Even in sunny L.A., people crave autumnal treats; how else to explain pumpkin spice cold brew? If you’re craving comfort reads, you can’t get much more comfy than new books from favorite authors, and this month there’s new highly anticipated fiction from the likes of Barbara Kingsolver and Chad Harbach, as well as page-turning nonfiction from Nathaniel Philbrick and the late, great Wendell Berry. Happy reading!
FICTION:
Partita: A Novel By Barbara Kingsolver Harper: 352 pp., $32 (Oct. 6)
A partita is a musical composition of distinct sections that come together through a musician’s skill and experience. In Kingsolver’s latest, a farm wife named Livia Cable has her quietly composed life blown open by a phone call from her days as a brilliant pianist. Painful memories force her to confront first her own choices, then personal grief and finally, the family secrets that provide the novel’s distinctly elegiac and holistic tone.
Every Story Is a Love Story: A Novel By Imbolo Mbue Random House: 352 pp., $32 (Oct. 6)
In her stunning 2016 debut, “Behold the Dreamers,”Cameroonian-born Mbue depicted an immigrant family living in New York City. Her new novel also centers on characters from Cameroon, and asks: What does it mean to offer forgiveness? Wolo lost his wife Yoma in a car accident. Three years later, he receives a letter from the driver, a white woman with a closely guarded secret. What happens next will surprise everyone, including readers.
The Names of the New World By Kawai Strong Washburn FSG: 448 pp., $29 (Oct. 6)
Washburn (“Sharks in the Time of Saviors”) focuses on three characters: Naomi, a maverick environmental lawyer; her husband, banker Amaré; and their longtime friend Raheem, who works as an auto mechanic. Naomi’s work clashes with both men’s professional aims, of course, but the real power of the story lies in its last third, which is set two and a half decades into the future and provides an unusual vision of climate change.
Luna, Phoenix, Queen: A Novel By Julie Orringer Knopf: 288 pp., $32 (Oct. 13)
A potent trifecta of academia, adultery and Alzheimer’s makes for an absolutely beautiful and compelling novel. The Penningtons are a married pair of professors whose lives will unravel after Dava’s diagnosis with cognitive decline. She had a secret that spurs her husband, Barr, to keep one of his own. Luna, who is a dog (later renamed Phoenix), has a specific role in this tale of intellectual acuity, loss and ownership. Get out your hankies.
The Brightness: A Novel By Chad Harbach Little, Brown: 672 pp., $32 (Oct. 27)
Those who loved the author’s 2011 “The Art of Fielding” will welcome the return of characters like Pella Affenlicht and Mike Schwartz, now engaged and still living at Westish College. However, reading the first novel isn’t a prerequisite to enjoying this one, in which Pella and her friend Irma Frisk disagree mightily on how to protest campus rape culture. Irma’s new friends and newfound anger will slowly affect Pella’s decisions about her future.
NONFICTION:
How to Look Away: On American Cruelty and the Refusal to Disappear By Daniel Peña One World: 208 pp., $28 (Oct. 6)
After the Pushcart Prize-winning Pena was asked on a BBC podcast with journalist Allan Little, “What differentiates viewer from voyeur?,” he began to write these essays about the American treatment of brown people, including Mexicans and Native Americans. The author himself has twice been stopped by ICE and reflects on how current policies separate everyone, regardless of citizenship, into those willing to use violence and “a lower tier to which the rest of us are condemned.”
The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts By Janet Reitman Random House: 448 pp., $32 (Oct. 6)
Journalist Reitman connects lives of nine Americans over three decades, vividly showing how ideals can give way to fear. Whether it’s a teenage girl recruited for Islamic State, a Black FBI analyst who leaked intelligence or a former Marine who organized the Charlottesville riots, these people are portrayed in five sections, starting with their struggles in post-9/11 America, on to their experiences and crises and closing with personal redefinition and some hope.
The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World By Nathaniel Philbrick Viking: 464 pp., $38 (Oct. 13)
With polished prose and impeccable research, historian Philbrick unravels the Golden State’s ties to profit, enslavement and white supremacy. From John Sutter on to a “dress rehearsal” for a Confederate victory and through to resource magnates like Leland Stanford, readers will understand that a conflict between North and South also included the West. They’ll also see that the greed unleashed during 19th century America resource-gathering isn’t gone.
Sitcom: A Memoir By Chuck Lorre Dey Street Books: 368 pp., $32 (Oct. 13)
What’s unsurprising about Chuck Lorre’s memoir: He dishes, and without sparing anyone, including himself. What’s surprising about Chuck Lorre’s memoir: He isn’t just playing for laughs when he serves up anecdotes about his failures (marriages, Scientology, drinking) or his colleagues (let’s just say the sheen is off the Charlie). He’s said: “I set out to write this book thinking I’d reveal where all the skeletons are buried. Turns out most of them are mine.”
Dispatches from Rural America: Sixteen Essays By Wendell Berry Counterpoint: 240 pp., $27 (Oct 27)
We lost Wendell Berry in August. The prolific and acclaimed writer and activist used his liberal beliefs and his agrarian roots in Kentucky to craft novels, poems and essays connecting the natural world to humankind. His final essay collection asks many provocative questions about industrialism and apathy, but (perhaps wisely) offers no solutions to the world’s ills. After all, Berry paid attention to his own backyard. He urges us to do the same.
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