Don’t stress about your pile of fall reading; fatten it up, baby, and pick up one of this month’s new releases. Your local booksellers and librarians will be happy to help you choose between hotly anticipated titles from Marlon James and Min Jin Lee, along with beloved East L.A. artist Guadalupe Rosales’ photo-filled memoir. There’s also thought-provoking nonfiction from the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and the author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Happy reading!
FICTION:
The Disappearers: A Novel By Marlon James Riverhead: 640 pp., $32 Out now
After a homophobic attack during a play rehearsal in 1988 results in death and injury, two Jamaican “battymen” (slang for homosexuals), Eddy Porteous and Jordan Brown, seek to figure out where two of their friends have gone (the “disappearers” of the title). James, as always, brings his Dickensian eyes and ears to his birth country’s gay culture, which flourished in its own way even during years of oppression and misinformation. A triumph.
The Birthing Tree: A Novel By Amanda Peters Catapult: 304 pp., $28 Out now
Peters follows up her excellent 2023 debut, “The Berry Pickers,” with another dive into Nova Scotia’s M’ikmaq first peoples, this time focusing on Aliet Paul, a nurse whose grandmother Kiju taught her a great deal about their tribe’s midwifery. Aliet decides, after Kiju dies, to return permanently to her homeplace. Her reasons for leaving involve both the recent and far-off past, which the author brings to a powerful place in her conclusion.
Our Cut of Salt: A Novel By Deena Helm Tor Nightfire: 288 pp., $28 (Sept. 22)
This grief-horror debut centers on the Nakba, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War’s displacement of Palestinians. Marina, whose grandmother warned her away from returning to their home in Haifa, finally visits and discovers that the house both seems to know her and is making her very ill. While sections pertaining to the house itself are both gripping and eerie (rooms flood, tiles rearrange, visions flicker), the real terror comes from human history.
American Hagwon: A Novel By Min Jin Lee Cardinal: 656 pp., $36 (Sept. 29)
In the third volume of her Diaspora Quartet, Lee follows the Koh family from Australia to Korea to the United States as their paterfamilias John hews to his strong inner compass. The Korean word “hagwon” can mean any kind of lesson outside of regular school hours; here it refers to the kind of tutoring ambitious families seek so their children can gain admissions to the best universities. Pro tip: Have them read the best kinds of literature, like this novel.
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman: A Novel By Deesha Philyaw Mariner: 432 pp., $32 (Sept. 29)
You’ll never look at fig leaves the same way after reading this hilarious, whipsmart and sometimes painful novel. Scharisse Freeman’s marriage to Pastor David Freeman of Belleton, Georgia’s Hope in Christ megachurch, has brought her First Lady fame, including several changes of designer clothes per day and a home so luxurious their family need never leave — until she realizes a tough family truth and contends with the true meaning of faith.
NONFICTION:
Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? By Jared Diamond Mariner: 288 pp., $32 Out now
Diamond’s 1997 “Guns, Germs, and Steel” convinced many readers that history is indeed contextual. He called it biogeography; his new book might make up a sort of anthrobiography in which he examines leaders of all kinds from all over the world to determine if there is any kind of blueprint for success. Of course, there isn’t, but that scarcely matters when you’re following along a mind as full and nimble as Diamond’s.
East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood By Guadalupe Rosales One World: 336 pp., $35 (Sept. 8)
Multi-disciplinary artist and educator Rosales puts a driving ’90s beat on the page in this look back at growing up in Boyle Heights. She writes about her family of origin, including a mom in financial precarity and a dad with substance issues; the real family she creates over the years involves her siblings and all of their friends, people who support her through partying and protests with such fierce loyalty that she winds up at the Art Institute of Chicago for grad school. While there, she created the Instagram archive “Veteranas and Rucas,” then “Map Pointz,” both of which show the author’s early formation in visual arts and community organizing.
The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America By Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz Simon & Schuster: 448 pp., $31 (Sept. 8)
In 1851, an escaped enslaved man named William Parker stood at the door of a Lancaster County farmhouse and barred access to four fugitive enslaved men he was protecting. What happened next changed the young United States, forcing people to question the line between law — which protected slavery — and justice, which demanded resistance to that law. Aptowicz (“Dr. Mutter’s Marvels”) takes a once-regional story and gives it proper resonance.
Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty By Anna Louie Sussman Dey Street Books: 368 pp., $30 (Sept. 8)
Falling birth rates, even in countries like Norway with strong social-welfare systems in place, worry many kinds of experts. Journalist Sussman, who wrote the New York Times Sunday Review cover story “The End of Babies,”is among them (and she shares that she froze her own eggs when she was in her early 30s). While she shares the finale to her story and those of others, her book is meant to be thought-provoking rather than conclusive.
The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic By Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown and Company: 304 pp., $34 (Sept. 29)
Its title reminiscent of Jessica Mitford’s 20th century muckraking, Gladwell’s latest faces the horror of gun violence in our country. Unlike some of his earlier books, “The American Way of Killing” doesn’t start or end with clever paradigms. The author, born and raised in the considerably less-violent nation of Canada, believes strongly that without reform in how we sell, acquire and use guns, the United States faces worse and worse tragedy.
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