Books
Oates' offering among fall releases

By Ron Berthel
Associated Press

If Joyce Carol Oates needed a middle name, Prolific would be a fitting one.

Among the 83 books named at the front of the Princeton University professor's new novel, "Middle Age," are novels, nonfiction, plays, essays and a children's book.

Oates' latest heads the list of new hardcover books, which include novels by Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer and Andrew M. Greeley; and nonfiction by Rick Bragg and P.J. O'Rourke.

The setting for "Middle Age" (Ecco) is Salthill-on-Hudson, an affluent suburb north of New York. Its hero — in the truest sense of the word — is middle-aged sculptor Adam Berendt, who dies in the book's early pages after saving a child's life. His neighbors learn something about themselves through his death and the subsequent revelations about his life.

Rushdie ("The Satanic Verses") offers his eighth novel in "Fury" (Random House), a black comedy about professor, doll-inventor and self-made millionaire Malik "Solly" Solanka. One day, Solanka feels a "fury" inside him. Fearing he has become a threat to his family, he abandons them and escapes to New York. What he finds there is a summer of discontent, with hostile cabbies, resentful and contentious citizens, and a serial killer who attacks women with a chunk of concrete.

Car trouble leads to romance, in Gordimer's "The Pickup" (FSG). Set in the author's native South Africa, the novel describes the relationship between Julie Summers, daughter of a white businessman, and Abdu, a black mechanic and illegal immigrant. Abdu is about to be deported and Julie insists on going with him, despite his concern about her reaction to the poverty of his Arab village and his Muslim family's strict ways.

The timely titled "September Song" (Forge) is Greeley's fourth novel about the O'Malleys of Chicago. This chronicle of 1960s America is narrated by Rosemarie, whose husband Chucky is the series' problem-prone hero. It opens after an argument with President Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam War policy leads Chucky to resign as ambassador to Germany. Chucky later becomes involved with the march on Selma, Ala., the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Vietnam War.

"All Families Are Psychotic" — and the Drummonds are no exception. In this novel (Bloomsbury) by Douglas Coupland, the Drummonds — which include a trophy wife, a suicidal son, a pregnant girlfriend and a philandering son — converge on Cape Canaveral, Fla., to see daughter Sarah's launch on the space shuttle. The reunion is a disastrous one, with kidnapping, blackmail and the black market figuring into it.

In "All Over But the Shoutin' " (1997), Bragg described his mother's struggle to raise three boys in dire poverty in the Deep South. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist continues his personal history of the region in "Ava's Man" (Knopf). The story, set during the Great Depression and his mother Margaret's childhood, concentrates on Charlie Bundrum, Margaret's father, an illiterate jack-of-all-trades who roofed, fished and improvised to meet his family's needs.

O'Rourke describes his yearlong "journey" that goes nowhere more remote than his remote control in "The CEO of the Sofa" (Atlantic Monthly). The political humorist visits topics close to home, including the New Economy, mail-order shopping, driving lessons, Moby (the pop singer, not Melville's whale) and celebrity magazines.

Andersen, whose books have featured subjects named Kennedy and Clinton, profiles "Diana's Boys" (Morrow). Four years after their mother's death, teen princes William and Harry are among the world's most discussed young men. Andersen reveals new information about how they fared during the first days after Diana's death, William's recurring nightmare, and Harry's life in William's shadow.

In 2000, three Associated Press reporters won Pulitzer prizes for their story about the U.S. Army's slaughter of Korean civilians in the early days of the Korean War. Charles J. Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe and Martha Mendoza tell that story, and more, in "The Bridge at No Gun Ri" (Henry Holt).

Gigi, Kilty, Lola and Vanessa, four loves in the life of Ved Mehta, are the subjects of "All for Love" (Thunder's Mouth), his 23rd book and ninth in his autobiographical series "Continents of Exile."

Other new books:

Fiction

• "The Holy Road" by Michael Blake (Villard). In this "Dances With Wolves" sequel, the railroad's western expansion sparks war between soldiers and Indians.
• "After the Plague" by T.C. Boyle (Viking). Sixth collection includes 16 stories, nine from the New Yorker magazine.
• "Tell Me Why" by Stella Cameron (Kensington). A famous jazz pianist becomes reclusive.
• "Soulmate" by Deepak Chopra (Putnam). One man loves two women in this story by the proponent of mind-body healing.
• "Swift as Desire" by Laura Esquivel (Crown). A woman whose father is near death tries to mend her parents' relationship.
• "The Smoke Jumper" by Nicholas Evans (Delacorte). A mountain fire forces a woman to choose between two men.
• "Lowell Limpett" by Ward Just (Public Affairs). Three short stories, including one in which an aging journalist reflects upon his life and work.
• "The Marble Quilt" by David Leavitt (Houghton Mifflin). An American expatriate in Italy deals with a friend's murder in one of this volume's nine stories.
• "Sacred Ground" by Barbara Wood (St. Martin's). The lives of one family's women, from prehistoric times to present-day California.

Nonfiction

• "I Thought My Father Was God", edited by Paul Auster (Henry Holt). 180 personal tales from National Public Radio's "National Story Project."
• "The Truth of Power" by Benjamin R. Barber (Norton). Analysis of President Clinton's unfulfilled intellectual promise.
• "30 Days in Sydney" by Peter Carey (Bloomsbury). Author visits his native land after long absence.
• "Stranger Shores" by J.M. Coetzee (Viking). Daniel Defoe, Dostoevski and Doris Lessing are among the subjects in 26 essays about books and authors.
• "The Longest Night" by David J. Eicher (Simon & Schuster). Nearly 1,000-page military history of the Civil War.
• "Living a Life That Matters" by Harold S. Kushner (Knopf). More advice from the rabbi who wrote "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People."
• "Wildlife Wars" by Richard Leakey (St. Martin's). Longtime anthropologist describes "My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures."
• "Savage Beauty" by Nancy Milford (Random House); and "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" (Henry Holt) by Daniel Mark Epstein. Two biographies of Pulitzer Prize poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.