Summer Beach Reads behind us now, the fall brings with it new books to read by the fire or tucked in bed before turning out the lights. Here are a few I have on my radar screen.
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith (Peguin Group)
Kirkus Reviews says, “Rarely does a book that seems to promise so little deliver so much.” It’s divided into four sections: Reading, Being, Seeing, and Feeling and covers a range of topics.
The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson (HarperCollins)
This is Robinson’s first collection of stories. He’s got a fan base for his best-selling Inspector Alan Banks novels, described as “perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature.” I haven’t read then. I’m thinking this might be a good entry into his fiction.
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s by Edmund White (Bloomsbury)
Publisher’s Weekly has given this autobiography a starred review. Bloomsbury’s website says, “A memoir of the sociel [sic] and sexual lives of New York City’s cultural and intellectual in-crowd in the tumultous 1970s, from acclaimed author Edmund White.”
Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr (HarperCollins)
The HarperCollins website says Lit is about, “getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; and learning to write by learning to live.” Library Journal claims it will be the memoir of the season.
The Humbling by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
The Chicago Tribune says this novel will find favor with Roth fans. From the synopsis, it appears to be in keeping with Roth’s current fictional focus on illness and death, featuring an aging actor.
Family Album by Penelope Lively (Viking)
The Guardian says Lively’s new book “should be rated as one of her most impressive works.” It also says Lively “plunges us into an entirely convincing world of bustling family life, yet at the same time keeps her distance with lethally sharp observations.”
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)
Kingsolver’s first new novel in nine years gets a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. The protagonist Harrison Shepherd embarks on a journey that begins in Mexico in the 1930s, connecting him to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro (Alfred A. Knopf)
10 new stories from this Grande Dame of short storywriting.
Invisible by Paul Auster (Henry Holt & Co.)
From the Holt website: “Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster’s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.”
Devil’s Dream: A Novel About Nathan Bedford Forrest by Madison Smartt Bell (Pantheon)
A fictionalized story about a Confederate Civil War General. Pantheon’s description: “Considered a rogue by the upper ranks of the Confederate Army, who did not properly use his talents, Forrest was often relegated to small-scale operations.”
The Longest Chapter 