King, Kingsolver and Ellroy all in Talking Volumes lineup

To celebrate its 10th year, Talking Volumes has lined up its biggest season yet, with appearances by novelists James Ellroy, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King and Audrey Niffenegger and Monica Ali.

Talking Volumes is a regional book club that presents authors and their work in the Star Tribune, to a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater and on Minnesota Public Radio. It is sponsored by the Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio, in collaboration with the Loft Literary Center.

This fall features big social novels by three major names in American fiction.

Ellroy's visit (Oct. 7) is timed to the Sept. 22 release of "Blood's a Rover," the epic third volume of his "American Underworld Trilogy," which includes "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand." The new book by the author of "L.A. Confidential" spans the tumultuous years of 1968 to 1972 in a chaotic narrative of bag men, Howard Hughes, undercover FBI agents, conspiracies real and imagined, vixens, violence and presidential politics.

Kingsolver, beloved author of "The Poisonwood Bible" and "Animal Dreams," will appear Nov. 11. (Sold out.) "The Lacuna," her first novel in nine years, also takes in a broad sweep of history and politics as it moves between Mexico and the United States in the 1930s and '40s. In Mexico City, protagonist Harrison Shepherd befriends artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky. In the United States he becomes embroiled in the Red Scare and the cross-currents of internationalism and Americanism.

King, one of the biggest-selling writers of all time, has been working on "Under the Dome" for 25 years. He'll talk about it Nov. 18 at the Fitz. (Sold out.) The setup -- a Maine town is cut off from the world by an invisible but impermeable force field -- is simple, but in true King fashion the plot plays out in ways both intricate and diabolical. This giant novel involves more than 100 characters, from an Iraq war veteran to a newspaper owner and three brave children.

Appearing with King is his friend Chicago-based writer Audrey Niffenegger, whose debut 2003 novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife," became a runaway bestseller (and is now a movie). Niffenegger's second novel is "Her Fearful Symmetry," a contemporary ghost story about 20-year-old American twin sisters who inherit their aunt's flat in London.

The Talking Volumes appearance of Bangladesh-born British author Ali (May 19, 2010), will coincide with the U.S. paperback release of her current top-selling novel, "In the Kitchen," about a fast-rising chef at a posh hotel restaurant who faces a corpse in the cellar, a mysterious girlfriend and a country dramatically changed, and challenged, by immigrants. Ali, who lives in London, is best known for "Brick Lane," a 2003 novel that also became a movie.

Talking Volumes, begun in 2000, has featured such internationally renowned, prize-winning fiction writers as Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson and Jane Hamilton. Bestselling novelists from Richard Russo and Wally Lamb to Joyce Carol Oates and Augusten Burroughs have visited the Twin Cities for the series, as have poets Rita Dove, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly and Gary Snyder. Regional writers hosted by the book club have included Diane Glancy, Neil Gaiman and Robert Alexander.

Claude Peck • 612-673-7977