The wheel of the year never stops turning, and October, suddenly, is here. For many of us, the fall can be a time both of harvests and loss, a time of fire and fading, life and death. For many Americans, in particular, this month has become synonymous in America with decorative gourds and spookiness (though I think spooky season should be all year, if you wish it). And I have a bountiful harvest for you, indeed, of new books out today that tackle such themes, along with much else. (Some are very appropriately spooky.)
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I’ve rounded up new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry below. In fiction, you’ll see anticipated new titles from many literary luminaries and rising stars to watch alike, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Tawada, Louise Erdrich, Karl Ove Knausgaard, John Banville, Dagoberto Gilb, Kay Chronister, Betsy Lerner, Rivers Solomn, and more. In nonfiction, you’ll find a stunning array, including new work from Ta-Nehisi Coates, Aaron Robertson, Dionne Brand, Jessica Valenti, Deborah Levy, and many other dazzling names, exploring everything from Black utopianism to the politics of abortion to celebrity accidents. And in poetry, you’ll find a new entry in the historical poems of Frank X. Walker, as well as verses exploring indigenous mythology, patriarchy, and more by the Cree poet Rosanna Deerchild.
It’s an excellent time to stock up on new books. And, if your book piles are taking up too much space in your home, you could reorganize, of course—or, month-appropriately, you could see the stacks as opportunities to creatively place some of those decorative gourds. Whatever you do, do it with some of these new books below.
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Joyce Carol Oates, Broke Heart Blues
(Akashic)
“Joyce Carol Oates’s stunning novel about one town’s ramped passion for a boy accused of murder, Broke Heart Blues, feels more resonant than ever in this reissue with a thoughtful afterword.”
–Shelf Awareness
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm (trans. Martin Aitken)
(Penguin Press)
“Knausgaard delves deeper into the lives of Norwegians affected by the emergence of a new heavenly body….Readers who come to this book first will find an entertaining story about people sorting through spiritual, domestic, and emotional confusion. But those who’ve read the prior novels will get a deeper sense of just how fascinating, frustrating, and unknowable we can be to each other, and the consequences of that disconnection.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife
(Counterpoint)
“A terrifically creepy Appalachian fairy tale-turned-horror story….A lavishly imaginative world that is equal parts grotesque and beautiful, dying and yet full of life….Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, as atmospheric as it is thoughtful, will delight fans of Karen Russell and Angela Carter alike in its marriage of eco-speculative fiction and gothic horror.”
–Shelf Awareness
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
(One World)
“Ever since his Baldwin-inflected Between the World and Me, Coates has been known for his incisive (and sometimes uncomfortable) cultural and political commentary. Here he journeys from West Africa to the American South to Palestine to examine how the stories we tell can fail us, and to argue that only the truth can bring justice.”
–The Boston Globe
Aaron Robertson, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
(FSG)
“In this stunning narrative, Aaron Robertson beautifully unveils the hidden spirit of Black utopian yearnings. By telling the forgotten story of the important Detroit pastor, Albert B. Cleage, Jr. and the Shrine of the Black Madonna, which he led, and the 1960s Black freedom struggles, with which he was affiliated—The Black Utopians deftly shifts from intellectual history to cultural critique to personal memoir…an indispensable resource for all those who dream of horizons, and who imagine unimaginable worlds.”
–Alex Zamalin
Dionne Brand, Salvage: Readings from the Wreck
(FSG)
“In this scintillating literary analysis, Canadian poet Brand, who grew up in Trinidad, examines depictions of imperialism in works by Charlotte Brontë, William Thackeray, and other British writers….Brand’s piercing analysis is at once sweeping and deeply personal….It’s a potent reevaluation of the British literary canon.”
–Publishers Weekly
Frank X. Walker, Load in Nine Times
(Liveright)
“Frank X Walker’s Load in Nine Times builds a powerful monument to those who served and were not recognized. . . . The language strikes the reader’s senses like a flame to a fuse and Walker shows us just why the stories of these brave and enduring souls are still seared into the landscape. This is seismic and significant work.”
–Oliver de la Paz
Rosanna Deerchild, She Falls Again
(Coach House Books)
“She Falls Again follows the voice of a poet attempting to survive as an Indigenous person in Winnipeg when so many are disappearing. Riddled with uncertainties, like if the crow she speaks to is a trickster, the poet hears the message of the Sky Woman who is set on dismantling the patriarchy. Through short poems and prose this collection calls for reclamation and matriarchal power.”
–CBC
Louise Erdich, The Mighty Red
(Harper)
“Erdrich’s career is one of the most distinguished in contemporary literature. The Post’s Ron Charles described it as ‘one powerful book after another’ about the experiences of Native Americans. In The Mighty Red, she offers a characteristic tapestry of stories about people living along the Red River Valley of North Dakota.”
—The Washington Post
John Banville, The Drowned
(Hanover Square Press)
“Banville remains a master of suspense; it’s not easy to stop turning the pages until the novel’s genuinely surprising end. This is yet another fine thriller from an author at the top of his game. Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters
(Grove Press)
“Shred Sisters is a brilliantly written, emotionally gripping saga that delves into the complexity of sisterhood, mental health, and resilience. Spanning decades, this utterly engrossing novel asks readers many profound and pressing questions: Can we fully know the ones we love? Does love always require self-sacrifice? Can we understand ourselves without understanding our family? One of the best books I’ve read in years.”
–Chloé Cooper Jones
Jessica Valenti, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win
(Crown Publishing Group)
“[Valenti] sets up women to successfully and succinctly argue for their rights and freedoms….A call to action for both inexperienced and seasoned pro-choice activists.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Charles Bock, I Will Do Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love
(Abrams Press)
“Charles Bock’s brilliant and absorbing new memoir of raising a toddler on his own—while trying to come to terms with loss and generally struggling to keep the lights on—is as magical and effervescent as Lily, the little girl at the book’s center. The book radiates with feeling, humor and insight—into parenting, the city, ambition….One of the best memoirs I’ve read in years.”
–Adelle Waldman
Ben Masters, The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies
(Tin House)
“Reading The Flitting is like following a meandering butterfly through the woods. There is purpose and power in the detours, beauty in the quiet moments, and satisfaction in articulating the invisible thread we grasp to honor love, loss, and legacy. Like H is for Hawk, Masters weaves together the words of multiple generations of naturalists….A lyrical tribute to the power of connection.”
–Sarah Dykman
Yoko Tawada, Suggested in the Stars (trans. Margaret Mitsutani)
(New Directions)
“With Japan obliterated from the map in a postapocalyptic near future, a refugee builds a new life in Denmark, where her interest in languages draws her into a ragtag group of linguists. It turns into a wondrously complex story of cultures colliding, languages morphing, and hidden narratives. Once opened, it’s hard to pull away.”
–Publishers Weekly
Dagoberto Gilb, New Testaments: Stories
(City Lights Books)
“Gilb is a master of stories concerning people who are constantly reinventing themselves, always trying to escape one delicate dilemma or another…[M]ost of the stories here involve tribulations worthy of Job, if not a few encounters with Delilah, his actors working-class men and women who are running out of options on the hard paths they’ve followed….A well-crafted summoning of people living ordinary lives on la frontera, in all their sorrow and splendor.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Rivers Solomon, Model Home
(MCD)
“Intense, original, and wonderfully unpredictable–those adjectives describe Rivers Solomon as much as this novel. Model Home is a story of a haunted house and haunted people; profound family secrets lie at the heart of this book as well as, surprisingly, blessedly meaningful touches of love and hope. Rivers Solomon is an astonishingly talented writer.”
–Victor LaValle
Deborah Levy, The Position of Spoon: And Other Intimacies
(FSG)
“A dazzling collection of musings on art, aging, psychoanalysis, celebrity car crashes, and more….Taken together, Levy’s extraordinary observations…amount to a trip through a consciousness trained to deeply consider everything it encounters….Readers will be grateful for this generous peek inside a singular mind.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jeremy Dauber, American Scary: A History of Horror, from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond
(Algonquin}
“Vividly written and encyclopedic in scope, American Scary traces the history of horror through sources both classic and surprising, from Washington Irving and Jordan Peele to Emily Dickinson and the literature of the Holocaust. Jeremy Dauber uses his engaging style and deep knowledge of the genre to illuminate the question that lies beneath the gore: the way the things we fear reflect who we are, as individuals and as a nation.”
–Ruth Franklin
Mike Davis, Dead Cities
(Haymarket)
“Including some of Davis’ most vivid and powerful short essays, it is about time this superb book was back in print. There’s prophecies here if you want them, but much more than that: this book of American urbicides of the past, present and future is still vital for understanding how we got into such an appalling mess, and what forces could wrench us out of it.”
–Owen Hatherley
Anne Hawk, The Pages of the Sea
(Biblioasis)
“The Pages of the Sea a beautifully written and intimately imagined debut novel coming out of the Caribbean. Anne Hawk weaves a story rarely told, that of those left behind in the wake of migration to the ‘motherland’. Intensely moving and lyrical, here is a story of our times, another piece of the mosaic of our fractured and remade Caribbean lives.”
–Monique Roffey
Pascha Sotolongo, The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories
(Norton)
“In this gorgeous debut, Pascha Sotolongo lyrically blends the fantastical with stories of family, love, and longing. Within these pages are vampires, ghosts, invisible daughters, and near apocalypses, and just as readily, the stories of our secrets, our joys, our fears, and our dreams. A beautiful and spellbinding collection.”
–Alexander Weinstein
Paolo Giordano, Tasmania (trans. Antony Shugaar)
(Other Press)
“A compulsively readable novel, Tasmania evokes the probing, introspective spirit of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. Giordano has written an urgent and moving book that looks with unflinching honesty at the crises of our troubled moment, as well as the fragile spaces of hope and connection in the midst of the storm.”
–Scott Guild
Katherine Natanel (editor), Ilan Pappé (editor), Palestine in a World on Fire
(Haymarket)
“As the world burns, Palestine flares brighter and hotter than any other place on the planet. This extraordinary and timely book remind us that fire both engulfs and illuminates; it generates ash and brilliance. Ilan Pappé’s Covid-era conversations with some of our most profound thinkers consider how a free Palestine offers a path toward decolonizing the world. The portal Arundhati Roy identified leads straight to Palestine, and this book points the way.”
–Robin D. G. Kelly
Alex Hannaford, Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City
(Dey Street Books)
“Compulsively readable, Lost in Austin is more than an account of how British journalist Alex Hannaford fell in and out of love with the Texas capital. Beneath its affable, engaging surface is a sharp, tough-minded look at how and why our neighborhoods, our cities and our country have changed almost beyond recognition.”
–Francine Prose
Dan Jones, Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King
(Viking)
“Wildly gripping, swashbuckling, battle-scarred and blood-spattered, in equal parts ferocious, dynamic and political, intimate and humane, the best biography yet of England’s greatest king.”
–Simon Sebag Montefiore
Jason Lipshutz, It Starts with One: The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park
(Hachette)
“A band beloved by millions and largely ignored by critics gets an admiring history from the senior director of music at Billboard….He argues that Bennington’s emotionally raw lyrics, rooted in his troubled past and struggles with addiction (he died by suicide at age forty-one in 2017), connected with fans viscerally, and he suggests they may have contributed to a sea change in attitudes about mental illness, both in rock and in society…a must-have for Linkin Park fans.”
–Kirkus Reviews
