09-15-2024 Fall Arts - Flipbook - Page 11
The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, September 15, 2024 11
FALL ENTERTAINMENT PREVIEW
BOOKS
Escape
clauses
Readers can choose where to go with
fantasy, literary fiction, politics and
Taylor-ed book offerings this season
By Hillel Italie | Associated Press
B
randon Sanderson, whose epic “Wind and Truth” is
a highlight of the upcoming publishing season, sees
nothing wrong with the idea of escapism.
“It’s just the ability to go
to another world and relate
to other people’s problems,
problems that aren’t our
problems. It’s a really valuable tool in our lives,” the
fantasy novelist said during
a recent interview. Sanderson’s fans have waited four
years for “Wind and Truth,”
the 1,300-page fifth volume
in his “Stormlight Archive”
fantasy series.
He acknowledges, with
mixed feelings, that some
will take relatively little
time to finish it.
“They will absolutely
read it in two days, which
feels both gratifying and a
little horrifying,” he says.
“You put your heart and
soul into something for so
long, knowing that fans are
going to be done in a couple
of days and say, ‘When’s the
next one?’”
Booksellers are looking
to Sanderson and others to
sustain the wave of fantasy
and the hybrid romantasy novels that have been
selling strongly over the
past few years. “Wind and
Truth” is among numerous anticipated works that
include Jeff VanderMeer’s
“Absolution,” Alan Moore’s
“The Great When,” Cecy
Robson’s “Bloodguard”
and Kerri Maniscalco’s
“Throne of Secrets,” the
second installment of her
“Prince of Sin” series.
According to Circana,
which tracks around 85%
of the retail market, fantasy
sales have been growing
for the past five years, and
since last summer, they
have jumped by nearly
75%, driven in part by the
million-selling romantasy
authors Sarah J. Maas and
Rebecca Yarros.
“The fantasy subject is
the top growth segment
of the total U.S. print book
market,” says Circana
analyst Brenna Conner,
who cites the reader-driven
sales of #BookTok as a
strong factor. “I also believe
escapism is a component
as more readers seek out
stories with elements of
escapism to counter daily
stress and fatigue of the
news cycle.”
At Barnes & Noble,
senior director of books
Shannon DeVito notes that
fantasy has expanded and
diversified, blending horror
and romance and mystery.
She cites Maas and Yarros,
and such upcoming
releases as Frances White’s
gay-themed “Voyage of the
Damned,” John Gwynn’s
Norse-inspired “The Fury
of the Gods” and Ann
Liang’s mythical “A Song to
Drown Rivers.”
“It’s event-proof,”
DeVito says of fantasy and
its offshoots. “It doesn’t
depend on news of the day.”
ELECTION FALLOUT
President Joe Biden’s
decision not to seek reelection may have little effect
on the fantasy market,
but it upended the fall
campaign and left a void in
the publishing schedule:
No one had time to work
up in-depth books on the
Democrats’ new nominee,
Vice President Kamala
Harris. The best chance for
revelations likely comes
from Bob Woodward’s
“War,” which centers on
Biden’s handling of the
conflicts in Ukraine and the
Middle East, but also promises insights on Harris and
the presidential race.
Publishers of anti-Biden
books are proceeding with
scheduled fall releases,
including former New York
City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s
“The Biden Crime Family.”
Harris’ Republican opponent, former President
Donald Trump, has a book
of photos coming, “Save
America,” which on its
cover has an image of him
bloodied and raising his
fist after the assassination
attempt in July. His wife,
former first lady Melania
Trump, is releasing the
memoir “Melania.” Donald
Trump’s estranged niece
and bestselling author,
Mary Trump, returns
with more family (horror)
stories in “Who Could Ever
Love You.”
H.R. McMaster, who
served briefly as national
security adviser during
the Trump administration, has written “At
War With Ourselves.”
Onetime Trump opponent
Hillary Clinton reflects on
marriage, faith and politics in the essay collection
“Something Lost, Something Gained.” Project
2025 architect Kevin
Roberts’ “Dawn’s Early
Light,” for which GOP
vice presidential nominee JD Vance wrote the
foreword, has been postponed until just after the
election amid Republican
efforts to distance themselves from the controversial blueprint for a second
Trump term. But before
the election, readers can
consider recommendations from Joel B. Pollak’s
“The Agenda: What Trump
Should Do in His First 50
Days,” with a foreword
from Trump ally Steve
Bannon.
PROSE AND POETRY
Sally Rooney’s “Intermezzo” is a story of grief
and sibling rivalry from
the author known for
the bestsellers “Normal
People” and “Conversations With Friends.” Nobel
laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s
“The Empusium: A Health
Resort Horror Story” is the
Polish author’s variation on
the Thomas Mann classic
“The Magic Mountain.”
Nobelist Annie Ernaux of
France combines memoir
and images in “The Use of
Photography,” and perennial Nobel candidate
Haruki Murakami expands
on an early short story for
“The City and Its Uncertain
Walls,” which his Japanese publisher is calling
“soul-stirring, 100% pure
Murakami world.”
Pulitzer Prize winner
Richard Powers’ “Playground” touches upon
everything from climate
change to artificial intelligence, while Louise
Erdrich, another Pulitzer
winner, sets “The Mighty
Red” on a North Dakota
beet farm during the
economic crash of 2008.
In “Tell Me Everything,”
Pulitzer winner Elizabeth
Strout returns to fictional
Crosby, Maine, and such
friends from “Olive Kitteridge” and “Olive, Again” as
the title character and the
scribe Lucy Barton.
“I never intended to
write them about them
again. I think I keep bringing them back because they
are so very well known to
me,” Strout says. “They
feel almost as real as actual
people. I know they’re not
real people, but they feel
like real people.”
John Edgar Wideman
blends fiction, history and
memoir in “Slaveroad,” and
Rebecca Godfrey’s “Peggy”
is a fictional take on the
heiress-art collector Peggy
Guggenheim that was
completed by Leslie Jamison after Godfrey’s death
in 2022. New fiction is
also coming from Richard
Price, Lee Child, Michael
Connelly, Kate Atkinson,
Janet Evanovich, Rachel
Kushner, Richard Osman,
Tova Reich, Paula Hawkins,
GETTY ILLUSTRATION
Jami Attenberg and
Rumaan Alam.
Margaret Atwood
began her career as
a poet and her verse is
collected
in “Paper
Boat: New
and Selected
Poems: 19612023,” while
“Blues in Stereo”
features early work from
the late Langston Hughes.
Prize winners Paul
Muldoon, Kimiko Hahn
and Matthew Zapruder all
have collections coming
out, along with new books
from Billy Collins, Ben
Okri, Kimiko Hahn, Frank
X Walker and E. Hughes.
“Dear Yusef” is a tribute to the celebrated poet
Yusef Komunyakaa that
includes contributions
from Terrance Hayes,
Major Jackson and Sharon
Olds. “Latino Poetry: The
Library of America Anthology” compiles verse from
the 17th century to the
present.
TAYLOR-ED
Like all pop culture
phenomena, from the
Beatles to “Star Wars,”
Taylor Swift’s appeal isn’t
confined to a single art
Erica Wainer and Joanie
Stone; and Rolling Stone
writer Rob Sheffield’s
“Heartbreak Is the National
Anthem: How Taylor Swift
Reinvented Pop Music.”
THE FAMOUS AND
NEAR FAMOUS
form. Her songs and her
life have inspired young
adult novels, children’s
books and biographies and
the wave continues.
Katie Cotugno’s “Heavy
Hitter” is an athlete-pop
star romance based in part
on Swift and NFL great
Travis Kelce, while “The
13 Days of Swiftness” is a
picture story for holiday
shoppers who can chant
such lines as “12 strings for
strumming” and “11 bracelets beaded.”
The anthology “Poems
for Tortured Souls”
includes verse from
Emily Dickinson, Edna St.
Vincent Millay and other
alleged kindred souls of
Swift. Biographies and
critical studies include
the picture book “Taylor
Swift: Wildest Dreams,” by
Lisa Marie Presley’s
“From Here to the Great
Unknown” was nearly done
before she died in 2023 and
was completed by daughter
Riley Keough.
In “Didion and Babitz,”
Lili Anolik draws upon
newly discovered letters as
she contrasts the California
bards Joan Didion and Eve
Babitz, who died within
days of each other in 2021
and whose lives, Anolik
documents, were more
entwined than previously
known.
Celebrity books also
will include Cher’s “The
Memoir, Part One,” Al
Pacino’s “Sonny Boy,” Josh
Brolin’s “From Under the
Truck,” Kelly Bishop’s “The
Third Gilmore Girl” and
Connie Chung’s “Connie.”
Pedro Almodóvar shares
stories-allegories-musings
in “The Last Dream,” and
Neneh Cherry looks back
on her life and music in “A
Thousand Threads.”
PAST AND PRESENT
“Patriot” is a posthumous memoir from imprisoned Russian opposition
leader Alexei Navalny.
Supreme Court Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson
has written “Lovely One: A
Memoir,” Malcolm Gladwell returns to famous
territory in “Revenge of
the Tipping Point,” and
Ta-Nehisi Coates explores
the power of stories — and
misinformation — in “The
Message.”
Numerous books draw
upon racism in U.S. history
and those who fought
against it.
David Greenberg’s “John
Lewis” is a biography of the
late civil rights activist and
congressman, while Wright
Thompson’s “The Barn”
promises new information
on the murder of Emmett
Till. Russell Cobb’s “Ghosts
of Crook County,” like
David Grann’s “Killers of
the Flower Moon,” tells of a
white oil man in Oklahoma
who seeks to steal Native
property.
In “The Black Utopians,” Aaron Robertson
tracks a century of planned
communities and asks,
“What does utopia look like
in black?”
