Amazon's Sara Nelson shares her favorite fall books

Readers are in for a literary treat this fall, says Sara Nelson, editorial director of books and Kindle for Amazon.com.

“September and October are always a bumper crop of books,” says Nelson. “There’s a lot of anticipated books from well-known writers like Zadie Smith and Junot Diaz, and it’s also a time for debuts from new writers. [We’ve seen] serious literary titles but also strong ‘commercial’ picks.”

Each month Amazon’s editorial team meets to select its list of the 10 books it believes are the best of the month, a process Nelson describes as “a bunch of people in a room all screaming about what we liked and didn’t like.” When you have as many good books come out as in September, says Nelson, the argument is particularly passionate.

One book everyone was passionate about, she says, is “The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t,” by Nate Silver, author of the New York Times’s popular FiveThirtyEight blog.

“It’s a book about science and forecasting everything from baseball, to weather to politics,” says Nelson. “It’s a brilliant book, surprisingly easy to read, and it makes science accessible… It stands out in a lot of ways.”

Another standout was Christopher Hitchens’ “Mortality,” the late author’s vivid account of his battle with esophageal cancer and the last months of his life.

“It’s very intense,” says Nelson, “you feel like you’re right there with him…[He writes] with such wit and with great humanity…For a book about dying of cancer, it’s surprisingly not depressing.”

“The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo,” by Tom Reiss, was one book that surprised Nelson. Part history, part biography, and part swashbuckling adventure saga, “The Black Count” tells the story of the little-known Gen. Alexandre Dumas, father of the better-known novelist Alexandre Dumas. Dumas was the mixed-race son of a count and a West Indies slave who would become one of Napoleon’s greatest generals and become the inspiration for many of his son’s books, including “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers.”

“It’s partly a history of France, but the book is way more than that,” says Nelson. “You learn a lot in it, it’s interesting and unusual.”

Another surprise, says Nelson, was “How Music Works,” by David Byrne, a book that explores the physics, business, technology, and cultural history of music, from African villages to Wagnerian opera houses.

“This is a very brainy book, but not so 'musicologist' that the average person who likes music couldn’t understand it,” says Nelson. “You’ll learn something, but it’s not homework.”

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