Booksellers and others who attended BookExpo, the national book industry trade show in New York, say there’s no single fall book creating a “buzz.” And it’s too early to know if there will be a sleeper novel, such as Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead,” that will become a surprise best-seller. Still, there is no shortage of books from newcomers and veterans to give us pleasure. Here are 10 novels to watch for, based on the authors’ reputations and publishers’ enthusiasm.
• “Shalimar the Clown,” by Salman Rushdie (Random House). Epic narrative about an ambassador who’s murdered by a Kashmiri Muslim, with action moving from past to present, California to Kashmir.
• “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf). A 90-year-old man is transformed in a year after giving himself “the gift of a night of love with a young virgin.”
• “Ordinary Heroes,” by Scott Turow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A packet of letters written during World War II sends a man on a journey into his family’s history.
• “The Widow of the South,” by Robert Hicks (Warner books). A Southern woman’s life is changed when the bloodiest battle of the Civil War arrives on her doorstep. (Top September Book Sense pick by independent booksellers.)
• “Christ the Lord,” by Anne Rice (Knopf). Jesus’ early years as told in his own words.
• “The Color of Law,” by Mark Gimenez (Doubleday). Debut legal thriller about a Dallas attorney that looks at morality, race and class, written by a former member of a high-profile Dallas law firm.
• “The Interpreter,” by Alice Kaplan (Free Press). A French translator watches an American court-martial hearing unfairly find black soldiers guilty of crimes against European civilians, told through the stories of a black private and a white Ranger who are given different treatment.
• “Dancing on Thorns,” by Rebecca Horsfall (Ballantine Books). Set in the ballet world and focusing on a male dancer and actress who fall in love in London.
• “Slow Man,” by J.M. Coetzee (Viking). Nobel laureate tells of a man who loses his leg in a bike accident and falls in love with his Croatian nurse, struggling to raise her family in Australia.
• “States of Being,” by E.L. Doctorow (Random House). A reimagining of Civil War Gen. William Sherman’s march through the South.
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