Top 10
Bad Bad Girl
Gish Jen. Knopf, Oct. 21 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-80373-8)
A pair of Shanghai natives meet in 1947 New York City, get married, and have two children including a girl named Gish, who grows up hearing the same refrain her mother did as a child: “Bad bad girl!”
Bog Queen
Anna North. Bloomsbury, Oct. 14 ($28.99, ISBN 978-1-63557-966-6)
North follows up her bestselling revisionist western Outlawed with a novel about an American forensic anthropologist investigating a surprising discovery of Iron Age human remains in England.
Heart the Lover
Lily King. Grove, Oct. 7 ($28, ISBN 978-0-8021-6517-6)
A successful middle-aged novelist reflects on her life-changing and messy senior year of college, when she shared a professor’s vacant house with two male classmates with whom she found love and intellectual fulfillment.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Kiran Desai. Hogarth, Sept. 23 ($32, ISBN 978-0-307-70015-5)
The Booker winner returns 19 years after The Inheritance of Loss with the story of an Indian couple who pursue love and success on their own terms in the U.S. and their homeland.
Shadow Ticket
Thomas Pynchon. Penguin Press, Oct. 7 ($30, ISBN 978-1-59420-610-8)
Pynchon’s caper chronicles the misadventures of an American private investigator in 1930s Europe, after his search for a missing heiress goes sideways.
The Silver Book
Olivia Laing. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov. 11 ($27, ISBN 978-0-374-61831-5)
Laing departs from the autofiction of their previous novel with a story about the last days of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini in the mid-1970s.
This Here Is Love
Princess Joy L. Perry. Norton, Aug. 5 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-10597-8)
Perry debuts with an entwined narrative of slavery and indentured servitude in 17th-century Virginia, where characters are forced to make impossible compromises on their quest for freedom.
We Love You, Bunny
Mona Awad. S&S/Rucci, Sept. 23 ($30, ISBN 978-1-6680-5986-9)
In the sequel to her bestseller Bunny, Awad follows protagonist Samantha Heather Mackey from the dark academia setting of the original to her first book tour as a published author.
The Wilderness
Angela Flournoy. Mariner, Sept. 16 ($30, ISBN 978-0-06-331877-9)
Ten years after The Turner House, National Book Award finalist Flournoy returns with a “knockout” novel—per PW’s starred review—about five Black women’s lifelong bonds and their attempts at navigating middle age.
Will There Ever Be Another You
Patricia Lockwood. Riverhead, Sept. 23 ($29, ISBN 978-0-593-71855-1)
Covid-19 rears its ugly head in this tale of an author dealing with the illness’s long-term debilitating effects. In a starred review, PW noted that the novel showcases Lockwood’s “trademark humor, originality, and depth.”
Longlist
Algonquin
Wolf Bells by Leni Zumas (Sept. 16, $28, ISBN 978-1-64375-657-8). The author who imagined the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the 2018 novel Red Clocks offers another tale of resistance, this time with the story of a group home that serves as a refuge for migrants.
Archipelago
Cécé by Emmelie Prophète, trans. by Aidan Rooney (Sept. 23, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-962770-41-5). A defiant woman forges a life for herself as a photographer and sex worker in a violent, gang-controlled slum in Haiti.
Astra House
Dusk by Robbie Arnott (Aug. 5, $26, ISBN 978-1-6626-0330-3). The Aussie author delivers a western about a man-killing puma and the two bounty hunters on her tail in the remote highlands of Australia.
Atria
The Frequency of Living Things by Nick Fuller Googins (Aug. 12, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5606-6). It’s been more than 20 years since three sisters put out a hit record with their punk band. Now, with the middle sister in jail for drug trafficking, they mull a comeback.
Ballantine
Atomic Hearts by Megan Cummins (Aug. 5, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-87535-3) follows two friends who bond as teens over their fathers’ opioid addictions. As the women come of age, one, an aspiring novelist, finds a muse in the other.
Berkley
L.A. Women by Ella Berman (Aug. 5, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-63915-3). In this novel of two friends driven apart by a betrayal in 1960s Los Angeles, Berman nods to the famous friendship and rivalry between
Eve Babitz and Joan Didion.
Cardinal
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Sept. 16, $30, ISBN 978-1-5387-7407-6) is an alternate history in which WWII ended in a stalemate and evil lurks in 1979 England, where 13-year-old triplets are the sole survivors of a mysterious disease that rips through their orphanage.
Counterpoint
Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry (Oct. 7, $27, ISBN 978-1-64009-775-9). In the author’s latest Port William novel, protagonist Andy Catlett shares with his children and grandchildren the story of his beleaguered and determined tobacco farmer grandfather.
Crown
Indian Country by Shobha Rao (Aug. 5, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-79895-9). An arranged marriage in India sets the stage for Rao’s tragedy
of colonialism and ambition, as a free-spirited young woman has no choice but to move to Montana with her engineer husband.
Dalkey Archive
Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff (Sept. 23, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62897-626-7). The author of The Last Samurai collaborates with journalist Gridneff on a metatextual narrative about a novel called Your Name Here, in which an author named Helen DeWitt attempts to write a novel, drawn from life, via emails from Gridneff.
Doubleday
Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Nov. 4, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-55147-2). Lagos resident Ebun and her daughter, Eniiyi, attempt to reverse their family’s curse, after Eniiyi is said to be the reincarnation of Ebun’s recently deceased cousin.
Dutton
People Like Us by Jason Mott (Aug. 5, $30, ISBN 979-8-217-04711-6). National Book Award winner Mott explores the burden of
literary success (including the attention paid to a writer for winning the National Book Award) and the prevalence of gun violence in America.
Ecco
The Devil Is a Southpaw by Brandon Hobson (Oct. 28, $29, ISBN 978-0-06-325965-2). Biblical and Nabokovian elements combine in the latest from Hobson, which comprises a novel written by a man obsessed with a Cherokee artist he was once incarcerated with as a boy in a hellish detention center.
What a Time to Be Alive by Jade Chang (Sept. 30, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-341639-0) follows a woman’s unexpected and controversial rise to influencer status after her post about her best friend’s death goes viral.
Europa
Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser, trans. by Hildegarde Serle (Aug. 26, $30, ISBN 979-8-88966-111-5). A Paris art lover takes his 10-year-old granddaughter, who’s at risk of going blind, to museums across the city in hopes that she’ll soak in the great works of art before she loses her sight.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Emergency by George Packer (Nov. 11, $29, ISBN 978-0-374-61472-0) marks the author’s return to fiction after 27 years of journalism with an ominous tale of a fallen empire, somewhere in an alternate present, where sectarian war rages while a doctor and his family attempt to navigate the new normal.
Flatiron
Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond (Sept. 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-38591-8) unspools the tale of a Jewish man exploring his family’s colorful history in Chicago’s criminal underworld.
Grand Central
Circle of Days by Ken Follett (Sept. 23, $40, ISBN 978-1-5387-7277-5). Bestseller Follett centers this story of love and war on three Neolithic characters who come together to begin the construction of Stonehenge.
Graywolf
The High Heaven by Joshua Wheeler (Oct. 7, $28, ISBN 978-1-64445-357-5). In this debut novel, inspired by a UFO cult in the Southwest and the Apollo space program, the author transfers to fiction the arid setting and trippy vibe of his essay collection, Acid West.
Harper
Wreck by Catherine Newman (Oct. 28, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-345391-3). This sequel to Sandwich revisits Cape Cod vacationer Rocky and her family, this time back home in western Massachusetts, where she becomes obsessed with a local car accident.
HarperVia
Intemperance by Sonora Jha (Oct. 14, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-344084-5). A newly single Indian American woman courts controversy by staging an ancient courtship ritual on her 55th birthday.
Holt
One of Us by Dan Chaon (Sept. 23, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-17523-6) tells the story of 13-year-old orphaned twins who join the circus while on the run from an evil con man in 1915 America.
Kensington
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart (Jan. 27, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4967-4072-4). A young and chaste woman is forced by the local sheriff to check into a state-run colony for allegedly debauched women in 1940s North Carolina.
Knopf
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Oct. 14, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-80487-2) follows up the author’s hit debut,
A Burning, with a work of climate fiction set in Kolkata and revolving around a family with plans to flee for the U.S.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (Sept. 23, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-80472-8). In the Booker Prize winner’s postapocalyptic latest, survivors of a nuclear disaster in 2119 England fixate on an enigmatic love poem written in 2014.
Little, Brown
Amity by Nathan Harris (Sept. 2, $29, ISBN 978-0-316-45624-1) delves into the turmoil of post–Civil War emancipation with the story of two siblings hoping to reunite after one is kidnapped and taken to Mexico by their former master.
Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Sept. 30, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-42214-7). The Laotian Canadian writer, winner of the Giller Prize for her story collection How to Pronounce Knife, further explores the trials and vagaries of menial labor with a novel of workers at a nail salon.
Liveright
Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov, trans. by Angela Rodel (Oct. 7, $26, ISBN 978-1-324-09729-7). In the latest from the International Booker winner, a man reflects on the life and times of his terminally ill father, who was in Bulgaria during WWII.
MCD
The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson (Oct. 14, $30, ISBN 978-0-374-61957-2) recounts the story of a Tongan girl’s quest to save her island from starvation amid the expansion of the Tu’i Tonga Empire.
Mira
I Know How This Ends by Holly Smale (Aug. 12, $30, ISBN 978-0-7783-6863-2). From the Cassandra in Reverse author comes a novel about a woman who has a vision that she will spend the rest of her life with a single dad she’s never met.
Morrow
Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory (Oct. 14, $32, ISBN 978-0-06-343968-9) revisits the Tudor court intrigue portrayed in Gregory’s bestseller The Other Boleyn Girl with the story of another Boleyn: notorious spy Jane.
New Directions
Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada, trans. by Margaret Mitsutani (Sept. 2, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8112-3979-0), completes a trilogy begun with Scattered All over the Earth that follows the globe-trotting exploits of Japanese refugee Hiruko.
New York Review Books
Driver by Mattia Filice, trans. by Jacques Houis (Oct. 21, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-988-3). This debut novel portrays the day-to-day routine, labor activism, and aesthetic concerns of a French train operator.
One World
The White Hot by Quiara Alegria Hudes (Nov. 11, $26, ISBN 978-0-593-73233-5). A young single mother runs away from her baby girl in Philadelphia, seeking freedom and self-discovery, in a novel that takes the form of a letter written to her daughter 10 years later.
Other Press
The Name on the Wall by Hervé Le Tellier, trans. by Adriana Hunter (Nov. 11, $16.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-63542-545-1), draws inspiration from a plaque commemorating young WWII French Resistance fighter André Chaix, with a story of romance and the desire for purpose.
Pantheon
Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski (Oct. 28, $40, ISBN 978-1-5247-4771-8). The bestselling author of House of Leaves serves up a fantastical western, north of 1,200 pages, about two friends in 1980s Utah who embark on a mission to rescue a pair of horses from slaughter.
Penguin Press
Fonseca by Jessica Francis Kane (Aug. 12, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-29885-5). Reeling from family and financial crises, English author Penelope Fitzgerald travels to Mexico in 1952, where she meets other luminaries including painter Edward Hopper.
Public Space
Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail (Sept. 16, $20 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-9859769-1-5). The women characters in this collection of stories set in Pakistan grapple with the tension between the strong bonds linking them and their desire for freedom.
Putnam
The Dogs of Venice by Steven Rowley (Oct. 14, $22, ISBN 979-8-217-04760-4). A heartbroken man embarks on a solo trip to Venice, where he unexpectedly bonds with a dog.
Random House
The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories by Salman Rushdie (Nov. 4, $28, ISBN 979-8-217-15419-7) revisits the author’s themes of magic, political turmoil, fakery, and freedom of speech with the tale of a writer looking for answers about his mentor’s death, an entry about a mischievous Mumbai musician, and more.
Riverhead
Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett (Oct. 21, $29, ISBN 979-8-217-04664-5). The British writer explores the nature of intimacy in a novel about a woman who moves to the country after a breakup and reflects on old loves.
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor (Oct. 14, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-33236-8) follows a Southern Black painter as he attempts to navigate New York City’s tight-knit art world.
Simon & Schuster
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers (Oct. 21, $28, ISBN 978-1-6680-8144-0). A man and a woman married to other people bond over new parenthood and confront their mutual attraction.
SJP Lit
I Am You by Victoria Redel (Sept. 30, $28, ISBN 978-1-63893-206-2) chronicles a 17th-century Dutch girl’s hardscrabble coming-of-age and brilliant skill as a still-life painter who defies gender norms to pursue her ambition.
Tin House
Great Disasters by Grady Chambers (Sept. 30, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-963108-50-7) follows six young men in Chicago whose friendship is tested during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when some join the military and others join the protests.
Tiny Reparations
This Kind of Trouble by Tochi Eze (Aug. 5, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-47510-2). Nigerian writer Eze debuts with a multigenerational story of a family’s secrets originating in an illicit love affair in the 1960s.
Transit
Vaim by Jon Fosse, trans. by Damion Searls (Oct. 7, $25.95, ISBN 979-8-89338-021-7). The Nobel winner launches a new trilogy with this love story about a fisherman and a woman who bears the same name as his boat.
Verso Fiction
Nymph by Stephanie Lacava (Oct. 14, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-80429-991-3). A woman born into a family of assassins adopts the family profession and struggles to avoid a romantic attachment.
Viking
Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela (Sept. 9, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-83517-3). A queer polyamorous husband and father is blindsided after his boyfriend dumps him in the latest from National Book Award finalist Varela.
Moderation by Elaine Castillo (Aug. 5, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-48966-6) combines a satire of the tech industry with a workplace romance, in the story of a lowly content moderator who catches a big break.
This article has been updated.
