OK, put away those beach blankets, lawn chairs, and half-empty bottles of sunscreen. With Labor Day past, fall is virtually here, and the seasonal rush of books is approaching like a paper tsunami. You'll have to be on your toes to make your picks, so here is our unscientific selection of books to look for.
It's shaping up to be a great fiction season, with old and promising new faces on the docket. Among New England writers, Boston University professor Ha Jin has a novel called "A Free Life" (October), which sounds autobiographical. It concerns a Chinese student at Brandeis, shocked by the Tiananmen Square massacre, who decides to make his life in America. In "Ghost" (October) MIT's Alan Lightman, author of "Einstein's Dreams," explores the tension between physical and spiritual. Richard Russo of Camden, Maine, has another novel of class and small-town life in "Bridge of Sighs" (September). Roland Merullo of Williamsburg relates a sentimental/comic journey in "Breakfast With Buddha" (October). Salem-based Jay Atkinson's novel "City in Amber" (October) is set in Lawrence.
Among writers outside New England, Philip Roth offers his last novel about Nathan Zuckerman, called "Exit Ghost" (October). Ann Patchett, author of the bestseller "Bel Canto," locates her new novel, "Run" (September), in Boston. It's about Boston Irish politics and family. Australian writer Janette Turner Hospital, whose teaching and writing life seems to be half America, half Australia, also chose a Boston setting for "Orpheus Lost" (October), a story of terrorism and suspicion. Alice Sebold's first novel since "The Lovely Bones" is called "The Almost Moon," due out in October. Garrison Keillor fans can look forward to "Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon" (September).
Promising authors from abroad include Canadian Lawrence Hill. The epic historical novel (Hill's first book published in the United States), is told in the voice of an old African woman enslaved before the American Revolution. Irish writer Anne Enright's new novel, "The Gathering" (September), about a clan assembled for a Dublin wake, is on the long- list for the UK's Man Booker Prize for Fiction. "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" (September), by Chinese-British writer Xiaolu Guo, plots the passionate love of a Chinese student for an Englishman in London.
Some prefer real stories to the made-up variety. In autobiography and memoir, the choices are rich. In "Brother, I'm Dying" (September) Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat tells the sad story of her father and her beloved uncle, Joseph. Joseph, 81, was imprisoned by customs officials in Miami in 2004 and soon died, and his grieving brother died shortly thereafter. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, not one to say much in public, tells his life story in "My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir" (October).
Much in the news lately, the reflections of Mother Teresa, "Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta," are being published this month. On the more secular side are the two-volume "Journals" (October) of historian and presidential adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Still very much with us, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan tells his own and America's story, as he saw it, in "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World" (September). In the arts, there's the apparently-not-ghostwritten "Clapton: The Autobiography" (October), by legendary rocker Eric Clapton.
The biography shelves are groaning, too, especially in the arts. John Richardson's highly praised three-volume biography of Pablo Picasso concludes with "A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932" (November). Hilary Spurling gives us the life of another painter with "Matisse the Master" (September). In film, there's Foster Hirsch's "Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King" (November), a life of the great director. Julie Kavanagh offers "Nureyev: The Life" (October). As if to prove there's no end to interest in Sherlock Holmes, November brings two books about the detective's creator: "Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters," by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Chris Foley, and "The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," by Andrew Lycett.
The election campaign is in full swing, and impassioned partisans are pumping out books left and right. In his title, John W. Dean of Watergate fame doesn't pussyfoot around: "Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches" (September) while conservative commentator Kenneth R. Timmerman purports to blow the cover of sinister liberal moles in the CIA and State Department, in "Shadow Warriors: The Untold Story of Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender" (November). Between the barricades, there's Ronald Brownstein's "The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America" (November).
War and peace are on all minds these days. Heidi Squier Kraft, a Navy psychologist who worked with suffering US servicemen and -women, tells her story in "Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital" (October). Roadside bombs are horrifying, but The Bomb remains the worst war nightmare of all. Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winner for "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," narrates a chilling tale in "Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race" (October).
Of course, the race goes on, and two books relate the career of Pakistani nuclear huckster A.Q. Kahn: "Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons" (October), by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, and "The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets and How We Could Have Stopped Him" (December) by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins.
Science has lyrics and music. On the former, there's Harvard's Steven Pinker, returning to the subject of words in "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature" (September). Oliver Sacks takes up the latter in "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain" (October). Nobel laureate James D. Watson, one of the livelier personalities in science, writes an autobiography-with-lessons in "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From a Life in Science" (September). On the sadder side is "The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man" (October), by Boston-based Amir D. Aczel. It tells of the French priest-scientist, whose writings on human origins were banned in his lifetime by the Vatican.
We end with a book that sounds interesting and hard to categorize. What does it mean that Americans now want to retire early, but typically live into their 90s? Psychotherapist Lillian B. Rubin, whose best-selling book about marriage was "Intimate Strangers," reflects on later life in "60 on Up: The Truth About Aging in America" (September). Rubin, in her early 80s and a very good writer, explores the good news/bad news about greater longevity of today's Americans.
David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.
