It’s an enormous list of forthcoming books for September, so I’ll jump right in today with the title that  tops my pick list, Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir. No, I don’t have a life worth writing about, but I’m interested in reading what  Karr has to say since she wrote three prize-winning memoirs, and has taught memoir writing for thirty years. Including excerpts and anecdotes from other writers, this is Mary Karr’s process. (Release date is Sept. 15.)

Camilla Lackberg’s The Drowning is set in Fjallbacka, where a new novel from a reclusive resident has enraptured the community. But author Christian Thydell remains distant. And, then Detective Patrik Hedstrom has his worst suspicions confirmed when the mind games aimed at Christian become a disturbing reality. And Christian’s childhood friends, a “gang of four” have secrets, relationships and love triangles to conceal. Is their silence driven by fear or guilt? (Release date is Sept. 15.)

In Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. For most of her life, she’s battled depression, anxiety, and a number of other disorders. Now, she discusses it, the good and the bad, along with the humorous aspects, and how to thrive despite it all. (Release date is Sept. 22.)

I know there are readers waiting for Archer Mayor’s new Joe Gunther crime novel, The Company She Kept. When a woman’s body is found hanging high above the Vermont interstate, with a hate message carved on her chest, Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team are called in. When the victim is identified not only as a state senator, but as an intimate friend of the governor’s, all hell breaks loose. It’s up to Gunther and his team to cut through all the publicity and furor, and find a killer. (Release date is Sept. 29.)

Livi Michael’s historical novel, Succession, is a story of treachery, betrayal, and the lives of two extraordinary women, set during the Wars of the Roses. The novel about the fall of the House of Lancaster and the two women who gave birth to the Tudor dynasty tells the story of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret Beaufort. (Release date is Sept. 22.)

British police officer and single father Max Wolfe returns in Tony Parsons’ crime novel, The Slaughter Man. When a wealthy family is found slaughtered inside their gated community, and their youngest child is missing, the clues lead Wolfe to Scotland Yard’s Black Museum and an exhibit devoted to a mass murderer from thirty years earlier. The young, obsessed detective finds that even happy families have dark secrets. (Release date is Sept. 22.)

Hollow Man is a standalone novel by Mark Pryor, author of the Hugo Marston novels. “Dominic is a prosecutor, a musician, and an Englishman living in Texas. He’s also a sociopath.” He’s trying to live a normal life and become a full-time musician in Austin. But one day spells disaster, and he ends up making a plan to steal a van filled with cash. He lets his accomplices know there will be no guns nor violence, but when they’re caught in the act, theft turns into capital murder. As problems occur, Dominic has to decide if he’ll stick with his partners in crime, or “let his true nature come out to play”. (Release date is Sept. 1.)

In the fall of 2009, the food world was stunned when Gourmet magazine closed down. Editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl was as stunned as everyone else. Now, in My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, she tells the story of her retreat to her country house, and the year she spent trying to recover the simple pleasures of the kitchen. (Release date is Sept. 29.)

Salman Rushdie turns to a story that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story in Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. For a thousand and one nights, whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, descendants from a jinn princess named Dunia, play a role in an epic war between light and dark. (Release date is Sept. 8.)

Scott Shane’s Objective Troy tells the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who once called for moderation, and, eventually directed his talents to terrorism. It also tells how President Barack Obama directed the mammoth machinery of spy agencies to hunt Awlaki down in a pursuit that would end in the death of Awlaki by the robotic technology that is changing warfare, the drone. (Release date is Sept. 15.)

Anne-Marie Slaughter uses her own life as the background for Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family. When she left the State Department for a job that allowed her to spend more time with her family, and wrote about if for The Atlantic, it caused a furor. Now, she takes it one step further, suggesting what might be needed so men and women can work and have family time. (Release date is  Sept. 29.)

Here’s another tough subject in a nonfiction book, the Holocaust. Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, focuses on the failure of nations to save the Jews. Instead, individuals stepped forward. He focuses on stories of the survivors, but, also warns that conditions are ripe right now in the 21st century, for a repeat of history. (Release date is Sept. 8.)

Stories of fathers and sons often revolve around sports. For Stuart Stevens, it’s Ole Miss football. In The Last Season, he tells of spending one last season with his 95-year-old father, paying fanatical attention to every form of madness and bonding that college football, and Southern football, represents. It’s a story of fathers, sons, race, and growing up in the South during the late 1960s. (Release date is Sept. 15.)

Amy Stewart’s novel, Girl Waits with Gun, is based on the true story of one of the nation’s first female deputy sheriffs. It’s a story of suspense, mystery, and wry humor, set in Patterson, NJ in 1914, where Constance Copp takes on an arrogant factory owner, helping the local sheriff who has long wanted to convict the man and his gang of thugs. (Release date is Sept. 1.)

The Year of Fear by Joe Urschel is about 1933. It’s subtitled “Machine Gun Kelly and The Manhunt That Changed the Nation”. Prohibition has given rise to the American gangster, a lawless group of bank robbers, bootleggers, and kidnappers.  With a botched kidnapping, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife Kathryn make the Justice Department’s J. Edgar Hoover and his agents hit the road on a 20,000 mile chase across Depression-era America. This is the true story of that manhunt. (Release date is Sept. 8.)

The last title is a debut crime novel, Sarah Ward’s In Bitter Chill. It’s a story of loss and family secrets. In Derbyshire, in 1978, two young schoolgirls are kidnapped. One, Rachel Jones, is found wandering unharmed, but with no memory of the events, except that her abductor was a woman. No trace of Sophie Jenkins is ever found. Over thirty years later, Sophie’s mother commits suicide. And, then one of Rachel’s former teachers is found murdered. She teams up with two police officers to look at the long ago clues to find what really happened all those years ago. (Release date is Sept. 29.)

An interesting collection, isn’t it, with an emphasis on nonfiction? Well, I’m sure there will be more crime novels turning up in the next month, so we’ll see what really ends up being reviewed. And, what titles entice you?