McClatchy Newspapers

There's new fiction out this fall by Stephen King, Toni Morrison and John le Carre; and new nonfiction by best-selling prognosticators Thomas L. Friedman and "Tipping Point" author Malcolm Gladwell.

Like a bird-parent pushing the strongest fledglings out of the nest first, many of this fall's books have already been released.

FICTION

Now available

"Guernica" by Dave Boling (Bloomsbury). An Olympic Peninsula writer makes his debut with a historical novel set in Civil War Spain - specifically, the Basque farm town bombed flat by the German Luftwaffe as they conducted "a devastating experiment in total warfare."

"When Will There Be Good News?" by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown). A new Jackson Brodie mystery from the author of "Case Histories" and "One Good Turn," in which three disrupted lives "come together in unexpected and deeply thrilling ways."

"One Fifth Avenue" by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion). Bushnell ("Sex and the City") takes a "Grand Hotel" approach to a ritzy Lower Manhattan apartment building where "the lives of New York City's elite play out."

"Deaf Sentence" by David Lodge (Viking). The esteemed British novelist - twice a finalist for the Booker Prize - delivers a tale about a linguistics professor "vexed by his encroaching deafness and at loose ends in his personal life."

Coming this month

"The Brass Verdict" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown). "Lincoln Lawyer" attorney Mickey Haller and Detective Harry Bosch form an uneasy partnership as they investigate a case involving Walter Elliott, a prominent L.A. film executive accused of murder.

"A Partisan's Daughter" by Louis de Bernieres (Knopf). The author of "Corelli's Mandolin" takes 1970s London as his backdrop, in a novel about a "bored, lonely" married man who invites a Yugoslavian hooker into his car. Only she's not a hooker - and she is one hell of a storyteller.

"The Eleventh Man" by Ivan Doig (Harcourt). Doig's latest novel tells a World War II story of a journalist and former member of a championship Montana college football team who is tapped by a government "press" agency to tell the wartime stories of 10 former teammates.

"I See You Everywhere" by Julia Glass (Pantheon). A novel about two sisters, one a risk-taking rebel, the other more quiet and responsible but yearning for something more. By the winner of the National Book Award-winning "Three Junes."

"The English Major" by Jim Harrison (Grove). A novel about a man in his 60s who, robbed of his farm by his "late-blooming real estate shark of an ex-wife," takes a road trip to San Francisco to visit his movie-producer son. By the author of "Legends of the Fall" and "Dalva."

"A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carre (Scribner). Le Carre's latest is set in Hamburg, where a young Russian Muslim, an idealistic German civil-rights lawyer and the aging scion of a failing British bank all cross paths - and become targets in the War on Terror.

"The Widows of Eastwick" by John Updike (Knopf). Updike's sequel to his 1984 novel, "The Witches of Eastwick," finds his three heroines contemplating a reunion in their Rhode Island hometown after divorce, remarriage and widowhood have carried them to the far corners of the world.

November

"Just After Sunset" by Stephen King (Scribner). Short stories from the horrormeister.

"A Mercy" by Toni Morrison (Knopf). A new historical novel by the Nobel Prize winner ("Beloved"), about an Anglo-Dutch farmer reluctantly acquiring a slave girl in 1680s colonial America. "I really wanted to get to a place before slavery was equated with race," Morrison has commented in an interview.

NONFICTION

Now available

"The Hemingses of Monticello" by Annette Gordon-Reed (Norton). An epic saga of the Hemings family, whose bloodline has been mixed with that of Thomas Jefferson since our third president took slave Sally Hemings as a mistress.

"Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer's Wife" by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead). The author of "The Cloister Walk" wrestles with the phenomenon of acedia, a term used since the Middle Ages to describe the phenomenon of soul weariness.

Coming this month

"The Owl and the Woodpecker: Encounters with North America's Most Iconic Birds" by Paul Bannick (Mountaineers). The Seattle photographer-naturalist showcases the "natural rhythms" of owls and woodpeckers in the wild. Book includes CD of more than 40 species' calls.

"Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey" by William Least Heat-Moon (Little, Brown). The author of "Blue Highways" writes of a series of journeys into small-town America.

"The Hero" by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday). The story of pro football player Pat Tillman, star safety for the Arizona Cardinals, who walked away from a multimillion NFL contract to fight and die in Afghanistan - from bullets fired by an American soldier.

"Titanic's Last Secrets" by Brad Matsen (Twelve). Matsen follows the investigations of legendary divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler (chronicled in "Shadow Divers") as they search through the wreck of the Titanic and its sister ship, Britannic, to try to answer the enduring mystery of the Titanic tragedy: Why did the Titanic sink so quickly?

November

"Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown). Mr. "Tipping Point" looks at this question: what makes high achievers different? Answers apparently lie in their culture, family, generation and the "idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing."

December

"American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon" by Steve Rinella (Spiegel & Grau). This look at the buffalo and the species - man - that drove it to the edge of extinction has been getting great pre-publication reviews.