winning author ("All the Pretty Horses") writes a post-apocalyptic novel about a man and his son traveling through "the ashes of the late world." November "Inés of My Soul" by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins). A historical novel by the Chilean-American writer about real-life Spanish conquistadora Inés Suarez, who took part in the 16th-century conquest of indigenous Chileans and, with her lover Pedro de Valdivia, helped build the city of Santiago. "Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf). The Florida writer cooks up another preposterous Florida-set tale, this one about an "impassioned, poorly medicated bipolar, self-proclaimed 'queen of lost causes' " who's determined to "rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference and dinnertime telemarketers." "The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro (Knopf). A new volume of short stories by the great Canadian writer ("Open Secrets"). "Carried Away," a retrospective selection of Munro's earlier work with an introduction by Margaret Atwood, will be brought out in September by Everyman Library, the publisher of literary classics that celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. December "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin Press). The first novel by Pynchon ("Gravity's Rainbow") in almost 10 years. An Amazon.com synopsis of it, supposedly written by Pynchon himself, says it spans "the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I," and is set in Colorado, New York, Siberia and numerous other places, including some not on any map. The cast includes "anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons" and many others. It's 1,040 pages long. And the reclusive author will be doing no publicity. NONFICTION September "The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History" by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The author of "The Corrections" pens a memoir about his upbringing in Webster Groves, Mo., his family's history and travails, and his New York adulthood and marriage. The story so far, in other words. Plus bird watching. "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth" by E.O. Wilson (Norton). The Alabama-raised Pulitzer-Prize-winning biologist, in the form of a letter to a Southern Baptist minister, warns that at least half the species of plants and animals on Earth could either be gone or fated for extinction by the end of this century, and that "the only way the earth can be saved is if science and religion join forces." A new book by Bob Woodward is coming from Simon & Schuster. Shades of "Deep Throat"! The text and even the title of this book were still "under embargo" as we went to press. We therefore can't give any specifics, but the book's general focus will be the Bush inner circle's attempts to come to terms with the struggles of the president's second term. Talk about great material. October "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" by Bill Bryson (Broadway Books). Bryson, author of "In a Sunburned Country" (a trip through Australia), "A Walk in the Woods" (a hike along the length of the Appalachian trail), and "A Short History of Nearly Everything" (an attempt to explain . . . nearly everything), now tells his own story, which begins in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, proceeds through a "totally all-American childhood" and culminates with many years spent in Britain and a career writing funny books that millions of people love to read. "My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H.W. Bush" by Doro Bush Koch (Warner). Bush the elder has said he's not planning to write his memoirs. If you want to know his story, this may be it until the scholars start weighing in. Koch is the sixth child and only surviving daughter of George and Barbara Bush. "Peace or Apartheid in Palestine" by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster). The former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner (for negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt) offers his prescription for what must be done to bring "permanent peace to Israel with dignity and justice to Palestine." "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town" by John Grisham. (Doubleday). It's nonfiction. That's all we know about it — and all the publisher will say. "Thunderstruck" by Erik Larson (Crown). Local-author-made-really-really-good Larson follows up his "The Devil in the White City" blockbuster with another true-crime tale set in the past. This one, set in Edwardian London, interweaves the stories of Hawley Crippen, a doctor and unlikely murderer, Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive genius who invented the wireless, and the role Marconi's creation would play in attempting to bring the murderer to justice. "Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas" by Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher (Doubleday). The authors (both Washington Post reporters, both black) characterize Thomas as "an isolated and bitter man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia to elite educational institutions to the pinnacle of judicial power." "Trump Nation: The Art of Being Donald" by Timothy L. O'Brien (Warner). A New York Times business reporter scrutinizes the real-estate magnate/TV personality and finds out some juicy things. The Donald is said to be very aggravated about it. "Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West" by Hampton Sides (Doubleday). The author of "Ghost Soldiers" tells the story of how the United States, between 1846 and 1865, conquered much of Mexican America and subdued the Southwest's Native American tribes — notably the Navajo. At the center of the action: Kit Carson, the frontiersman whose life became fodder for the Western dime novels known as "Blood and Thunders." "Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, his Republican Allies and the Buying of Washington" by Peter H. Stone (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Said to be a comprehensive look at a scandal that just keeps growing. Stone is a writer for National Journal. "Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell" by Karen DeYoung (Knopf). The life of the man who rose through the Army to become the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ultimately secretary of state. "With dramatic new information about the inner workings of the administration as it became locked in ideological combat after 9/11," says the publisher. Written with the co-operation of Powell and his family. November "Point to Point Navigation" by Gore Vidal (Doubleday). Vidal follows up "Palimpsest," his memoir of his boyhood and youth, with a book about his adult life that is billed as "far from linear, but always on course." Among those populating its pages: the Kennedys, Tennessee Williams, Orson Welles, Greta Garbo, Federico Fellini and Rudolph Nureyev. Mary Ann Gwinn is The Seattle Times book editor. Michael Upchurch is The Times book critic.
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