12 brand new books NPR can’t wait to read this fall

Much like how any book can be a beach read if you try hard enough, any book can be the perfect cozy, blanket-worthy, fall/winter read if the temps outside deem it so. There’s a lot coming out on the publishing horizon but here are a few that might be worth some extra consideration as you’re putting together your library hold list.

Fiction

‘Will There Ever Be Another You’ by Patricia Lockwood, Sept. 23

Patricia Lockwood’s 2021 book, “No One is Talking About This”, was a novel about being sad and alone online, coming out at a time when a lot of us were sad and alone online. Lockwood’s latest novel is a more straightforward COVID novel. But don’t get it twisted — this being a Lockwood novel, don't expect it to be straightforward at all.

‘Shadow Ticket’ by Thomas Pynchon, Oct. 7

One of the few literary living legends we’ve got left, the book is Pynchon’s first novel since 2013’s “Bleeding Edge.” It takes place in the middle of the Great Depression, and follows Hicks McTaggert, “a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye,” who goes out on a routine case which, as you can guess, turns out to be not so routine.

‘All That We See or Seem’ by Ken Liu, Oct. 14

Ken Liu is a known entity in hard sci-fi circles. He’s won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards — not just for his own novels but for translating Cixin Liu’s massive hit “The Three-Body Problem.”

This new novel is a thriller that follows mysterious hacker Julia Z, who has since retired from her hacking ways, until a problem shows up at her front door. The book confronts our present-day anxieties of being surrounded by AI, and the tricky relationship between reality and our dreams.

‘Your Name Here’ by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff, Oct. 28

“Your Name Here” is a long and ambitious collaboration between veteran novelist Helen DeWitt and first-time novelist Ilya Gridneff about the two of them collaborating to write a long, ambitious novel that is somehow about art, the war on terror, linguistics and email.

The last we heard from DeWitt was her 2022 novella “The English Understand the Wool” — a book that was specifically designed to be read in one sitting. This one? Not so much.

‘The White Hot’ by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Nov. 11

A single mother named April leaves her daughter, in what was supposed to be a temporary stint in self-discovery. Instead, April is gone for a long time and the novel takes the form of a letter April writes to her daughter explaining what happened.

While this is a debut novel from Hudes that name might sound familiar — she’s a longtime playwright whose work includes “In the Heights,” and “Water by the Spoonful,” which got her a Pulitzer Prize in drama.

‘Daddy Issues’ by Kate Goldbeck, Nov. 18

Ah, to be 26, working crappy jobs, stifling under a massive weight of student-loan debt, living with your mom …. near a hot older dad going through a divorce. Goldbeck has a knack for taking familiar tropes (He’s dependable! She’s zany!), and turning them into satisfying romance reads. Her last book, “You, Again” made NPR’s 2023 year-end Books We Love list for its “delicious, slow burn tension.”

Nonfiction

‘Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America’ by Beth Macy, Oct. 7

Macy is a journalist who changed our national conversation about drugs and addiction with her book “Dopesick.” Now she turns those writing and reporting skills on her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, and on herself.

Part memoir, part dispatch from a home that doesn't much resemble home anymore, the book touches on addiction, loneliness, anger and the loss of the stuff that binds us together.

‘The Once and Future Riot’ by Joe Sacco, Oct. 14

Joe Sacco’s comics journalism has brought us to the front lines of some of the most consequential conflicts of our time. This time, he’s examining the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots that swept through the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. In the larger picture, these were relatively smaller conflicts –=— but indicative in how rote political violence can become.

‘Vagabond: A Memoir’ by Tim Curry, Oct. 14

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Tim Curry is set to come out with a memoir detailing his journey from military brat to playing Pennywise in “It.” Fans of Curry will also be psyched to know he’s narrating the audiobook version too.

‘Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times’ by Tracy K. Smith, Nov. 18

If you’ve got a few moments to kill, what’s stopping you from putting your phone down and picking up a poem instead? If it’s an underlying fear that poetry just isn’t for you, Tracy K. Smith has got something to say about that.

The former U.S. poet laureate is out with a book demystifying the poetry process (both the reading and writing of), to make the point that poetry isn't some grand, important thing. It's just human.

‘Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century’ by W. David Marx, Nov. 18

W. David Marx's 2015 book “Ametora” enchanted menswear dorks all over the world by examining the East-West cultural exchange that took place via Oxford Cloth Button-Down — OCBD — collar rolls.

He widens his lens a bit on this one, examining why the past 25 years in culture has felt so stuck in the mud, arguing that we (as a culture) favor profit and “going viral” over any actual cultural innovation. Marx isn’t the type of writer to only throw down purely an “old man yells at cloud” screed, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what arguments he has to promote actual reinvention.

‘A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans and the Fight to Modernize Literature’ by Adam Morgan, Dec. 9

In 1921, publisher Margaret C. Anderson put her life’s work, and her freedom, on the line when she faced a criminal trial for publishing James Joyce’s “Ulyssees.” Journalist Adam Morgan tells the story of a woman navigating politics, police and bill collectors all in the service of publishing good writing.

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