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Fall 2012 Announcements: Romance - Home Is Where the Hearts Are
This fall’s romance listings have appeal for adventurers and risk-takers, but shy spirits needn’t worry—there’s also plenty of cozy comfort reading. It turns out there are as many definitions of “home” as there are couples looking to build new lives together.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Politics - Beyond Partisanship
After an Obama-centric spring that tried to prep (or inflame) conscientious readers before the election, fall’s titles consider matters of state other than partisan gridlock. At least, some of them do.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Memoir
Memoirs look at life: for Richard Russo, whose novels reflect his working-class origins, it’s contemplating a childhood marked by poverty in the factory town of Gloversville, N.Y., but also gifted with the love and inspiration of his mother, in Elsewhere: A Memoir. Literary critic Marco Roth tells a different story of childhood in The Scientists: A Family Romance.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Art & Architecture - Green Is the Color
The environment is on everyone’s mind, one way or other, whether it is a subject that invites debate or advocacy—or terror. This fall’s books—especially in architecture but also in other, subtler contexts—will keep the environment front and center.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: History & Military History - From Monticello to Monte Cristo
We mustn’t let the continuing plethora of books on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, not to mention commemorations of the War of 1812, mask the variety of history and military history books coming out this fall.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Mysteries & Thrillers - Distinguished Debuts, Hot Historicals
This season boasts a number of impressive first novels, led by Ariel S. Walker’s The Twenty-year Death, which consists of three interrelated sections, each written in the style of an iconic crime writer—Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler, and Jim Thompson—and set, respectively, in 1931, 1941, and 1951. This tour de force, as J.I. Baker notes in his boxed PW review, “transcends the formal gimmick at its heart.”
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Travel - It’s a Small World, After All
Travel literature dates back to a time when seeing the world was an expensive and time-consuming enterprise reserved for the privileged, like Charles Dickens, whose Pictures from Italy, about a yearlong trip to Italy, combined his gifts of imagination and observation.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Business - It's the Economy, Stupid
The two big themes of the economy in the past few years—the economic recovery, or lack thereof, from the Great Recession, and the march of technology—are reflected in business books set to hit retailers and e-tailers this fall. And with this being a presidential election year, some of the business titles contain a dose of politics.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Performing Arts - A World of Entertainment
Broadway takes center stage in this fall's performing arts titles.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Lifestyle - From the Spiritual to the Profane—Really
This fall's lifestyle books are all about mermaids, diets, and knowing when to say f**k it.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Fiction - Gone Hollywood
In the next sixth months new books will arrive from the likes of Junot Díaz, Michael Chabon, Barbara Kingsolver, Mark Helprin, and more U.K. writers than you could cram into a lorry, including Zadie Smith, Irvine Welsh, and Martin Amis.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Cookbooks - Back to Basics
New cookbooks from former New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton, Lidia Batianich, the hit HBO series 'True Blood' and more are publishing this fall.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy - Taking the Plunge
Going back to childhood and the first days of school, fall is the season of potential. That’s the theme for this fall’s science fiction and fantasy list, which is chock-full of authors both new and familiar embarking on exciting ventures in every area of speculative fiction.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Social Science - Maybe It Does Get Better
A culture war still rages in America, but consider this: just two weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta released an online video that thanked gay members of the military and their families for their service—remarkable, considering that those same service members last year faced court-martial just for being gay. It’s enough to give you hope that Dan Savage is right: maybe it does get better.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Music - Songwriters Turn to Books
Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Courtney Love, and Wyclef Jean are just some of the big-name musicians with memoirs hitting this fall.
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Fall 2012 Announcements: Comics and Graphic Novels: Good Yarns
Why is a story about the sea always called a yarn? This season’s best graphic novels not only include two set on the water but a number of great yarns, some outright science fiction, that present the kind of larger than life stories comics are often known for.
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Small Towns, Big Sales: Focus on Romance 2012
Even as shelf space contracts in bricks-and-mortar retailers, publishers still believe in a happily-ever-after for the contemporary romance genre—and one that extends to signing new authors, particularly in the digital space.
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Yes, Virgil, There Are Men Writing Romance: Focus on Romance 2012
While female authors still greatly outnumber their male counterparts in the romance category, more men are writing love stories, though not always under their own names.
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Country Crime: Six Regional Mystery Authors
As in all genres, the mystery category enjoys trends or fads that capture readers’ attention and garner critical acclaim for a few months or a few years. Think of the ongoing influx of Scandinavian mysteries or the continuing fascination with serial killers or even spillover from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series resulting in an upsurge of vampire mysteries. Sometimes these trends unfairly obscure the strong body of work represented in less flashy if just as substantial subgenres—in particular, regional mysteries.
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Paging the Future: Focus on Reference 2012
The Encyclopedia Britannica is now strictly digital? The thought left many stunned booklovers feeling that the prospects for looking up information were not... well, looking up. It was like learning your grandmother had gotten a tattoo and run off with a younger man.
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