Well, dear friends, we have managed to escape from the couch and our mega-reading session last week. And just in time too, as the shelves are filling up again with shiny new releases, all of which are chirping and hiccuping with delight over being selected by you! That's right. It's like visiting the petting zoo around here, but with less pet dander and virtually no chance of getting headbutted in the behind by a goat. 

We provide the best out-of-the-house entertainment in the entire South Sound, if you didn't know it already. Plus there's a place to park your kid and distract them with toys while you dally over which Colleen Hoover you're going to get this week. 
 

Anyway, look at this! Historian Pekka Hämäläinen has a new book about the history of North America. Hämäläinen's book, however, starts much much much earlier than the arrival of European explorers. Like 10,000 years plus earlier. Indigenous Continent sets forth the idea that "colonial America" is more than a little boorish, and if we're going to talk about the history of the land around here, we should really refer to it as "indigenous America," thereby recognizing the history of those peoples who have been here much longer than us immigrants. 
 

And speaking of perspective, here is Neal DeGrasse Tyson with Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. In the introduction, DeGrasse Tyson talks about Galileo Galilei's publication of Sidereus Nuncius (in 1610), and how Galileo's book offered a heretofore unrealized perspective about our world, which was: it's a very small dot in a very large sea. Galileo offered us an 'ego check,' and with Starry Messenger (the Latin of which is 'Sidereus Nuncius,' by the way; see what he did there?), DeGrasse Tyson takes us through a series of conversations and observations about being "human" in very vast cosmos. 
 

And if all of this makes you feel very insignificant, let us turn to Nicholas Sparks who, once again, reminds us that a chance encounter between two very different people can change everything. In Dreamland, his latest Vasoline-slathered-on-the-lens soft-focus feel-gooder, we have a failed musician / local homesteader who meets a daughter of doctors who dreams of being a country music sensation. Naturally, they meet-cute their way into a possible future where everything is kittens and poodles and slow walks in the park while eating locally-sourced and ethically-produced frozen yogurt (because one of the two is undoubtedly lactose-intolerant). 
 

And speaking of music and love and whatnot, Colleen Hoover actually has a new—no, wait, a new chapter out this week. This one is Maybe Now, a follow on to Maybe Someday. (We imagine the third one will be titled Didn't We? to fully close the circle.) Anyway, Maybe Now asks the pertinent question of our time: Which is most important: friendship, loyalty, or love? 

We hope that the fact that Maybe Now is currently the #1 title in the Friendship Fiction category isn't too much of a spoiler. 

By the way kids, if you want your book to be noticed this fall, stay away from teal, pumpkin orange, and goldenrod. The field is getting crowded already. 
 

Here's something that doesn't look—oh, wait. So much orange. Jasmine Guillory is back with more sweet, sexy, and funny rom-com escapades with Drunk on Love. Undeniable chemistry! Sexy strangers! One-night flings that get complicated at the staff meeting the following morning! Lush wine country backdrop! Did we mention the intoxicating romance yet? 
 

Or how about Bobby Finger's The Old Place, which is also orange! (How does this keep happening?) In Finger's bighearted debut, we get to meet intractable retiree Mary Alice Roth who is forced to address a decades-old secret that might shatter the carefully constructed shell Mary Alice has spent years building. Will this tough old nut finally crack and reveal her soft interior? Or is there nothing but a wizened pea that not even a hungry squirrel would hide?
 

And here is Olesya Salnikova Gilmore's The Witch and the Tsar, which is . . . so very orange. This is another debut, and it tells the tale of a young Baba Yaga who must risk everything (including a very quiet life, living very far away from pesky humans who have a penchant for breaking her heart) in order to save Russia from the Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Epic folktale! Sparkling with mystery and myth! Chicken feet! 
 

And—what the heck!—more orange! Sarah Adams's When in Rome is a frisky, slow-burn rom-com set in Rome, Kentucky, where a burnt-out pop star finds herself at the mercy of a local pie-shop owner. She needs a place to stay while her car gets fixed; he needs someone to remind him that life isn't all about getting up before dawn to roll out pie crusts because that's what his dead grandmother did and damnit all, he can't malign her memory now, can he? When in Rome is like putting your leftovers in the oven to warm up. Oh, the anticipation! 
 

And fine, here's another orange cover (with hints of teal!). This one is Sean Andrew Greer's Less is Lost, which is a followup to his Pulitzer Prize winning Less, staring the eternally affable and thoroughly self-deprecating Arthur Less. This time around, Less gets, uh, lost as he attempts to forget his problems by forging across the US on a literary book tour. It's a book about life, as we know it and as we don't know it, as well as how we transform either end of this equation into something resembling a personal narrative and a profound sense of who we really are. 

Right. Well, there's a theme with all this orange and that darn teal color too. Maybe James Patterson can save us from all this navel-gazing, pumpkin-adoring . . . 
 

Oh. But . . . but . . . <sigh> teal . . . 

Anyway, The Girl in the Castle (which is co-written by Emily Raymond) is a twisty psychological mystery about two girls, both named Hannah, who are suffering from hallucinations and delusions. They exist in two time periods, you see. Hannah Doe is in the now, and Hannah Dory is in the 14th century. It's a Collapsing History Into a Singular Event thriller! It's like when Joan of Arc thinks she's talking to God, but she's actually channeling some kid who's working the Starbucks drive-thru. 

Well, this one has no orange in it, even if it does go heavy on the teal, so it has that going for it. Oh, woe. We're never going to find a book that isn't—

Oh, wait! Here we go. Yes! 

Antony Beevor has been working his way across Europe, dropping fat tomes of deep dive history for a while now. This time, he's doing Russia, or, at least, that five year span when everything was being turned inside out. Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 covers, uh, what the subtitle says, and like all Beevor books, you know you're in for a very intensive journey. Recommended. And not just because it is unafraid to eschew the fall color palette. 

No, wait. That's a very orangy-red color  on the title treatment. Son of a—!
 

And finally, circling back around because we clearly cannot escape these ever-present hues (but at least it isn't orange!), we have Richard Osman's newest adventure of the Thursday Murder Club, The Bullet That Missed. See the old folks sleuth out another cold case! Watch Elizabeth get hunted by a new adversary! Look, a gun! And so many exotic locales: an upmarket spa, a prison cell with an espresso machine, and a luxury penthouse! Oh, Osman. You know exactly what we need.