Hot Type

After a grueling summer of sipping Negronis in the Hamptons, publishers are getting back to business, cranking out some of this year's biggest books, and none is bigger, literally, than JOHN IRVING'SA Son of the Circus (Random House). In the 633-page novel (his eighth) the ambitious maestro of Misfit Lit goes to India, where Irving's pet passions—faith, murky sexual identity, alienation, and dwarfs—are all trotted out under the big top.

Also this month: JACKIE COLLINS, the Queen of Supertrash, fingers the progeny of America's hot spot in Hollywood Kids (Simon & Schuster). Sexual obsession is the plat du jour in KAREN MOLINE'SLunch (Morrow); however, as literary fare, Lunch is a microwave burrito. Nobel laureate NADINE GORDIMER'S new novel, None to Accompany Me (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), reflects the hope and hazards of life in the new South Africa. A gay man is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of his lover in JOSEPH OLSHAN'S bold and transcendent Nightswimmer (Simon & Schuster). LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS'SThe Style's the Man (Scribners) is a compilation of his artful essays. JACK HITT goes Off the Road (Simon & Schuster) in Spain on a quest for the Holy Grail, and a vial of the Virgin Mary's breast milk. BILL MAHER sends up stand-up in his "comedy novel," True Story (Random House). GRANT TINKER'S autobiographical Tinker in Television (Simon & Schuster) is the skinny on the man who gave us The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Thirty years' worth of curator and art critic HENRY GELDZAHLER'S essays and interviews with the likes of Haring and Warhol are collected in Making It New (Turtle Point). A mother searches for her runaway son on Philadelphia's mean streets in STEVEN LOPEZ'SThird and Indiana (Viking), and a scrappy single mother finds her life on the rocks in SUSAN JEDREN'SLet 'em Eat Cake (Pantheon). JOHN GREGORY DUNNE'S heroine goes from 1940s naughty-nymphet movie star to 1990s trailer-park queen in his new novel, Playland (Random House). SALLY MANN'SStill Time (Aperture) features never-before-published work of one of America's most original and provocative photographers. ALEXANDER THEROUX'S essays wax rhapsodic on the pan-cultural significance of red, blue, and yellow in The Primary Colors (Henry Holt). NEAL KARLEN'SBabes in Toyland (Times Books) is a behind-the-scenes look at how this all-grrrl garage band crashed the all-boy dance party of grunge rock. Adrian Mole: The Lost Years (Soho Press), by SUE TOWNSEND, is another hysterical installment in the diary of young Master Mole, the beleaguered British nerdling with the soul of a poet and the libido of a longshoreman. Hansel and Gretel Spare Ribs is just one concoction you'll be tempted to whip up from ROALD and FELICITY DAHL'SRevolting Recipes (Viking). Just in time for rabbit season, H. LEA LAWRENCE'SSmall-Game and Varmint Hunter's Bible (Doubleday) advises the intrepid on bagging prairie dogs, squirrels, and other perfect-for-potpie fare. And the average Joe takes a shot on the chin in the late WILLIAM A. HENRY Ill'S In Defense of Elitism (Doubleday), a book guaranteed to provoke spitting and fistfights at Labor Day picnics, which we're sure would have pleased Mr. Henry immensely.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL