Reuters - In "The Duchess," actress Keira Knightley's latest period picture, a lavish melodrama of aristocratic foolishness and betrayal is designed around the colorful though not always happy life of an 18th century socialite.

AP - The fall season is afoot, with these three shows among the first to hit the air: TNT's courtroom drama "Raising the Bar"; FX's series about an outlaw motorcycle club, "Sons of Anarchy"; and HBO's vampires-are-just-folks horror-comedy-romance, "True Blood."

AP - "Everything Under the Sky" (HarperCollins Publisher, 387 pages, $25.95), by Matilde Asensi: It's a good thing that the gambling, opium-addicted, prostitute-loving husband of Elvira De Poulain died. She would otherwise be stripped of an adventure that is so engrossing it could compel the reader to skip meals and ignore chores in a mad dash to read the book's ending.

AP - "In the Land of Invisible Women" (Sourcebooks Inc. 464 pages, $24.95) by Qanta A. Ahmed: Most job contracts don't include mentions of the death penalty, but when Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed agreed to a new job in a Saudi Arabian hospital she became subject to the laws of that country which, as she writes in her memoir, can include decapitation.

AP - "Fine Just the Way It Is" (Scribner. 221 pages. $25), by Annie Proulx: It was Annie Proulx's award-winning "Brokeback Mountain" — a tale of love between two Wyoming cowboys — that became an Academy Award-winning film.

AP - "Soccer Dad" (Skyhorse Publishing. 288 pages. $22.95), by W.D. Wetherell: In the first chapter of this loving remembrance of his son's final year of playing soccer on a top-ranked high school team, W.D. Wetherell says he assumes that anyone reading the book "already understands and values soccer."