New novels from Sara Gruen and Scarlett Thomas, humor from David Sedaris and David Rakoff, science fiction you've come to love from WIlliam Gibson, and new, experimental work from 5 under 35 winner, Charles Yu.
1. 'Ape House' by Sara Gruen
© Random House
Random House, September 7, 2010
The author of Water for Elephants is back with more in the realm of human-animal interaction - this time with great apes. Ape House begins with the bombing of the Great Ape Language Lab which sets into motion a story involving a reporter, a scientist, and six American Sign Language fluent bonobos.
2. 'Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self' by Danielle Evans
© Riverhead
Riverhead, September 23, 2010
Danielle Evans' debut collection of short stories focuses largely on young women and girls struggling with maturity, sexuality, racial inequality, and more.
3. 'By Nightfall' by Michael Cunningham
© Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 28, 2010
Peter and Rebecca are a mid-forties couple enjoying successful careers in New York's art world until turmoil visits in the form of Rebcca's younger brother Ethan, whose devil-may-care ways threaten to unhinge their world.
4. 'Fall of Giants' (The Century Trilogy Book 1) by Ken Follett
© Penguin
Penguin, September 28, 2010
The first novel in Ken Follett's new Century Trilogy weaves together the lives of families from Germany, Russia, Britain, and the United States as they move through a turbulant time in history - the years leading up to and following World War I.
5. 'Half Empty' by David Rakoff
© Knopf Doubleday
Knopf Doubleday, September 21, 2010
David Rakoff, who often writes for GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and PRI's This American Life, lives up to his sardonic journalist reputation in this collection of essays in which he warns us not to get too comfortable.
6. 'How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe' by Charles Yu
© Knopf Doubleday
Knopf Doubleday, September 7, 2010
Five under 35 award winner Charles Yu's debut novel is an adventurous science fiction-themed story about a time travel technician named Charles Yu who is trying to save the universe, or at least himself.
7. 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis
© Viking
Viking, September 23, 2010
This new translation of Gustave Flaubert's masterpiece is by Lydia Davis (The End of the Story), who was awarded the 2003 French-American Foundation Translation Prize for her translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way. and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations.
8. 'Our Tragic Universe' by Scarlett Thomas
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 1, 2010
Meg Carpenter writes fantasy novels, formulaic mystery novels, and book reviews while steadfastly avoiding the completion of her big literary novel, the one that actually means something to her, the one that may or may not involve a similarly stuck protagonist by the name of Meg Carpenter. Much metafiction and big thinking to be had in this meandering novel by Scarlett Thomas.
9. 'Room' by Emma Donoghue
© Little, Brown & Company
Little, Brown & Company, September 13, 2010
Jack, age five, and his mother live inside of an 11 foot square cell, the only room he's ever known. It's the shed in the backyard of a man who kidnapped his mother and has held her in captivity for seven years. Irish writer, Emma Donoghue tells this breathtaking story from Jack's point of view.
10. 'Safe Haven' by Nicholas Sparks
© Grand Central
Grand Central, September 14, 2010
In Nicholas Spark's (The Last Song, The Choice, At First Sight) latest novel, a beautiful woman arrives in a small Southern town with a mysterious past.
