Winter storm warnings continue in northern Minnesota 

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Happy fall, bookworms! It's readin' season. Tell us your favorite books of the year so far 

"Umami" dives into a grief-soaked corner of Mexico City, where five houses gather around a courtyard. Ana, a 12-year-old girl still haunted by the mysterious drowning of her young sister, looks for answers and relief in Agatha Christie novels, barely glancing up from her books. Her neighbors share their own losses and tragedies, and Laia Jufresa jumps between them, drawing out the pain and secrets weighing down the neighborhood.

"Commonwealth" may be Ann Patchett's most personal novel yet. In 

, she said: "I didn't think my father would have liked this book, but I thought, I'm in my fifties now, and I don't want to think that certain parts of my own life are off limits anymore."

The book starts with an unexpected kiss — a kiss with so many consequences, it reverberates for five generations. Patchett writes with her usual cutting insights into family dynamics, brushing plenty of wit over the wounds.

Affinity Konar's novel mixes beauty and horror in one of the bleakest moments of history. "Mischling" follows a pair of identical twins hand-picked by Josef Mengele for experiments at Auschwitz. Stasha and Pearl must learn to survive in the camp, and survive without each other, as the trials pull them apart. 

"The Mortifications" by Derek Palacio – Oct. 4, 2016

In 1980, tens of thousands of Cubans left their country for the United States, making the treacherous journey across the water. "The Mortifications" follows one family split apart in the chaos. While Soledad flees with her children, she leaves behind her husband, Uxbal. Decades later, despite the new lives they have built for themselves in the U.S., Cuba calls them home, where Uxbal is waiting.

"Today Will Be Different" by Maria Semple – Oct. 4, 2016

Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" was one of the most beloved comic novels in recent years, and now Semple is back with the tale of another mother under pressure. "Today Will Be Different" tells the story of Eleanor, who is really going to get her life together — probably, maybe, no, definitely today. But life has other plans for Eleanor. As her "to-do" list comes apart at the seams, some long-buried secrets threaten to surface. Today will be different for Eleanor, but just not the way she planned.

"The Wangs vs. the World" by Jade Chang – Oct. 4, 2016

There's nothing like a road trip to bring a fractured family back together. Right? Or maybe it's the opposite. In Jade Chang's charming debut novel, the Wangs hit the road. The family patriarch, Charles, was a successful, self-made business man until the recession wiped out his fortunes. Now he's packed his wife and children in the car so he can make a clean break from their foreclosed Bel Air mansion for a new life in China. Chang skewers consumer culture and crafts new levels of dysfunction on the family's ill-fated cross-country road trip. 

"The Mothers" by Brit Bennett – Oct. 11, 2016

Brit Bennett's debut novel is one of the most buzzed-about books of the season. "The Mothers" follows 17-year-old Nadia, adrift after her own mother's suicide, as she falls fast and hard for the pastor's son. When she finds out she's pregnant, she struggles to hide it from everyone in her small town, including her extremely religious best friend. The novel follows Nadia and her close circle into adulthood, as they question the decisions they made as teenagers. 

"Swing Time" by Zadie Smith – Oct. 15, 2016

The master of the modern novel returns with a story of childhood friendship and its enduring grip. In "Swing Time," two young black girls growing up in London are united by their love of dance, but their talent separates them: Only one has the skill to make it a career. Smith explores the power of early friendship and the politics of black bodies.

Take Sherlock Holmes and drop him into one of modern-day Los Angeles' toughest neighborhoods, and you get Isaiah "IQ" Quintabe, the young, brilliant protagonist at the center of Joe Ide's debut novel. When was the last time you read a crime novel set in a place where crime is an everyday reality? 

In what could be the start of a new series, IQ, a high school dropout, solves cases for whatever his clients can afford. When a rapper hires him on after receiving death threats, IQ realizes the case may go deeper than even he wants to know.

"Moonglow" by Michael Chabon – Nov. 22, 2016

Almost thirty years ago, Michael Chabon sat at his grandfather's death bed and 

. In his last days, in a haze of medication, his grandfather unspooled stories and histories Chabon had never heard before. After three decades of mulling them over, Chabon has turned those stories into the basis for his new novel, which is framed as a deathbed confession of a man who has seen love, war, triumph and collapse, from the invasion of Germany to a Florida retirement village. 

"Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life" by Ruth Franklin

On my list of authors — dead or alive — that I wish I could have lunch with, Shirley Jackson's pretty close to the top. Her eerie and unsettling stories have kept people up late for half a century. Best known for her short story, "The Lottery," Jackson is finally getting her time in the spotlight with a new biography from Ruth Franklin. (Also coming this fall, for Jackson fans, is a graphic novel adaptation of "The Lottery" and other stories by Miles Hyman.)

You can name John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, but do you know Dorothy Vaughan or Mary Jackson? How about Katherine Johnson or Christine Darden? Margot Lee Shetterly's book tells the true story of the African-American women mathematicians who did some of the most critical calculations at NASA to make space exploration possible. Overlooked for decades, these women overcame obstacle after obstacle to slide rule their way into history.

"Welcome to the Universe" by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss and J. Richard Gott

Astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss and J. Richard Gott taught this course together at Princeton — an introduction to astronomy. Now, it's not just limited to Princeton undergrads. This book captures the spirit of the class, unwinding the intricacies of the universe — and beyond — from black holes to time travel. Who doesn't want to know more about space? 

When Belle Boggs was wrestling with the idea that she might never get pregnant, everything else around her seemed infinitely fertile, from the cicadas in her yard to the gorilla at the zoo. In "The Art of Waiting," Boggs shares her meditations on pregnancy, fertility and childlessness, confronting everything from the natural world to William Shakespeare to pop culture, and sharing stories of couples battling and coming to peace with their own reproductive realities and decisions.

Writer and photographer iO Tillett Wright was born into beautiful chaos, if there is such a thing. Raised in New York in the 1980s amidst punk, drugs, art and poverty, Wright knew more about performance art than about the normal conventions of childhood. "Darling Days" chronicles Wright's coming-of-age and early adulthood, as Wright questions gender and identity with candor and humor.

"Another Day in the Death of America" by Gary Younge — Oct. 4, 2016

On an average day in the U.S., seven children will be killed by guns. For his book, Gary Younge picked one day — November 23, 2013 — and profiled the ten children who lost their lives that day. Aged 9 to 19, the children are spread across the country, no two stories the same. Younge shares the details of their short lives and their sudden deaths, putting ten faces on the issue of gun violence.

"Tetris: The Games People Play" by Box Brown – Oct. 11, 2016

You've probably played Tetris. You've probably played 

 of Tetris. You can't stop after just one game. Why is that? Box Brown digs into the history of the addictive, unending puzzle game that has attracted generations of players. From its roots in the Soviet Union to its pop culture triumphs, Brown tells the story of the world's most popular video game.

"Truevine" by Beth Macy — Oct. 18, 2016

"Truevine" offers up a dark moment of America's past with the story of two brothers enslaved in a traveling circus. In 1899, George and Willie Muse, two black albino boys just 6 and 9 years old, were stolen away from life on a Virginia tobacco farm to perform in a sideshow. The boys were told their mother had died, but she never stopped fighting to get them back. Beth Macy unfolds their life story based on in-depth research and interviews with family members and neighbors.

"Bellevue" by David Oshinksy – Nov. 5, 2016

In 2005, David Oshinsky won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on the impact of the polio epidemic, and now he's turned his attention to the oldest public hospital in the country: Bellevue. Founded in mid-1700s, the hospital has served as housing for the poor, a refuge for Civil War soldiers, a haven for those battling AIDS and many other roles in its long history. Oshinsky unpacks the hospital's complicated and sometimes controversial past in "Bellevue."

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Tracy Mumford

Author

This fall's reading list is packed with new perspectives on U.S. history, a fresh reinvention of Sherlock Holmes and book that asks: Why is Tetris so addictive?

19 books to read this fall

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox