Editors' Fall Picks

Attention! Readers of travel memoir, of investigative reporting, those seeking to understand America today, even devotees of fiction of the American journey—heck, simply of fine writing! Look out for James McCommons's Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service (Chelsea Green. Nov. ISBN 978-1-60358-064-9. pap. $17.95). NOTICE! Train chasers, railroaders, and train hobbyists, you'll want to chase down this book as well. DESCRIPTION Height nine inches, approximately 272 pages deep. Instigated by veteran journalist McCommons, who was last seen riding the rails in 2008 on extended trips covering all regions of the country that still permit the possibility of passenger rail travel. As he rides the California Zephyr, the Silver Meteor, the Acela, the Empire Builder, he interweaves stories of the men and women he encounters with an accessible and expertly traced history of America's enchantment and subsequent tragically wrongheaded abandonment of its railroads. In a year when gas prices tipped the $4 mark, the speed and efficiency of freight trains carrying shipping containers became all the more clear. McCommons urges us not to fall back on train nostalgia but to look to the future. He sees the possibility that with increased stimulus support of America's railroad lines, age-old disconnects between freight and passenger rail may at last ease, and we may cease to be “a third-world country when it comes to passenger railroads.” McCommons is the son and grandson of railroad men. He does them proud. Detain his work. Can be found as of November 2009. Reward The pleasure of reading prose that has the shimmer, strength, and authenticity that our railroads can still inspire and that they may yet attain again.—Margaret Heilbrun

Weep, laugh, weep Fellow poet Nick Flynn says Alex Lemon's debut memoir, Happy (Scribner. Jan. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4165-5023-5. $25), is “written in blood.” An apt metaphor, but the book made me think of the most addictive candy bar I ever ate. This isn't to belittle what is a serious chronicle of unimaginable medical horrors and the heavy shit young people break through to become adults. But Lemon has also produced a page-turner on par with the best thrillers, a drop down a rabbit hole to the white liberal arts college scene and its hip-hop-referencing children. Lemon's exquisite prose blasts us out of our own time, heart, brain, and body into his, making an acute empathy possible. With its bumble bee–bright cover, the book incites a veritable frenzy to ingest its crackling dark center as quickly as possible. And what a center: it's the late 1990s, and Lemon, a star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team, discovers he has a potentially lethal lesion in his brain stem. In fact, he suffers two hemorrhages and hurtles into a depression leavened only by heavy doses of drugs and denial before getting the lesion removed in a risky operation. Just able to walk, speak, and bear human company in recovery, he invites death but meets a stronger force in his life-affirming artist Ma, an unforgettable character. Read this and weep, laugh, weep.—Heather McCormack

Stellar lives How can biographers cultivate a realistic, sympathetic, and individual image of a subject they clearly feel passionate about without taking over the portrait or superfluously inserting their own relationship to the person in question? Both Kenneth Turan and Chris Welles Feder have pulled it off, with distinct tactics, in their explorations of, respectively, Joe Papp of Public Theater and New York Shakespeare Festival renown and famed film director Orson Welles. In Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told (Doubleday. Nov. ISBN 978-0-7679-3168-7. $39.95), Turan weaves together an oral biography from the voices of over 160 friends, family, writers, directors, and actors, as well as Papp himself (he's credited as coauthor). This nearly 650-page book contains the stories of many a professional's beginnings along with the career of the man whose poverty-stricken upbringing and political beliefs led to a lifelong determination to create a theater free and accessible to all. While Turan focuses on Papp's professional life, Feder paints a beautifully personal memoir/biography that stars herself as much as her father. In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles (Algonquin. Nov. ISBN 978-1-56512-599-5. $24.95) is a portrait of the cigar-smoking, work-obsessed, well-intentioned but absent father as well as an exploration of a young girl's admiration and understanding (or misunderstanding) of family dynamics and love. Feder's narrative is one no detached biographer could fashion, and her perspective feels essential. Both books are stellar and absorbing evocations of stunningly influential and artistic creators.—Anna Katterjohn

The storyteller lives on Of all the audiobooks to have landed on my desk in recent months, Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales (Hachette Audio. Jul. ISBN 978-1-60024-666-1. $16.98) is the standout, hands down. First published in 2002 as an illustrated hardcover, it is only now, in the titular Nobel laureate editor's 91st year, available in audio format, both on CD and as a digital download. Though just three hours long, it is a massive undertaking, collecting 32 folktales from every region of Africa. Imagine the production headache: recorded in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, London, and Johannesburg, it's read by a cast of 23 leading stage and screen stars, among them Don Cheadle, a vocal opponent of genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and Forest Whitaker, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (2006). These fables, rooted in the aural tradition, are further enhanced by a special message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, original music by South African musicians Johnny Clegg and Vusi Mahlasela, and bonus PDFs with full-color illustrations. “It is my wish that the voice of the storyteller will never die in Africa,” Mandela wrote in the book's original foreword. Bravo to Hachette and the nonprofit Artists for a New South Africa, to which a portion of the audio's proceeds are being donated, for helping to grant that wish through what amounts to a dignified, edifying, and tremendously enjoyable listening experience. (For more info and to listen to an audio clip, visit www.MandelasFavoriteFolktales.com and www.hachettebookgroup.com.)—Raya Kuzyk

City of paintings Every fall, hundreds of art books get published on every conceivable subject. Despite the economy, this year is no exception. While many could be singled out for their extraordinary reproductions, one stands out for its unique effort to capture a city's history through the eyes of those who painted its beautiful gardens, boulevards, palaces, and churches. The History of Paris in Painting (Abbeville. Sept. ed. by Georges Duby & Guy Lobrichon. ISBN 978-0-7892-1046-3. $235) is not a complete catalog of all the paintings that have celebrated Paris through the ages—could such a catalog even be possible?—but instead a thoughtful collection of paintings (and some photographs) paying homage to the city's changing character and the ever-inspiring collective consciousness of its masses. Spanning several centuries—beginning in the Dark Ages and ending in the 21st century—this oversized tome (with 350 full-color illustrations and four stunning gatefolds) will not blend in with the rest of your art collection—whether at home or at the library. Instead, it will dominate, both with its striking appearance and its unexpectedly strong narrative. The high price tag is no small matter, but any attempt to produce a smaller, more affordable version would have jeopardized what is so masterfully captured here.—Mirela Roncevic

In love with words Emily Arsenault's intricate debut novel, The Broken Teaglass (Delacorte. Oct. ISBN 978-0-553-80733-2. $25), came to my attention at the Random House Book Buzz presentation at the recent American Library Association conference in Chicago. If you have ever wondered how words find their way into published reference sources, this gem about lexicographers and the making of a dictionary will fascinate you.

Billy Webb's first job out of college is with Samuelson Company, “the oldest and most revered name in American dictionaries.” His tasks include research-reading and creating citations (cits) to support adding new words and new uses of old words to the dictionary and its supplements. Soon, Billy and office mate Mona Minot discover a pattern to some of the cits distributed among the older files, from a 1985 novel called The Broken Teaglass, that include details of a corpse. Are these cits a cry for help or a ruthless murderer's coded confession? As he delves into the mystery, Billy unearths more questions about his own place in the world. Word lovers won't want to miss this one.

Donning my hat as romance editor for LJ, I'd like to note a few books to keep in mind: Kathryne Kennedy's historical romance My Unfair Lady (Sourcebooks Casablanca. Dec. ISBN 978-1-4022-2990-9. pap. $6.99); Kasey Michael's How To Tame a Lady (HQN: Harlequin. Oct. ISBN 978-0-373-77376-3. pap. $7.99), one of her new Daughtry family titles; and Terri DuLong's debut, Spinning Forward (Kensington. Nov. ISBN 978-0-7582-3204-5. $15), which casts off on the popularity of knitting books.—Bette-Lee Fox

Stunning selections In the opening story of Terrence Holt's debut collection, In the Valley of the Kings (Norton. Sept. ISBN 978-0-393-07121-4. $23.95), a child is admitted to a small-town hospital with an inky bruise that eventually forms a word—the first victim of a bizarre yet deadly plague. In the long title story, an archaeologist hunting down “a word of power” finds himself trapped in a tomb, “commanded to write, and given only dust.” The extraordinary power of language to confound us is everywhere evident in these strikingly original stories, and what confounded me most was the language itself: cerebral yet fresh, deeply pondered, absolutely nothing like the glib and flashy writing prevalent today. Readers of the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best of Zoetrope will recognize practicing physician Holt's work; everyone else will be stunned.

As will readers of two stand-out poetry collections. In Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan Univ. Sept. ISBN 978-0-8195-6916-5. $22.95), Kazim Ali razors apart his poems to produce a cascade of discrete but linked sentences that unfold a life caught between traditional Islam and contemporary America, cities and art, family and homosexuality. It's formally intriguing—sort of shattered prose poetry—and engagingly honest, without the browbeating that often accompanies such personal writing. And speaking of personal, Rachel Zucker follows up her wittily acidulous The Bad Wife Handbook with Museum of Accidents (Wave. Oct. ISBN 978-1-933517-42-1. pap. $14), a fiercely felt and off-kilter meditation on motherhood. Zucker is about the only contemporary poet I've read who manages to address this topic without sounding coy and cloying. Mothers should read, others can learn.—Barbara Hoffert