|
Comeback kids: Fall releases answer questions about authors, characters
REVIEWS BY TRISHA PING Readers concerned that the November elections will limit fall releases to political exposés and tell-alls, fear not. This season ushers in fiction galore, including five books that readers have been waiting a decade—or more!—to read. From New Yorker writers to Oprah favorites to the woman who popularized urban lit, there is something for every reader to savor.
By Katherine Neville Ballantine, $26 464 pages, ISBN 9780345500670
Nelson DeMille hit a home run with readers in 1990, when he released the mob novel The Gold Coast. Starring an attorney, John Sutter, whose life—and marriage—changes forever when a Mafia don moves into the house next door, the novel was an unusual blend of action and midlife crisis story. On October 28, DeMille continues the story of wry, capable everyman Sutter with The Gate House. Ten years after the events of The Gold Coast, John and his ex-wife, Susan, have both returned to that same Long Island enclave. Their former neighbor is long gone, but his son has unfinished business with both Sutters—and there just might be some unfinished business between the exes, too. The Gate House promises trademark DeMille suspense and excitement.
By Nelson DeMille Grand Central, $27.99 500 pages, ISBN 9780446533423
Though John Updike's specialty is writing about suburban life from a male point of view, one of his greatest successes is a 1984 novel starring a group of three powerful women. The Witches of Eastwick became a bestseller and a 1987 movie. Updike said at the time that, though Witches ended with the three women marrying, "Who knows what's going to happen [next]?" Twenty-four years later, we do. On October 28, The Widows of Eastwick brings back Sukie, Jane and Alexandra, who in the past 30 years have all lost the husbands acquired at the end of Witches. They decide to return to Eastwick to recapture their youth—but find themselves facing the past instead.
By John Updike Knopf, $24.95 320 pages, ISBN 9780307269607 Hottest second act ever Sister Souljah is something of a controversial figure. The singer, writer and actress, whose real name is Lisa Williamson, is also an activist who speaks her mind when it comes to race relations. However, that didn't keep her 1999 debut novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, a gritty tale of a Brooklyn drug lord's daughter, from climbing the bestseller lists and inspiring a new genre of American fiction, urban lit. The novel is now in its 20th printing, and has sold more than one million copies. In November, Souljah will release a new novel: Midnight: A Gangster Love Story. Midnight comes from Sudanese royalty, but he and his devoutly Muslim mother and little sister are sent to America by their father when conflict strikes the country. His story is bound to be the next hit for Souljah, who says the long delay in publication was to make sure she put out a book that was a worthy successor to Winter.
By Sister Souljah Atria, $26.95 512 pages, ISBN 9781416545187 Answer to prayers Finally, Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed makes its appearance in November. After releasing two well-regarded novels in the 1990s, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, both of which were Oprah's Book Club picks, Lamb disappeared from the fiction landscape, preferring to focus on his work teaching writing workshops at York Correctional Institute—until now. The Hour I First Believed follows a woman who moves from Colorado to Connecticut following the 1999 Columbine High School tragedy. During a public reading in Connecticut, Lamb said he found the spark for the new novel, in New Orleans, where he prayed for inspiration in a French Quarter church. One week later, he had the first sentence of his book: "My mother was a convicted felon, a manic depressive, and Miss Rheingold of 1950." Well, do you want to read more?
By Wally Lamb Harper, $29.95 800 pages, ISBN 9780060393496
|
Katherine Neville thrilled audiences in 1988 with The Eight, an intense debut novel that drew comparisons to Umberto Eco and became a major bestseller. The book interlaced the stories of two women—Cat Velis, a computer expert in 1972, and Mireille de Remy, a nun-in-training in 1790—with the legend of a chess set that, when all the pieces are reunited, gives the user unlimited power. Neville has since published two other novels, but never returned to the characters from The Eight. On October 14, fans can read The Fire, a sequel starring Cat's daughter Alexandra. When her mother goes missing, Alexandra realizes that someone is again in pursuit of the famous chess set. Her search for Cat takes her around the world, and uncovers more details about the chess set's intriguing history.
Neighbors to the mob
From witches to widows