The October 2022 Prepub Alert posts are also available as a downloadable spreadsheet of titles.  

Mystery

Alexander, Tasha. Secrets of the Nile. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Lady Emily Mystery, Bk. 16). Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250819697. $27.99. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Andrews, Donna. Dashing Through the Snowbirds. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Meg Langslow Mysteries, Bk. 32). Oct. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250760227. $26.99. MYSTERY/COZY

Beaton, M.C. & R.W. Green. Devil’s Delight. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Agatha Raisin Mysteries, Bk. 33). Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781250816160. $26.99. MYSTERY/COZY

Haines. Carolyn. Bones of Holly. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Sarah Booth Delaney Mysteries, Bk. 25). Oct. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250833754. $26.99. MYSTERY/COZY

Longworth, M.L. Disaster at the Vendome Theater. Penguin. (Provençal Mystery, Bk. 10). Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780143135302. $17. MYSTERY/INTERNATIONAL

McKinlay, Jenn. The Plot and the Pendulum. Berkley. (Library Lover’s Mystery, Bk. 13). Oct. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593101803. $27. CD. MYSTERY/COZY

Rendon, Marcie R. Sinister Graves. (Cash Blackbear Mystery, Bk. 3). Soho Crime. Oct. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9781641293839. $27.95. MYSTERY

Rosenfelt, David. Santa’s Little Yelpers. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Oct. 2022. ISBN 9781250828811. $25.99. CD. MYSTERY

A British antiquities lover, Lord Bertram Deeley drops dead on a cruise he’s organized to his luxurious Luxor home, and guest Lady Emily (an Alexander stalwart) has a horde of suspects—and a link to a millennia-old crime—to consider as she uncovers the Secrets of the Nile (40,000-copy first printing). Delightfully fowl-mouthed best seller Andrews sends readers Dashing Through the Snowbirds as Meg Langslow hosts a group of Canadians forced by a nasty boss to work far from home over Christmas, then investigates when the boss is murdered (40,000-copy first printing). Green again takes the reins from the late, formidable Beaton in Devil’s Delight, with Agatha Raisin and colleague Toni encountering a naked young man who claims hysterically that he has stumbled upon a dead body near the Mircester Naturist Club, though no body can be found when the police huffily arrive (75,000-copy first printing). In Haines’s Bones of Holly, effervescent private eye Sarah Booth Delaney and colleague Tinkie head to Bay St. Louis, MS, to judge the annual library tree-decorating contest with Sandra O’Day and Janet Malone—writers who are bitter rivals and one of whom soon disappears (40,000-copy first printing). A lawyer friend of Aix-en-Provence’s examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque is thrilled to participate in a local theater production starring a legendary actress, but an indifferent leading man, a scatterbrained director, and finally a missing actor add up to Disaster at the Vendome Theater. (Longworth’s series now appears on BritBox featuring two very British actors.) In the New York Times best-selling McKinlay’s The Plot and the Pendulum, library director Lindsey Norris unearths a skeleton at the Dorchester family estate, where she is cataloging a huge bequest to the Briar Creek Public Library. From Pinckley Prize–winning Rendon, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Sinister Graves brings back young Ojibwe woman Cash Blackbear, who helps her sheriff guardian investigate when the body of an unidentified Indigenous woman is swept into town by the ferocious floodwaters of a sudden snowmelt. In Rosenfelt’s latest, Santa’s Little Yelpers—a litter of puppies at lawyer Andy Carpenter’s dog-rescuing Tara Foundation—are being fostered by volunteer Scott Tillman, formerly imprisoned, who’s discovered evidence that would exonerate him of the crime he insists he didn’t commit (50,000-copy first printing).

Literary Fiction  

Banville, John. The Singularities. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780525655176. $30. LITERARY

Newly named, newly released from prison, and driving a borrowed sports car, a man arrives on the estate where he grew up to find a new family—the Godleys, descendants of the celebrated scientist whose theories radically reformulated perceptions of the universe. Booker Prize winner Banville himself shifts perceptions of life, death, and looking back.

Belcourt, Billy-Ray. A Minor Chorus. Norton. Oct. 2022. 176p. ISBN 9781324021421. pap. $15.95. LITERARY

A Lamba Literary Award winner and Canada’s top-selling poet (see the LJ best-booked NDN Coping Mechanisms), Belcourt crafts a debut novel about a queer Indigenous doctoral student in Northern Alberta who temporarily deserts his dissertation to write a novel. Meanwhile, he converses with the closeted Michael and fellow student River, frustrated by the pressures on marginalized scholars, and ponders a cousin trapped in the awful cycle of police violence, drugs, and despair.

Cohen, Leonard. A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories. Grove. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780802160478. $27. LITERARY

Including 15 short stories, a radio play, and an unpublished novel, this collection of literary work by legendary musician Cohen sums up the themes seen in his songs: longing and desire, a relentless battle with one’s demons, and a questioning of one’s worth.

Irving, John. The Last Chairlift. S. & S. Oct. 2022. 912p. ISBN 9781501189272. $35. CD. LITERARY

In 1941 Aspen, slalom skier Rachel Brewster fails to place well at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships but gets pregnant, returning home to become a ski instructor and raise son Adam in unconventional fashion. As an adult, Adam returns to Aspen to investigate his past and encounters real ghosts. The celebrated Irving’s first novel in seven years.

Kingsolver, Barbara. Demon Copperhead. Harper. Oct. 2022. 560p. ISBN 9780063251922. $29.99. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

A boy born to a single, teenage mother grows up tough in Appalachia, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for surviving foster care, child labor, and terrible schools while balancing athletic triumph with heartbreak and addiction. What matters most: his rural roots ultimately render him invisible to society. A contemporaneous David Copperfield; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Passenger. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780307268990. $30. lrg. prnt. CD. Downloadable LITERARY

McCarthy, Cormac. Stella Maris. Knopf. Nov. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780307269003. $26. lrg. prnt. CD. Downloadable. LITERARY

National treasure McCarthy returns with a two-volume work being released over two months. In The Passenger, opening in 1980 Mississippi, a salvage diver now fears the water’s depths and a conspiracy he doesn’t understand, wishing he were dead yet not at peace with God. In Stella Maris, Alicia Western, a 20-year-old doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, checks into a hospital in 1972 Wisconsin after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and wonders at our insistence on shared experience, shot through with the beauties of physics and philosophy, while fearing for a brother beyond her reach.

McCracken, Elizabeth. The Hero of This Book. Ecco. Oct. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9780062971272. $26.99. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Traveling from New England to London and walking its winding streets, a writer contemplates the life of her recently deceased mother and their relationship, marveling at her mother’s stubborn conquest of her troubles while feeling that her profound need for privacy is being violated by even chronicling these thoughts. From National Book Award finalist McCracken; with a 125,000-copy first printing.

Millet, Lydia. Dinosaurs. Norton. Oct. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9781324021469. $26.95. LITERARY

Following The Children’s Bible, among the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2020, Millet uses the lives of humans and other animals in the desert to contemplate the difference we can make in the cosmos. Her focus: one Arizona man’s relationship with the family next door, whose actions he knows because their house has a wall fashioned entirely of glass.

Ng, Celeste. Our Missing Hearts. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593492543. $29. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Bird Gardner lives quietly with his shattered father in a society ferociously intent on preserving “American culture” after years of violence and economic chaos, with books that are seen as unpatriotic suppressed and the children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, sometimes forcibly relocated from their homes. Now he wants to find his mother, a banned Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. From Little Fires Everywhere author Ng.

Pamuk, Orhan. Nights of Plague. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 704p. tr. from Turkish by Ekin Oklap. ISBN 9780525656890. $32.50. CD. LITERARY

In 1900, plague arrives on an imaginary island that belongs to the Ottoman Empire and is split between Muslims and Orthodox Greeks. Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II first sends his top quarantine expert, an Orthodox Christian whose strict measures are flouted by some Muslims, then sends a Muslim doctor whose strict measures are flouted by local administrators. Blisteringly relevant writing from the Nobel Prize winner.

Quinn, Joanna. The Whalebone Theatre. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 560p. ISBN 9780593321706. $29. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

In 1928, a whale washes ashore along the English Channel, and 12-year-old orphan Cristabel Seagrave persuades residents of Chilcombe manor where she lives to make a theater of its grand ribcage. Years later, she and Digby, the Chilcombe heir, become secret agents in Nazi-occupied France. A debut bought in a four-way auction in the UK, getting its chance here.

Saunders, George. Liberation Day: Stories. Random. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780525509592. $28. CD. LITERARY

MacArthur fellow, Booker Prize winner, and short fiction genius Saunders returns with a pungent collection featuring characters ranging from a man advising his grandson during futuristic dystopian times, an octogenarian whose memory has been scraped in a project to reprogram the less fortunate as political protesters, and a man working the hell-themed section of an amusement park who starts rethinking his presumptions in life.

Schweblin, Samanta. Seven Empty Houses. Oct. 2022. 208p. tr. from Spanish by Megan McDowell. ISBN 9780525541394. $25. LITERARY

Thrice an International Booker Prize finalist, Buenos Aire–born, Berlin-based Schweblin made her name in Latin American literature with this book, appearing for the first time in English. The seven stories feature seven houses empty of something—love, memory, or furniture—and the little disruptions—from a ghost, from trespassers—that creep back in.

Shapiro, Dani. Signal Fires. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593534724. $28. LITERARY

In 1985, a car crash on Division Street leaves a young woman dead, three teenagers traumatized, and the Wilf family with hearts shuttered forever. Decades later, a lonely child whose parents have just moved in across the street befriends retired doctor Ben Wilf, struggling with buried secrets and his wife’s final illness. From novelist/memoirist Shapiro (Inheritance).

Tran, E.M. Daughters of the New Year. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Oct. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781335429230. $27.99. CD. LITERARY

Former beauty queen Xuan Trung, a refugee from Vietnam living in New Orleans, seeks to shape her daughters’ lives via Vietnamese zodiac signs. But these young women have ideas of their own. Nhi cheerfully competes as the one woman of color on a Bachelor-styled TV show, lawyer Trac shoves her sexuality behind a curtain when her family is around, and aspiring writer Trieu wants to learn more about her family history. A debut with a 150,000-copy first printing.

Wong, Ryan Lee. Which Side Are You On. Catapult. Oct. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9781646221486. $24. LITERARY

When a Black man is killed by a Chinese American NYPD officer, Chinese Korean American Reed is ready to storm out of his Columbia classes and dedicate himself to Black Lives Matter. But he reconsiders the best way forward after discussing what makes for effective politics and a meaningful life in an unjust world with his father and mother—a labor organizer and leader of a Korean-Black activist coalition, respectively, back in the early 1990s. A debut inspired by the 2014 Akai Gurley/Peter Liang case in Brooklyn, NY.

Thrillers

Baldacci, David. Long Shadows. Grand Central. (Memory Man, Bk. 7). Oct. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781538719824. $29. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

There are no plot details to share on Baldacci’s latest in the “Memory Man” series, but the million-copy first printing bespeaks continuing faith in police detective Amos Decker, a man who can forget nothing, including the terrible murder of his family.

Child, Lee & Andrew Child. No Plan B: A Jack Reacher Novel. Delacorte. (Jack Reacher, Bk. 27). Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781984818546. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Though an eyewitness concurs that a woman leaped before a bus to her death, Jack Reacher knows she was pushed by a hooded purse snatcher, whom he follows into a major conspiracy. After two Child brothers collaborations, both No. 1 New York Times best sellers.

Cornwell, Patricia. Livid: A Scarpetta Novel. Grand Central. (Kay Scarpetta, Bk. 26). Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781538725160. $29. lrg. prnt. CRIME

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta testifies in a case, fumbled by the initial pathologist, concerning a drowned beauty queen whose fiancé is charged with her death. Then the judge’s sister is murdered. With a 400,000-copy first printing.

Ferraro, Nicolás. Cruz. Soho Crime. Oct. 2022. 312p. tr. from Spanish by Mallory N. Craig-Kuhn. ISBN 9781641293969. $27.95. CRIME

Tomás Cruz’s abusive gangster father is imprisoned, followed by Tomás’s older brother Seba, who was forced to assume his father’s obligations. With a cartel boss holding his wife and child as collateral, Tomás himself must now join the business. A Dashiell Hammett finalist from a leading Argentine author.

French, Nicci. The Favor. Morrow. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780063243668. $28.99; Morrow Paperbacks. pap. ISBN 9780063243620. $17.99. CD. THRILLER

Though Jude hasn’t seen boyfriend Liam since a life-altering car crash years ago, she agrees to pick him up at the train station—without telling anyone, even her fiancé. The police show up instead. With a 50,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Galbraith, Robert. The Ink Black Heart. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 1072p. ISBN 9780316413039. $30. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Last-minute news: Galbraith (the pseudonymous J.K. Rowling) returns on August 30 with the sixth book in the “Cormoran Strike” series. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

Gervais, Simon. Robert Ludlum’s The Blackbriar Genesis. Putnam. (Blackbriar, Bk. 1). Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593419977. $28. lrg. prnt. Downloadable.

Two Blackbriar counterintelligence operatives investigate when an undercover agent for the CIA black-ops initiative Treadstone is assassinated in Prague, a place he wasn’t supposed to be. From the best-selling Gervais (The Last Protector), a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, launching the publisher’s third Ludlum series.

McDermid, Val. 1989. Atlantic Monthly. (Allie Burns Novel, Bk. 2). Oct. 2022. NAp. ISBN 9780802160102. $27. THRILLER

The CWA Gold– and Cartier Diamond Dagger–clad McDermid follows up 1979, the multi-starred opener in the “Allie Burns” series, with the idealistic investigative journalist running the northern news operation of the Sunday Globe and uncovering an urgent HIV/AIDS story. Is 1999 next?

Morris, Wanda. Anywhere You Run. Morrow. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063271821. $28.99; Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 9780063082502. $17.99. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

After debuting to uproarious acclaim with All Her Little Secrets, Morris offers a tale of two Black sisters fleeing 1964 Mississippi in different directions, Violet after she kills a white man who attacks her and Marigold because she is unmarried and pregnant. Alas, someone sinister is tracking them both. With a 100,000-copy paperback and a 30,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Patterson, James. Cross Over. Little, Brown. Oct. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780316499187. $29. CD/downloadable. CRIME

A killer slaughtering multigenerational families wholesale in and around Washington, DC, looks to be seeking out Det. Alex Cross’s family next. Cross is on the case, of course, with his efforts doubled by a flashy true-crime author. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

Rankin, Ian. Untitled: An Inspector Rebus Novel. Little, Brown. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780316473637. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

Four-time CWA dagger claimant Rankin returns with the next chiller starring tough-guy Edinburgh detective John Rebus. No plot details yet, but there’s a 60,000-copy first printing.

Sandford, John. Righteous Prey. Putnam. Oct. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780593422472. $29.95. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. CRIME

Sandford standby Virgil Flowers travels with Prey protagonist Lucas Davenport to the Twin Cities, where they are tasked with cornering the Five, a group of presumably rich, bored vigilantes who target rapists, murderers, and others they say deserve death, then donate untraceable bitcoin to charities and victims.

Woods, Stuart. Untitled. Putnam. (Stone Barrington Novel, Bk. 63). Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593540039. $28. lrg. prnt. CD.

With five Stuart Woods thrillers publishing yearly, it’s hard to keep track, but this one is the next in long-running Stone Barrington series, a top fan favorite.

Fantasy/SF/Dystopian/Fairy Tales 

Blake, Olivie. The Atlas Paradox. Tor. (Atlas, Bk. 2). Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781250855091. $27.99. CD. FANTASY

In this sequel to The Atlas Six, a viral phenomenon that’s prompted nearly 20 countries to buy the entire trilogy, rivalries continue to split a secret society of magical academicians called the Alexandrians that’s baldly about power. Blake is the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, author of several indie SFF and a forthcoming YA romcom.

Chakraborty, S.A. The River of Silver: Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy. Harper Voyager. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780063093737. $27.99. CD. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

Originally published as an audio-first book in Winter 2022, this new work compiles stories surrounding Chakraborty’s multi-award-nominated “Daevabad Trilogy.” Some pieces come from the author’s website, others are original, and jointly they aim to keep fans satisfied until Chakraborty debuts a new series in 2023. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Glück, Louise. Marigold and Rose. Farrar. Oct. 2022. 64p. ISBN 9780374607586. $18. FAIRY TALE

In a fairy tale cum literary excursion into language, time, and the act of discovery that is life, Nobel laureate Glück tells the story of twin girls in their first scrambling and sad-funny year of life. Not poetry but surely poetic; with a 30,000-copy first printing.

Hairston, Andrea. Will Do Magic for Small Change. Tordotcom. Oct. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9781250808738. $27.99. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

Cinnamon Jones wants to perform onstage like her theater-star grandparents, the eponymous protagonists of Hairston’s multi-award-winning Redwood and Wildfire, but she’s still sorting through a messy family life. Then her brother gives her a book about a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who performed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and she knows she has a connection to them. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Howey, Hugh. Across the Sand. Harper Voyager. (Sand Chronicles). Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780358670452. $27.99. CD. SF/POSTAPOCALYPTIC

In a land of nothing but sand, sand, sand, four siblings scrabble to survive after the disappearance of their father and oldest sister, both legendary sand divers. Meanwhile, Anya has grown up near the mines and expects to spend her life toiling for the Empire of the East, but the destruction of her entire community sends her to the dunes in search of vengeance. In 2020, Howey triumphed with Wool, and the intervening years have seen the reissue of his self-published backlist, but this is his first original work in six years; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Kalfar, Jaroslav. A Brief History or Living Forever. Little, Brown. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780316463188. $28. SF

In this edgy, politically informed follow-up to Kalfar’s multi-finalist debut, Spacemen in Bohemia, a young woman in surveillance-heavy 2029 America must convince the Czech brother she’s never met to help her find the remains of their mother, buried in mass grave for immigrants. Originally scheduled for July 2021; with a 35,000-copy first printing.

Maguire, Gregory. The Oracle of Maracoor. Morrow. (Another Day, Bk. 2). Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780063094017. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. FAIRY TALE

Having sent readers spinning back to the Wicked world with The Brides of Maracoor, which introduced Elphaba’s green-skinned granddaughter, Rain, Maguire continues Rain’s story with Maracoor facing invasion. Rain escapes from prison with young Cossy, but they remain in danger—not just because of war but because cracks in reality are letting in blue wolves, harpies, and giants. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Moore, Alan. Illuminations: Stories. Bloomsbury. Oct. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9781635578805. $30. FANTASY

For the first time in a four-decade career that embraces V for Vendetta and the Hugo Award–winning Watchmen, Moore publishes a short story collection. The characters range from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to theoretical Boltzmann brains dreaming up the universe at the big bang, and a big novella covers the twisty history of the comics industry. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Nethercott, GennaRose. Thistlefoot. Anchor. Sept. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780593468838. $28. Downloadable. FANTASY

A folklorist and National Poetry series winner for The Lumberjack’s Dove, Nethercott draws on eastern European and Jewish folklore for her fiction debut. The estranged Yaga siblings—woodworker Bellatine and street performer Isaac—are brought together by a surprising inheritance from Russia: a sentient house on chicken legs. Alas, the Longshadow Man has followed the house to the United States and is now tracking down its new owners with evil intent.

Pokwatka, Aimee. Self-Portrait with Nothing. Tordotcom. Oct. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250820846. $26.99. SF/MYSTERY

Abandoned as a baby and raised by two caring mothers, 36-year-old Pepper Rafferty hides a secret: she knows that her biological mother is controversial artist Ula Frost, who insists that her portraits call forth their doppelgangers from a parallel universe. But wait: is there a parallel universe where Pepper would have not been abandoned and could feel worthy of love? A debut with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Roth, Veronica. Poster Girl. Morrow. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780358164098. $26.99. lrg. prnt. CD. DYSTOPIAN

“Poster girl” for a totalitarian regime in the Seattle-Portland region that has since fallen, Sonya has been imprisoned for ten years but could earn her freedom if she can find a missing girl taken from her parents under the previous regime. Successful YA author Roth’s first adult novel, Chosen Ones, hit the New York Times best sellers list.

Horror  

Adams, Erin E. Jackal. Bantam. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593499306. $27. HORROR

Davidson, Andy. The Hollow Kind. MCD: Farrar. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780374538569. $28. CD. HORROR

Harrison, Rachel. Such Sharp Teeth. Berkley. Oct. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593545829. $27. HORROR

Pargin, Jason. If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781250195821. $28.99. HORROR

Thorne, Jennifer Marie. Lute. Tor Nightfire. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250826084. $26.99. CD. HORROR

Ward, Catriona. Little Eve. Tor Nightfire. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250812650. $27.99. HORROR

In Jackal, a debut from Haitian American author Adams, a Black woman named Liz has returned to her predominantly white hometown for a wedding shattered by the disappearance of the bride’s daughter—one of several Black girls who have vanished recently in the town’s creepy woods. From Bram Stoker finalist Davidson, The Hollow Kind sends Nellie Gardner fleeing from an abusive marriage to a crumbling house in a Georgia forest, where son Max hears whisperings in the uncommon stillness and realizes that they’re still in danger, this time from an ancient evil connected to his mother’s family (35,000-copy first printing). Such Sharp Teeth, mutters Rory Morris when she is attacked by something in Bram Stoker finalist Harrison’s latest; then, stronger and suddenly captivated by the moon, she starts transforming—but is she in danger or getting in touch with her true, wild self? With If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, Pargin adds to his terrifying but funny “John Dies at the End” series as John, Dave, and Amy tremblingly face supernatural threats in a town rife with interdimensional parasites, paranormal cults, and a plastic egg that encourages the unwary to commit murder and feed it the body parts (75,000-copy first printing). YA novelist Thorne sets her first adult effort on Lute, an island where the residents experience unusual peace and prosperity—but every seven years comes the Day when seven people die (100,000-copy first printing). Unlike friend Dinah, Little Eve loves the gloomy Scottish isle of Altnaharra, where they’re raised among the Children by spooky and controlling Uncle, and they offer very different accounts of a massacre there in the dead of winter (250,000-copy first printing). From Shirley Jackson/August Derleth honoree Ward. 

Family, Friends, Lovers  

Backman, Fredrik. The Winners. Atria. Oct. 2022. 688p. ISBN 9781982112790. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD.

Cousens, Sophie. Before I Do. Putnam. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593539873. pap. $17. Downloadable.

Deveraux, Jude & Tara Sheets. Thief of Fate. Mira: Harlequin. Oct. 2022. ISBN 9780778333586. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9780778386551. $17.99. CD.

Hilderbrand, Elin. Endless Summer: Stories. Little, Brown. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780316460910. $29. CD/downloadable. CONTEMP

Kennedy, Deborah E. Billie Starr’s Book of Sorries. Flatiron: Macmillan. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250138439. $27.99. FAMILY LIFE

Macomber, Debbie. The Christmas Spirit. Ballantine. Oct. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593500101. $22. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable.

Mallery, Susan. Home Sweet Christmas. HQN. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781335449986. $28.99; pap. 384p. ISBN 9781335934000. $17.99. CD.

Martin, Celestine. Witchful Thinking. Forever: Hachette. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781538738078. pap. $15.99.

Nwabineli, Onyi. Someday, Maybe. Graydon House: Harlequin. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781525899805. $26.99. CD. CONTEMP

Patterson, James & Tad Safran. The Twelve Long, Hard, Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas. Little, Brown. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780316405904. $25. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. HOLIDAYS

Picoult, Jodi & Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. Ballantine. Oct. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9781984818386. $29.99. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. CONTEMP

Steel, Danielle. The High Notes. Delacorte. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781984821744. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CONTEMP

Backman’s The Winners revisits the small but tough rural community first seen in the multi-best-booked Beartown, inspiration for the HBO original. From Cousens (This Times Next Year), Before I Do features Audrey, who’s about to marry dependable Josh when his sister turns up with the guy Audrey always wanted. With Thief of Fate, Deveraux and Sheets wrap up a trilogy about an 1840s Irish thief in contemporary Providence Falls, NC, who is tasked by the angels with righting the wrong of having lured away Cora from her intended (75,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Hilderbrand’s Endless Summer offers nine stories serving as prequels, sequels, and interim chapters illuminating her beloved novels (375,000-copy first printing). In Edgar-nominated Kennedy’s Billie Starr’s Book of Sorries, down-on-her-luck Jenny Newberg (mother of the eponymous Billie) unwisely accepts money to seduce the so-called Candidate (75,000-copy first printing). Macomber gets us in The Christmas Spirit with the story of two friends, a bartender and a pastor, and what they learn when they trade places for the holidays. Second in a series set in Wishing Tree, WA, Mallery’s Home Sweet Christmas features two women—one a town newbie, another home temporarily—with Christmas surprises in store (250,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Bringing together stay-at-home witch Lucy Caraway and merman Alex, out of his element in Freya Grove, NJ, Martin’s Witchful Thinking launches a series featuring Black characters with books already slated for publication in 2023 and 2024 (45,000-copy first printing). Nigerian British Nwabineli debuts with Someday, Maybe, about a young woman struggling to recover from her husband’ suicide (75,000-copy first printing). Thanks to Patterson and coauthor Safran, lonely widower Henry Sullivan and children Will and Ella end up welcoming a raucous bunch of animals and houseguests to their Harlem brownstone during The Twelve Long, Hard, Topsy-Turvy, Very Messy Days of Christmas (125,000-copy first printing). Picoult and Boylan’s Mad Honey stars a wealthy wife returning to her New Hampshire hometown after discovering her husband’s ugly side. In Steel’s latest, a sensational young singer who hits all The High Notes must wrestle freedom from those who would exploit her, including her father.

Historical Fiction  

Albanese, Laurie Lico. Hester. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250278555. $27.99. HISTORICAL

Reimagining the woman who inspired The Scarlet Letter, Albanese brings gifted young Scottish seamstress Isobel Gamble to early 1800s New England, where she’s quickly abandoned by her husband when he signs up as a ship’s medic. Soon she draws close to the trouble author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Big in-house love; a 150,000-copy first printing.

Lawhon, Ariel & others. When We Had Wings. Harper Muse. Oct. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780785253341. $27.99. HISTORICAL/WORLD WAR II

In this Word War II novel by New York Times best-selling authors Lawhon (Code Name Hélène), Kristina McMorris (Sold on a Monday), and Susan Meissner (The Last Year of the War), three nurses from the U.S. Navy nurse, the U.S. Navy, and the Philippines become fast friends in 1941 Manila and are among the first female prisoners of the invading Japanese Imperial Army.

Miller, Sarah. Marmee. Morrow. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063041875. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CD. HISTORICAL/CIVIL WAR

Having retold Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” novels from the mother’s perspective in Caroline, Miller turns to Little Women mother Marmee, detailing her struggles to support four daughters with her army chaplain husband at war and a mistake she once made undermining the family finances. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Mujica, Bárbara. Miss del Río: A Novel of Dolores del Río, the First Major Latina Star in Hollywood. Graydon House: Harlequin. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781525804991. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9781525899935. $17.99. HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Brightly shining Hollywood star Dolores del Río, who helped launch the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, is unfolded over a half century by award-winning novelist/scholar Mujica (Frida) with the help of Dolores’s fictional hairdresser and longtime friend as narrator. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Pariat, Janice. Everything the Light Touches. HarperVia. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063210042. $27.99. CD. HISTORICAL

Shai, from contemporary India, whose travels to her country’s northeast reinvigorate her sense of self and heritage. Evelyn, a Cambridge science student traversing the Lower Himalayas in the early 1900s. Groundbreaking botanist Linnaeus in 1732 Lapland. And Goethe questioning human presumptions during a sojourn in Italy. Award-winning Indian author Pariat makes her U.S. debut with multiple characters and timeframes; a 75,000-copy first printing.

Nonfiction

Current Issues

Campbell, Andy. We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism. Hachette. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780306827464. $29. Downloadable. POLITICS

Having long covered extremism in the United Stated, HuffPost senior editor and reporter Campbell draws on new reporting to track the rise of the Proud Boys, examining their role within the Republican Party and arguing that the goal of this virulent Far Right group is to legitimize political violence. With a 25,000-copy first printing.

Citron, Danielle Keats. The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age. Norton. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780393882315. $30. PRIVACY

A MacArthur Fellow who serves as the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, Citron interviewed activists, lawmakers, and victims worldwide to deliver some bad news: reeling under the impact of everything from nonconsensual pornography to selling our data for profit, privacy as we understand it has largely vanished, with current laws unable to provide sufficient defense. At least she has recommendations for going forward.

Draper, Robert. Weapons of Mass Delusion: How the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593300145. $28. POLITICS

Author of the LJ-starred To Start a War, Draper traveled nationwide from January 6 to the 2022 midterm runups to show that the crucial and profoundly disturbing story of politics today is not Donald Trump’s presidency but what happened in its aftermath, as many Republicans cling to big-steal extremism and follow the lead of a new generation of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

Dudley, Renee & Daniel Golden. The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits’ Improbable Crusade To Save the World from Cybercrime. Farrar. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780374603304. $30. CYBERCRIME

ProPublica reporters Dudley and Goldne, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner, respectively, visit a bunch of ordinary folks with extraordinary techie skills: they challenge hackers and criminal gangs worldwide who lock up computer systems and then seek to extort money from businesses, schools, hospitals, government agencies, and others. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Fanone, Michael & John Shiffman. Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul. Atria. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781668007198. $28. MEMOIR

Twenty-year police veteran Fanone self-deployed to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and urged fellows officers to hold firm against the insurrectionists. Then he was dragged into the mob, tased to the point of heart attack, and beaten with a Blue Lives matter flag by people shouting for his death. Here, the former Trump supporter chronicles that day while calling for new views on race, politics, and policing and crediting his closest friend—an informant who is a Black, transgender, HIV-positive woman—for helping him rethink his attitudes.

Foroohar, Rana. Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World. Crown. Oct. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593240533. $28.99. ECONOMICS

Arguing that globalization has created economic inequality and distrust, Financial Times/CNN regular Foroohar points to the pandemic’s supply-chain disruptions and the rise of everything from decentralized manufacturing and digital currencies when she argues that the globalized economy will soon be overshadowed by rising local, regional, and home-grown businesses.

Giridharadas, Anand. The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593318997. $30. POLITICS

Author of the multi-best-booked Winner Take All, former New York Times reporter Giridharadas laments the refusal to shake off ironclad convictions and be persuaded to accept other viewpoints—or to seek to persuade others. To show how it’s done, he talks to a cofounder of Black Lives Matter, white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color, activists supporting immigrants’ rights, and a cult member–turned–QAnon deprogrammer.

Haberman, Maggie. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Penguin Pr. 480p. ISBN 9780593297346. $30. lrg. prnt. POLITICS

Having covered Donald Trump for many years and won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on investigations into his and his advisers’ connections to Russia, New York Times reporter Haberman here assesses his rise as a calculating businessman/politician always asking what’s in it for him, the world that made him possible, and his impact on the U.S. body politic. According to the news website Axios, the book Trump fears the most.

Miller, Chris. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. Scribner. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781982172008. $30. POLITICS

Running everything from missiles to cars to the electric grid itself, microchip technology is foundational in the modern world, and the United States once dominated the market with the speediest chips. But Miller, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, points out that it’s been losing firepower to Taiwan, Korea, and Europe, with China eager to join the fray.

Quammen, David. Breathless: The Scientific Race To Defeat a Deadly Virus. S. & S. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781982164362. $28.99. BIOLOGY

Given how viruses have been leaping from animals to humans with ongoing ecosystem disruption, infectious disease experts have been predicting the current pandemic for two decades, but their warnings were brushed aside for political or economic reasons. The exact origins of SARS-CoV-2 won’t be known for years, but it will likely be with us forever. Learn this and more from go-to science writer Quammen (Spillover), who drew on interviews with nearly 100 scientists worldwide

Schulten, Katherine. Coming of Age in 2020: Teenagers on the Year That Changed Everything. Norton. Oct. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9781324019442. pap. $24.95. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Drawing from 5,500 diary entries, comics, photos, poems, paintings, charts, lists, Lego sculptures, songs, recipes, and rants submitted to a contest on the New York Times Learning Network, network editor-in-chief Schulten creates a portrait of what COVID-wrecked 2020 meant for U.S. teenagers.

Whipple, Chris. The Fight of His Life: The Inside Story of Joe Biden’s White House. Scribner. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781982106430. $30. POLITICS

Former 60 Minutes producer Whipple (The Gatekeepers) takes readers inside President Joe Biden’s White House and right up to the Oval Office, where he draws on insider connections to report on the tumultuous transfer of power and how decisions are being made amid pandemic, climate disaster, ongoing racism, the Afghanistan withdrawal, and, finally, the siege of Ukraine.

Social Science  

Bogdanich, Walt & Michael Forsythe. When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm. Doubleday. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780385546232. $32.50. lrg. prnt. BUSINESS/ECONOMICS

Corcoran, Katherine. In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Coverup, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press. Bloomsbury. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781635575033. $28. TRUE CRIME/JOURNALISM

Gray, John & others. Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen. Artisan. Oct. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781648290169. $40. COOKING

Higgins, Jamie Fiore. Bully Market: My Story of Money and Misogyny at Goldman Sachs. S. & S. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781668001028. $28.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Hunter-Gault, Charlayne. My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives. Harper. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063135390. $27.99. CD. SOCIAL SCIENCE

New York Times investigative journalists, Pulitzer Prize–winning Bogdanich and George Polk Award–winning Forsythe pool their talents to explain what it means for businesses and government agencies when international consulting firm McKinsey Comes to Town. Chronicling the murder of often-censored Mexican journalist Regina Martínez in 2012 after she uncovered shocking evidence regarding the disappearance of thousands of Mexican people, former AP Mexico bureau chief Corcoran plumbs crucial issues of freedom of the press with In the Mouth of the Wolf (60,000-copy first printing). From a Bronx culinary collective, John Gray and others’ Ghetto Gastro Black Power Kitchen celebrates Black cuisines and cultures (100,000-copy first printing). Determined to make her immigrant family proud, Higgins worked hard enough to become a managing director at Goldman Sachs—a rare woman in its highest ranks, especially with children; Bully Market describes her encounters with a toxic environment characterized by extravagantly high living and, most disturbingly, discrimination against women and people of color. With My People, celebrated Emmy Award–winning journalist Hunter-Gault collects five decades’ worth of reportage, from the Civil Rights era to today, to offer an overview of recent Black American history (75,000-copy first printing).

Memoir

Ali, Fatima with Tarajia Morrell. Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More. Ballantine. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593355190. $28. MEMOIR

A fan favorite on Bravo’s Top Chef, Pakistani American chef/restaurateur Ali discovered before the show aired that she had a rare form of bone cancer, which soon became terminal. She dedicated the last year of her life to traveling the world, eating amazing food, spending time with loved ones, and writing this meditation on being a chef, a daughter, and a queer woman.

Bee, Vanessa A. Home Bound: An Uprooted Daughter's Reflections on Belonging. Astra House. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781662601330. $28. MEMOIR

Born in Cameroon, consumer protection lawyer Bee was adopted by her aunt and the aunt’s white French husband, taken to the United States and back to Europe after her parents’ divorce, settled in Reno, NV, as a teenager amid the financial and housing crises, accepted to Harvard Law at age 20, then left behind both her husband and her evangelical Christian faith upon graduation. Understandably, she formats her memoir around her own definition of the word home.

Bush, Cori. The Forerunner: A Memoir. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593320587. $25.99. MEMOIR

A St. Louis nurse, pastor, and community organizer, Bush was encouraged by community leaders to run for office after providing medical care to frontliners while protesting during the Ferguson Uprising occassioned by the shooting of Michael Brown Jr. The first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress, she offers a call to action illuminated by her experiences as a minimum-wage worker, unhoused parent, and survivor of domestic and sexual violence.

Glenn, Ruth M. Everything I Never Dreamed: A Memoir. Atria. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781982196004. $28. MEMOIR

After being shot three times by a husband who routinely beat her, Glenn vowed that if she survived she would dedicate herself to combating domestic violence. Now she’s the CEO and president of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her memoir considers why men beat and kill women, why women and children are devalued, and how domestic violence can be demystified.

Hill, Jemele. Uphill: A Memoir. Holt. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781250624376. $27.99. CD. MEMOIR

Born to a teenage mother and heroin-addicted father, Hill found escape from intergenerational trauma in writing, moving determinedly from diarist to newspaper reporter to Emmy Award–winning host of ESPN’s SportsCenter to staff writer for the Atlantic. Here she reflects on work, the women in her family, and the ferocious reaction to her calling Donald Trump a white supremacist. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Kadlec, Jeanna. Heretic: A Memoir. Harper. Oct. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780358581819. $27.99. CD. MEMOIR

Married to the pastor’s son but recognizing that she was queer, Kadlec knew she had to leave behind the evangelical church and her Midwestern working-class upbringing. Here she shows how each reinforced the other while considering how conservative Christianity ultimately undermines politics and society. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Manning, Chelsea. Untitled. Farrar. Oct. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780374279271. $28. MEMOIR

After recounting a difficult childhood and her pride in joining the military, Manning chronicles her 2010 decision to leak 720,000 classified military documents while working in U.S. Army intelligence and declaration of her gender identity as a woman after being convicted of the unlawful possession and distribution of these materials. She also pleads for greater government accountability. Originally scheduled for July 2020; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Ryan, April. Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem. Amistad: HarperCollins. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780063210196. $27.99. MEMOIR

A White House correspondent for more than three decades who was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists in 2017, Ryan reflects on the watershed year 2020—when the United States elected its first Black woman vice president—as she celebrates the resilience of Black women and recalls her own triumphs and challenges. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Samatar, Sofia. The White Mosque. Catapult. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781646220977. $27. MEMOIR

A scholar of African and Arabic literature, British Fantasy/World Fantasy award winner Satamar recounts her journey through Uzbekistan to the site of the Christian village Ak Metchet (“The White Mosque”), built in the late 1800s by German-speaking Mennonites traveling from Russia. Along the way, she reflects on her own identity as daughter of a Swiss Mennonite and a Somali Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in the United States.

Sullivan, Margaret. Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250281906. $28.99. MEMOIR

Over her four-decade career, Sullivan moved from intern to editor in chief at the Buffalo News, became the first woman appointed public editor at the New York Times, and now serves as the Washington Post's media columnist. Here she offers an insider’s view of U.S. news reporting and an argument that public faith in the press must be restored. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Thompson. Debra. The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging. S. & S. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781982182465. pap. $18.99. MEMOIR

Moving to the United States in 2010, McGill University political scientist Thompson felt she was reconnecting with her ancestors, who had escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad. She follows up decade-long travels across the United States—at a time when Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump were emerging—with this meditation on the meaning of home and of being a Black person in North America today.

U.S. History

Burns, Ken. Our America: A Photographic History. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780385353014. $60. HISTORY

Famed documentarian Burns offers some of his favorite photographs of the United States, while MoMA photography curator Sarah Hermanson Meister offers context. With 251 four-color images by lens masters both known and unknown.

Delmont, Matthew F. Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad. Viking. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781984880390. $30. HISTORY

Dartmouth historian Delmont (Black Quotidian) revisits the bitter irony of Black Americans fighting fascism during World War II while facing racism, with portraits of some of the million-plus men and women who served and of others like war correspondent Langston Hughes and civil rights leader Ella Baker.

Farrell, John A. Ted Kennedy: A Life. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2022. 752p. ISBN 9780525558071. $40. CD. HISTORY

Author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Nixon and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Clarence Darrow, Farrell has closely watched Ted Kennedy for years and here offers a hefty biography.

Freedland, Jonathan. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. Harper. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780063112339. $28.99. CD. HISTORY

An Orwell Prize–winning columnist for the Guardian, Freedland tells the story of 19-year-old Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 with fellow inmate Fred Wetzler to warn other Jews of the mass murder transpiring there. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Greenidge, Kerri K. The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family. Liveright: Norton. Oct. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9781324090847. $28.99. CD. HISTORY

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke famously left South Carolina to preach abolition in the North. But as highlighted by award-winning historian Greenidge (Black Radical), their brother remained on the family plantation and sired several children with an enslaved woman, Nancy Weston. Limning the contributions of the Black Grimke women and the U.S. tendency to mythologize.

Hastings, Max. The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962. Harper. Oct. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9780062980137. $35. CD. HISTORY

In his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, celebrated journalist/military historian Hastings shifts his focus to the attitudes of Soviet, Cuban, and U.S. participants, explaining as much as describing their actions. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Meacham, Jon. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. Random. Oct. 2022. 720p. ISBN 9780553393965. $40. lrg. prnt. CD. HISTORY

A Pulitzer Prize–winning, No. 1 New York Times best-selling biographer (American Lion), Meacham retells the life of Abraham Lincoln to show what his confrontation with enslavement and secession can teach an embattled and polarized country today.

Paul, Joel Richard. Indivisible: Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism. Riverhead. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780593189047. $30. HISTORY Downloadable.

Early U.S. residents still tended to think of themselves as New Yorkers or Virginians rather than members of one nation. Eventually, explains Paul (Without Precedent), they had to choose between the state-focused, racist-rooted approach of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and the single-nation precept that Daniel Webster espoused.

Poole, W. Scott. Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire. Counterpoint. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781640094369. $28. HISTORY

A history professor at the College of Charleston and Bram Stoker nominee for his biography of H.P. Lovecraft, Poole pools his talents to show how the horror genre, both fiction and film, has reflected U.S. dominance in the world even as it seems to deflect readers/viewers from its consequences.

Ricks, Thomas E. Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968. Farrar. Oct. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9780374605162. $30. CD. HISTORY

Specializing in military strategy, the Pulitzer Prize–winning, No. 1 New York Times best-selling Ricks (Fiasco) examines the Civil Rights movement in its light, arguing that the successes of the past century were won not only by idealists like Martin Luther King Jr. but by the kind of recruiting, training, and organization that characterizes every triumphant military campaign. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Shetterly, Aran Robert. Morningside: A Survivor’s Story of the Greensboro Massacre. Amistad: HarperCollins. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780062858214. $28.99. CD. HISTORY

In November 1979, Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party members fired on an anti-Klan rally near Morningside Homes in Greensboro, NC, killing five people. After the killers' acquittal, Rev. Nelson Johnson, who had helped assemble marchers, sought to make the city face its responsibility for the tragedy with methods based on Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Martin Luther King Jr’s concept of Beloved Community. Greensboro finally issued an apology in 2020. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Tamkin, Emily. Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities. Harper. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063074019. $28.99. CD. HISTORY

Senior editor, US, of the New Statesman, Tamkin (The Influence of Soros) surveys 100 years of Jewish history and culture in the United States to show how varied and fluid Jewish identity really is. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

World History

Aslan, Reza. An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. Norton. Oct. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781324004479. $30. HISTORY

Figes, Orlando. The Story of Russia. Metropolitan: Holt. Oct. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250796899. $29.99. HISTORY

Moorehead, Caroline. Mussolini's Daughter: The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe. Harper. Oct. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780062967251. $29.99. CD. HISTORY

Sassoon, Joseph. The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire. Pantheon. Oct. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780593316597. $35. Downloadable. HISTORY

Vallejo, Irene. Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 464p. tr. from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle. ISBN 9780593318898. $35. Downloadable. HISTORY

Author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Zealot, religion scholar Aslan resurrects the life of the little-known Howard Baskerville, An American Martyr in Persia who traveled there in the early 1900s, befriending revolutionaries intent on securing democracy and eventually joining them in battle. The Wolfson Prize–winning Figes gives us the history book we need to read now: The Story of Russia, starting with the ancient Rus—Baltic Slavs or Vikings?—and parsing the mythologies that have shaped the country (60,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-selling "Resistance Quartet,” Moorehead offers a portrait of Mussolini’s Daughter, who was instrumental in imposing fascism in Italy. A Georgetown professor of history and politics tells the story of his own family, The Sassoons, the Jewish Baghdadi dynasty that built an empire grounded in trade in the 18th through 20th centuries. An award winner in the author’s native Spain, Vallejo’s Papyrus unearths the fascinating story of books and libraries in the ancient world.

STEM Stars  

Flores, Dan. Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. Norton. Oct. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781324006169. $30. PALEONTOLOGY

An award-winning author (Coyote America) and distinguished scholar of the U.S. West, Flores surveys human–wildlife interactions across North America, from the emergence of its flora and fauna and the Pleistocene mass extinctions to the impact of white settlement and the decline (and sometimes rescue) of species in recent centuries.

Grandin, Temple. Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions. Riverhead. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593418369. $28. Downloadable. NEUROSCIENCE

A professor of animal science best known as an advocate for the autism community, Grandin first reconfigured our understanding of how the brain functions with her New York Times best-selling memoir, Thinking in Pictures, an illumination of visual thinking. Here she suggests new ways of educating, parenting, employing, and working with visual thinkers.

Mukherjee. Siddhartha. The Song of the Cell: The Transformation of Medicine and the New Human. Scribner. Oct. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9781982117351. $32.50. CD. MEDICINE/BIOLOGY

Mukherjee gives us the story of those minuscule, self-regulating packages called cells, from their groundbreaking discovery by English scientist/architect Robert Hooke and Dutch cloth merchant Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to revolutionary new ways cells are being manipulated today to improve human health. Following the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Emperor of All Maladies and the No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Gene.

Preston, Diana. The Evolution of Charles Darwin: The Epic Voyage of the Beagle That Forever Changed Our View of Life on Earth. Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780802160188. $30. HISTORY/EXPEDITIONS

An historian with a scientific bent—her Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology—Preston reconstructs Charles Darwin’s journey on HMS Beagle through letters, diary entries, recollections of contemporaries, and accounts by both Darwin and ship captain Robert FitzRoy.

Tyson, Neil deGrasse. Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Holt. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250861504. $28.99. CD. SCIENCE

Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, Tyson takes an interesting turn here, applying science to offer an overarching perspective on holding civilization together despite the issues fracturing us. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

Arts  

Abrams, Jonathan. The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop. Crown. Oct. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9781984825131. $35. MUSIC

Baldwin, Neil. Martha Graham: When Dance Became Modern. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9780385352321. $40. DANCE

Gaddy, Kristina R. Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History. Norton. Oct. 2022. 588p. ISBN 9780393866803. $30. MUSIC/HISTORY

Posner. Michael. Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: That’s How the Light Gets In, Vol. 3. S. & S. Oct. 2022. 496p. ISBN 9781982176921. $35. MUSIC

Rauch, Arianna Warsaw-Fan. Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music. Putnam. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593331460. $27.MUSIC

New York Times best-selling authors Abrams (Boys Among Men) tracks The Come Up of hip-hop from its 1973 origins in the Bronx to its preeminence today. A busy biographer and emeritus professor of theatre and dance at Montclair State University, Baldwin surveys the life and work of legendary dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, whose technique offered the first real and lasting alternate to ballet. In Well of Souls, fiddler/writer Gaddy traverses two century to reveal the importance of the banjo in Black history, spirituality, and resistance. With Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories, award-winning writer, playwright, and journalist Posner wraps up his study of the seminal musician, soaring through the last three decades of his life. When Juilliard-trained violinist Warsaw-Fan Rauch titles her book Declassified, she’s serious: she not only explains classical music to the uninitiated but insists that they can chose what they like and don’t like about it—because she does, too.

Celebrities

Heughan, Sam. Waypoints. Voracious: Hachette. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780316495530. $29. MEMOIR

Mowry-Housley, Tamera. You Should Sit Down for This: A Memoir about Wine, Life, and Cookies. Legacy Lit: Hachette. Oct. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780306925955. $29. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Newman, Paul. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir. Knopf. Oct. 2022. 304p. ed. by David Rosenthal. ISBN 9780593534502. $32. MEMOIR

Rickman, Alan. Madly, Deeply:  The Diaries of Alan Rickman. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250847959. $29.99. MEMOIR

Shatner, William with Joshua Brandon. Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder. Atria. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781668007327. $28. MEMOIR

Outlander star Heughan guides readers through the Waypoints of his life (300,000-copy first printing). In You Should Sit Down for This, TV personality Mowry-Housley explains how she moved beyond child stardom to become a fully empowered professional and mom (75,000-copy first printing). The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is condensed from thousands of pages of manuscript compiled over five years in a project begun in 1986, when legendary actor Newman sat down with best friend Stewart Stern to talk about his life even as Stern interviewed Newman’s family and friends for an oral history. Star-power actor Rickman invites you into his life with The Rickman Diaries, which he kept assiduously for 20 years (100,000-copy first printing). In Boldly Go, Star Trek luminary Shatner offers stories from his life to inspire us with a sense of connectivity and joy.

Literature

Gay, Ross. Inciting Joy. Algonquin. Oct. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781643753041. $27. LITERATURE

Gay is not only a National Book Critics Circle Award–winning poet (Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude) but an essayist whose The Book of Delights was a New York Times best seller exploring the world’s simple joys. Here he focuses on the joy we find in caring for others. A big author tour.

Gregory, Dick. The Essential Dick Gregory. Amistad: HarperCollins. Oct. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780062879202. $27.99. CD.

As part of Amistad’s Literary Revival Program, which reintroduces backlist Black classics to a new generation, this book nimbly draws form 16 books, 15 albums and audio compilations, and more than 1,200 hours of archival video to present the core thinking of one of Comedy Central's "100 Greatest Standups" and an ardent human rights and environmental activist. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Pinckney, Darryl. Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan. Farrar. Oct. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780374126650. $30.

In the early 1970s, Pinckney arrived at Columbia University and signed up for a writing class across the street at Barnard with Elizabeth Hardwick, who took him under her wing and introduced him to fellowNew York Review of Books cofounder Barbara Epstein. And that introduced him to the grand world of literature, art, and music in New York at the time, as he explains in this memoir. With a 25,000-copy first printing.