Autumn brings more than just falling leaves and the return of legitimate root vegetables: it's also when publishing houses drop their most ambitious cookbook offerings, hoping to tap into the spirit of cooking (and book-buying) that pervades the pre-holiday season.

And is this ever a good year for cookbooks: the next three months will see enough glossy shots of figs, doorstop culinary bibles, and sweet, quirky one-offs to shut down any concern over the future of culinary publishing. The season brings big names: Keller, Adria, and Bastianich all add more to their oeuvres, not to mention hotly anticipated game-changers from the likes of David Chang, Michael Psilakis, and Michael Symon. Our books editor Helen Rosner sifted through the hundreds of titles landing on shelves in the next few months and picked out the ones most worth paying attention to.

The Big Guns

The books everyone will be bragging about owning come 2009 year-in-review time

Coco by Ferran Adria, Mario Batali, Rene Redzepi, Alice Waters, Jacky Yu, Gordon Ramsay, Fergus Henderson, Shannon Bennett, Alain Ducasse, and Yoshihiro Murata

(Phaidon, October 2; preorder on Amazon)
Ten internationally renowned chefs pick 100 rising stars, each of whom is profiled, along with a recipe or three. Expect who makes it in and who doesn't to fuel plenty of interminable dinner-party conversation.

Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan

(Clarkson Potter, October 27; preorder on Amazon)
David Chang has already shared the recipe for his pork buns online — now learn how to make everything else. Not for the vegetarians.

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"I'm so excited. When the magazine first started, they never would have had something about food, about women being in the kitchen. But we can have it all!"

We sure can, Katie Lee! Like, remember when we had this 1969 cookbook written by Helen Gurley Brown, who at the time was editor-in-chief of Cosmo (which she founded only four years earlier)? Jeepers, Katie Lee! Look how far we've come! [via]