Pynchon's Big `Day,' Crichton's Future, Godfather: New Fiction

Pynchon's Big `Day,' Crichton's Future, Godfather: New Fiction

By Edward Nawotka

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- A new book by Thomas Pynchon is only slightly less rare than sightings of the man himself. ``Against the Day'' (Penguin Press) is the reclusive genius's first novel in a decade and, at 1,085 pages, easily his fattest. The extravagant plot moves from the 1883 Chicago World's Fair to early Hollywood, and the prose is jammed with the funny names, silly songs, unhinged fantasy, encyclopedic learning and, not least, excruciating beauty that are his trademarks.

Pynchon has clearly been keeping up with the national news, and his hatred of the power structure hasn't abated: Part of the novel deals with the anarchist dynamiters who plagued Colorado's mining barons, and there's no question as to where his sympathies lie.

Also new this month:

``Next'' by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins). The provocateur futurist is back with a novel tackling the widely debated topic of genetic engineering. The book is embargoed until Nov. 28, but its publisher promises it will change ``everything you think you know.''

``The Godfather's Revenge'' by Mark Winegardner (Putnam). Winegardner is becoming a worthy successor to Mario Puzo, who died in 1999. This second sequel to ``The Godfather'' finds the Corleone clan embroiled in the political machinations of the early 1960s and culminates in a plot to assassinate the U.S. president.

``The Hidden Assassins'' by Robert Wilson (Harcourt) Spanish police inspector Javier Falcon investigates an explosion at a Seville mosque and tries to thwart a terrorist conspiracy in the latest brainy mystery from the author of the acclaimed ``A Small Death in Lisbon.''

``The View from Castle Rock'' by Alice Munro (Knopf). The renowned Canadian's 11th story collection comprises 12 masterful tales inspired by her ancestors' immigration from Scotland's Ettrick Valley to the shores of Lake Huron.

``The Handmaid and the Carpenter'' by Elizabeth Berg (Random House). A rewrite of the Christmas story that fleshes out the doubts and fears of the 13-year-old virgin Mary who, miraculously pregnant, marries 16-year-old Joseph and travels to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus.

``The Aeneid'' by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles (Viking). This new book by the heralded translator of ``The Odyssey'' and ``The Iliad'' offers a fresh interpretation of the third pinnacle of the classic epics: the story of Aeneas, the wandering Trojan who eventually founded Rome.

``The Phony Marine'' by Jim Lehrer (Random House). The PBS newsman's 16th novel may be his best yet and explains the unexpected consequences that unfold after an unremarkable clothing salesman buys a Silver Star on EBay Inc. and begins posing as a war hero.

``The Book of Samson'' by David Maine (St. Martin's). Maine's third brilliant re-imagining of a Bible story -- after ``The Preservationist'' (about Noah) and ``Fallen'' (about Adam and Eve) -- is filled with murder and mayhem, as the strongman Samson recounts how he became a blood-thirsty killer hellbent on slaughter in the name of God.

``The Book of Dave'' by Will Self (Bloomsbury). An ambitious satire from the controversial British writer portrays a post- apocalyptic society hundreds of years in the future that takes a bitter manifesto by a 21st-century cockney cab driver as its sacred text.

``The Crimson Portrait'' by Jody Shields (Little, Brown). Working from a true story, the author of the highly regarded ``The Fig Eater'' tells of a World War I widow who decides to salvage her life by refashioning a disfigured soldier into her husband's image.

``The Rising Tide'' by Jeff Shaara (Ballantine). In the first volume of a planned World War II trilogy, Shaara channels Rommel, Eisenhower and Patton while vividly describing the early days of the U.S.'s involvement in the war, especially the desert tank battles of the North African front and the Allied invasion of Italy.

``Ines of My Soul'' by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins). The latest historical saga from the Chilean bestseller depicts the life of the iron-willed 16th-century heroine Ines Suarez, who together with her lover, the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, helped conquer Chile.

``Last Seen Leaving'' by Kelly Braffet (Houghton Mifflin). A tense thriller inspired by the Elizabeth Smart abduction in which a girl crashes her car and is picked up by an enigmatic stranger who helps her start a new life in a Virginia town beset by a serial killer.

``A Christmas Caroline'' by Kyle Smith (Morrow). Charles Dickens meets ``The Devil Wears Prada'' in this comic romp that delves into the love life of a haunted, high-maintenance editor of a women's shopping magazine who bah-humbugs her way through the holidays.