Next week brings three female authors with fresh takes on topical subjects.

Big commercial expectations accompany The Wave: In Pursuit of Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, by O magazine editor-in-chief Susan Casey, about rogue waves exacerbated by global warming (the largest was taller than the Empire State Building) and the extreme surfers who chase them. It is listed in USA Today’s fall books roundup. A review is scheduled for the upcoming NYT BR and it will be featured on Good Morning America on Monday, followed by The Daily Show the next evening.

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean Susan Casey Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 0767928849 / 9780767928847

Promise Me: How a Sister’s Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer by Nancy Brinker, is a memoir by the woman who founded Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which has raised more than a billion dollars for breast-cancer research.  Kirkus finds it “touching and inspring.” Library holds are growing, and it has been rising on Amazon too.

Promise Me: How a Sister’s Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer Nancy G. Brinker Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Crown Archetype – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 0307718123 / 9780307718129

Big Girls Don’t Cry by Salon.com staff writer Rebecca Traister is a nuanced look back at the election of 2008, arguing that it changed the role of women in national politics. She spoke to librarians earlier in the year at the S&S editors’ Fall books presentation (the next one is Fri., Sept 24 from 9 to 12:30 at the S&S offices in NYC; email Michelle Fadlalla to RSVP or for more information). Traister is thoughtful, dynamic and passionate; sure to be on many talk shows.

PW says that “Traister does a fine job in showing that progress does not proceed in straight lines, and, sometimes, it’s the unlikeliest of individuals who initiate real change.”

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women Rebecca Traister Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 1439150281 / 9781439150283

Other Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week

Pinheads & Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama by Bill O’Reilly (Morrow) is another round of liberal bashing from the Fox News pundit.

Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind by Joyce Meyer (Faithwords) is the TV preacher’s followup to her bestseller Battlefield of the Mind. PW says “critics of Meyer will say she sounds like an infomercial (‘You will see amazing results’). Yet her many fans will continue to appreciate her upbeat attitude and her ability to offer practical tips on the toughest topics.”

Zooming up to #10 on Amazon’s sales rankings on its first day of publication is a non-conformist manifesto in a conformist package (a book — or as Craig Ferguson puts it, a “BO-OK from the Beforetimes” — and from a New York publishing house). Based on a popular blog of the same title, it’s The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau.

The author says he will be doing an “Unconventional Book Tour” — collectively organized, self-funded and hitting 63 cities.

The book was not reviewed prepub; the libraries that own it are showing holds on light ordering.

The Art of Non-Conformity Chris Guillebeau Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Perigee – (2010-09-07) ISBN 9780399536106

On the Today Show, Stephanie Dolgoff mourns former hotness, but tries to say the message of her book, My Formerly Hot Life, is to not fear aging. It rose to #80 on Amazon.

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My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young Stephanie Dolgoff Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2010-08-17) ISBN / EAN: 0345521455 / 9780345521453

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We’re not surprised when we see Gawker making fun of Rhonda Byrne’s book The Power, the followup to her super successful The Secret, releasing today, but USA Today? The newspaper’s book review editor Dierdre Donahue finds Byrne’s ideas pretty flimsy, and ends with this zinger, “With The Secret, Byrne made a fortune off the delusional bliss of magical thinking. Let’s not give her any more power.”

The Wall Street Journal, naturally, take a more businesslike approach to the whole thing, calling its publication a “bright spot” in a struggling business. Publisher Atria tells the WSJ that they have pre-orders for 924,000 copies, “the largest in its history.”

The Power (The Secret) Rhonda Byrne Retail Price: $23.95 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Atria Books – (2010-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 1439181780 / 9781439181782

S&S Audio; Read by: Rhonda Byrne; September 2010; ISBN-13: 9781442337961; $29.95

Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash‘s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir Rosanne Cash Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship Gail Caldwell Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Even long-term marriages can end in divorce, which was the subject of the Diane Rehm Show on NPR yesterday. As evidenced by the many comments about the show on the Web site, this is a hot-button issue.

As is the case with nearly any legal situation, there is a NOLO Press book on the subject and the author, attorney Janice Green joined the discussion.

Divorce After 50: Your Guide to the Unique Legal & Financial Challenges Janice Green Retail Price: $29.99 Paperback: 370 pages Publisher: NOLO – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 1413310818 / 9781413310818

Also featured was Andrew Cherlin Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family Today.

The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today Andrew J. Cherlin Retail Price: $16.00 Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0307386384 / 9780307386380

The most emailed and viewed story on the NYT Web site currently is “The Science of a Happy Marriage,” by Tara Parker-Pope on the Well blog.

Parker-Pope has just released a book with a similar subtitle, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage. Newsweek says it “may be the most credible and interesting marital self-help book of all time.” The book has received considerable attention; a long piece in the New Yorker, and reviews in the L.A. Times,  San Francisco Chronicle and one by Susan Jane Gilman on NPR (naturally, the author of the brilliantly titled Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress has an inspired headline, “Chemistry Set for The Science of a Good Marriage”). Those who are skeptical about scientific studies of something as elusive as happy marriages, will be amused by Carolyn See‘s contrarian review in The Washington Post.

For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage Tara Parker-Pope Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 356 pages Publisher: Dutton Adult – (2010-05-06) ISBN / EAN: 0525951385 / 9780525951384

HighBridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615730940; $26.95

WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

Rising on Amazon; now at #24 is a new parenting book, Raising Happiness.

The book’s author, Christine Carter, writes the blog “Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids.”

The book wasn’t reviewed prepub (check to see if you’ve ordered it; several libraries we checked hadn’t yet). It’s covered in these consumer magazines:

• US News & World Report, “On Parenting” blog; Two Simple Ways to Be a Happier Parent, 3/2
• Globe and Mail, How to raise joyful kids: Reject perfection and let them fail, Q&A with author, 2/28.
• Psychology Today, How to Raise an Olympic Athlete (blog post by the author), 3/3.

Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents Christine Carter Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 0345515617 / 9780345515612

ebook available from OverDrive