<\/p>\n
The season\u2019s literary offerings are as varied and complex as a cast of Thomas Pynchon characters … and include Thomas Pynchon\u2019s return. Susan Orlean and Arundhati Roy turn the pen on themselves, while Jonathan Lethem and Ada Lim\u00f3n release collections of their work. Chief Inspector Gamache and the Lincoln Lawyer are on to new cases. Biographies of the Mitford sisters and Scottish writer Muriel Spark are sharp and illuminating. And death follows in books about talking corpses, cemetery folklore and the darkest days of World War II. Here\u2019s a sampling of this fall\u2019s bounty. <\/p>\n
September <\/p>\n
Mother Mary Comes to Me<\/a> In her first memoir, acclaimed novelist Roy (\u201cThe God of Small Things<\/a>\u201d) chronicles her complicated relationship with her maverick mother, who divorced Roy\u2019s father when she was 2, then founded an important school. Roy manages to set their lives within the whirlwind of India\u2019s postcolonial cultural and political change. \u201cI have been writing this book all my life,\u201d Roy says, which conveys how the writing feels \u2014 like the waves rocking the Kerala coastline where her mother\u2019s school still stands. \u2014 Bethanne Patrick<\/p>\n Mercy<\/a> Those we encounter and befriend shape us as much as our family does, an idea perfectly suited to linked stories like award-winning author Silber\u2019s \u201cMercy.\u201d Ivan and Eddie head to a Manhattan ER on the same night in 1974 as the much-younger Cara and Nina. Over the decades their lives unspool, some disastrously, some glamorously, but the delicate sleight of hand carrying everything concerns whether or not Ivan \u2014 who abandoned Eddie in the middle of an overdose \u2014 will reconnect with his closest friend. \u2014 B.P. <\/p>\n Fall Preview 2025<\/p>\n The only guide you need to fall entertainment.<\/p>\n Little Movements<\/a> Layla Smart has a chance to fulfill a big dream so when she\u2019s hired as choreographer-in-residence in Vermont, she leaves New York to grab her chance. As secrets are exposed and her marriage is threatened, Layla questions whether prestige is worth the cost. With comic verve, Morrow\u2019s novel dances on the page as she explores the dilemma of being a Black artist who is expected by traditionally white arts organizations to represent their notions of Blackness. \u2014 Lorraine Berry<\/p>\n The Wilderness<\/a> Flournoy\u2019s stellar debut novel, 2015\u2019s \u201cThe Turner House<\/a>,\u201d proved she could manage a wide cast of characters in a dense story about family and memory in declining Detroit. Her long-awaited follow-up expands the geographical canvas, bounding from L.A. to New York to Zurich, following five Black millennial women as they navigate careers, family struggles and COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter-era social upheavals. Throughout, Flournoy\u2019s gift for weaving multiple personalities into a cohesive whole is on fine display. \u2014 Mark Athitakis<\/p>\n Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me<\/a> Seasoned TV writer and graphic novelist Pond has created a sweeping graphic novel about the six Mitford sisters, scions of aristocracy whose lives mirrored the convulsions of the 20th century and turned the Mitfords into the most infamous British clan since the Boleyns. Pond\u2019s witty visuals and sharp prose make \u201cDo Admit\u201d the best group biography of the sisters to date. \u2014 Marc Weingarten<\/p>\n Beings<\/a> Masad, a regular contributor to The Times, probes the mysteries of outer space in dramatizing the first alien abduction story. In the 1960s, an encounter with extraterrestrials leaves an interracial couple grappling with their experiences while a lesbian couple fashions their own love story in a time of queer repression. Fragments in an archive come together to produce an (U)nputdownable (F)abulous (O)pus. \u2014 L.B.<\/p>\n A Different Kind of Tension<\/a> This collection of 35 years\u2019 worth of short fiction is Lethem\u2019s career in miniature, highlighting the various ways the Brooklyn native and Pomona College professor has played with form: Philip K. Dick-inspired science fiction, postmodern takes on pulpy crime stories, genre parodies (one story spoofs Hollywood pitch meetings) and domestic stories that turn the typical he-said-she-said material on its head. (One would-be romance features a pornography critic.) Many of these stories are previously uncollected, making the book a must-read for both longtime fans and newcomers to Lethem\u2019s expansive, off-kilter sensibility. \u2014 M.A.<\/p>\n Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel<\/a> Award-winning biographer Wilson approaches the life of Scottish writer Muriel Spark as a series of puzzles and conundrums to be teased out. Wilson homes in on Spark\u2019s eventful and well-traveled life in the 1940s and \u201850s, which included a stormy marriage, bouts of penury and the abandonment of a child \u2014 incidents which would become the fossil fuel for her wide-ranging body of work as one of England\u2019s greatest 20th century novelists. \u2014 M.W.<\/p>\n One of Us<\/a> Tod Browning\u2019s 1932 classic film \u201cFreaks\u201d delivered the circus sideshow to the masses, and Chaon\u2019s novel borrows some of that movie\u2019s mood and characters for this lively, eerie thriller. Set in 1915, the story features twins who escape the clutches of a serial killer and find a haven among a group of so-called \u201ccircus freaks,\u201d including a two-headed woman and dog-faced boy. Chaon\u2019s writing evokes the surreality of its setting, but the novel is also an affecting story about the nature of acceptance. \u2014 M.A.<\/p>\n Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave<\/a> Providing tantalizing insights into her inspirations and sensibilities, the Argentine queen of horror\u2019s<\/a> first work of nonfiction is a quirky, passionate memoir of over two decades\u2019 worth of travel to more than 20 of the world\u2019s most interesting cemeteries. Enriquez\u2019s luminous prose (translated by McDowell) and innate curiosity about cemetery folklore, histories and final resting places of the famous and obscure could make thanatophiles of us all. \u2014 Paula L. Woods<\/p>\n Startlement<\/a> \u201cGoing to the mountain just to go \/ it\u2019s the old way \/ it\u2019s the only way I know, a mountain, an echo \/ a coming back and coming back, a chorus.\u201d The U.S. poet laureate and native Californian\u2019s seventh collection of poetry is rooted in the land, but gives voice to the transcendent. The compendium features selections from Lim\u00f3n\u2019s first six books, along with an entirely new collection of her word magic. \u2014 L.B.<\/p>\n Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)<\/a> The late 1960s and \u201870s delivered a host of classic horror films, from \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby\u201d to \u201cThe Exorcist\u201d to \u201cThe Stepford Wives\u201d to \u201cAlien.\u201d Not coincidentally, many of those movies were, subtly or overtly, concerned with women\u2019s bodies and forms of sexist repression. Johnson, a Columbia English professor, explores the role of the era\u2019s horror movies in echoing and shaping feminist discourse, with an eye to how history rhymes in the post-Dobbs era. As Johnson puts it, \u201cthe vertiginous reality is that now, in the 2020s, we are once again living through the 1970s.\u201d \u2014 M.A.<\/p>\n October Shadow Ticket<\/a> For all his storied complexity, Pynchon has long admired an old-fashioned mystery, from 1966\u2019s \u201cThe Crying of Lot 49\u201d to 2009\u2019s \u201cInherent Vice\u201d to this, an ersatz detective story set during the final days of Prohibition. Featuring a detective looking into the disappearance of a Milwaukee cheese heiress, the story bounces from Wisconsin to Hungary and beyond, featuring a typically offbeat and oddly named cast of characters (Pips Quarrender, Sandor Zsupka), tucking social critique into a seriocomic noir. \u2014 M.A.<\/p>\n Joyride<\/a> The cover photo speaks a thousand words, about the length of Orlean\u2019s first assignment for an alt-weekly newspaper in Oregon: The red-headed author leans forward laughing as she steers a green go-kart. We can\u2019t see what\u2019s ahead of her, but rest assured, Orlean knows. \u201cStory ideas are everything,\u201d she writes, and since it\u2019s the 25th anniversary of her book \u201cThe Orchid Thief,\u201d we believe her. And since she\u2019s written four more books, including 2018\u2019s \u201cThe Library Book\u201d about the Los Angeles Public Library, we trust her. \u2014 B.P.<\/p>\n The Wayfinder<\/a> The shape-shifting novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel \u201cThe Orphan Master\u2019s Son<\/a>,\u201d sets this expansive historical epic on the Polynesian islands, where a child from an endangered Indigenous tribe heads straight into the vortex of power in order to save her people. Johnson is a master builder of fictive worlds. \u201cThe Wayfinder\u201d is a story of cultural erasure wrapped into a fantastical fable. \u2014 M.W.<\/p>\n We Survived the Night<\/a> Filmmaker and Oscar nominee<\/a> Noisecat combines powerful journalism and oral history in showing the complexity of modern Indigenous life. Whether recalling his life in Oakland\u2019s urban Native community, exploring the powerful ways tribes assert their land sovereignty to repair environmental damage or documenting the leadership of individuals such as Debra Haaland, Noisecat brings together years of research and an artist\u2019s eye in depicting vibrant cultures. \u2014 L.B.<\/p>\n The Unveiling<\/a> Black film scout Striker takes an Antarctic cruise that winds up with passengers stranded on an island following a kayaking expedition. Black versus white echoes in skin tones, geography and fate. Survivors contend with immediate hazards and individual secrets, complicating whether or not they can withstand ghost hordes of previous expeditions. How has no one written this story before and thank goodness it\u2019s Barry (\u201cWe Ride Upon Sticks\u201d) who has, with her signature blend of ironic humor, supernatural whispers and historical context, created a horror story worthy of 21st-century concerns. \u2014 B.P.<\/p>\n Bad Bad Girl<\/a> Some relationships are so complex that truth can\u2019t do them justice. Jen set out to write a memoir about her mother and realized without imaginative writing, she couldn\u2019t show her mother\u2019s full story. Loo Shu-Hsin, who was a disappointment to her Shanghainese parents, saw her second child Lillian (now Gish) as another disappointment, a \u201cbad bad girl.\u201d In this bitter but sharp and compassionate novel, two generations of bad girls emerge as strong women and complete human beings. \u2014 B.P.<\/p>\n The Proving Ground<\/a> Eight novels into this stellar legal series, Mickey Haller pivots from criminal to civil practice as he takes on a plaintiff suing an about-to-be-acquired AI company for the murder of her teenage daughter by an ex-boyfriend who was urged on by an AI companion. Set during a tragic moment in L.A.\u2019s recent history and as topical as today\u2019s news<\/a>, the Lincoln Lawyer is more relevant than ever. \u2014 P.L.W.<\/p>\n Tom\u2019s Crossing<\/a> Danielewski<\/a> has confounded and thrilled readers with his gargantuan, hard-to-categorize novels, most notably 2000\u2019s \u201cHouse of Leaves\u201d and the five-volume opus \u201cThe Familiar.\u201d In his latest, Danielewski serves up a tale of the Old West, in which two Utah brothers embark on a quest to save two horses from slaughter. The story sounds straightforward enough, but with a 1,000-plus page count, Danielewski is sure to take his readers on a far-ranging, mind-bending ride. \u2014 M.W.<\/p>\n Sacrament<\/a> The Robert Kirsch Award winner and native Californian excels at capturing the state\u2019s joys and contradictions. Her latest conjures a makeshift camp of RVs inhabited by nurses as they tend to those sick or dying during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The book takes a turn when a nurse\u2019s daughter goes missing, but Straight amps the joy with an unexpected life-affirming love affair. \u2014 L.B.<\/p>\n The Black Wolf<\/a> Following the events of \u201cThe Grey Wolf\u201d comes the 20th entry in the Chief Inspector Gamache series. Penny raises the stakes even higher as Armand and his team uncover a more sinister conspiracy that strikes at the heart of Canada\u2019s government and its ripped-from-the-headlines conflict with the U.S. Too close for comfort? Try revisiting the handsomely repackaged commemorative edition of 2005\u2019s \u201cStill Life<\/a>\u201d but consider, as Penny notes in a new letter to readers, that she created her heartfelt oasis of kindness \u201cout of my own sense of vulnerability after 9\/11.\u201d \u2014 P.L.W.<\/p>\n Wreck<\/a> Newman follows her 2024 novel, \u201cSandwich,\u201d which was set on Cape Cod and captured a week in the life of a middle-aged married couple torn between the needs of their aging parents and young-adult children, with \u201cWreck,\u201d which finds the same family back home and coping with how the past impacts the present \u2014 regardless of how happy or unhappy either was. As protagonist Rocky reckons with a local tragedy, she learns that neither cyberchondria nor wit (and she\u2019s hilarious) will prevent life\u2019s progress. \u2014 B.P.<\/p>\n The Bone Thief<\/a> In Lillie\u2019s second mystery, tensions rise between Rhode Island\u2019s Narragansett tribe and the Founders Society\u2019s Mayflower descendants after 300-year-old sacred remains are unearthed, then vanish from a Society campground. When a young Native woman\u2019s disappearance hints at the Society\u2019s darker deeds, Syd Walker, Bureau of Indian Affairs archaeologist and Cherokee Nation member, digs for deeper truths while making her mission clear: \u201cIsn\u2019t that why I\u2019m an archaeologist?\u201d Walker asks. \u201cTo be the midwife for the past into a better future.\u201d \u2014 P.W.<\/p>\n November The Royal We<\/a> Bottum, the co-founder of the band Faith No More, offers up an elegy to a lost time and place: pre-tech bro San Francisco in the 1980s, when cultural ferment was in the air. Bottum\u2019s touching memoir is a story of a gay man finding himself in a time of great exuberance and upheaval as the AIDS epidemic wiped out so many of the creatives that made that efflorescence possible. \u2014 M.W.<\/p>\n Lightbreakers<\/a> At the heart of Gabel\u2019s sophomore novel are questions about grief and the nature of time. Noah\u2019s daughter from his first marriage has died. Maya, his second wife, watches as he gambles his reputation to work on the pet project \u2014 time travel \u2014 of an eccentric billionaire. While Noah toils away in the desert, artist Maya seeks to recolor her own faded view of the world. \u2014 L.B.<\/p>\n The Name on the Wall<\/a> Le Tellier\u2019s latest book was sparked by the discovery of a faint name scratched into the wall of his newly acquired home. Intrigued, the French writer dives into a rabbit hole and discovers the name belongs to a member of the French Resistance. From there, Le Tellier pieces together a stirring tale of valor and romance, death and duty during the darkest days of World War II. \u2014 M.W.<\/p>\n The White Hot<\/a> April Soto, 26, copes with her white-hot rage at life by chanting \u201cdead inside\u201d while listening to ambient noise through her Beats. But when her 10-year-old daughter exhibits similar anger, April flees to save them both. So begins a journey of self-discovery reminiscent of Hermann Hesse\u2019s \u201cSiddhartha,\u201d whom April read as a promising high schooler. This fiery debut from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grapples with April\u2019s anguished question: \u201cHow, God? How could love look like leaving?\u201d \u2014 P.L.W.<\/p>\n
By Arundhati Roy
Scribner: 352 pages, $30
(Sept. 2) <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Joan Silber
Counterpoint: 256 pages, $27
(Sept. 2) <\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Lauren Morrow
Random House: 256 pages, $28
(Sept. 9)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Angela Flournoy
Mariner: 304 pages, $30
(Sept. 16)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Mimi Pond
Drawn and Quarterly: 444 pages, $30
(Sept. 16)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Ilana Masad
Bloomsbury: 304 pages, $29
(Sept. 23)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Jonathan Lethem
Ecco: 400 pages, $30
(Sept. 23)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Frances Wilson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 432 pages, $35
(Sept. 23)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Dan Chaon
Henry Holt: 288 pages, $29
(Sept. 23)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell
Hogarth: 336 pages, $30
(Sept. 30)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Ada Lim\u00f3n
Milkweed: 232 pages, $28
(Sept. 30)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Eleanor Johnson
Atria: 352 pages, $30
(Sept. 30)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press: 304 pages, $30
(Oct. 7)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Susan Orlean
Avid Reader Press \/ Simon & Schuster: 368 pages, $32
(Oct. 14)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Adam Johnson
MCD: 736 pages, $30
(Oct. 14)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Julian Brave Noisecat
Knopf: 432 pages, $30
(Oct. 14)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Quan Barry
Grove Press: 320 pages, $28
(Oct. 14)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Gish Jen
Knopf: 352 pages, $30
(Oct. 21)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Michael Connelly
Little, Brown: 400 pages, $32
(Oct. 21)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Mark Z. Danielewski
Pantheon: 1,232 pages, $40
(Oct. 28)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Susan Straight
Counterpoint: 352 pages, $29
(Oct. 28)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Louise Penny
Minotaur: 384 pages, $30
(Oct. 28)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Catherine Newman
Harper: 224 pages, $27
(Oct. 28)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Vanessa Lillie
Berkeley: 368 pages, $30
(Oct. 28)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Roddy Bottum
Akashic Books: 272 pages, $28
(Nov. 4)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Aja Gabel
Riverhead: 352 pages, $30
(Nov. 4)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Herv\u00e9 Le Tellier
Other Press: 176 pages, $17
(Nov. 11)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
By Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes
One World: 176 pages, $26
(Nov. 11)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n