John Updike, right; Thomas L. Friedman, above.

AP / JIM COOPER, right; VIA BLOOMBERG NEWS / GREG MARTIN, above

If the price of gas means you’re sticking around the house more these days, you’ll be glad to know that authors have been busily cranking out new tomes for what booksellers expect to be a strong fall reading season. Whether you’re still lounging in the hammock on those nice autumn days or curled up in front of the fireplace, authors from Stephen King and Wally Lamb to Bob Woodward and Thomas Friedman will tempt you with new offerings.

Some books might even appeal to two people likely to be among the busiest on Earth this fall: Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ nominee, and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain.

McCain has said he’s a fan of John Updike, who will be releasing The Widows of Eastwick, his sequel to the best-selling The Witches of Eastwick. Three writers cited favorably by Obama will have novels out: Marilynne Robinson, whose Home is a companion to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead; Toni Morrison, with A Mercy, set on a plantation in the 17th century; and Philip Roth, whose Indignation takes place on a Midwestern college campus in the 1950s.

Other anticipated titles include Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? — the new literary crime thriller from the author of Case Histories. Wally Lamb, author of She’s Come Undone, has completed his first novel in a decade, The Hour I First Believed. Pulitzer Prize winner E. Annie Proulx has a new story collection, Fine Just the Way It Is.

Booksellers also are hopeful about 2666, by the late Chilean author Roberto Balano, whose Savage Detectives was a critical and commercial success last year.

“I expect you’ll see a lot of editorial excitement from us on that book,” says bookseller Amazon.com’s senior books editor, Brad Parsons.

Some fiction fits right into an election year, such as Christopher Buckley’s Supreme Courtship, a satire of the judicial branch, and Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, which fictionalizes First Lady Laura Bush. Sittenfeld, author of the best seller Prep, continues a tradition of novelists imagining the private lives of American leaders, like such recent works as Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler’s Intercourse, a story collection that includes a peek into the bedroom of the current first couple.

“In this world of celebrity, blogs and entertainment gossip television, we are intensely aware of public figures who perform the same function as mythological figures did in an earlier period,” Butler says. “It’s our own private lives writ large.”

Familiar names such as King, Michael Crichton, Candace Bushnell, Gregory Maguire, Dennis Lehane, Nelson DeMille, David Baldacci and Vince Flynn will be back. Sister Souljah has written a sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever, which helped kick off the Urban Lit phenomenon. Anne Rice has a new book, Called Out of Darkness, a memoir that details her Christian faith and its influence on her vampire novels.

Publishers did hold some books until after Election Day, including Patrick Tyler’s World of Trouble, a history of presidents and the Middle East that Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in December. Around the same time, Collins will release My Word is My Bond, a memoir by actor Sir Roger Moore.

“We just felt the media coverage would benefit from a clearer field post-election, and that is looking increasingly true,” says Steve Ross, president and publisher of Collins, a HarperCollins division.

Three September releases that won’t be overlooked: Obama’s Change We Can Believe In, a policy book and collection of speeches; Wood- ward’s fourth volume about the Bush adminis- tration; and Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, his first since the million-selling The World is Flat.

Topical works are scheduled from Michael Moore, Paul Begala and Ann Coulter. Topical thoughts will be transmitted from ancient times through Garry Wills’ translation of epigrams by the Roman satirist Martial, including a couplet that reads like an ode to campaign fundraising: “I did not ask wealth for my own/It was just to make my rival groan.”

Scholastic Inc., the U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books, starts a new series this fall, The 39 Clues, 10 planned novels by 10 different authors, packaged with multimedia games, contests and trading cards, enhanced by a movie deal with Steven Spielberg. A well-established franchise, Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance fantasy series, continues with Brisingr.

Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial is not until February, but fall offers a warm-up for the deluge: John Stauffer’s Giants: The Parallel Lives of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; Harold Holzer’s Lincoln President-Elect; and Tried by War, by James M. McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize winner and leading Civil War historian who thinks, despite thousands of books about the president, that Lincoln’s war leadership deserves more attention.

“His functions as commander in chief have been undertreated compared to many other aspects of his life and career,” says McPherson, winner of the Pulitzer for The Battle Cry of Freedom, widely regarded as the best one-volume history of the Civil War.

Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, is an authorized biography of the billionaire investor. David Hackett Fisher, winner of the Pulitzer for Washington’s Crossing, has written Champlain’s Dream, about the founding of Quebec. Malcolm Gladwell, of Blink and The Tipping Point fame, ponders the mystery of success in Outliers.

The Library of America will honor poet John Ashbery with a volume of his early work, a rare tribute to a living artist. The letters between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, celebrated poets and equally intense correspondents, have been compiled. Poet Jay Parini has written The Promised Land: 13 Books That Changed America, including essays about On the Road, The Feminine Mystique and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Celebrity titles

 A ritual for any season: celebrities telling all. This fall, Ted Turner gets personal in Call Me Ted, Alec Baldwin sounds off on parenthood and divorce in A Promise to Ourselves, Prince takes you on stage for 21 Nights and Maureen McCormick adds to the mini-mountain of Brady Bunch literature with Here’s the Story.

 Memoirs also are coming from Eminem, Tony Curtis and Bill O’Reilly, who calls his book A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, a title that Barnes & Noble buyer Edward Ash-Milby declined to comment on, saying, “I’d rather keep it PG here.”

 Don Rickles, 82 and fresher than ever, is working on a book of letters that should be out in November. They’re not real, just messages he’s made up for departed friends (Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson), living friends (Bob Newhart), and some he’s never met, such as Lincoln and George Washington.

 “I call myself the Jewish Mark Twain,” says Rickles, who acknowledges that he’d rather publish a book than read one.

 “I had trouble with English class in high school. Thank God there was World War II or I might still be there. That should give you an idea of my reading background.”