Booksellers pick potential hits for fall

For readers, writers and publishers, fall is the biggest and most serious season for books. USA TODAY's Bob Minzesheimer asked three booksellers — Cathy Langer of Denver's Tattered Cover, Amazon's Sara Nelson and Barnes & Noble's Mary Amicucci — to pick this fall's hits in three categories:

Non-fiction:

Langer says Norman Lear's memoir Even This I Get to Experience (Penguin, Oct. 14) "will entertain, enlighten and probably enrage some readers, just like his TV shows (All in the Family, The Jeffersons) did."

Nelson calls Jeffrey Kluger's The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed — in Your World,(Riverhead, Sept. 9) a "very funny book with all sorts of tests to take to see if you're a narcissist, in case there is any doubt."

Amicucci expects that George W. Bush's biography of his dad, George H.W. Bush, 41: A Portrait of My Father (Crown, Nov. 11), will "give an intimate perspective of history that has not yet been revealed."

Fiction:

Langer predicts Marilynne Robinson's Lila (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Oct 7),about a homeless girl who marries a minister, will appeal to "lovers of luscious writing, strong stories and beautifully drawn characters." It's set in the same Iowa town as Gilead, Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Nelson calls Ian McEwan's The Children Act (Nan Talese, Sept. 9), about a female British family court judge caught up in crisis (both personal and public), "brainy but straightforward and engaging."

Amicucci praises the "vivid storytelling" in Ken Follett's Edge of Eternity: Book Three of the Century Trilogy (Penguin, Sept. 16) which covers the cultural upheavals from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Sleeper:

Langer expects that Laird Hunt's Neverhome (Little Brown, Sept. 9), a novel about a woman who binds her breasts and dresses like a man to fight in the Civil War, will "surely join the ranks of the brilliant novels not just of the Civil War but war writ large."

Nelson toasts I'll Drink to That: A Life in Style, With a Twist (Penguin, Sept. 4) by Betty Halbreich with Rebecca Paley, a memoir by a legendary personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, the high-end Manhattan department store, as a "delicious, old-fashioned story about how to live well."

Amicucci calls Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven (Knopf, Sept 9), about a Hollywood star and his would-be savior battling a deadly pandemic, "darkly glittering" and "spellbinding."