Fall Preview

By Marie Arana

Of making many books there is no end. So it was written in the Bible, and more than 2,000 years later it still is true. Like bread and brick, the book goes on, issuing from presses, outliving all notions of technological change. Perhaps it's as a Victorian do-gooder once said: "A good book is the best of friends, the same today as forever."

Well, dear reader, get ready for a horde of friends to overrun your house this fall: The sheer volume of book production is breathtaking. It's as if publishers had decided to bring out a book by every established author they could think of and tossed in a slew of fresh-faced novices for good measure. We've never experienced anything quite like this. Bleary-eyed editors stand in the doorway of our overstuffed book room mumbling something akin to the Duke of Gloucester's lamentations: "Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble!"

Here then, to guide you through the deluge, is a short list of books you'll soon see reviewed on these pages. My advice? Plunge in, look through; the list is bound to offer up a friend or two.

FICTION

Apostle Paul , by James Cannon (Steerforth, Nov.). The tale of a scholar who changed the course of Western civilization.

Blue Smoke , by Nora Roberts (Putnam, Oct.). A fire in her family's pizzeria draws a Baltimore investigator into a ruthless inferno.

The Brooklyn Follies , by Paul Auster (Holt, Dec.). Divorced, estranged from his family, ready to die, Nathan Glass comes to Brooklyn -- and finds redemption.

Captain of the Sleepers , by Mayra Montero (Farrar Straus Giroux, Sept.). An 82-year-old pilot summons a young man to explain his long-ago affair with the young man's mother.

Christ the Lord , by Anne Rice (Knopf, Nov.). Rice pored over New Testament scholarship to produce this novel about Jesus: a radical departure from her lush vampire cycle.

Cinnamon Kiss , by Walter Mosley (Little Brown, Sept.). Easy Rawlins hunts for a vanished attorney, his exotic lover and a stash of Nazi papers.

Dancing in the Dark , by Caryl Phillips (Knopf, Sept.). The fictionalized life story of black (and blackface) entertainer Bert Williams.

The Divide , by Nicholas Evans (Putnam, Sept.). The author of The Horse Whisperer tells the tale of an eco-terrorist found dead in a remote mountain creek.

Dog Days , by Ana Marie Cox (Riverhead, Jan.). It's the summer of 2004, a presidential election looms, and a feisty campaign staffer is having love jitters.