Illustration ©2024 James Weston Lewis

Jill Cox-Cordova l Associate Editor, LJ Reviews

Narratives about social injustices seemingly have no end. Many fall titles tackle the issues by giving insight and perspectives from authors who unflinchingly expose the problems and motivate readers to do something to make life better for all. For example, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a new nonfiction work for the first time in a decade, The Message (One World), which shows how realities have been shaped and bent by the stories (the fables, the hidden histories, the myths) people tell themselves and each other about censorship, oppression, and other suppressions. Tiffany Yu’sThe Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World (Hachette Go) urges readers to check their biases, change the words they use, and make workplaces inclusive and accessible to all. By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (Harper) by Rebecca Nagle combines a history lesson with an examination of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled on the fight to regain tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. Speaking of the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offers insight into how she became the first Black woman to be appointed to the nation’s highest court in Lovely One (Random). Oliver Radclyffe’s poignant memoir Frighten the Horses (Roxane Gay Bks.) discusses the intersectionality of gender, sexual orientation, family dynamics, and acceptance of self in his story of coming of age as a trans man.

Melissa DeWild l Editor, LJ Reviews

The popularity of Formula 1 racing has found its way into romance novels, with several out this fall: Double Apex (Forever) by Josie Juniper, Off Track (Avon) by Esha Patel, and Fast & Reckless (Slowburn: Zando) by Amanda Weaver. There’s also a nonfiction book that goes behind the lines with the Mercedes F1 team: Matt Whyman’s Inside Mercedes F1 (Crown) is set to publish the week before the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November. Two highly anticipated cookbooks perfect for the autumn season are restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi’s Ottolenghi Comfort (Ten Speed), which reimagines classic recipes, and beloved baker Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Afternoon Sweets: With Snacking Cakes, Brownies, Blondies, and More (Chronicle). Holiday fiction also starts appearing in early fall. Two highlights include Make the Season Bright (Berkley) by Ashley Herring Blake, featuring Christmas cheer and an emotional second-chance lesbian romance, and Ally Carter’s on-trend romystery The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year (Avon), which finds two rival mystery writers investigating a locked-room disappearance at a remote English country house and falling in love.

Liz French l Senior Editor, LJ Reviews

Look forward to Vanity Fair contributing editor Lili Anolik’s dual biography of Californian writers Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, aptly titled Didion & Babitz (Scribner). Anolik has covered half this beat before; her 2019 bio Hollywood’s Eve seemed like the last word on Babitz, until a cache of unsent correspondence found in Babitz’s apartment after her death led Anolik to examine the curious frenemyship of Didion and Babitz, mostly through Babitz’s fanciful yet astute viewpoint. Moving from late ’60s and early ’70s California to that other coast, there’s Dustin Pittman: New York After Dark (Rizzoli), by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha, in which prolific photographer Pittman gives readers a you-are-there look at star-studded nightlife in ’70s and ’80s NYC, a scene that looks more fun than nowadays. There’s also new crime fiction from big names that readers will be dying to crack into: Alter Ego (Flatiron), Alex Segura’s follow-up to his sensational comics-inflected Secret Identity; “Thursday Murder Club” author Richard Osman’s stand-alone (or could it be a new series starter? Yes, please!), We Solve Murders (Pamela Dorman: Viking); and The Murderess (Little A), Laurie Notaro’s take on a grisly real-life double murder in 1931 Phoenix. Fans of fictionalized true crime may want to compare Notaro’s novelization to Megan Abbott’s 2009 novel Bury Me Deep, which covers the same shocking incident. On a less murderous note, but still keeping it vintage, fashionistas will drool over Azzedine Alaïa: A Couturier’s Collection (Thames & Hudson) by Miren Arzalluz and Olivier Saillard, which accompanies a Paris exhibition of the late designer’s extensive, secret couture acquisitions, from Poiret and House of Worth to McQueen and Gaultier.

Sarah Hashimoto l Editor, LJ Reviews

This fall finds exemplary nature writing that explores human connections with the natural world. A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery (Greystone) is wildlife biologist Diane K. Boyd’s debut memoir, documenting the evolving challenges of wolf management and her decades-long work studying wolves in Montana. Kevin Grange, a former paramedic and park ranger, highlights the formidable grizzly bear in his latest, Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator (Harper Horizon). On the other end of the spectrum, naturalist Sy Montgomery takes readers into the remarkable lives of backyard chickens with What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird (Atria). Leigh Ann Henion unveils the wonders of the night in Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark (Algonquin), describing little-observed wonders such as gigantic moths, bioluminescent mushrooms, and migratory salamanders. Meanwhile, in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World (Scribner), Edward Dolnick takes readers to the early 1800s, when unconventional adventurers, naturalists, and bone hunters discovered the existence of dinosaurs and overturned accepted wisdom concerning humankind’s relationship with the rest of the natural world. Oxford fellow Katherine Rundell’s stunningly illustrated Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures (Doubleday) considers amazing animals that are currently facing extinction, from matriarchal troops of lemurs to seahorses, who mate for life and dance with each other at the beginning of each day.

Sarah Wolberg l Associate Editor, LJ Reviews

As basketball season approaches, suggest Why So Serious?: The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokic (Harper) by Mike Singer, a biography of the enigmatic Serbian basketball star, and Courtside: 40 Years of NBA Photography (Abrams) by Nathaniel Butler, one of basketball’s premier photographers. Marijam Did investigates another kind of sport in Everything To Play For: How Video Games Are Changing the World (Verso), which looks at the multibillion-dollar video game industry (built on the labor of poorly paid “click workers” and miners of the rare metals that go into consoles and computers), as well as the communities that surround particular games; it would pair well with Tore C. Olsson’s Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past (St. Martin’s). Delving into another mainstay of internet culture, online dating, is Patsy Tarr’s Operation Match: Jeff Tarr and the Invention of Computer Dating (2wice), about the college student who, in 1962, invented the world’s first computer dating service. In the world of art, there’s At the Louvre: Poems by 100 Contemporary World Poets (NYRB), poems inspired by works in the Paris museum’s collection; Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema  (Delmonico/Academy Museum of Motion Pictures), a history of color films from the 1890s to today, edited by Jessica Niebel and Sophia Serrano; and The African Decor Edit: Collecting and Decorating with Heritage Objects (Abrams) by Nasozi Kakembo, which shows how to use ethically sourced African objects—Zambian baskets, Malian mudcloths, Moroccan rugs—to decorate a home in a thoughtful and culturally sensitive way.

Neal Wyatt l Reviews Director, LJ

Magical-cozy books across genres simply delight, and there are several to look forward to: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping (Berkley) by Sangu Mandanna, following her LJ Best Book The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches; Marigold Mind Laundry (Dial) by Jungeun Yun, tr. from Korean by Shanna Tan; and The Crescent Moon Tearoom (Atria) by Stacy Sivinski. Not exactly cozy but decidedly magical is The Wood at Midwinter (Bloomsbury), Susanna Clarke’s new short story. It’s being released in part to mark the 20th anniversary of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which will be reissued in October in a new paperback edition with an introduction by V.E. Schwab. For anyone who is lucky enough to be reading Jonathan Strange for the first time: it’s a mix of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and what surely must be a pilfered pail of fairy dust. Meanwhile, fans of Rebecca Yarros’s genre-changing romantasy series “The Empyrean” might feel as if it has been decades since her last book; they’ll be lining up for the third in the series, coming this January: Onyx Storm (Entangled: Red Tower). In nonfiction, there is a long list of cooking and food books not to miss; one to note is Julia Child’s Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space (Abrams), written by Paula Johnson, director of the American Food History Project at the Smithsonian. Additional nonfiction titles that both teach and inspire include The Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition (Rizzoli Electa) by Asia Graziano, a work of micro-photography published on the occasion of a new immersive exhibition; The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (Atlantic Monthly) by Dava Sobel, who helped create the audience for narrative nonfiction; and Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me (Ballantine) by Glory Edim, founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club and podcast and author of the LJ Best Book Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves.