Like the movie industry, the publishing business saves their most prestigious titles for the fall - all those Christmas trees have a way of having a book - or an ereader - under them.

Literary fiction will offer a new book by Tom Wolfe, who is now 81 years old, but refuses to write like it, which, depending on your point of view, may or may not be a problem. Wolfe’s new novel Back to Blood (Oct.) takes place in the cauldron of Miami. Also up are Ian McEwan with Sweet Tooth (Oct.) and the venerable - 96! - Herman Wouk’s The Lawgiver (Oct.) You go, Herman! And Mark Helprin’s new novel is titled In Sunlight and Shadow (Oct.), a big New York love story.

On the cusp between literature and suspense genre is Dennis Lehane, whose new novel Live By Night concerns itself with the life of a bootlegger who happens to be the son of a Boston cop during Prohibition. And J. K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (Sept.), her first book for adults, is due. The plot concerns the death of a young man who leaves a vacancy on the local town council. Complications ensue. The tone is lightly comic. Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (Sept.) concerns itself with a record store, a setting which worked very well well indeed for Nick Hornby.

Former Palm Beach Post writer Paul Reid has one of the big books of the season, with volume three of The Last Lion, his completion of William Manchester’s biographical trilogy about Winston Churchill (Nov.). Besides Reid’s book, upscale biography will offer Timothy Egan’s Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher (Oct.), about the great Edward Curtis, the obsessive documentarian of the American Indian. Henry Wiencek’s Master of the Mountain (Oct.) constitutes a massive take-down of Thomas Jefferson, depicting him as a committed racist slave-holder.

Moving into the 20th century, Penelope Niven has written only the second biography of Thornton Wilder (Nov.), and Dan Wakefield has edited a very entertaining collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s letters (Oct.). Joyce Johnson’s The Voice Is All (Sept.) focuses on the self-creation of the young Jack Kerouac. David Nasaw’s The Patriarch (Nov.), is the first authorized biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, and it tries to get at the humanity of a man long derided as an arriviste anti-Semite, appeaser, and rapacious womanizer.

Something between a memoir and a biography is Breakfast with Lucian, by Geordie Greig (October) about his meals with the largely secretive Lucian Freud. And moving into the 21st century, D.T. Max writes the first biography of David Foster Wallace entitled Every Love Story is a Ghost Story. (Sep.).

Autobiography is held down by Richard Russo’s new memoir Elsewhere (Oct.), while Christopher Hitchens’ last book is Mortality (Nov.) - much of which was published in column form in Vanity Fair. Keith Richards’ successful memoir of a few years ago has kicked loose a batch of rock and roll memoirs. Pete Townshend has written Who Am I (Oct.), and Neil Young’s book is entitled Waging Heavy Peace (Nov.). On a lighter note, there’s part-time Palm Beacher Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment (Nov.), while Hunter Davies has edited a collection of John Lennon’s letters (Nov.).

Roger Moore offers Bond on Bond (Oct.), in which the second James Bond offers his opinions on all the others. Salman Rushdie writes a memoir of his years in hiding called Joseph Anton (September). Finally, the last volume of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries appears in November, and that same month offers a volume of P.G. Wodehouse’s letters.

But I think everyone can agree that the most eagerly awaited book will be Uggie - My Story (Oct.), by the world’s most resourceful Jack Russell terrier.