This year, summer took a while to let go of. After a long winter, I yearned for hot, sweaty days, walking around with sunglasses on and stopping by the public pool. But the other day in DC, a cloudy day signaled what was to come — crisp breezes, falling leaves. Winter’s a long way away; for now, it’s time to open the windows and enjoy the cool down. Here’s 30 books to enjoy along with it!
Happiness and Love, Zoe Dubno (Sept 2)
An artsy novel that takes place during one insufferable dinner party, Happiness and Love examines the materialism, identity, and self-importance that emerge from New York City creative life.
Christina the Astonishing, Marianne Leone (Sept 2)
Like a Bostonian My Beautiful Friend, the 1960s coming-of-age debut novel from The Sopranos star Marianne Leone follows a poor daughter of Italian immigrants whose Catholic school education is more restrictive than she’d prefer.
Muscle Man, Jordan Castro (September 9)
Jordan Castro’s new novel centers Howard, an adjunct professor at an irritating college, sacked with a day of meetings where he’d rather be in the gym. With fluctuating apathy and deep caring about his colleagues, philosophy, and exercise, Harold survives the tedium of academia, only to realize his jitters don’t stop once he finally starts to move his body.
Swallows, Natsuo Kirino (Sept 9)
Riki is a twenty-nine-year old temp worker whose hospital job isn’t satisfying. Motoi and Yuko are a power couple who are desperate for a child to complete their perfect life, but are unable to get pregnant. With Riki’s idea to undergo surrogacy, Natsuo Kirino explores the potency and morality of carrying a life that might not be yours in the end.
Breaking Awake: A Reporter’s Search for a New Life, and a New World, Through Drugs, P.E. Moskowitz (Sept 9)
From the author of two previous books and the Mental Hellth newsletter, P.E. Moskowitz’ new book starts from a near-death experience where they recuperated with the help of drugs. In the vein of Emily Witt’s Health and Safety, Breaking Awake is a tour through drug-addled Americana, both trendy and illicit, condemned and glamorized.
All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, Ruby Tandoh (Sept 9)
For anyone who’s noticed the hyperfixation our culture has recently had around the eating, presentation, and commodification of food, culinary writer Ruby Tandoh’s All Consuming goes from TikTok chefs to Great British Bake Offs to find out why our fuel has such a hold over our entertainment.
The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny, Laura Bates (Sept 16)
Anyone who has spent time on the internet knows that misogyny is baked into the platform. In her newest book, Laura Bates explores how emerging technologies are deepening sexism, made worse by artificial intelligence, sex robots, and increasing polarization.
Good and Evil and Other Stories, Samanta Schweblin (Sept 16)
The Argentinian author’s new collection has six stories on the edge of the diabolical. An old lady is granted a place to stay, only to be followed by her gun-wielding son; a boy’s speech impediment leads to a father’s feeling of inadequacy; a sea-drenched woman shows up at a salon for her biweekly pampering years after she haunted a young girl’s summer vacation where her sister mysteriously drowned. Spooky and propulsive and perfect for readers of Bora Chung or Mariana Enríquez.
Calls May Be Recorded, Katharina Volckmer (Sept 16)
For fans of Lexi Freiman and Tova Reich, Katharina Volkmer’s quippy and brash new novel centers Jimmie, a call center employee whose prowess at his job is underscored by the lipstick he wears everyday, stolen from his mother. Deeply funny, brazen, and then shockingly tender.
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares (Sept 16)
For fans of Max Tegmark, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares go deep on artificial intelligence in this treatise on the defining threat of our time. Both a warning and a manual, they detail how AI has the ability to surpass its human inventors — if it’s not already too late.
The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry’s Troubled History Reverberates Today, Susanne Paola Antonetta (Sept 23)
Susanne Paola Antonetta’s radically personal exploration of Nazi eugenics infuses the author’s own experience in psychiatric wards into a thorough journey of how best to care for the mentally ill. Using writers and mental patients Dorothea Buck and Paul Schreber as guiding stars, Antonetta searches for answers during a dark and still unfurling time.
Best Woman, Rose Dommu (Sept 23)
Twitter icon (and my favorite …And Just Like That live tweeter) Rose Dommu’s debut novel follows Julia Rosenberg, a trans woman accepted by her family enough to become the ‘best woman’ at her brother’s Floridian wedding. But when her adolescent crush is revealed to be the maid of honor, soon to walk down the aisle with Julia, she might need to tell some white lies to make her seem a little more alluring.
Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why it Matters, Joanna Walsh (Sept 23)
From the author of Girl Online, a new manifesto building on the hyperdeveloped internet society of the twenty-first century. Amateurs builds on Time magazine’s 2006 assertion that ‘you’ are the person of the year — the stragglers and marginalized communities that ultimately build the internet’s biggest trends and rhythms.
Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Luke Kemp (Sept 23)
The Cambridge scholar’s far-reaching first book incorporates 440 societal lifespans to understand why, how, and where societies fail. With nuclear warfare on the brink and a climate catastrophe not far behind, there’s much to learn from the world’s past failures.
Underspin, E.Y. Zhao (Sept 23)
Andre Agassi’s Open meets Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad in this wildly exciting, whipsmart and beautiful novel of a tragic table tennis star, told by those who were closest to him. Mobile, adventurous, and deeply imaginative, it’s a stunner of a debut.
Herculine, Grace Byron (Oct 7)
The debut novel from critic and writer Grace Byron, Herculine imagines an all-trans utopian commune whose good fortune may or may not come from selling their souls to demons. Funny, brash, and unafraid to wade deep into trans politics, this debut is entertainingly chaotic.
Mothers, Brenda Lozano (Oct 7)
Another international motherhood plot! The essayist and novelist Brenda Lozano returns with Mothers, a dueling tale of a comfortably wealthy woman blessed with a large family and the working-class woman who is presented with an adoption opportunity that’s too good to pass up.
The High Heaven, Joshua Wheeler (Oct 7)
Inspired by the true story of a UFO cult based near White Sands, New Mexico, Joshua Wheeler’s debut novel follows Izzy through her whole life, starting from when she was orphaned as a child on the night of the 1967 Apollo mission. Paying homage to Southern gothics and Westerns, The High Heaven explores the Space Age in a wickedly stunning narrative.
DILF: Did I Leave Feminism?, Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Oct 14)
Before the summer of 2020, Jude Doyle had a prolific career writing for women’s magazines, winning awards, vocally on the side of a burgeoning and much-needed moment. Then he came out as trans, saying, in fact, he had never been a woman at all. Did I Leave Feminism? is Doyle’s insightful and entertaining manifesto reckoning with this period of his life — and how the fight for feminism isn’t a one-size-fits all issue.
Sea Now, Eva Meijer (Oct 14)
It happened — the world flooded. In this new novel by Eva Meijer, the residents of the Netherlands find shelter internationally, and The Hague dips underneath the water. With the apocalypse upon them, three women refuse to submit and venture to look for remnants of a society that may be lost.
Happy Bad, Delaney Nolan (Oct 14)
Billed as Hernan Diaz meets Ottessa Moshfegh, Delaney Nolan’s debut roadtrip/catastrophe novel centers medicated patients at Twin Bridge, placated by a dose of BeZen, a calming drug that works on just about everybody. But when a heat wave triggers a blackout, the patients and staff must travel to a new facility, the road to which is dotted with police brutality, climate refugees, and the consequences of the staff’s own lives.
Bog Queen, Anna North (Oct 14)
From the author of Outlawed and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark comes an imaginative new novel about an anthropologist whose discovery of a completely preserved body dated to the Iron Age calls into question her memory, past, and expertise.
Joyride, Susan Orlean (Oct 14)
From the prolific New Yorker writer comes a memoir about the golden age of magazine journalism, packed with her previous features (like a Sunday spent climbing Mount Fuji), but also golden writing and career advice from someone who rose to the top.
Big Kiss, Bye-Bye, Claire-Louise Bennett (Oct 21)
Claire-Louise Bennett’s Checkout-19 was one of the most stunning and hypnotic books I’ve ever read, so the novelist’s return is high on my reading list. Her trademark elliptical and mesmerizing prose describes a woman trapped by her memories, asking herself what it means to truly connect to another person.
Crawl, Max Delsohn (Oct 21)
Praised by George Saunders, this debut collection of stories sounds niche — 2010s transmasculine life in Seattle — but reaches farther into themes of sex, romance, gender expression and identity.
Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long Way, Edward McPherson (Oct 21)
From a writer whose previous books featured Buster Keaton, the future, and the atomic bomb, Edward McPherson turns his attention to a top-down view. Despite its privileged position, the bird’s eye view has been present throughout history, from Civil War times to our now ubiquitous drone warfare tactics.
Self Care, Russell Smith (Oct 21)
The Canadian writer returns with a familiar tale of Millennial ennui — Gloria is a writer for The Hype Report, where her column “Self Care” makes her a Carrie Bradshaw hopeful. When she meets Daryn coming back from an anti-immigration rally, she offers to interview him under the guise of an article, but their newfound sexual relationship starts to reveal more about herself than her column ever could.
The Ten Year Affair, Erin Sommers (Oct 21)
From the author of Stay Up with Hugo Best, the Publisher’s Marketplace reporter returns with “the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary” (Tony Tulathimutte). For fans of Seduction Theory or Big Swiss, two married couples meet and then split into parallel realities to test the depths of their desire.
I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, Hu Anyan (Oct 28)
Already a hit in China, Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing was born out of online essays the night shift worker posted during the COVID pandemic. Quippy and delivering some much needed humanity to the specter of delivery work, Anyan reinvents the narrative of the marketplace.
Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, Jonathan Karl (Oct 28)
Jonathan Karl, one of my favorite political writers, returns with Retribution, tracking the journey of the formerly down-and-out President Trump to the unthinkable position of the highest power in office. Journalistically solid and meticulous, Karl’s reporting always provides a much-needed explanation to the chaos of 21st century politics.
