The Best New Books Publishing in Fall 2023

Fall

2023

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We currently have previews of 327 Fall 2023 books.
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Amazing Grace Adams: A Novel
by Fran Littlewood
Henry Holt and Company, 09/05/2023
 
Grace Adams gave birth, blinked, and now suddenly she is forty-five, perimenopausal and stalled―the unhappiest age you can be, according to the ...more
Literary Fiction
Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
by Katja Hoyer
Basic Books, 09/05/2023
 
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Budapest: Portrait of a City Between East and West
by Victor Sebestyen
Pantheon Books, 09/05/2023
 
Victor Sebestyen has written a sweeping, colorful and immersive history of the capital of Hungary, from the fifth century to the present day: a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History of the '60s Girl Groups
by Laura Flam, Emily Sieu Liebowitz
Hachette Books, 09/05/2023
 
The girl group sound, made famous and unforgettable by acts like The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Supremes, and The Vandellas, took over the airwaves ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Creep: Accusations and Confessions
by Myriam Gurba
Avid Reader Press, 09/05/2023
 
A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do...more
Dearborn
by Ghassan Zeineddine
Tin House Books, 09/05/2023
 
Spanning several decades, Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Do You Remember Being Born?: A Novel
by Sean Michaels
Astra House, 09/05/2023
 
Marian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the making—but only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of...more
Literary Fiction
Evil Eye: A Novel
by Etaf Rum
Harper, 09/05/2023
 
"After Yara is placed on probation at work for fighting with a racist coworker, her Palestinian mother claims the provocation and all that's come ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Gull Island: A Novel
by Anna Porter
Simon & Schuster, 09/05/2023
 
When her estranged father goes missing, Jude is persuaded by her mother to find his will. She travels to the family cottage on remote Gull Island, ...more
Thrillers
Holly
by Stephen King
Scribner, 09/05/2023
 
When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency, hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly Gibney is reluctant to accept the ...more
Thrillers
Landlines: The Remarkable Story of a Thousand-Mile Journey Across Britain
by Raynor Winn
Pegasus Books, 09/05/2023
 
Raynor Winn knows that her husband Moth's health is declining, getting worse by the day. She knows of only one cure. It worked once before. But will ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
One Blood: A Novel
by Denene Millner
Forge Books, 09/05/2023
 
Meet Grace: raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her grandmother....more
Literary Fiction
Phoebe's Diary
by Phoebe Wahl
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 09/05/2023
 
Meet Phoebe. She's cool and insecure, talented and vulnerable, sexy and awkward, driven and confused, ecstatic and tragic.

Like you.

And here is...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Proud Sorrows: Billy Boyle WWII Mysteries #18
by James R. Benn
Soho Crime, 09/05/2023
 
Norfolk, England, November 1944: After a series of dangerous missions in the South of France, US Army Captain Billy Boyle is finally on leave, and is ...more
Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World
by Leah Broad
Faber and Faber, 09/05/2023
 
Ethel Smyth (b.1858): Famed for her operas, this trailblazing queer Victorian composer was a larger-than-life socialite, intrepid traveller and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence
by Gavin Francis
Penguin Life, 09/05/2023
 
For many of us, time spent in recovery—from a broken leg, a virus, chronic illness, or the crisis of depression or anxiety—can feel like ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Reykjavík: A Crime Story
by Ragnar Jónasson, Katrín Jakobsdóttir
Minotaur Books, 09/05/2023
 
What happened to Lára?

Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of ...more
Rusted Souls: Tom Harper Mysteries #11
by Chris Nickson
Severn House, 09/05/2023
 
Leeds, 1920. Chief Constable Tom Harper of Leeds City Police has just six weeks left in the role before his well-earned retirement. But even though ...more
Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World
by Karen Armstrong
Vintage, 09/05/2023
 
Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural...more
Science, Health and the Environment
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere
by Maria Bamford
Gallery Books, 09/05/2023
 
Maria Bamford is a comedian's comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Art of Desire
by Stacey Abrams
Berkley Books, 09/05/2023
 
One doomed love affair after another has made lovely Alex Walton swear off men. Now, she's determined to try something that maybe she can succeed at: ...more
Thrillers
The Future: Biblioasis International Translation Series #44
by Catherine Leroux
Biblioasis, 09/05/2023
 
In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future
by Robert P. Jones
Simon & Schuster, 09/05/2023
 
Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Longmire Defense: A Longmire Mystery
by Craig Johnson
Viking, 09/05/2023
 
Deep in the heart of the Wyoming countryside, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire, is called to a crime scene like few others that he has seen. ...more
The Raging Storm: Detective Matthew Venn Series #3
by Ann Cleeves
Minotaur Books, 09/05/2023
 
Fierce winds, dark secrets, deadly intentions.

When Jem Rosco—sailor, adventurer, and legend—blows into town in the middle of an autumn...more
The River We Remember: A Novel
by William Kent Krueger
Atria Books, 09/05/2023
 
On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. ...more
Literary Fiction
The September House
by Carissa Orlando
Berkley Books, 09/05/2023
 
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
by Andrew Joseph White
Peachtree Publishers, 09/05/2023
 
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Trouble the Living: A Novel
by Francesca McDonnell Capossela
Lake Union Publishing, 09/05/2023
 
It's the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Bríd and her sister, Ina, try to maintain a stable life in a divided country. ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Wednesday's Child: Stories
by Yiyun Li
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/05/2023
 
A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she's lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments
by Joe Posnanski
Dutton, 09/05/2023
 
Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays's catch, Babe Ruth's called ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Wound: A Novel
by Oksana Vasyakina
Catapult, 09/05/2023
 
From one of Russia's most exciting new voices, Wound follows a young lesbian poet on a journey from Moscow to her hometown in Siberia, where she has ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Cocktail
by Lisa Alward
Biblioasis, 09/12/2023
 
A girl receives a bedtime visit from a drunken party guest, who will haunt her fantasies for years. A young mother discovers underneath the wallpaper ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Digging Stars: A Novel
by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/12/2023
 
With admission to The Program, an elite interdisciplinary graduate cohort at the forefront of astronomy and technology, Rosa's dreams are finally ...more
Literary Fiction
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
by Naomi Klein
Picador, 09/12/2023
 
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger ...more
Biography/Memoir
Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Simon & Schuster, 09/12/2023
 
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until...more
Biography/Memoir
Enemies in the Orchard: A World War 2 Novel in Verse
by Dana VanderLugt
Zonderkidz, 09/12/2023
 
It's October 1944, and while Claire's older brother, Danny, is off fighting in World War II, her dad hires a group of German POWs to help with the ...more
Historical Fiction
Flipping Boxcars: A Novel
by Cedric The Entertainer
Amistad, 09/12/2023
 
Babe is a charismatic and widely loved man, a gambler with a gift for gab that often gets him out of tricky situations. He's also a dreamer, something...more
Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City
by Elyssa Maxx Goodman
Hanover Square Press, 09/12/2023
 
From the lush feather boas that adorned early female impersonators to the sequined lip syncs of barroom queens to the drag kings that have us laughing...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Godkiller
by Hannah Kaner
Harper Voyager, 09/12/2023
 
Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless gods in the world—but after ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Larry McMurtry: A Life
by Tracy Daugherty
St. Martin's Press, 09/12/2023
 
In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Lucy by the Sea: A Novel
by Elizabeth Strout
Random House, 09/12/2023
 
With her trademark spare, crystalline prose—a voice infused with "intimate, fragile, desperate humanness" (Washington Post)—Elizabeth ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Monstrous
by Jessica Lewis
Delacorte Press, 09/12/2023
 
Don't go outside past dark. Come straight home after church. And above all—never, ever, go into Red Wood.

These are the rules Latavia's aunt ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Omega Farm: A Memoir
by Martha McPhee
Scribner, 09/12/2023
 
In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two almost-grown children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal
by Bettina L. Love
St. Martin's Press, 09/12/2023
 
In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan's presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Rez Ball
by Byron Graves
Heartdrum, 09/12/2023
 
These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team—even though he can't help but be ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Roaming
by Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki
Drawn & Quarterly, 09/12/2023
 
Over the course of a much-anticipated trip to New York, an unexpected fling blossoms between casual acquaintances and throws a long-term friendship ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Rouge: A Novel
by Mona Awad
Marysue Rucci Books, 09/12/2023
 
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange
by Ntozake Shange
Legacy Lit, 09/12/2023
 
In the late '60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school's literary ...more
The Asking: New and Selected Poems
by Jane Hirshfield
Knopf, 09/12/2023
 
In an era of algorithm, assertion, silo, and induced distraction, Jane Hirshfield's poems bring a much-needed awakening response, actively countering ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Death I Gave Him
by Em X. Liu
Solaris, 09/12/2023
 
Hayden Lichfield's life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased. The killer can only have been ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Devil of the Provinces
by Juan Cárdenas
Coffee House Press, 09/12/2023
 
When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly ...more
The Heart of It All
by Christian Kiefer
Melville House, 09/12/2023
 
Set in failing small town in central Ohio, The Heart of It All asks how one manages, in an America of increasing unsurety, to find a sense of family ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Meadows
by Stephanie Oakes
Dial Books, 09/12/2023
 
Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Glades, the Meadows. These are the special places where only the best and brightest go to...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Missing Morningstar: And Other Stories
by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
Torrey House Press, 09/12/2023
 
A young Navajo man catches a ride home alongside a casket he's sure contains his dead grandfather. A gas station clerk witnesses the kidnapping of the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Secret Hours
by Mick Herron
Soho Crime, 09/12/2023
 
Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service. ...more
The Stranger Upstairs: A Novel
by Lisa M. Matlin
Bantam Books, 09/12/2023
 
A therapist and self-help writer with all the answers, Sarah has just bought a gorgeous Victorian in the community of her dreams. Turns out you can ...more
Thrillers
The Vaster Wilds: A Novel
by Lauren Groff
Riverhead Books, 09/12/2023
 
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Young Man
by Annie Ernaux
Seven Stories Press, 09/12/2023
 
The Young Man is Annie Ernaux's account of her passionate love affair with A., a man some 30 years younger, when she was in her fifties. The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America
by Navied Mahdavian
Princeton Architectural Press, 09/12/2023
 
Before Navied Mahdavian moved with his wife and dog in November of 2016 from San Francisco to an off-the-grid cabin in rural Idaho, he had never ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Witch of Wild Things
by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
Berkley Books, 09/12/2023
 
Sage Flores has been running from her family—and their "gifts"—ever since her younger sister Sky died. Eight years later, Sage reluctantly...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
A Myriad of Tongues: How Languages Reveal Differences in How We Think
by Caleb Everett
Harvard University Press, 09/19/2023
 
We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But this isn't the case. When we ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement
by Ashley Shew
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/19/2023
 
When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
All the Fighting Parts
by Hannah V. Sawyerr
Amulet Books, 09/19/2023
 
Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her voice as her weapon—even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
 Debut Author
Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
by Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
Harper, 09/19/2023
 
The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
by Michael Harriot
Dey Street Books, 09/19/2023
 
America's backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Black Sheep
by Rachel Harrison
Berkley Books, 09/19/2023
 
Nobody has a "normal" family, but Vesper Wright's is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Champion of Fate: Heromaker #1
by Kendare Blake
Quill Tree Books, 09/19/2023
 
Aristene are an order of mythical female warriors. Though heroes might be immortalized in legends, it's the Aristene who guide their paths to victory....more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Father and Son: A Memoir
by Jonathan Raban
Knopf, 09/19/2023
 
In June 2011, just days before his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban was sitting down to dinner with his daughter when he found he couldn't move ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Loved and Missed
by Susie Boyt
New York Review Books, 09/19/2023
 
Ruth is a woman who believes in and despairs of the curative power of love. Her daughter, Eleanor, who is addicted to drugs, has just had a baby, Lily...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood
by Minna Dubin
Seal Press, 09/19/2023
 
Mothers aren't supposed to be angry. Still, Minna Dubin was an angry mom: exhausted by the grueling, thankless work of full-time parenting and feeling...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Mr. Texas: A Novel
by Lawrence Wright
Knopf, 09/19/2023
 
Sonny Lamb is an affable, if floundering, rancher with the unfortunate habit of becoming a punchline in his Texas hometown. Most recently, to everyone...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Night Watch: A Novel
by Jayne Anne Phillips
Knopf, 09/19/2023
 
In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell?A Heartwarming Compassionate Portrait of Injured Turtles, Perfect for Nature Lovers.
by Sy Montgomery
Mariner Books, 09/19/2023
 
When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles ...more
Science, Health and the Environment
Saving Emma: A Novel
by Allen Eskens
Mulholland, 09/19/2023
 
When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he's certain there's not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, ...more
Starter Villain
by John Scalzi
Tor Books, 09/19/2023
 
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Book of (More) Delights: Essays
by Ross Gay
Algonquin Books, 09/19/2023
 
Ross Gay's essays have been called "exquisite" (Tracy K. Smith), "imperative" (the New York Times Book Review), and "brilliant" (Ada Limón). Now,...more
The Collectors: Stories
by A.S. King
Dutton, 09/19/2023
 
From David Levithan's story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Hobbit Illustrated by the Author: Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien (Tolkien Illustrated Editions)
by J. R. R. Tolkien
William Morrow, 09/19/2023
 
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past
by Taras Grescoe
Greystone Books, 09/19/2023
 
Many of us are worried (or at least we should be) about the impacts of globalization, pollution, and biotechnology on our diets. Whether it's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Pole: A Novel
by J. M. Coetzee
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 09/19/2023
 
Exacting yet maddeningly unpredictable, J. M. Coetzee's The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, "extravagantly white-haired" ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The World Wasn't Ready for You: Stories
by Justin C. Key
Harper, 09/19/2023
 
Justin C. Key has long been obsessed with monsters. Reading R. L. Stine's Goosebumps as a kid, he imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
The Wren, the Wren: A Novel
by Anne Enright
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/19/2023
 
Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family
by Daniel Finkelstein
Doubleday, 09/19/2023
 
In Two Roads Home beloved British journalist Daniel Finkelstein tells the extraordinary story of the years before his mother met his father—...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation (A Norton Short)
by Tiya Miles
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/19/2023
 
Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15
by Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/26/2023
 
In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
An Impossible Thing to Say
by Arya Shahi
Other Press, 09/26/2023
 
Omid needs the right words to connect with his newly-met grandfather and distant Iranian heritage, words to tell a special girl what she means to him ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
 Debut Author
And Then She Fell: A Novel
by Alicia Elliott
Dutton, 09/26/2023
 
On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She's just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Black River Orchard
by Chuck Wendig
Del Rey, 09/26/2023
 
It's autumn in the town of Harrow, but something besides the season is changing there.

Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that ...more
Thrillers
Blackward
by Lawrence Lindell
Drawn & Quarterly, 09/26/2023
 
Tired of feeling like you don't belong? Join the club. It's called the Section. You'd think a spot to chill, chat, and find community would be much ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
by Brian Merchant
Little Brown & Company, 09/26/2023
 
The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson
Viking, 09/26/2023
 
At a time when the very foundations of American democracy seem under threat, the lessons of the past offer a road map for navigating a moment of ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Devil Makes Three: A Novel
by Ben Fountain
Flatiron Books, 09/26/2023
 
Haiti, 1991. When a violent coup d'état leads to the fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, American expat Matt Amaker is forced to abandon ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Enough
by Cassidy Hutchinson
Simon & Schuster, 09/26/2023
 
Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance
by Azam Ahmed
Random House, 09/26/2023
 
Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts (Bill O'Reilly's Killing Series)
by Bill O'Reilly
St. Martin's Press, 09/26/2023
 
Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lies and Other Love Languages: A Novel
by Sonali Dev
Lake Union Publishing, 09/26/2023
 
Bestselling advice columnist Vandy Guru built her career teaching others how to live honestly and courageously, but after the loss of her husband, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Murder Most Royal: A Novel (Her Majesty the Queen Investigates, 3)
by SJ Bennett
William Morrow, 09/26/2023
 
Queen Elizabeth II is looking forward to a traditional Christmas gathering with her family in Sandringham when a shocking discovery interrupts holiday...more
Thrillers
Our Philosopher
by Gert Hofmann
New York Review Books, 09/26/2023
 
Our narrator is Hans, a clever and inquisitive boy. He relates a mix of things he witnesses himself and things he hears about from his father, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
People Collide: A Novel
by Isle McElroy
HarperVia, 09/26/2023
 
When Eli leaves the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that he now inhabits ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Poem Bitten By a Man
by Brian Teare
Nightboat Books, 09/26/2023
 
A medical emergency, a road trip, a breakup, and a paean to the power of creative process—Poem Bitten by a Man is for everyone who has tried ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Shadow Speaker: The Desert Magician's Duology: Book One
by Nnedi Okorafor
DAW Books, 09/26/2023
 
Niger, West Africa, 2074

It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Armor of Light: A Novel (Kingsbridge)
by Ken Follett
Viking, 09/26/2023
 
The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Fragile Threads of Power: Threads of Power #1
by V. E. Schwab
Tor Books, 09/26/2023
 
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. Until the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Hexologists: The Hexologists #1
by Josiah Bancroft
Orbit, 09/26/2023
 
The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival
by Lisa M. Hamilton
Little Brown & Company, 09/26/2023
 
As combat rages across the highlands of Vietnam and Laos, a child is born. Ia Moua enters the world at the bottom of the social order, both because ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Iliad
by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/26/2023
 
When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017―revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Most Secret Memory of Men: A Novel
by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
Other Press, 09/26/2023
 
In 2018, Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer in Paris, discovers a legendary book from the 1930s, The Labyrinth of Inhumanity. No one ...more
Literary Fiction
The Museum of Failures
by Thrity Umrigar
Algonquin Books, 09/26/2023
 
When Remy Wadia left India for the United States, he carried his resentment of his cold and inscrutable mother with him and has kept his distance from...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Navigating Fox
by Christopher Rowe
Tor.com, 09/26/2023
 
Quintus Shu'al, the world's only navigating fox, is in disgrace after guiding an expedition to its doom, leaving no survivors. One year later, Quintus...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Times: How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism
by Adam Nagourney
Crown, 09/26/2023
 
For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Wake-Up Call
by Beth O'Leary
Berkley Books, 09/26/2023
 
It's the busiest season of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the ...more
Romance
The War of Words: How America's GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II
by Molly Guptill Manning
Blackstone Publishing, 09/26/2023
 
At a time when civilian periodicals faced strict censorship, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall won the support of President Franklin Delano ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
This Is Salvaged: Stories
by Vauhini Vara
W.W. Norton & Company, 09/26/2023
 
Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor, or ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Undiscovered: A Novel
by Gabriela Wiener
HarperVia, 09/26/2023
 
Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener confronts her complicated family heritage. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, ...more
Literary Fiction
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
by Nathan Thrall
Metropolitan Books, 10/03/2023
 
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Grove Press, 10/03/2023
 
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
A Winter in New York: A Novel
by Josie Silver
Delacorte Press, 10/03/2023
 
When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated how big the Big Apple really is—all the nostalgic ...more
Romance
After the Forest
by Kell Woods
Tor Books, 10/03/2023
 
Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.

Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Alfie and Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe
by Carl Safina
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/03/2023
 
When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife, Patricia, took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they'd rescued, she'd be...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
And Don't Look Back
by Rebecca Barrow
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 10/03/2023
 
Harlow Ford has spent her entire life running, caught in her mother's wake as they flit from town to town, hiding from a presence that Harlow isn't ...more
Before the Devil Knows You're Here
by Autumn Krause
Peachtree Publishers, 10/03/2023
 
1836, Wisconsin. Catalina lives with her pa and brother in a ramshackle cabin on the edge of the wilderness. Harsh winters have brought the family to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Brooklyn Crime Novel: A Novel
by Jonathan Lethem
Ecco, 10/03/2023
 
On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of ...more
Thrillers
Company: Stories
by Shannon Sanders
Graywolf Press, 10/03/2023
 
Shannon Sanders's sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
Curious Tides: The Drowned Gods Duology
by Pascale Lacelle
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 10/03/2023
 
Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Death Valley: A Novel
by Melissa Broder
Scribner, 10/03/2023
 
In Melissa Broder's astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Dragging Mason County
by Curtis Campbell
Annick Press, 10/03/2023
 
Peter Thompkins needs a public image overhaul. After a tense confrontation with one of the few other queer kids in his small-town high school, rumors ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
by Kevin J. Mitchell
Princeton University Press, 10/03/2023
 
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Gather
by Kenneth M. Cadow
Candlewick Press, 10/03/2023
 
Ian Gray isn't supposed to have a dog, but a lot of things that shouldn't happen end up happening anyway. And Gather, Ian's adopted pup, is good ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Glory Be: A Glory Broussard Mystery
by Danielle Arceneaux
Pegasus Books, 10/03/2023
 
It's a hot and sticky Sunday in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Glory has settled into her usual after-church routine, meeting gamblers at the local coffee ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways: A Memoir
by Brittany Means
Zibby Books, 10/03/2023
 
I can't write a story about myself as the sad, quiet child of two drug addicts. That's not how it was, even when it was. To me, sleeping in the car ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape
by Marc Masters
The University of North Carolina Press, 10/03/2023
 
The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy
by Faith Erin Hicks
First Second, 10/03/2023
 
It should have been a night of triumph for Alix's hockey team. But her mean teammate Lindsay decided to start up with her usual rude comments and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
by Safiya Sinclair
37 Ink, 10/03/2023
 
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair's father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
I've Been Thinking
by Daniel C. Dennett
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/03/2023
 
Daniel C. Dennett, preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist, has spent his career considering the thorniest, most fundamental mysteries of the ...more
Biography/Memoir
In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950
by Nick Bunker
Basic Books, 10/03/2023
 
Halfway through the twentieth century, the United States towered over the world in industrial might. After winning the 1948 election, Harry Truman ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lou Reed: The King of New York
by Will Hermes
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/03/2023
 
Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed's living presence has only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep
by Kenneth Miller
Hachette Books, 10/03/2023
 
A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein: A Novel
by Anne Eekhout
HarperVia, 10/03/2023
 
Switzerland, 1816. Anguished by the recent loss of her child, Mary spends her days in strife. But come nightfall, the friends while away rainy wine-...more
Historical Fiction
Monica
by Daniel Clowes
Fantagraphics Books, 10/03/2023
 
Monica is a series of interconnected narratives that collectively tell the life story — actually, stories — of its title character. Clowes...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Moscow X: A Novel
by David McCloskey
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/03/2023
 
CIA officers Sia and Max enter Russia under commercial cover to recruit Vladimir Putin's moneyman. Sia works for a London law firm that conceals the ...more
Night of the Witch: Witch and Hunter #1
by Sara Raasch
Sourcebooks Fire, 10/03/2023
 
Fritzi is a witch. The lone survivor of a brutal attack on her coven, she's determined to find her only remaining family member and bring the hexenj&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
One Last Kill: Tracy Crosswhite Series #10
by Robert Dugoni
Thomas & Mercer, 10/03/2023
 
Tracy Crosswhite is reopening the investigation into Seattle's Route 99 serial killer. After thirteen victims, he stopped hunting and the trail went ...more
One Puzzling Afternoon: A Novel
by Emily Critchley
Sourcebooks Landmark, 10/03/2023
 
I kept your secret Lucy. I've kept it for more than sixty years...

It is 1951, and at number six Sycamore Street fifteen-year-old Edie Green is ...more
Plan A
by Deb Caletti
Labyrinth Road, 10/03/2023
 
Ivy can't entirely believe it when the plus sign appears on the test. She didn't even know it was possible from ... what happened. But it is, and now ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Salt the Water
by Candice Iloh
Dutton for Young Readers, 10/03/2023
 
Cerulean Gene is free everywhere except school, where they're known for repeatedly challenging authority. Raised in a free-spirited home by two loving...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Starling House
by Alix E. Harrow
Tor Books, 10/03/2023
 
I dream sometimes about a house I've never seen….

Opal is a lot of things―orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Blackwoods
by Brandy Colbert
Balzer + Bray, 10/03/2023
 
The Blackwoods. Everyone knows their name.

Blossom Blackwood burst onto the silver screen in 1962, and in the decades that followed, she would ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance
by Rebecca Clarren
Viking, 10/03/2023
 
Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family's origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Dead Take the A Train: Carrion City #1
by Richard Kadrey, Cassandra Khaw
Tor Nightfire, 10/03/2023
 
Julie is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-year-old whose only retirement plan is dying early. She's been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Locked Door
by Freida McFadden
Poisoned Pen Press, 10/03/2023
 
While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement.

Until the ...more
Thrillers
The Night House: A novel
by Jo Nesbo
Knopf, 10/03/2023
 
In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the ...more
Thrillers
The Prospectors: A Novel
by Ariel Djanikian
William Morrow, 10/03/2023
 
The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Roaring Days of Zora Lily: A Novel
by Noelle Salazar
Mira Books, 10/03/2023
 
2023, The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: A costume conservator is preparing an exhibition featuring movie costumes from the 1920s ...more
Historical Fiction
The Scarlet Alchemist
by Kylie Lee Baker
Inkyard Press, 10/03/2023
 
Zilan dreams of becoming a royal alchemist, of providing for her family by making alchemical gold and gems for the wealthy to eat in order to stay ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Voice Upstairs
by Laura E. Weymouth
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 10/03/2023
 
Wilhelmina Price has a dubious reputation in the village of Thrush's Green. Ever since her mother's untimely death, she has been able to see a person'...more
Wreck the Halls: A Heartwarming Holiday Rom-Com Featuring Music Royalty and Second Chances
by Tessa Bailey
Avon Books, 10/03/2023
 
Melody Gallard may be the daughter of music royalty, but her world is far from glamorous. She spends her days restoring old books and avoiding the ...more
Romance
Bittersweet in the Hollow
by Kate Pearsall
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 10/10/2023
 
In rural Caball Hollow, surrounded by the vast National Forest, the James women serve up more than fried green tomatoes at the Harvest Moon diner, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Blackouts: A Novel
by Justin Torres
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/10/2023
 
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Breaking Through: My Life in Science
by Katalin Karikó
Crown, 10/10/2023
 
Katalin Karikó has had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karikó grew up in an adobe home that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Brooms
by Jasmine Walls
Levine Querido, 10/10/2023
 
It's 1930s Mississippi. Magic is permitted only in certain circumstances, and by certain people. Unsanctioned broom racing is banned. But for those ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Charming Young Man
by Eliot Schrefer
Katherine Tegan Books, 10/10/2023
 
They say Léon Delafosse will be France's next great pianist. But despite his being the youngest student ever accepted into the prestigious Paris ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair
by Rosa Lowinger
Row House Publishing, 10/10/2023
 
Dwell Time is a term that measures the amount of time something takes to happen – immigrants waiting at a border, human eyes on a website, the ...more
Biography/Memoir
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir
by Werner Herzog
Penguin Press, 10/10/2023
 
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Family Meal: A Novel
by Bryan Washington
Riverhead Books, 10/10/2023
 
Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion
by Sowmya Krishnamurthy
Gallery Books, 10/10/2023
 
Set in the sartorial scenes of New York, Paris, and beyond, music journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy's reporting on the intersecting histories of hip-hop...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
I Loved You in Another Life
by David Arnold
Viking Books for Younger Readers, 10/10/2023
 
Evan Taft has plans. Take a gap year in Alaska, make sure his little brother and single mother are taken care of, and continue therapy to process his ...more
Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction
by Fergus M. Bordewich
Knopf, 10/10/2023
 
The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as "the first organized terrorist movement in American history," rose from the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lies and Sorcery
by Elsa Morante
New York Review Books, 10/10/2023
 
Elsa Morante is one of the great writers of the twentieth century—Natalia Ginzburg said she was the writer of her own generation that she ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Lilith: A Novel
by Nikki Marmery
Alcove Press, 10/10/2023
 
Before Eve, there was Lilith.

Lilith and Adam are equal and happy in the Garden of Eden. Until Adam decides Lilith should submit to his will and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Look on the Bright Side
by Lily Williams, Karen Schneemann
First Second, 10/10/2023
 
Old friends. New Loves. The future is looking bright.

A new year of school is starting, and Brit finds herself struggling with feelings for a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios
by Joanna Robinson
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/10/2023
 
Marvel Entertainment was a moribund toymaker not even twenty years ago. Today, Marvel Studios is the dominant player both in Hollywood and in global ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
My Death
by Lisa Tuttle
NYRB Classics, 10/10/2023
 
The narrator of Lisa Tuttle's uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband but her muse seems to have ...more
Short Stories
My Work
by Olga Ravn
New Directions Publishing, 10/10/2023
 
After giving birth, Anna is utterly lost. She and her family move to the unfamiliar, snowy city of Stockholm. Anxiety threatens to completely engulf ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Naked: On Sex, Work, and Other Burlesques
by Fancy Feast
Algonquin Books, 10/10/2023
 
When Fancy Feast was in her high school production of "Cabaret," she convinced the director to cast her as a sexy Kit Kat Club Girl, not the old ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
Nobility in Small Things: A Surgeon's Path
by Craig R. Smith M.D.
St. Martin's Press, 10/10/2023
 
His routine was the same every day for 38 years: up at 4:15, make a turkey-on-rye, drive the deserted Henry Hudson Parkway to the hospital, check the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business
by Roxane Gay
Harper Perennial, 10/10/2023
 
Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-...more
Essays
Queen Hereafter: A Novel of Lady Macbeth
by Isabelle Schuler
Harper Perennial, 10/10/2023
 
She will be Queen. Whatever it takes ...

Daughter of an ousted king, descendant of ancient druids, Gruoch (GREW-ock), has grown up believing that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Shoot the Moon
by Isa Arsén
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/10/2023
 
How far would you travel for love?

Intelligent but isolated recent physics graduate Annie Fisk feels an undeniable pull toward space. Her childhood...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Songs of Irie
by Asha Ashanti Bromfield
Wednesday Books, 10/10/2023
 
It's 1976 and Jamaica is on fire. The country is on the eve of important elections and the warring political parties have made the divisions between ...more
Sword Catcher
by Cassandra Clare
Del Rey, 10/10/2023
 
In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, the richest of nobles and the most debauched of criminals have one thing in common: the constant search for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Christmas Fix
by Lucy Score
Bloom Books, 10/10/2023
 
There's only one thing standing in the way of Cat King saving Merry, Connecticut's Christmas festival: Grumpy town manager Noah Yates.

Single dad ...more
Romance
The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
by Stuart Stevens
Twelve Books, 10/10/2023
 
Today's Republican party is not a "normal" political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Crossing (Harry Bosch)
by Michael Connelly
Grand Central Publishing, 10/10/2023
 
Detective Harry Bosch has retired from the LAPD, but his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, needs his help. A woman has been brutally ...more
Thrillers
The Fall of Whit Rivera
by Crystal Maldonado
Holiday House, 10/10/2023
 
Frenemies Whit and Zay have been at odds for years (ever since he broke up with her in, like, the most embarrassing way imaginable), so when they're ...more
The Leftover Woman: A Compelling Exploration of Motherhood and Survival, Uncover the Secret Ties that Bind Two Women Across Worlds
by Jean Kwok
William Morrow, 10/10/2023
 
Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from her rural Chinese village without money or family support, fleeing a controlling husband, on a desperate ...more
Literary Fiction
The Prince and the Coyote
by David Bowles
Levine Querido, 10/10/2023
 
1418 – Pre-Columbian Mexico

Fifteen-year old crown prince Acolmiztli wants nothing more than to see his city-state of Tetzcoco thrive. A ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Touched
by Walter Mosley
Grove Press, 10/10/2023
 
Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Wearing My Mother's Heart
by Sophia Thakur
Candlewick Press, 10/10/2023
 
In her heartfelt second poetry collection, Sophia Thakur takes us on an emotionally charged journey through the lives of women in the past and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
What We Kept to Ourselves: A Novel
by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Atria Books, 10/10/2023
 
But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of a stranger in the backyard, carrying a letter to Sunny, leaving ...more
Literary Fiction
All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology
by Circe Moskowitz
Amberjack, 10/17/2023
 
Welcome to the Dark.

We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America
by Edwin Raymond
Viking, 10/17/2023
 
Over his decade and a half with the New York Police Department, Edwin Raymond consistently exposed the dark underbelly of modern policing, becoming ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
by Jon Meacham
Random House, 10/17/2023
 
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and ...more
Biography/Memoir
Artificial: A Love Story
by Amy Kurzweil
Catapult, 10/17/2023
 
How do we relate to—and hold—our family's past? Is it through technology? Through spirit? Art, poetry, music? Or is it through the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Black Friend: Essays
by Ziwe
Abrams Image, 10/17/2023
 
Ziwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
by Robert M. Sapolsky
Penguin Press, 10/17/2023
 
Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Distant Sons
by Tim Johnston
Algonquin Books, 10/17/2023
 
What if?

What if Sean Courtland's old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he'd never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local ...more
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir
by Curtis Chin
Little Brown & Company, 10/17/2023
 
Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung's Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone—from the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Great Falls, MT: Fast Times, Post-Punk Weirdos, and a Tale of Coming Home Again
by Reggie Watts
Tiny Reparations, 10/17/2023
 
Reggie Watts is weird. But you knew that. Anyone who's seen his multifaceted, entirely improvised comedy and music shows knows that. Reggie Watts is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Half a Cup of Sand and Sky
by Nadine Bjursten
Alder House Books, 10/17/2023
 
It is 1977, and the anti-shah protests at Tehran University are intensifying, but Amineh is not like her peers who want a say in the future of their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters
by Schuyler Bailar
Hachette Go, 10/17/2023
 
Anti-transgender legislation is being introduced in state governments around the United States in record-breaking numbers. Trans people are under ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World
by Deb Chachra
Riverhead Books, 10/17/2023
 
Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks
by Adam Nicolson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/17/2023
 
In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and ...more
I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country
by Elena Kostyuchenko
Penguin Press, 10/17/2023
 
To be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko's unrelenting attempt to document her country as experienced by those ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
by Gary J. Bass
Knopf, 10/17/2023
 
In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Let the Dead Bury the Dead: A Novel
by Allison Epstein
Doubleday, 10/17/2023
 
Saint Petersburg, 1812. Russian forces have defeated Napoleon at great cost, and the tsar's empire is once again at peace. Sasha, a captain in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
One Hundred Days: A Novel
by Alice Pung
HarperVia, 10/17/2023
 
Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother's Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days awaiting the birth of her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country
by Patricia Evangelista
Random House, 10/17/2023
 
"My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Straw Dogs of the Universe: A Novel
by Ye Chun
Catapult, 10/17/2023
 
"Heaven and earth do not pick and choose.
They see everything as straw dogs
."

A sweeping historical novel of the American West from the little-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary
by Sarah Ogilvie
Knopf, 10/17/2023
 
The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind's greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food
by Andrew Friedman
Mariner Books, 10/17/2023
 
On a typical evening, in a contemporary American restaurant, a table orders their dinner from a server. It's an exchange that happens dozens, or ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Exchange: After The Firm (The Firm Series)
by John Grisham
Doubleday, 10/17/2023
 
What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is ...more
Thrillers
The Forgers: The Forgotten Story of the Holocaust's Most Audacious Rescue Operation
by Roger Moorhouse
Basic Books, 10/17/2023
 
Between 1940 and 1943, a group of Polish diplomats in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable—and until now, completely unknown—...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative
by Gregg Hecimovich
Ecco, 10/17/2023
 
In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
by Stuart A. Reid
Knopf, 10/17/2023
 
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA
by Liza Mundy
Crown, 10/17/2023
 
Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA's ...more
Biography/Memoir
The Unmaking of June Farrow: A Novel
by Adrienne Young
Delacorte Press, 10/17/2023
 
In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Witches at the End of the World
by Chelsea Iversen
Sourcebooks Landmark, 10/17/2023
 
Rage burns brighter than any spellfire…

Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
These Burning Stars: The Kindom Trilogy #1
by Bethany Jacobs
Orbit, 10/17/2023
 
On a dusty backwater planet, occasional thief Jun Ironway has gotten her hands on the score of a lifetime: a secret that could raze the Kindom, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays
by John Lee Clark
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/17/2023
 
Born Deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, John Lee Clark learned to embrace the possibilities of his tactile world. He is on the...more
Tremor: A Novel
by Teju Cole
Kids@Random, 10/17/2023
 
Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling.

A weekend spent ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Here Lies Olive
by Kate Anderson
North Star Editions, 10/20/2023
 
Growing up in the dark tourism capital of the United States, sixteen-year-old Olive should be comfortable with death. But ever since an allergic ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing
by Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt and Company, 10/24/2023
 
In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own ...more
America Fantastica: A Novel
by Tim O'Brien
Mariner Books, 10/24/2023
 
At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.

"How much is on hand, would ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Hercule Poirot's Silent Night: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery
by Sophie Hannah
William Morrow, 10/24/2023
 
It's December 19, 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday, when they are ...more
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
by Adam Grant
Viking, 10/24/2023
 
We live in a world that's obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Jane and the Final Mystery: Being a Jane Austen Mystery
by Stephanie Barron
Soho Crime, 10/24/2023
 
March 1817: As winter turns to spring, Jane Austen's health is in slow decline, and threatens to cease progress on her latest manuscript. But when her...more
King of Greed (Kings of Sin, 3)
by Ana Huang
Bloom Books, 10/24/2023
 
Powerful, brilliant, and ambitious, Dominic Davenport clawed his way up from nothing to become the King of Wall Street.

He has everything―a ...more
Romance
Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins - From Spices to Vices
by Noah Whiteman
Little, Brown Spark, 10/24/2023
 
A deadly secret lurks within our spice racks, medicine cabinets, backyard gardens, and private stashes.

Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
On Marriage
by Devorah Baum
Yale University Press, 10/24/2023
 
"As far back as our history books go, we have no record of a time preceding marriage. Isn't that an extraordinary fact?" So writes Devorah Baum in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
by Matt Singer
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/24/2023
 
On a cold Saturday afternoon in 1975, two men (who had known each other for eight years before they'd ever exchanged a word) met for lunch in a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement
by Tanisha Ford
Amistad, 10/24/2023
 
Our Secret Society brilliantly illuminates a little known yet highly significant aspect of the civil rights movement that has been long overlooked&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream
by David Leonhardt
Random House, 10/24/2023
 
Two decades into the twenty-first century, the stagnation of living standards has become the defining trend of American life. Life expectancy has ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Pay as You Go
by Eskor David Johnson
McSweeney's Books, 10/24/2023
 
New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he'...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sonic Life: A Memoir
by Thurston Moore
Doubleday, 10/24/2023
 
Thurston Moore moved to Manhattan's East Village in 1978 with a yearning for music. He wanted to be immersed in downtown New York's sights and sounds&...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
by Margaret Renkl
Spiegel & Grau, 10/24/2023
 
In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over ...more
The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories
by Kij Johnson
Small Beer Press, 10/24/2023
 
The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson's speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Search for Us: A Novel
by Susan Azim Boyer
Wednesday Books, 10/24/2023
 
Samira Murphy will do anything to keep her fractured family from falling apart, including caring for her widowed grandmother and getting her older ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
by Michael Willrich
Basic Books, 10/31/2023
 
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Black Punk Now
by Chris L. Terry
Soft Skull Press, 10/31/2023
 
Black Punk Now is an anthology of contemporary nonfiction, fiction, illustrations, and comics that collectively describe punk today and give punks&#...more
Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided
by Scott Eyman
Simon & Schuster, 10/31/2023
 
Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin's fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust
by Neal Shusterman
Graphix, 10/31/2023
 
Courage to Dream plunges readers into the Holocaust - one of the greatest atrocities in human history - delving into the core of what it means to face...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Dirty Thirty (30) (Stephanie Plum)
by Janet Evanovich
Atria Books, 10/31/2023
 
Stephanie Plum, Trenton's hardest working, most underappreciated bounty hunter, is offered an assignment that seems simple enough. Local jeweler ...more
Thrillers
Edith Holler: A Novel
by Edward Carey
Riverhead Books, 10/31/2023
 
The year is 1901. England's beloved queen has died, and her aging son has finally taken the throne. In the eastern city of Norwich, bright and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science
by Catherine McNeur
Basic Books, 10/31/2023
 
In Mischievous Creatures, historian Catherine McNeur uncovers the lives and work of Margaretta Hare Morris and Elizabeth Carrington Morris, sisters ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
People to Follow: A Novel
by Olivia Worley
Wednesday Books, 10/31/2023
 
A reality show on a remote Caribbean island. Ten teen influencers. One dead body.

Welcome to "In Real Life," the hot new reality show that forces ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sinner's Isle
by Angela Montoya
Joy Revolution, 10/31/2023
 
Rosalinda is trapped on Sinner's Isle, an island filled with young women like her—Majestics, beautiful witches loathed by society for their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
The Berry Pickers: A Novel
by Amanda Peters
Catapult, 10/31/2023
 
July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Body of the Soul: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
by Ludmila Ulitskaya
Yale University Press, 10/31/2023
 
While we can feel, know, and study the body, the soul refuses definition. Where does it begin and end? What does the soul have to do with love? Does ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Glutton: A Novel
by A.K. Blakemore
Scribner, 10/31/2023
 
1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The House of Love and Death: Cameron Winter Mysteries
by Andrew Klavan
Mysterious Press, 10/31/2023
 
Cameron Winter is known for having a sense about crime. His background as a spy trained his mind—and his body—for action, and his current ...more
The Race to Be Myself: A Memoir
by Caster Semenya
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/31/2023
 
Olympian and World Champion Caster Semenya is finally ready to share the vivid and heartbreaking story of how the world came to know her name. Thrust ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Space Between Here & Now
by Sarah Suk
Quill Tree Books, 10/31/2023
 
Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Spy Coast: A Martini Club Thriller
by Tess Gerritsen
Thomas & Mercer, 11/01/2023
 
Former spy Maggie Bird came to the seaside village of Purity, Maine, eager to put the past behind her after a mission went tragically wrong. These ...more
The Shepherd
by Frederick Forsyth
Penguin Books, 11/02/2023
 
As his mind drifts toward yuletide and home, he gradually realizes he is flying into a pilot's worst nightmare: his compass and radio stopped working,...more
Thrillers
A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous
by Caspar Henderson
University Of Chicago Press, 11/03/2023
 
The crackling of a campfire. The scratch, hiss, and pop of a vinyl record. The first glug of wine as it is poured from a bottle. These are just a few ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
by Kelly Weinersmith
Penguin Press, 11/07/2023
 
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
A Death in Malta: An Assassination and a Family's Quest for Justice
by Paul Caruana Galizia
Riverhead Books, 11/07/2023
 
An archipelago off the southern coast of Italy, Malta is a picturesque gem eroded by a climate of corruption, polarization, inequality, and a virtual ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
A Grandmother Begins the Story
by Michelle Porter
Algonquin Books, 11/07/2023
 
Written like a crooked Métis jig, A Grandmother Begins the Story follows five generations of women and bison as they reach for the stories that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A Nearby Country Called Love: A Novel
by Salar Abdoh
Viking, 11/07/2023
 
Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Power Unbound: The Last Binding # 3
by Freya Marske
Tor.com, 11/07/2023
 
Secrets! Magic! Enemies to...something more?

Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire
by Emma Southon
Abrams Press, 11/07/2023
 
The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of "The Doing of Important Things," and as far as Roman historians have ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Above the Salt: A Novel
by Katherine Vaz
Flatiron Books, 11/07/2023
 
John Alves, son of a famous Presbyterian martyr on the Portuguese island of Madeira, spends his childhood in jail and in poverty. When he meets Mary ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Again and Again: A Novel
by Jonathan Evison
Dutton, 11/07/2023
 
Eugene "Geno" Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy
by Shibani Mahtani
Hachette Books, 11/07/2023
 
Hong Kong was an experiment in governance. Handed back to China in 1997 after 156 years of British rule, it was meant to be a carve-out between ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story-The True Story of a Journalist's Investigation into a Fraternity Drug Ring
by Max Marshall
Harper, 11/07/2023
 
When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. ...more
True Crime
Baumgartner
by Paul Auster
Atlantic Monthly Press, 11/07/2023
 
Baumgartner's life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, ...more
Literary Fiction
Books Make Good Friends
by Jane Mount
Chronicle Books, 11/07/2023
 
Lotti isn't sure she wants to make friends. She's shy, and she doesn't really know how. While everyone around her is playful, outgoing, and loud, ...more
Graphic Novels
Check & Mate
by Ali Hazelwood
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 11/07/2023
 
Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory's ...more
Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
by Stephanie Land
Atria Books, 11/07/2023
 
When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir Maid, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work
by Jesse David Fox
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/07/2023
 
Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Emmett
by L. C. Rosen
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 11/07/2023
 
Emmett Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and...more
Finding My Elf
by David Valdes
HarperTeen, 11/07/2023
 
Escaping to NYU for college didn't turn out the way Cameron planned—he's flunking his theater classes, about to lose his scholarship, and he ...more
Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
by H. W. Brands
Doubleday, 11/07/2023
 
To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Gorgeous Gruesome Faces
by Linda Cheng
Roaring Brook Press, 11/07/2023
 
You'll love them to death...

THEN:

Sunny Lee is on the top of the world. She's one third of Sweet Cadence, the hottest up-and-coming teen pop ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology
by Philip Ball
University Of Chicago Press, 11/07/2023
 
Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works—the idea of the genome as a...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins
by Helena de Bres
Bloomsbury Publishing, 11/07/2023
 
Wait, are you you or the other one? Which is the evil twin? Have you ever switched partners? Can you read each other's mind? Twins get asked the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Iron Flame (The Empyrean, 2)
by Rebecca Yarros
Entangled, 11/07/2023
 
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College―Violet included. But Threshing was only the first ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet's Life
by David Yezzi
St. Martin's Press, 11/07/2023
 
Anthony Hecht (1923-2004) was one of America's greatest poets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and widely recognized as a master of formal verse that ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Murtagh: The World of Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle)
by Christopher Paolini
Knopf, 11/07/2023
 
The world is no longer safe for the Dragon Rider Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn. An evil king has been toppled, and they are left to face the ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
My Name Is Barbra
by Barbra Streisand
Viking, 11/07/2023
 
Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Pedro and Marques Take Stock: A Picaresque Novel
by José Falero
Astra House, 11/07/2023
 
In the favelas of Porto Alegre, Brazil, marijuana is hard to come by. Supermarket stock clerks Pedro and Marques spend their days unloading trucks, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe
by George Musser
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/07/2023
 
The whole goal of physics is to explain what we observe. For centuries, physicists believed that observations yielded faithful representations of what...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Resurrection Walk (A Lincoln Lawyer Novel)
by Michael Connelly
Little Brown & Company, 11/07/2023
 
Defense attorney Mickey Haller is back, taking the long shot cases, where the chances of winning are one in a million. After getting a wrongfully ...more
Thrillers
Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel
by Ed Park
Random House, 11/07/2023
 
In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Shot With Crimson: A Josephine Tey Mystery
by Nicola Upson
Crooked Lane Books, 11/07/2023
 
September 1939, and the worries of war follow Josephine Tey to Hollywood, where a different sort of battle is raging on the set of Hitchcock's Rebecca...more
Skeletons in the Closet (New York Review Classics)
by Jean-Patrick Manchette
NYRB Classics, 11/07/2023
 
Private eye Eugéne Tarpon is back to sleeping in his office, waiting for a paying job to turn up. Then he gets a call from a sometime contact in ...more
Thrillers
Sweet Thing: A Novel
by David Swinson
Mulholland, 11/07/2023
 
In a red brick house on a tree-lined street, DC homicide detective Alex Blum stares at the bullet-pocked body of Chris Doyle. As he roots around for ...more
The Corset & The Jellyfish: A Conundrum of Drabbles
by Nick Bantock
Tachyon Publications, 11/07/2023
 
Little is known of the fascinating manuscript that Nick Bantock has come to possess. It was discovered in an attic in North London, stuffed into a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Liberators
by E. J. Koh
Tin House Books, 11/07/2023
 
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Lost Bookshop
by Evie Woods
HarperCollins Publishers, 11/07/2023
 
"The thing about books," she said "is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of."

On a quiet street in ...more
Literary Fiction
The Night Parade: A Speculative Memoir
by Jami Nakamura Lin
Mariner Books, 11/07/2023
 
Are these the only two stories? The one, where you defeat your monster, and the other, where you succumb to it?

Jami Nakamura Lin spent much of her...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Vulnerables: A Novel
by Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Books, 11/07/2023
 
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez's ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
We Are the Crisis: Convergence Saga # 2
by Cadwell Turnbull
Blackstone Publishing, 11/07/2023
 
Three years after the Monster Massacre, members of Rebecca's old wolf pack have begun to go missing without a trace.

The world has undergone many ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork
by Witold Szablowski
Penguin Books, 11/07/2023
 
In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szabłowski has tracked down—and broken bread with—people whose...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
by Edel Rodriguez
Metropolitan Books, 11/07/2023
 
Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
 Debut Author
IF HEADSTONES COULD TALK: Stories from the Early Days of Dodge City
by Mary S. Schartz
Independently published, 11/12/2023
 
It should be more than memorizing dates and who won what battle. Of course, those are important, but I believe history can come alive when you know ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Very Inconvenient Scandal: A Novel
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Mira Books, 11/14/2023
 
Stunned by her recently widowed father's reckless behavior, a young woman must learn to navigate a new world—where the people she should trust ...more
America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy
by Dr. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar
Basic Books, 11/14/2023
 
Atlanta is home to some of America's most prominent Black politicians, artists, businesses, and HBCUs. Yet, in 1861, Atlanta was a final contender to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Day: A Novel
by Michael Cunningham
Random House, 11/14/2023
 
April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open
by Angela Hume
AK Press, 11/14/2023
 
Starting in the 1970s, small groups of feminist activists met regularly to study anatomy, practice pelvic exams on each other, and learn how to safely...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Eyeliner: A Cultural History
by Zahra Hankir
Penguin Books, 11/14/2023
 
From the distant past to the present, with fingers and felt-tipped pens, metallic powders and gel pots, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Her Side of the Story
by Alba de Céspedes
Astra House, 11/14/2023
 
As she looks back on her life, Alessandra Corteggiani recalls her youth during the rise of fascism in Italy, the resistance, and the fall of Mussolini...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Other Minds and Other Stories
by Bennett Sims
Two Dollar Radio, 11/14/2023
 
A man lends his phone to a stranger in the mall, setting off an uncanny series of Unknown calls that come to haunt his relationship with jealousy and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Pritty
by Keith F. Miller Jr.
HarperTeen, 11/14/2023
 
On the verge of summer before his senior year, Jay is a soft soul in a world of concrete. While his older brother is everything people expect a man to...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men
by Claire Keegan
Grove Press, 11/14/2023
 
Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, considered "among the form's most masterful practitioners" (New York Times), Claire Keegan now gifts us ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Stockholm: A Novel
by Noa Yedlin
HarperVia, 11/14/2023
 
Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There's just one problem—he's dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Dark Is Rising (2) (The Dark Is Rising Sequence)
by Susan Cooper
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 11/14/2023
 
The day before Will Stanton's eleventh birthday, he notices strange omens on his family farm: a cryptic gift, a terrifying flock of birds, and a deep,...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs
by David Runciman
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 11/14/2023
 
Countless books, news reports, and opinion pieces have announced the impending arrival of artificial intelligence, with most claiming that it will ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Helsinki Affair
by Anna Pitoniak
Simon & Schuster, 11/14/2023
 
Spying is the family business. Amanda Cole is a brilliant young CIA officer following in the footsteps of her father, who was a spy during the Cold ...more
Literary Fiction
The Little Liar: A Novel
by Mitch Albom
Harper, 11/14/2023
 
Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis never told a lie. When the Nazi's invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America
by Daniel Schulman
Knopf, 11/14/2023
 
Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The New Naturals
by Gabriel Bump
Algonquin Books, 11/14/2023
 
An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman bereft after the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Breaking Trey (Reign of the Underground)
by Amelia Shea
Independently published, 11/15/2023
 
Her roommate just bailed before paying next month's rent, and her bank account registers almost a zero balance. Her only shot at survival lies in the ...more
Romance
Archer's Voice
by Mia Sheridan
Forever, 11/21/2023
 
I wanted to lose myself in the small town of Pelion, Maine. To forget everything I had left behind. The sound of rain. The blood. The coldness of a ...more
Romance
November 1942: An Intimate History of the Turning Point of World War II
by Peter Englund
Knopf, 11/21/2023
 
At the beginning of November 1942, it looked as if the Axis powers could still win the Second World War; at the end of that month, it was obviously ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Sailing the Graveyard Sea: The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy's Only Mutiny, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation
by Richard Snow
Scribner, 11/21/2023
 
On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in Brooklyn Harbor at the end of a cruise intended to teach a group of adolescents the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I
by Steven Ujifusa
Harper, 11/21/2023
 
Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Warrior of the Wind: The Nameless Republic #2
by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
Orbit, 11/21/2023
 
There is no peace in the season of the Red Emperor.

Traumatized by their escape from Bassa, Lilong and Danso have found safety in a vagabond colony...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Godly Heathens: The Ouroboros #1
by H.E. Edgmon
Wednesday Books, 11/28/2023
 
Maybe I have always just been bad at being human because I'm not one.

Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
No One Left But You
by Tash McAdam
Soho Teen, 11/28/2023
 
BEFORE. Newly out trans guy Max is having a hard time in school. Things have been tough since his summer romance, Danny, turned into his bully. This ...more
The Kingdom of Sweets: A Novel of the Nutcracker
by Erika Johansen
Dutton, 11/28/2023
 
Light and dark—this is the cursed birthright placed upon Clara and Natasha by their godfather, Drosselmeyer, whose power and greed hold an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Last Love Note: A Novel
by Emma Grey
Zibby Books, 11/28/2023
 
Kate is a bit of a mess. Two years after losing her young husband Cameron, she's grieving, solo parenting, working like mad at her university ...more
Romance
The Mystery Guest: A Maid Novel (Molly the Maid)
by Nita Prose
Ballantine Books, 11/28/2023
 
Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star ...more
Mysteries
The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story
by Sam Wasson
Harper, 11/28/2023
 
Francis Ford Coppola is one of the great American dreamers, and his most magnificent dream is American Zoetrope, the production company he founded in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
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