Joy Williams

Williams takes her time turning out masterful fiction—these twelve short stories comprise her first collection in more than ten years. The title story concerns a teenage girl who is coming to terms with the imminent death of her mother, and who is reluctantly suicidal herself (but “suicide was so corny and you had to be careful in this milieu that was eleventh grade…”). The tenuous connections between life and death run as a theme through the other eleven stories; nevertheless, Williams’ characters hold on to hope, even as they fall victim to their own errant behaviors or the sudden tragedies that their creator visits upon them without warning. Williams is not a writer you turn to for comfort, but if you’re looking for odd, even absurd explorations of the human psyche, she’s just the ticket. Available October 5

SUSAN ORLEAN
My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere
Various Locations, October 14–16
Emphasis in the title should be on “stories,” not “travel.” Orlean has indeed been everywhere—some will recall a fictional version of her played by Meryl Streep in Adapation, in which she trails an orchid hunter through Florida swamps—but My Kind of Place is no ordinary travel writing. For one thing, these tales may range near and far, from Bhutan to Midland, Texas (hometown of Dubya), from a trailer park outside Portland, Oregon, to the African music scene in Paris—but they are not in the least prescriptive. Instead, the places Orlean writes about emerge as characters as vivid as any of the humans who inhabit them. One would expect nothing less, after all, from one of our foremost literary journalists (most of the pieces here were published in the New Yorker and Outside). October 14: Bound To Be Read, 870 Grand Ave., St. Paul; 651-646-2665; www.boundtoberead.com. October 15: Amazon Books, 4755 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-821-9630; www.amazonfembks.com. October 16: The Bookcase of Wayzata, 607 E. Lake St., Wayzata; 952-473-8341; www.bookcaseofwayzata.com

ALSO NOTED
• Thomas Frank,
U of M Bookstore
October 13

• John Updike,
Villages
Available October 19

• Jessica Hagedorn,
U of M Bookstore
October 14

• Jon Lee Anderson,
Barnes & Noble Edina
October 15

• Stanley Crouch,
The Artificial
White Man: Essays
on Authenticity
Available October 30

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Barnes & Noble Edina
October 7

• Joyce Carol Oates, Fitzgerald Theater
October 4

• Philip Roth,
The Plot Against America
October 7

• Edward Gorey,
Amphigorey Again Available October 31

• Neil Labute,
Seconds of Pleasure
Available October 10

• Imre Kertesz,
Liquidiation
Available October 19