Fall book preview

This year, two of Canada's brightest stars shine their lights on the fall book season. Alice Munro, who just a few years ago proclaimed her retirement from writing, fooled us all by just publishing Too Much Happiness, which includes 10 new stories that reaffirm her reign as a short-story master in Canadian and international arts and letters. A few stories in the collection surprisingly veer from Munro's usual rural Canadian themed stories.

Margaret Atwood again proves to be a master of timing with The Year of the Flood (McClelland & Stewart), to be released next week, which reveals an imagined future where the world as we know it is wiped out by a pandemic. Two women survive, one trapped in a sex club and the other in a luxury spa. It promises to be Atwood at her sardonic best and she's employing some creative ideas to market the book, including a theatrical performance complete with original music.

On her international book tour, including six Canadian cities, she'll hire local actors and musicians. She will appear in Ottawa on Sept. 22 at Saint Brigid's Centre for the Arts and Humanities. Atwood is also blogging about the experience at http://marg09.wordpress.com/

Not to be overshadowed by these two major literary events, following are some highlights of a very busy fall book season.

CANADIAN FICTION

Shinan Govani, the National Post's gossip columnist, writes what he knows in Boldface Names, about a jet-setting celebrity columnist who has to think twice about revealing the biggest scoop of his career. (HarperCollins, in stores now)

Former Toronto Star columnist Linwood Barclay's new thriller, Fear the Worst, involves a 17-year-old who goes missing from her father's home, sending him on a frantic search. (Doubleday, in stores now)

Giller Prize winner Bonnie Burnard writes about three women, their decades- long friendship and how a unexpected diagnosis affects them, in Suddenly. (HarperCollins, September)

Bestselling author of Rush Home Road and The Girls, Lori Lansens writes in The Wife's Tale about an obese woman who is shocked out of her stupor after her husband of 25 years leaves her. (Random House, in stores now)

Vancouver writer Michael Turner continues his exploration of the experimental novel form with 8 x 10, a story with nameless characters who are connected to the world through their actions, relationships and job titles. (Doubleday, September)

A freed slave who settles in an African-American settlement in what is now known as Chatham, Ont., is the subject of David, Ray Robertson's sixth novel. (Thomas Allen, September)

Fresh young writer Zoe Whittall follows up her acclaimed Bottle Rocket Hearts with Holding Still for as Long as Possible, centring on three characters in their twenties - a former teen idol, a paramedic and aspiring filmmaker - trying to navigate their highly anxious, fast-paced, multi-distracted and increasingly public relationships and environments. (Anansi, September)

A Giller Prize nominee for The Island Walkers, John Bemrose is back with The Last Woman, a story about how a reappearance of a man into the life of a couple one 1980s summer brings back old conflicts and sorrows. (McClelland & Stewart, September)

Playwright and novelist Cordelia Strube's Lemon centres on how a misfit girl creatively copes with her offbeat family - three mothers and a deadbeat dad - that has nothing but problems. (Coach House Press, October)

In Kanata, Don Gillmor, journalist and author of Canada: A People's History, offers a fictional account of the life of Welshman David Thomson who became Canada's first cartographer. (Penguin, November)

CANADIAN NON-FICTION BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

In Middle-Aged Spread: Moving to the Country at 50, gardening writer and newspaper columnist Sonia Day humorously documents her move from the fast-paced city to a simpler country life in Bellwood, Ont. (Key Porter, in stores now)

Philosopher and critic Mark Kingwell tells the life of virtuoso pianist Glenn Gould for Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series. (September). Also in the series, Ottawa writer and Giller Prize nominee Daniel Poliquin takes on Parti Qubecois leader Rne Lvesque (September). Next in the series in March 2010 is Doug Coupland writing on Marshall McLuhan; John Ralson Saul on the leaders of Upper and Lower Canada, Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin; and Joseph Boyden on Mtis leaders Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont.

Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000, is the sequel to Citizen of the World. University of Waterloo history professor John English had exclusive access to the papers and letters of Trudeau to document the former PM's life from the '60s until his death in 2000. (Knopf, October)

Canada's veteran songstress Anne Murray remembers her life and path to 40 years of recording career success in All of Me, written with Globe & Mail arts columnist Michael Posner. (Knopf, October)

Toronto psychologist Catherine Gildiner follows up her lauded Too Close to the Falls on its 10th anniversary with After the Falls, retelling her 1960s coming of age in suburban Buffalo. (Knopf, October)

CURRENT AFFAIRS

Award-winning writer David Adams Richards takes a break from fiction to explore his personal attitude toward faith in God Is. (Doubleday, in stores now)

Ottawa writer Denise Chong, author of The Concubine's Children and The Girl in the Picture publishes her first book in a decade, Egg on Mao. It's the story of Lu Decheng, a Chinese bus mechanic who was jailed for defacing a Mao's portrait during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. (Random House, September)

Governor General Award-winning poet, novelist and memoirist Karen Connolly sheds light on a troubled Burma in Burmese Lessons: A Love Story, documenting time spent there from the early 1990s to 2006. (Random House, September)

In The Case For God, Karen Armstrong, a respected writer on religious affairs, examines the waning interest in religion as it has been known and practised, and the impulse toward new, more modernized forms of belief. (Knopf, September)

BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research In Motion and the Little Device That Took the World By Storm, by historian and author Alistair Sweeny gives a behind-the-scenes look at how how Mike Lazaridis and RIM made the BlackBerry the Swiss army knife of smart phones and a top status symbol. (John Wiley & Sons, September)

A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War is Gen. Rick Hillier's first-hand, inside account of his time as Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff of the Armed Forces during the country's controversial role in Afghanistan until his retirement in 2008. (HarperCollins, October)

The blurred line between advertising and culture is the topic of The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture by CBC radio hosts Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant. The book looks at the history of advertising, including the Mad Men of the 1960s as depicted in the popular TV show and the new social media trends that brought us Facebook and YouTube. (Knopf, October 2009)

Never one to shy away from controversy, Buzz Hargrove gives advice about how to negotiate for your rights during an economic slowdown in Laying It on the Line: Driving a Hard Bargain in Challenging Times. (HarperCollins, October)

Broadcaster, writer and journalism professor Ted Barris uses his unique interviewing skills to encourage Canadian veterans to talk about their experiences in Breaking the Silence: Untold Veterans' Stories from the Great War to Afghanistan. (Thomas Allen, October)

Canada's master of rhetoric Rex Murphy compiles some of his greatest and controversial commentaries in Rex Murphy and Other Matters of Opinion. (Doubleday, October)

Broadcast icon Peter Mansbridge reminds readers why he's one of the most respected interviewers in Canada in One On One: Favourite Conversations and the Stories Behind Them. Named for his CBC weekly program, this compendium features 40 interviews including, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Sydney Crosby, Shimon Peres and Desmond Tutu. (Random House, October)

FOOD

Fresh with Anna Olson: Seasonally Inspired Recipes to share with Family and Friends gives recipes, tips and techniques for cooking with fresh, seasonal, local, healthy and wholesome ingredients. Anna Olson is a Food Network Canada host of the shows Sugar and Fresh. (Whitecap, September)

Globe & Mail food columnist Lucy Waverman encourages readers to eat at home with some healthy, economical recipes made from local seasonal ingredients in A Year in Lucy's Kitchen: Seasonal Recipes and Mouthwatering Menus. (Random House, October)

INTERNATIONAL FICTION

Dan Brown involves his famous protagonist Robert Langdon in a new religious thriller in The Lost Symbol, the sequel to the wildly bestselling Da Vinci Code. (Knopf DoubleDay, September)

American writing icon Philip Roth tells a dark, perversely erotic tale of an actor past his prime in The Humbling. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November)

Historical fiction writer Diana Gabaldon offers the seventh instalment in her popular Outlander series, An Echo in the Bone. (Doubleday, September)

Born in St. Kitt's, raised in England and now living in New York, Caryl Phillips is one of most compelling writers on race and identity. His new book In the Falling Snow involves a middle-aged social worker, estranged from family who, when accused of harassment by a co-worker, begins to assess his career and life. (Knopf, September)

Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving's 12th first novel, his first since 2005's semi-autobiographical Until I Find You. Partially set in Canada, it's an adventure about a father and his teenage son on the run in the mid- 1950s. (Knopf, October)

Barbara Kingsolver's first novel since The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna is a story spanning the 1930s, '40s and '50s, about a man caught between two countries; Mexico and the United States. (HarperCollins, October)

Audrey Niffenegger, author of the beloved Time Traveller's Wife, is back with Her Fearful Symmetry, about teenage identical twins who go to live in their dead aunt's house, inhabited by her ghost looking for closure. (Knopf, October)

Inspired by Maurice Sendak's popular children's book Where the Wild Things Are, Dave Eggers recasts the story for adults in The Wild Things. Limited editions will have a fur cover. (Publishers Group Canada, October)

The Museum of Innocence is the new novel by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, a story of love and temptation set in his native Istanbul. (Knopf, October)

Bestselling British author Nick Hornby conjures up a tale of music, love and superfandom in Juliet Naked. (Putnam, September)

Superstar crime writer James Ellroy concludes a trilogy that began with 1995's American Tabloid'with Blood's a Rover, a political noir of corruption and retribution. (Knopf, September)

Joyce Carol Oates, in A Fair Maiden, the story of 16-year-old girl from a working-class background who gets involved with a sophisticated, silver-haired author, weaves an unsettling tale of desire and control.(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November)

Anne Rice begins a new series called Songs of the Seraphim with Angel Time, a time-travelling tale of angels, reluctant assassins and redemption.

INTERNATIONAL NON-FICTION

Superfreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner picks up where Freakonomics left off with all new material and original studies about the way we live today, how we make decisions and navigate our ever-changing world. (HarperCollins, November)

Michael Chabon, the bestselling author of the Pulitzer-prizewinning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and the The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards, explores what it means to be a man, husband and father today in a personal manifesto and handbook titled Manhood for Amateurs. (HarperCollins, October)

Al Gore, who needs no introduction, continues his call for action on climate change in Our Choice. The book draws on research, dialogue and conclusions from more than 30 summits he has attended since he published An Inconvenient Truth. (Random House, November)

Everyone's favourite grumpy celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay brings the food from Maze - his London, New York and Prague restaurants - to life in Gordon Ramsay's Maze. The book is co-written by Jason Atherton, head chef at Maze. (Key Porter, September)

Ottawa Citizen