Fall preview: books

FICTION: SPEAK, MEMORY

In October, Philip Roth releases "Nemesis," the latest in the series of short novels he's been publishing since 2006. Revolving around a 1944 polio outbreak, it returns to territory Roth has mined to great effect since the start of his career: the Jewish Newark of his childhood. Returning to familiar territory as well is Armistead Maupin, whose 10th novel, "Mary Ann in Autumn" — a "Tales of the City" book — brings his character Mary Ann Singleton back to San Francisco after 20 years to reconnect with a life she thought she'd left behind.

Memory again also motivates Nicole Krauss. In "Great House," her follow-up to "The History of Love," a desk becomes the possessor of its owners' pasts and secrets. Cynthia Ozick's "Foreign Bodies" recasts Henry James' "The Ambassadors." Then, there's Jim Carroll's "The Petting Zoo," a novel set in the New York art world of the 1980s, on which the poet, singer and author of "The Basketball Diaries" was working when he died a year ago. Perhaps most intriguing is Janice Shapiro's debut "Bummer and Other Stories," a series of tales about women at the edge of their emotions or endurance; it has the title of the year.

THE CULTURE OF POLITICS

Fiction may be strong this fall, but politics still dominates. On Nov. 9, George W. Bush releases his presidential memoir, "Decision Points"; two weeks later, Sarah Palin's "American by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag" appears. Bob Woodward's much-anticipated " Obama's Wars" comes out Sept. 27; Obama himself writes the foreword to Nelson Mandela's "Conversations with Myself."

Also weighing in are the usual pundits, from all points on the ideological spectrum: Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned its Back on the Middle Class"; Arianna Huffington's "Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream"; Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen's "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System" and Kate Zernike's "Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America."

Also of interest: "Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788" by Pauline Maier, which traces the public discussion over constitutional ratification; and Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell's "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us." And don't miss "The Conservative Assault on the Constitution" by UC Irvine Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a searing indictment of the effects of ideology on the laws that govern daily life.

NONFICTION: REALITY BYTES

Not all the fall's nonfiction is political. In "Bird Cloud," Annie Proulx writes about Wyoming and the house she built there, while Mark Jacobson's "The Lampshade" offers an unorthodox vision of the Holocaust, spurred by the discovery, made by a friend of the author, of a lampshade made of human skin. Christopher Isherwood's "The Sixties: Diaries 1960-1969" turns a personal lens on a tumultuous time. John Cage had his own influence on the 1960s — and in "Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage," Pulitzer Prize-winner Kenneth Silverman tells the story of this uniquely American life.