Fall promises a bumper crop of good reading

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading,” British writer Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote two centuries ago, “nor any pleasure so lasting.”

Book lovers would argue nothing has changed. Reading requires no Internet connection, no cell phone, hardly a chair. And now autumn looms, and with it the annual harvest of new books. Here are a few your book editor is anticipating.—hitting stories from now ‘til November.

FICTION AND POETRY

“Away,” by Amy Bloom. I’ve been a Bloom fan since “A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You,” her compact but vivid story collection from 2000. One of her strengths is her understanding of contemporary gender politics—no surprise, since she’s a therapist. In Away, though, Bloom turns her skillful hand to the story of Lillian Leyb, a young Jewish immigrant who lands in 1920s New York. Guess it doesn’t matter which era Bloom tackles. The novel is vibrant and sure, and as usual Bloom wastes no words; she gets it done in 256 pages. Hits bookshelves Tuesday.

“The Door,” by Margaret Atwood. The grand dame of Canadian literature gets so much attention for novels such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Oryx and Crake” that people forget what a marvelous poet she is—a situation not helped by her not having produced a verse collection in more than a decade. Here it is at last: a somber but stunning collection of half a hundred poems to meddle with the mind and haunt the heart. There’s beauty here, but Atwood is at her best when she makes us question, as she does in lines like these from “The Hurt Child”: “(I)t will hide in culverts / in toolsheds, under shrubs, / licking its wound, its rage, / the rage you gave it.” Publishes Sept. 13.

“Bridge of Sighs,” by Richard Russo. The author won a Pulitzer for “Empire Falls”; now he returns with another big, rich novel. Unlike Bloom, Russo doesn’t work on small canvases. “Bridge of Sighs” runs 544 pages, and it has the Russo earmarks: small town, big themes such as commerce vs. art, and so on. Book clubs, start your engines. In print Sept. 25.

“An Absolute Gentleman,” by R.M. Kinder. The trouble with some “thriller” writers is they know how to keep the plot moving but aren’t good stylists. Kinder, who lives in Warrensburg, has the chops to telegraph the story but make the language sing as she does so. Her first novel concerns a serial killer with oodles of charm—which is how such people set their snares, of course. All the more chilling is that Kinder’s fiction is based on a real-life encounter. Available Oct. 28.

“The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis,” by Michael Pritchett. The author teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has a collection of short stories to his credit, “The Venus Tree,” but Capt. Lewis is his debut novel, courtesy of the highly respected regional Unbridled Books. Pritchett has achieved something pretty intricate here: He has wrapped the real-life explorer Meriwether Lewis in a contemporary fiction. The tension between past and present, reality and imagination, helps give the book its considerable urgency. Look for it Nov. 1.

NONFICTION

“Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography,” by David Michaelis. It’s hard to believe Charles M. Schulz has been gone seven years, but yes, he died in 2000. The creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip is an icon with the kind of stature attributed to Walt Disney. And like Disney, Schulz was no angel, but rather a flawed man with his share of foibles, problems and setbacks. In other words, a human being. Publication date: Oct. 1.

“The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944,” by Rick Atkinson. His credentials are impeccable: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, former staffer at the Washington Post and the old Kansas City Times, author of “An Army at Dawn,” the first volume in his “Liberation Trilogy” of World War II histories. Now comes the second, and it’s as ambitious and meticulous as the first. At 816 pages, it’s bound to keep nonfiction buffs entranced starting Oct. 2.

“Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race,” by Richard Rhodes. The author won every major American literary prize—Pulitzer, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award—for “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” In this new volume he turns from the nuts and bolts of science to the sometimes loose screws of political and military thought. The result might just scare the living hell out of you. In frightening detail, Rhodes explains how close we’ve come to annihilation over the years but also the economic and social costs of “deterrence.” In stores Oct. 9.

“Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism,” by John Updike. In this sequel to “More Matter,” “Hugging the Shore” and similar volumes, Updike expounds as only he can. What’s here? Art, books, critique, damnation, ecstasy, foolishness, Edward Gorey, Ernest Hemingway, ignorance, JFK Jr., artist Chip Kidd, poet Philip Larkin, “mind/body problems,” The New Yorker, orgasms, poker, quips, “A Response to the Question `Why Do I Live In New England?’?” sex and lots of it, James Thurber, Updike on Updike, verse, Walden, xenophobia, Chinese writer Mo Yan, and this author’s almost Zen approach to filtering the wide world. Release date is Oct. 23.

ODD DUCKS

“Shaggy Muses: The Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf,” Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte, by Maureen Adams. If canine inspiration was good enough for these mistresses of literature, it should be good enough for us, as Adams, a Californian who used to teach at the University of Missouri, demonstrates in this charming romp. Available now.

“Amazing Card Tricks,” by Jon Tremaine. Well, now I know how to shuffle like a pro, deal off the bottom, make your card appear and disappear at will, and so forth. Note I said I know how, not that I can really do any of those things. If you have more manual dexterity than I, this one’s for you. It’s out now. Just don’t wear it out and become a nuisance at your spouse’s dinner parties.

“Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory,” by Judith Dupre. What a lovely and fascinating book. The concept really isn’t so odd, perhaps, but what is somewhat unusual is that Dupre wisely chose to augment her discussions of emblems such as the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell with chapters on lesser-known but important monuments such as the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City. This is excellent, and it’ll be out Nov. 6.

QUOTABLE FALL TITLES

“When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother’s core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers.”—“The Almost Moon” by Alice Sebold, author of “The Lovely Bones.” “Moon” will be published Oct. 16.

“In the courtyard there was an angel of black stone, and its angel head rose above giant elephant leaves; the stark glass angel eyes, bright as the bleached blue of sailor eyes, stared upward.”—“New Orleans,” from “Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote,” to be published Oct. 9.

“It was hard to sit in the classroom and concentrate on schoolwork. The autumn days were sunny and warm. Green trees became vividly gold and rust and glowed amidst dark pines.”—“Lana’s Lakota Moons,” a novel for young readers by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, will be published Sept. 1.

“On the one swing in Pioneer Park / not broken, a boy and girl / taking turns pushing each other / are trying to reach the sky.”

“In Pioneer Park (later)”—Poem in Gary Gildner’s “Cleaning a Rainbow,” to be published Oct. 1 by BkMk Press.

“On December 4, 1918, three weeks after the Armistice, Woodrow Wilson boarded the USS George Washington bound for the Paris Peace Conference with the grand mission of cutting through the darkness at the center of the universe to release a light of peace.”—“Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919.” The book by Ann Hagedorn is available now.

“It was full dark, midnight, and heat like that should have disappeared. Then the bombing started. Those poor souls ... of the city had no idea we were watching from the rooftop of the tallest building in town, six sets of eyes in the night, calling in rounds from the circling AC-130 Spectres.”—“The Farther Shore,” the debut novel from Matthew Eck, will be published Sept. 28.