Meg Waite Clayton The truth comes out

With all the great fall releases, it can be tough to choose which book to tee up first. Here are four possibilities that have in common that they are based on something perhaps less valued these days than it once was: actual fact.

Philip Pullman proposes in “Daemon Voices” that the “so-called omniscient narrator” ought to be called the “multiscient narrator”; we have neither time nor page space to know everything. Multiscient is an apt descriptor of this new collection of his essays on stories and storytelling; it doesn’t contain everything one could know about story, but what isn’t here won’t be much missed.

"Daemon Voices” collects Pullman’s essay and lectures from several decades, edited to minimize repetition without loss of the abundant humor. “My first rule is that stories must begin,” he advises, along with, “The only good thing about being poor and obscure is the obscurity — just as the only trouble with being rich and famous is the fame.” Where do his ideas come from? “I dunno,” he admits.

Pullman covers topics ranging from the Gnostic myth to resonance, reinforcement and racism, to the pluperfect tense — not the right tense in which to tell a story, we learn. He narrates the volume himself, too, in a beautifully deep British voice.

Film star Reese Witherspoon’s “Whiskey in a Teacup,” also self-narrated, mixes tasty tidbits of memoir, advice and recipes into one scrumptious listening experience. Witherspoon sees her Nashville hometown through rosy lenses, but it’s an engaging view. A proud Southerner and a proud feminist, Witherspoon unapologetically offers hot roller instructions, table setting tips (formal and casual) and endless possibilities for monograms. Biscuit and mint julep recipes are on offer, as is sweet tea, a true Nashville staple. She doesn’t read the recipes aloud in the audiobook, thankfully, but she does chat pleasingly around the subject of each, sharing advice on honeysuckle tasting, ways to keep party conversation lively (hint: think about the guest list), and how to catch a frog with your bare hands.

As one might expect from the title, Witherspoon serves up plenty of humor. She also offers moments of intimacy, inviting us into her life in Nashville and in Hollywood: her career, her marriages, her family. The stories of the strong women who have inspired her, told here in her own voice, are particularly moving — a reason to choose the audiobook. Don’t worry: it comes with a PDF download of the fabulous photos and recipes.

Since it’s October, our favorite month to be scared, listeners might like to pick up Ben Macintyre’s “The Spy and the Traitor,” a fast-paced and fascinating biography of Russian-spy-turned-British-asset Oleg Gordievsky. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called Gordievsky “Mr. Collins.” She didn’t know exactly who he was; the circle who knew the KGB’s top London spy had turned double agent was that limited. Yet when she attended the funeral of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, she took with her the spy’s advice on what to say and do to improve Anglo-Russian relations.

The book is narrated by John Lee, who does a great job, although in the early pages one does wish he would get through K-G-B without so much respect for individual letters. It’s nonfiction, but it reads like the best of thrillers, right to the extraction of Gordievsky from Russia in its final pages. The toll spying takes on Gordievsky’s personal life is enthralling, and the details of how deep the effects of one KGB agent’s deception can go are, in these days of Russian election meddling, quite frightening.

The prize for most frightening read of the month, though, goes to Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House.” Astonishing. Harrowing. Alarming. Choose your favorite over-the-top adjective; they all seem understated when applied to this expose. Woodward brings his journalistic talent and integrity right into the Oval Office, the Trump residence, Air Force One and even the Situation Room.

Unlike the man on which he reports here, Woodward is fastidious with facts and careful with conclusions. Still, even readers unfazed by Trump’s tweet tantrums or the cost of his golf weekends will be appalled by the stories told here. A Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility had to be torn down due to the risk that listening devices might have been planted when Trump took Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull into it. Trump, told time and again that our military presence in South Korea reduces our notice of a North Korean missile launch from 15 minutes to seven seconds, still had to be talked out of tweeting that he was going to pull dependents out of South Korea, which would have been seen by North Korea as a prelude to war.

Our worst fears about Trump’s self-aggrandizing, his temper, his lack of judgment and his casual relationship with the truth are confirmed. When adviser Gary Cohn reminds Trump of something he said that later proves inconvenient, Trump brazenly replies, “I’m going to deny it.” “Fear” is a grim look at the “nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.”

“Everybody’s trying to get me,” Trump rants on learning of the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. “Fear” will leave many hoping that “everybody” will manage to do so soon, so that next fall we can feed our fear-and-horror appetite with new novels from Anne Rice and Stephen King.

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of six novels, including “Beautiful Exiles,” published in June. Email: books@sfchronicle.com