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After a relatively quiet summer, publishers are bringing out their big guns for fall.
There is an impressive array of literary titles from Cormac McCarthy, Alice McDermott, Richard Ford, Charles Frazier and Thomas Pynchon.
John Grisham is coming out with his first non-fiction, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, on sale Oct. 10.
For children, a series comes to a close with the publication of the final Lemony Snicket book. About 2.5 million copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Thirteenth: The End go on sale Oct. 13, a Friday, of course. The Beatrice Letters, in stores this week, gives clues to the series' finale.
"Last fall and spring were slow. Maybe the publishers were holding back. Already our sales have started to rebound," says Sara Hinckley of Hudson Booksellers.
Amazon's Daphne Durham is calling this fall the "return of the heavy hitters. You name an A-list author, and I will bet that they have a book coming out."
*Big name 1: Stephen King's Lisey's Story (Scribner, $28; Oct. 24) is being touted "as much a love story as a scary book," Durham says.
*Big name 2: Mitch Albom's For One More Day (Hyperion, $21.95; Sept. 26) is sure to drive footsteps into bookstores, Borders' Bill Nasshan says. Starbucks is also selling Albom's novel.
*Debut: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (Atria, $26; Tuesday). Barnes & Noble's Sessalee Hensley stayed up to 1:30 a.m. to finish this "satisfying read."
*Post-apocalyptic pick: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf, $24; Sept. 26) is a must-read, Amazon's Durham says. "It's really dark, so not everyone is going to love it, but the writing is just wonderful, and he is just a powerful writer."
*Football: The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton, $24.95; Sept. 25) "will sell like crazy for us" at airports and train stations, says Hinckley of Hudson Booksellers.
*Second act: A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (Doubleday, $24.95; out this week). "A few of us in the office have read it and can't stop raving about it," says Georgie Lewis of Powells.com.
*Witty suspense: One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown, $24.99; Oct. 11). "Her new book is even better than Case Histories and that is saying something," Lewis says.
*Music: U2 by U2 by U2 and Neil McCormick (HarperEntertainment, $39.95; Sept. 26) and Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band by Robert Santelli (Chronicle Books, $35; Oct. 2). Reading them makes you "feel like you're traveling with the band," says Barnes & Noble's Edward Ash-Milby.
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