Here is an excerpt of a lovely list of what the USA TODAY critics are excited about with a sentence telling why…
DEIRDRE DONAHUE’S PICKS:
1. Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility
By Mireille Guiliano; Oct. 13. Oh la la! The Frenchwoman who revealed why she and her sexy sisters don’t get fat returns with tips about creating a satisfying life and career.
2. The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
By Max Brooks; Oct. 6. Zombie assaults get the graphic-novel treatment in the latest from the author of World War Z.
3.When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present
By Gail Collins; Oct. 14. The New York Times columnist tracks revolutionary changes women have experienced.
4. Cockroach
By Rawi Hage; Oct. 12. Hage’s DeNiro’s Game won the $140,000 International Dublin IMPAC Literary Award in 2008 — so expectations are high for this second novel about an Arab immigrant forced to see a therapist after a failed suicide attempt.
5. The Possibility of Everything – click here for my review of this wonderful memoir
By Hope Edelman; Sept. 15. The author of the 1994 sensation Motherless Daughters now writes about consulting a Mayan healer over her 3-year-old daughter’s imaginary playmate.
JOCELYN McCLURG’S PICKS:
1. How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
By William J. Mann; Oct. 21. Mann, who wrote the provocative bio Kate (as in Hepburn), pulls back the curtain on another glamorous big-screen legend.
By Amy Sohn; in stores. A top choice because a) this chick-lit novel about four urban mommies is set in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live and b) Sarah Jessica Parker is eyeing it for an HBO series.
3. Stardust
By Joseph Kanon; Sept. 29. Author of The Good German (so much better than the movie) returns with a thriller set in 1945 Hollywood.
4. Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
By Francine Prose; Sept. 29. A literary critic explores why this famous Holocaust diary has meant so much to so many readers, including this one.
5. The Lacuna
By Barbara Kingsolver; Nov. 3. First novel in nine years from the author of the excellent Poisonwood Bible tracks a character who hangs out with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotksy.
CAROL MEMMOTT’S PICKS:
1. Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
By Julie Powell; Powell, whose memoir Julie & Julia is now a hit movie, tells us more about her marriage and her food obsession.
2. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters; Sept. 15. Giant lobsters and two-headed sea serpents mix it up with Austen’s proper protagonists.
By Stephen King; Nov. 11. Even die-hard King fans may need to undergo endurance training so they can lift this 1,088-page novel about a town in Maine that becomes sealed off by an invisible dome.
By Jonathan Safran Foer; Nov. 2. Author of Everything Is Illuminated turns to non-fiction in this look at how we justify being carnivores.
5. Dracula the Undead: The Sequel to the Original Classic
By Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt; Oct. 13. Who could resist sinking their teeth into a sequel by a writer with Stoker blood in his veins?
BOB MINZESHEIMER’S PICKS:
1. Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
By Jon Krakauer; Sept. 15. The life and tragic death of a former pro football star killed in Afghanistan, a victim of friendly fire.
2. Spooner
By Pete Dexter; Sept. 24. A story about a man’s struggle to help his troubled stepson by a novelist who writes about trouble better than most anyone.
3. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
By Jeannette Walls; Oct. 6. Glass Castle author Walls imagines the frontier life of her grandmother, who broke horses, among other things.
4. The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America
By Timothy Egan; Oct. 19. Egan, who found the human drama in the dust bowl in The Worst Hard Time, his National Book Award winner, revisits the worst wildfire in U.S. history.
5. Lit
By Mary Karr; Nov. 3. A third memoir by a wickedly witty poet and professor who retraces her improbable path from alcoholic agnostic to baptized Catholic.
I’m hoping to read Anne Frank by Francine Prose. I always look forward to good lit on the Holocaust Era. Thanks for posting the list
My pleasure!! I love lists, too…
Just finished Cockroach and it was fantastic. I will def be going back to read Deniro’s Game.
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/reviews/cockroach
Unfortunately, I just finished reading Cleaving and can’t recommend it. (Review is on my blog).
I am going to try Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters since I loved P&P&Vampires.
Thank you for weighing in! Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get into P&P&Zombies… I hope you enjoy Sea Monsters, though!!