I have a ton of notes lying around about books coming out this fall. Here's the rundown of several that jumped out at me for a variety of personal or bloggable reasons. (Meaning I want them for myself or I wanted to let you all know.) Some aren't online yet, but if you're interested in them at least now you can keep your eyes peeled.

Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodarto (September from FSG): "Fear doesn’t come naturally to Mathilda Savitch. She prefers to look right at the things nobody else can bring themselves to mention: for example, the fact that her beloved older sister is dead, pushed in front of a train by a man who is still on the loose. But after a year of spying and provocations, she’s no closer to the truth than she was the day it happened. When Mathilda finally cracks Helen’s e-mail password, a secret life opens up, one that swiftly draws her into a world of clouded motives and strange emotion. Somewhere in it lies the key to waking her family up from their dream of grief. To cross into that underworld and see what her sister saw, she has to risk everything that matters to her."

I see major teen crossover potential with this one as the protagonist is only thirteen. We'll see how it turns out - I'm hoping it leans heavily on the mystery and doesn't get bogged in trying to prove its quirkiness. It's coming my way so I'll keep you posted on how it reads.

The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling (October Palgrave): "In 1811, when she was only twelve years old, Mary Anning discovered the first dinosaur skeleton—of an ichthyosaur—while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Mary, the child of a poor family, became a fossil hunter, selling her discoveries and attracting the attention of collectors and eventually of the scientific world. Until Mary’s discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. But the bizarre nature of the creatures that Mary found made it impossible to ignore the truth, sparking the conversation about evolution carried on by scientists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould."

Mary Anning has a fascinating story and I'm very pleased to see this book. She was collecting fossils as a child and supported her family with her discoveries. Another example of a woman ahead of her time who has been hugely overlooked by modern historians. (Have any of you ever heard of her in earth science class when studying dinosaurs? I sure didn't and I'd love to reach back to my 8th grade teacher and demand to know why!)

Rewilding the World by Caroline Fraser: (Henry Holt December) From Fraser's web site: "In the spirit of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which launched the modern environmental movement with its clarion call to stop the chemical onslaught against birds and wildlife, Rewilding the World, based on more than­ five years of travel, reporting, and research, documents the current global crisis of biodiversity loss and measures the profound cost of losing our ancient connections to the realm of the wild. But while the book offers an unsparing portrait of the toll of destruction and the failure of mainstream conservation groups to reverse the tide, it's also a story of breath throughs in genetics and conservation biology, of visionary heroes, and of hope. It is the first authoritative, narrative account of the rewilding crusade that has transformed conservation efforts and raised the environmental stakes on every continent, from Yellowstone to Africa to the jungles of Asia a­nd Latin America."

This is a subject that concerns me all the time - partly from growing up in FL where so much of the landscape has been altered for no good reason (and I mean that - abandoned shopping malls abound down there) and partly from living in AK where the belief that wilderness is limitless is still clung to by many. (Many people I personally know as a matter of fact.) I'm interested to see what has been going on in the field and who is doing the work.

The Heart of the Great Alone by David Hempleman-Adams (Bloomsbury October): "Among the greatest achievements in the history of photography, those of the early polar explorers surely stand out, for the beauty of their images and the almost impossible conditions they encountered. And none of these are more remarkable than the photographs recorded by the official chroniclers of two epic Antarctic expeditions—that of Robert Falcon Scott, departed in 1910, which tragically resulted in his death; and, four years later, that of Ernest Shackleton, whose heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia has become the stuff of legend.

Their photographers—Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley—transported bulky cameras and glass plate negatives across the forbidding polar landscape to record some of the earliest images of this dramatic environment. That the photographs survived to be presented on their return to King George V is miraculous, and they have remained ever since in the Royal Collection. The Heart of the Great Alone reproduces the best of these marvelous images, some of which have never appeared in book form before—ships encased in ice floes, ice cliffs and ravines, campsites and dog sleds, and the incomparable beauty of Antarctic flora and fauna. Together they form an invaluable record of an environment that global warming has forever changed. With a superb narrative drawing on Ponting’s and Hurley’s writings and other unique archival material from the Royal Collection, and with extended captions for each image, this book is a unique addition to the literature of polar exploration."

I can't imagine why I even have to explain why I want this. Please - you all know me. It's a given.

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith (Penguin November). "Split into four sections—“Reading,” “Being,” “Seeing,” and “Feeling”—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith’s unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays—some published here for the first time—on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani. In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding."

I'm not a huge Smith fan but anyone interested in writer porn of the literary kind is going to want to give this one a look. The fact that she gives Hurston some attention certainly makes me happy though.

Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs - from the Strange Maps web site. (Studio/Penguin October): "An intriguing collection of more than one hundred out-of-the-ordinary maps, blending art, history, and pop culture for a unique atlas of humanity."

This is brain candy for anyone interested in development, urbanism, history, etc. The site is a lot of fun and always informative - the book looks gorgeous.

The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Fleming (Putnam September): "After discovering an old photograph, an elderly antiques dealer living in present-day Los Angeles is forced to revisit the history he has struggled to deny. The photograph depicts a man and a woman. The man is Peter Force, a young frontier adventurer who comes to New
York City in 1901 and quickly lands a job digging the first subway tunnels beneath the metropolis. The woman is Cheri-Anne Toledo, a beautiful mathematical prodigy whose memories appear to come from another world. They meet seemingly by chance, and initially Peter dismisses her as crazy. But as they are drawn into a tangle of overlapping intrigues, Peter must reexamine Cheri-Anne’s fantastic story. Could it be that she is telling the truth and that she has stumbled onto the most dangerous secret imaginable: the key to traveling through time?"

It features cameos from Edison and Tesla and sounds like fun. I like a fun novel sometimes and this will have to be my Tesla fix (damn you Samantha Hunt for making him so appealing!) I also love that it is in old NYC and the turn of the last century (a favorite place and time for me). Here's hoping it's as good as promised....

Wonderwall by Elizabeth Hand (Penguin YR October) Hand goes YA - who would have thought it after reading the incredible grittiness of Generation Loss (still can't forget that book). From the catalog: "Seventeen-year-old Meredith lives for her art—but after her girlfriend Lindsey commits suicide, even that can’t save her. Desperate, Mer abandons art school and makes her way home to Washington, D.C., intending to kill herself. A chance street encounter leads her to a lockhouse by the river, which leads her to craft something remarkable—a wall painting that is a doorway through art and time. Through it comes the young Arthur Rimbaud, the “child poet,” who is equally desperate. The two artists—one visual, one verbal—change each other’s lives."

Arthur Rimbaud in a YA title? My God - it's like the apocalypse or something. No vamps, no werewolves, no deep soulful looks. No mean cheerleaders. No....well, you get the idea. I'm planning to review this one for my October column and really looking forward to it. Hand is probably one of my favorite authors, not because I automatically love everything she writes, but because she pushes me with everything she writes. She makes me think - both as a writer and a reader. I'm delighted to see her writing a book for teens.

Whew - lots of books to look forward to! (And I didn't even mention DK's two LEGO titles - Lego Star Wars and The Lego Book. Somebody in my house will be finding both of those under the Christmas tree, I guarantee it.)