The season’s literary offerings are as varied and complex as a cast of Thomas Pynchon characters … and include Thomas Pynchon’s return. Susan Orlean and Arundhati Roy turn the pen on themselves, while Jonathan Lethem and Ada Limón 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’s a sampling of this fall’s bounty.
September
Mother Mary Comes to Me By Arundhati RoyScribner: 352 pages, $30(Sept. 2)
In her first memoir, acclaimed novelist Roy (“The God of Small Things”) chronicles her complicated relationship with her maverick mother, who divorced Roy’s father when she was 2, then founded an important school. Roy manages to set their lives within the whirlwind of India’s postcolonial cultural and political change. “I have been writing this book all my life,” Roy says, which conveys how the writing feels — like the waves rocking the Kerala coastline where her mother’s school still stands. — Bethanne Patrick
Mercy By Joan SilberCounterpoint: 256 pages, $27(Sept. 2)
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’s “Mercy.” 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 — who abandoned Eddie in the middle of an overdose — will reconnect with his closest friend. — B.P.
Little Movements By Lauren MorrowRandom House: 256 pages, $28(Sept. 9)
Layla Smart has a chance to fulfill a big dream so when she’s 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’s 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. — Lorraine Berry
The Wilderness By Angela FlournoyMariner: 304 pages, $30(Sept. 16)
Flournoy’s stellar debut novel, 2015’s “The Turner House,” 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’s gift for weaving multiple personalities into a cohesive whole is on fine display. — Mark Athitakis
Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me By Mimi PondDrawn and Quarterly: 444 pages, $30(Sept. 16)
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’s witty visuals and sharp prose make “Do Admit” the best group biography of the sisters to date. — Marc Weingarten
Beings By Ilana Masad Bloomsbury: 304 pages, $29(Sept. 23)
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. — L.B.
A Different Kind of Tension By Jonathan LethemEcco: 400 pages, $30(Sept. 23)
This collection of 35 years’ worth of short fiction is Lethem’s 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’s expansive, off-kilter sensibility. — M.A.
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel By Frances Wilson Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 432 pages, $35(Sept. 23)
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’s eventful and well-traveled life in the 1940s and ‘50s, which included a stormy marriage, bouts of penury and the abandonment of a child — incidents which would become the fossil fuel for her wide-ranging body of work as one of England’s greatest 20th century novelists. — M.W.
One of Us By Dan ChaonHenry Holt: 288 pages, $29(Sept. 23)
Tod Browning’s 1932 classic film “Freaks” delivered the circus sideshow to the masses, and Chaon’s novel borrows some of that movie’s 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 “circus freaks,” including a two-headed woman and dog-faced boy. Chaon’s writing evokes the surreality of its setting, but the novel is also an affecting story about the nature of acceptance. — M.A.
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave By Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowellHogarth: 336 pages, $30(Sept. 30)
Providing tantalizing insights into her inspirations and sensibilities, the Argentine queen of horror’s first work of nonfiction is a quirky, passionate memoir of over two decades’ worth of travel to more than 20 of the world’s most interesting cemeteries. Enriquez’s 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. — Paula L. Woods
Startlement By Ada LimónMilkweed: 232 pages, $28(Sept. 30)
“Going to the mountain just to go / it’s the old way / it’s the only way I know, a mountain, an echo / a coming back and coming back, a chorus.” The U.S. poet laureate and native Californian’s seventh collection of poetry is rooted in the land, but gives voice to the transcendent. The compendium features selections from Limón’s first six books, along with an entirely new collection of her word magic. — L.B.
Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980) By Eleanor JohnsonAtria: 352 pages, $30(Sept. 30)
The late 1960s and ‘70s delivered a host of classic horror films, from “Rosemary’s Baby” to “The Exorcist” to “The Stepford Wives” to “Alien.” Not coincidentally, many of those movies were, subtly or overtly, concerned with women’s bodies and forms of sexist repression. Johnson, a Columbia English professor, explores the role of the era’s horror movies in echoing and shaping feminist discourse, with an eye to how history rhymes in the post-Dobbs era. As Johnson puts it, “the vertiginous reality is that now, in the 2020s, we are once again living through the 1970s.” — M.A.
October
Shadow Ticket By Thomas PynchonPenguin Press: 304 pages, $30(Oct. 7)
For all his storied complexity, Pynchon has long admired an old-fashioned mystery, from 1966’s “The Crying of Lot 49” to 2009’s “Inherent Vice” 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. — M.A.
Joyride By Susan OrleanAvid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster: 368 pages, $32(Oct. 14)
The cover photo speaks a thousand words, about the length of Orlean’s 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’t see what’s ahead of her, but rest assured, Orlean knows. “Story ideas are everything,” she writes, and since it’s the 25th anniversary of her book “The Orchid Thief,” we believe her. And since she’s written four more books, including 2018’s “The Library Book” about the Los Angeles Public Library, we trust her. — B.P.
The Wayfinder By Adam JohnsonMCD: 736 pages, $30(Oct. 14)
The shape-shifting novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel “The Orphan Master’s Son,” 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. “The Wayfinder” is a story of cultural erasure wrapped into a fantastical fable. — M.W.
We Survived the Night By Julian Brave NoisecatKnopf: 432 pages, $30(Oct. 14)
Filmmaker and Oscar nominee Noisecat combines powerful journalism and oral history in showing the complexity of modern Indigenous life. Whether recalling his life in Oakland’s 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’s eye in depicting vibrant cultures. — L.B.
The Unveiling By Quan BarryGrove Press: 320 pages, $28(Oct. 14)
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’s Barry (“We Ride Upon Sticks”) who has, with her signature blend of ironic humor, supernatural whispers and historical context, created a horror story worthy of 21st-century concerns. — B.P.
Bad Bad Girl By Gish JenKnopf: 352 pages, $30(Oct. 21)
Some relationships are so complex that truth can’t do them justice. Jen set out to write a memoir about her mother and realized without imaginative writing, she couldn’t show her mother’s full story. Loo Shu-Hsin, who was a disappointment to her Shanghainese parents, saw her second child Lillian (now Gish) as another disappointment, a “bad bad girl.” In this bitter but sharp and compassionate novel, two generations of bad girls emerge as strong women and complete human beings. — B.P.
The Proving Ground By Michael ConnellyLittle, Brown: 400 pages, $32(Oct. 21)
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.’s recent history and as topical as today’s news, the Lincoln Lawyer is more relevant than ever. — P.L.W.
Tom’s Crossing By Mark Z. DanielewskiPantheon: 1,232 pages, $40(Oct. 28)
Danielewski has confounded and thrilled readers with his gargantuan, hard-to-categorize novels, most notably 2000’s “House of Leaves” and the five-volume opus “The Familiar.” 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. — M.W.
Sacrament By Susan StraightCounterpoint: 352 pages, $29(Oct. 28)
The Robert Kirsch Award winner and native Californian excels at capturing the state’s 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’s daughter goes missing, but Straight amps the joy with an unexpected life-affirming love affair. — L.B.
The Black Wolf By Louise PennyMinotaur: 384 pages, $30(Oct. 28)
Following the events of “The Grey Wolf” 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’s 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’s “Still Life” but consider, as Penny notes in a new letter to readers, that she created her heartfelt oasis of kindness “out of my own sense of vulnerability after 9/11.” — P.L.W.
Wreck By Catherine NewmanHarper: 224 pages, $27(Oct. 28)
Newman follows her 2024 novel, “Sandwich,” 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 “Wreck,” which finds the same family back home and coping with how the past impacts the present — 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’s hilarious) will prevent life’s progress. — B.P.
The Bone Thief By Vanessa LillieBerkeley: 368 pages, $30(Oct. 28)
In Lillie’s second mystery, tensions rise between Rhode Island’s Narragansett tribe and the Founders Society’s Mayflower descendants after 300-year-old sacred remains are unearthed, then vanish from a Society campground. When a young Native woman’s disappearance hints at the Society’s darker deeds, Syd Walker, Bureau of Indian Affairs archaeologist and Cherokee Nation member, digs for deeper truths while making her mission clear: “Isn’t that why I’m an archaeologist?” Walker asks. “To be the midwife for the past into a better future.” — P.W.
November
The Royal We By Roddy BottumAkashic Books: 272 pages, $28(Nov. 4)
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’s 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. — M.W.
Lightbreakers By Aja GabelRiverhead: 352 pages, $30(Nov. 4)
At the heart of Gabel’s sophomore novel are questions about grief and the nature of time. Noah’s daughter from his first marriage has died. Maya, his second wife, watches as he gambles his reputation to work on the pet project — time travel — of an eccentric billionaire. While Noah toils away in the desert, artist Maya seeks to recolor her own faded view of the world. — L.B.
The Name on the Wall By Hervé Le TellierOther Press: 176 pages, $17(Nov. 11)
Le Tellier’s 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. — M.W.
The White Hot By Quiara Alegría HudesOne World: 176 pages, $26(Nov. 11)
April Soto, 26, copes with her white-hot rage at life by chanting “dead inside” 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’s “Siddhartha,” whom April read as a promising high schooler. This fiery debut from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright grapples with April’s anguished question: “How, God? How could love look like leaving?” — P.L.W.
Wild Instinct By T. Jefferson ParkerMinotaur: 336 pages, $29(Nov. 11)
When Bennet Tarlow, an influential Orange County developer, is found eviscerated by a mountain lion in Caspers Wilderness Park, homicide detective Lew Gale — a former Marine sniper — is sent to track and kill the predator. An autopsy reveals Tarlow was shot in the head before the attack, sending Gale and his new partner, Daniela Mendez, deep into Tarlow’s business deals and Gage’s Acjachemen tribal heritage. Outstanding in every respect, one hopes “Wild Instinct” is the first of many investigations for this engaging detective duo. — P.L.W.
December
This Year: 365 Songs Annotated By John Darnielle, illustrated by John KeoghMCD: 560 pages, $36(Dec. 2)
Songwriters’ books of lyrics usually disappoint — the words often turn limp without music and the commentaries can be thin and chest-beating. Darnielle, the songwriter of the Mountain Goats and a National Book Award-nominated novelist, skirts this problem thanks in part to the depth and detail of his lyrics as well as the compassionate and observant commentaries he shares, from his time working in a psychiatric ward to addiction to hard traveling. — M.A.
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