Publishers like to save their buzziest nonfiction for fall, probably because it’s holiday shopping season. This year’s lineup includes celebrity memoirs, secret Nazi histories, Renaissance biographies, a prismatic group of true crime offerings and immersive reporting on social movements past and present.
Memoir
Mother Mary Comes to Me
by Arundhati Roy
Roy, the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things,” channels warmth, moral clarity and a sweeping bird’s-eye view of modern India to tell her life story, which was shaped by poverty, violence, political upheaval and — most of all — the volatile single mother who raised her.
Scribner, Sept. 2
Memoir
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation
by Elizabeth Gilbert
The “Eat Pray Love” author returns with a love story about her relationship with Rayya Elias, her friend-turned-soulmate. Elias’s terminal cancer diagnosis brought the two together, while simultaneously sending them spiraling into addiction. Gilbert told People magazine that “All the Way to the River” will plumb “the darker side of that spiritual, emotional and physical hunger” of her first memoir, “and how lost we can become in the endless search for connection and satisfaction.”
Riverhead, Sept. 9
Memoir
The Book of Sheen
by Charlie Sheen
Since his youth, Charlie Sheen has been caught in the public eye, whether because of his father, the actor Martin Sheen, his role in “Two and a Half Men” or his highly publicized divorces and struggles with drug use. This memoir is an attempt to reclaim his narrative, he said in a statement: “It’s time to finally read these stories directly from the actual guy.”
Gallery Books, Sept. 9
Biography
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival
by Stephen Greenblatt
The popular Elizabethan scholar’s newest biography focuses on the 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe. Greenblatt immerses readers in provincial Canterbury, Cambridge’s secret Catholic cells, the Tower of London’s torture chamber and more to paint a detailed portrait of one of the most consequential figures of the English Renaissance.
Norton, Sept. 9
Memoir
Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution
by Amy Coney Barrett
Barrett joins the chorus of Supreme Court justices who have recently published memoirs. Breaking from the high court’s notorious opacity, she pulls back the curtain on everything from her early career and day-to-day schedule to her Constitutional interpretation and judicial deliberation process.
Sentinel, Sept. 9
Science
Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy
by Mary Roach
In her latest dispatch, Roach, a rigorous chronicler of pop science curiosities, turns her gaze toward the growing field of replacement parts and prosthetics, from the vital (organs and limbs) to the convenient (noses and toes). Think pig organs, printed kidneys and hair nurseries.
Norton, Sept. 16
History
We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
by Jill Lepore
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, which will take place next year, Lepore, a history and law professor at Harvard, offers a comprehensive history of one of the most stubborn documents in modern governance. Drawing from a database of more than 11,000 amendments proposed in Congress since 1789 — of which only 27 have been ratified — Lepore argues that the Constitution’s framers meant for it to be amended.
Liveright, Sept. 16
Memoir
Awake
by Jen Hatmaker
Hatmaker, the popular podcaster and self-help author, chronicles the implosion of her 26-year-long marriage and its aftermath. Her memoir is light on advice and aphorisms, but heavy on humor, raw emotion and the belief that good things can come from starting over.
Avid Reader Press, Sept. 23
True crime
The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us
by John J. Lennon
Lennon, a convicted murderer, began taking creative writing classes behind bars and interviewing fellow prisoners on his cell block. The result is a nuanced biography of three high-profile killers, braided with Lennon’s reflections on the choices and circumstances that led Lennon himself to violence and a scathing criticism of the media ecosystem that launders tragedy into entertainment.
Celadon, Sept. 23
Social science
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life
by Steven Pinker
What do nervous phone calls between lovers, toilet paper hoarding, political protests and election polling have in common? They are, according to Pinker’s latest book, examples of how our “mutual knowledge” conditions the decisions we make in both small and major ways.
Scribner, Sept. 23
Memoir
Truly
by Lionel Richie
The superstar soul singer revisits his greatest hits and most formative challenges, from humble beginnings as a late bloomer in civil-rights-era Tuskegee, Ala., to his rollicking years touring with the Commodores to his current role as a kingmaker on “American Idol.”
HarperOne, Sept. 30
Tech
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
by Cory Doctorow
The eponymous term of Doctorow’s book, which he coined in a 2022 blog post, has become a widely adopted descriptor for the rapid decay of online platforms from Google to Facebook. He expands his thesis to diagnose the business decisions that led to this phenomenon and offers suggestions on how the damage can be undone.
MCD, Oct. 7
History
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation
by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Eight years in the making, this immersive history by the New York Times financial columnist offers a fly-on-the-wall account of the motivations behind the bankers, regulators and politicians whose ambition and maneuvering led to the stock market crash of 1929.
Viking, Oct. 14
Memoir
Next of Kin
by Gabrielle Hamilton
Hamilton, the chef known for her candid memoir “Blood, Bones & Butter,” opens up about her family in this account prompted by the tragic deaths of two of her brothers. In it, she charts their gradual estrangement and reflects on nonconformity, individualism and fate.
Random House, Oct. 14
Cultural criticism
Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012-Present
by Jelani Cobb
In this collection of cultural criticism and reportage — drawn mostly from his writing for The New Yorker — Cobb offers a cleareyed look at a turbulent decade of grass-roots social movements and the eventual right-wing backlash they inspired.
One World, Oct. 14
History
We Survived the Night
by Julian Brave NoiseCat
Blending oral history, mythology and reportage, this account takes the form of a “coyote story,” a legend about the forefather of NoiseCat’s people. It also weaves in textured examinations of Indigenous history and resistance across North America.
Knopf, Oct. 14
History
The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II
by David Nasaw
Nasaw, whose last book addressed the one million people displaced after World War II, focuses on the overlooked consequences of the war for returning Americans, from a spike in alcoholism and divorce rates to a decline in the batting averages of veteran baseball players like Joe DiMaggio.
Penguin Press, Oct. 14
History
Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope: A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement
by Brandon M. Terry
Terry, a professor of social sciences at Harvard, eschews the conventional heroes, romanticism and rosy narratives of the civil rights era for a more complex and sober assessment of its modern day legacy.
Belknap Press, Oct. 21
Memoir
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
by Margaret Atwood
When her publishers approached Atwood, the writer best known for her 1985 dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” they asked for a “memoir in a literary style.” She creates a through line from her own unconventional life to the lasting cultural impact of her books.
Doubleday, Nov. 4
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Girls Play Dead: Acts of Self-Preservation
by Jen Percy
Percy, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, draws on original reporting, interviews with survivors and her own personal experience to explain how unexpected responses to sexual assault, which are often misread as signs of consent, are instead acts of survival.
Doubleday, Nov. 11
Memoir
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
by Christine Kuehn
With all the trappings of a Le Carré spy thriller, Kuehn’s deeply researched history tells the story of her grandfather Otto Kuehn, the patriarch of a Berlin family sent to Honolulu to spy for the Nazis. After the Kuehns began feeding information about U.S. Navy ships to the Japanese from their cottage overlooking Pearl Harbor, well, you know what happened next. But Kuehn, who learned about her grandfather’s involvement only as an adult, brings the reader along with her as she uncovers this family secret.
Celadon, Nov. 25
Also out this fall
“Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense,” by Senator Joe Manchin; “The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding,” by Joseph J. Ellis; “Joyride,” by Susan Orlean; “Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom,” by Christine Brown Woolley; “History Matters,” by David McCullough; “Art Work: On the Creative Life,” by Sally Mann; “Poems & Prayers,” by Matthew McConaughey
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