Last week we featured the first list of the fall titles we're looking forward to (Chris Priest, our marketing manager, points out that Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Bleeding Edge, is set in 2001, not 2011. I plead non-existent typing skills). And so to our second list:
Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (Penguin Press, November 5). From the authors who brought us the bestselling Game Change, about the 2008 presidential election, this one promises to be even better (perhaps depending on your politics).
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink (Crown, September 10). A stunning examination of one of the most shocking and complex stories to come out of Hurricane Katrina--the deaths of 45 patients at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center in the days following the storm.
Guests on Earth by Lee Smith (Algonquin, October 15). Evalina Toussaint, the orphaned child of an exotic dancer in New Orleans, is admitted to Highland Hospital in Asheville, N.C., at the age of 13. One of her fellow patients is Zelda Fitzgerald, just one of a supporting cast of memorable characters.
Happy Hour in Hell by Tad Williams (DAW, September 3), is the second Bobby Dollar novel, following The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Dollar is an angel advocate for souls caught between heaven and hell. His girlfriend, a demon, is captured by the nastiest demon in the underworld. "Why does an angel have a demon girlfriend? Well, certainly not because it helps my career." Urban fantasy with a wry laughtrack.
Havisham by Ronald Frame (Picador, November 5). In a prelude to Great Expectations, Frame imagines how a young woman turned into a crone clothed in the tattered dress for a wedding that never happened.
Hild by Nicola Griffith (FSG, November 12). In seventh-century Britain, a brutal, changing, fascinating world, young Hild begins her journey to becoming St. Hilda of Whitby. Prepare to be pulled into an intriguing time and place.