Bookworks Presents 'Traveling Sprinkler', 'W is for Wasted' and More

The final (maybe) installment (part 1, part 2, part 3,part 4) listing books we're looking forward to this fall... and we've barely scratched the surface of the fabulous titles on the way!

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking, October 1). Gilbert returns to fiction with a hefty novel about a woman born in 1800 who becomes a botanist and lives in a time of new ideas and exploding assumptions.

Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford (Ballantine Books, Sept 10). Depression-era Seattle, an orphaned Chinese-American boy, and an actress named Willow Frost, whom the boy believes to be his mother--surefire wonderfulness from Jamie Ford.

Someone by Alice McDermott (FSG, September 10). An ordinary life lived by an ordinary woman. In McDermott's hands, it becomes extraordinary in its detail and universality.

Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker (Blue Rider Press, September 17). Baker reintroduces sometime poet Paul Chowder from The Anthologist. Now he's turning 55 ("Unless you're Yeats or Merwin you are done as a poet at fifty-five."); he decides to learn songwriting and win back his ex-girlfriend Roz.

The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan (Ecco,November 5). Centered on the dazzling world of courtesans in early Shanghai, moving to a remote Chinese mountain village and the streets of San Francisco, and spanning 50 years, Tan maps the lives of three generations of women: Lucia, the mother; Violet the reluctant "Virgin Courtesan"; and Flora, the American granddaughter.

W Is for Wasted by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood/Putnam, September 10). Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes. A pleasure for Grafton fans, even as we think, with trepidation, "Only three more letters."

The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge,September 10). The second in the suspenseful series. One of our reviewers had this to say: "Yay, the new Hank Phillipi Ryan!! [reporter] Jane and [detective] Jake had better f***ging make out in this one, because they did not in the last one and I was very, very angry about it. VERY. ANGRY." --Marilyn Dahl

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