Here are all the October 2023 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

Fiction

Mystery

Alexander, Tasha. A Cold Highland Wind. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Lady Emily Mysteries, Bk. 17). Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250872333. $28. Downloadable. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Vacationing with her family at Cairnfarn Castle, the Scottish estate of friend Jeremy, Duke of Bainbridge, Lady Emily must untangle the relationship between the murder of the duke’s gamekeeper and the widow of a previous lord, thrown from her home and accused of witchcraft in 1676, two centuries previously. The runic stone gently placed on the victim’s forehead complicates matters. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Andrews, Donna. Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Meg Langslow Mysteries, Bk. 34). Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250893963. $27. CD/downloadable. MYSTERY

When her blacksmithing mentor smashes his wrist before a big competition set to be filmed at the estate of a retired heavy-metal drummer, Meg reluctantly steps in, hammer and anvil at the ready. But she’s not prepared for how competitive the event will be, and with all that heavy metal at hand, there could be trouble. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Brown, Rita Mae. Lost & Hound. Ballantine. (“Sister” Jane, Bk. 15). Oct. 2023. ISBN 9780593357576. $28. MYSTERY

No plot details yet, but fans will be happy that “Sister” Jane Arnold, Master of Foxhounds for the Jefferson Hunt in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, is in the saddle again and coaxing some four-legged buddies to help her solve another crime.

Evanovich, Janet. Dirty Thirty. Atria. (Stephanie Plum, Bk. 30). Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781668003091. $29.99. CD. MYSTERY

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is back in a milestone—her 30th adventure—and though we don’t yet know what she’ll be up to, she’ll doubtless be pulling in her wild and reckless family and friends.

Hannah, Sophie. Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night. Morrow. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780062991638. $30. CD. MYSTERY

Since 2014’s The Monogram Murders, Hannah has been crafting mysteries starring Agatha Christie’s beloved Hercule Poirot, but this is the first Poirot Christmas mystery. At the moment, what happens is as secret as what’s under the tree, but note that the most recent in the series, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill, was named a New York Times Best Book To Give. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Kelly, Julia. A Traitor in Whitehall. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Parisian Orphan, Bk. 1). Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250865489. $28. Downloadable. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Daughter of Sir Reginald Redfern and wild young Frenchwoman Genevieve, Evelyne was famously fought over when her parents divorced, earning her the sobriquet “the Parisian Orphan.” In World War II London, a grown-up Evelyne works as a secretary in Winston Churchill’s cabinet war rooms, but she pulls out her amateur sleuthing skills (having read lots of mysteries) when a young colleague is murdered. Kelly, an internationally best-selling author of historical fiction (The Lost English Girl), launches a mystery series; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Kelly, Sofie. Paws To Remember. Berkley. (Magical Cats, Bk., 15). Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593548707. $27. MYSTERY/COZY

When remains are discovered behind the walls of a store run by an artists’ co-op, soon determined to be those of a woman who has been missing for 30 years, librarian Kathleen Paulson enlists the help of her “magical cats” to help her discover what happened. Next in the New York Times best-selling series.

McDorman, Dann. West Heart Kill. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780593537572. $28. lrg. prnt. MYSTERY

Private detective Adam McAnnis likely regrets agreeing to join an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York. The other guests are remarkably standoffish, one of them turns up dead just before a massive storm blows out the power, and that’s just the start of the mayhem. An Emmy-nominated TV news producer, McDorman debuts with a mystery that reportedly takes a standard trope and then changes the rules.

Mukerji, Ritu. Murder by Degrees: A Mystery. S. & S. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781668015063. $27.99. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

In 1875 Philadelphia, Dr. Lydia Weston is readying herself for the courses she teaches at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania when she learns that one of her patients was pulled from the Schuylkill River and declared a suicide. But she voices her doubts, and this brings her into the police investigation. A debut from practicing internist Mukerji.

Munier, Paula. Home at Night. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 352p. ed. by Peter Wolverton. ISBN 9781250887894. $29. CD/downloadable. MYSTERY

Retired military police officer Mercy Carr is moving in with Troy, and they need lots more space for their many dogs, a cat, and other assorted animals. But when she brings along loyal Belgian Malinois Elvis to check out Grackle Tree Farm, a tumble-down Northshire manor with a colorful history, he sniffs out a dead body in the library. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Rosenfelt, David. 'Twas the Bite Before Christmas. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250828842. $26. CD. MYSTERY

Lawyer Andy Carpenter is happy to be at the Tara Foundation’s annual Christmas party, especially because two-time foster-fail Derek Moore is there; he agreed to take in two senior dogs temporarily, then ended up adopting them and is now looking for a third. But the police are looking for Derek, accusing him of murder, and Andy sets out to prove Derek’s innocence. From the Shamus Award–winning Rosenfelt; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Literary Fiction

Adegoke, Yomi. The List. Morrow. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780063274877. $30. CD. LITERARY

A top journalist at Womxxxn magazine, Ola Olajide always calls out the men who appear on the List, an anonymous social media posting critiquing inappropriate behavior. Then one morning she wakes up to find her fiancé on the list. Fiction debuter Adegoke is a columnist for the Guardian and British Vogue who wrote Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible and was named one of Forbes 30 under 30. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Campbell, Bonnie Jo. The Waters. Norton. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780393248432. $30. LITERARY

On an island in Michigan’s Great Massasauga Swamp, herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook tends to 11-year-old granddaughter Dorothy, nicknamed Donkey, who was abandoned by a mother as intimated as the residents of nearby Whiteheart by Herself. Donkey longs for her mother’s return, not realizing that family secrets are about to explode in her face. From National Book Award finalist Campbell (American Salvage).

Cole, Teju. Tremor. Random. Oct. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9780812997118. $28. LITERARY

A West African man who teaches photography at a prestigious school in New England, Tunde loves ferreting out stories yet finds everything he encounters rimmed with pain. A simple walk might summon up colonial atrocities or casual racism, and even a happy marriage has its tensions. From the PEN/Hemingway and Windham-Campbell acknowledged Cole, his first novel since 2011’s Open City after numerous nonfiction titles.

Garner, Helen. The Children’s Bach. Pantheon. Oct. 2023. 176p. ISBN 9780553387414. $25. CD. LITERARY

Pompous Dexter and quietly efficient Athena Fox lead a staid life in the environs of early 1980s Melbourne, attending to two sons, one with disabilities. Then an old friend of Dexter resurfaces and introduces them to the city’s bohemian underground, and Athena in particular is drawn to the possibilities of a free and passionate new life. From a top Australian author and one of the publisher’s lead titles of the year.

Labatut, Benjamín. The MANIAC. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780593654477. $28. LITERARY

A pioneer in everything from game theory to AI and cellular automata, Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann is here given fictional life through the varied perspectives of family, friends, colleagues, and rivals. Labatut has done this sort of thing before; When We Cease To Understand the World, a New York Times Best Book that was also International Booker National Book Award shortlisted, explored a group of real-life scientists and thinkers in the early 20th century.

Lethem, Jonathan. Brooklyn Crime Novel. Ecco. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780062938824. $30. CD. LITERARY

Author of the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Motherless Brooklyn, Lethem circles back to the iconic borough in a story that opens in the 1970s and spans a half-century. Along the way, we meet parents, children, police, landlords, and gentrifiers, as money moves, power shifts, and lives are forever altered. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Mathis, Ayana. The Unsettled. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780525519935. $29. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Stuck with son Toussaint in a crumbling family shelter in 1985 Philadelphia, Ava wants to be the loving mother her own mother, Dutchess, never was and finds herself completely reenchanted by Toussaint’s firebrand father when he drops back into her life. Meanwhile, Dutchess struggles mightily to maintain their Alabama hometown, a place of Black self-determination that has dwindled to a handful of residents. From the author of the New York Times best-selling The Twelve Tribes of Hattie.

NDiaye, Marie. Vengeance Is Mine. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 240p. ISBN 9780593534243. $28. LITERARY

A Bordeaux lawyer known simply as Maître Susane is puzzled when asked by powerful Gilles Principaux to defend his wife, accused of a terrible crime. Why would he approach a small-town lawyer like her, and why does she feel she knows him from some incident in her past she can’t quite reconstruct? From the Prix Goncourt–winning author of Three Strong Women.

Newman, Sandra. Julia. Mariner: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780063265332. $30. CD. LITERARY

Newman’s retelling of Orwell’s 1984 focuses on Winston Smith’s lover, the glibly apolitical Julia, who works as a mechanic in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. But one day she surprises herself by slipping Winston a note and starts rethinking her world. From the author of The Heavens, The Country of Ice Cream Star, and the recent, controversy-stirring Men.

O’Brien, Tim. America Fantastica. Mariner: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780063318502. $32. CD. LITERARY

In August 2019, discredited journalist Boyd Halverson walks into the Community National Bank in Northern California and steals $81,000 at gunpoint, then brings teller Angie Bing along on an extended ride that reveals the country’s flattened morals and morale. Along the way, they’re chased by hitmen, angry lovers, an heiress, a billionaire, and assorted others as Boyd seeks vengeance for the wrongs one man did him. The masterly O’Brien’s first novel in two decades.

Thirlwell, Adam. The Future Future. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780374607616. $28. LITERARY

In 1775 France, innocent 18-year-old Celine is subject to scandalous allegations that, however false, the public wholeheartedly believes. She and her friends then band together and (it seems) march through history to crusade for truth and against a male-dominated world’s tendency toward genocide, colonial expansion, and violence against women. Twisty history from Thirlwell, twice selected as a Granta Best of Young British Novelists.

Toutonghi, Pauls. The Refugee Ocean. S. & S. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781668007433. $27.99. CD. LITERARY

In late 1940s Lebanon, Marguerite Toutoungi is prevented by family from studying at the Conservatoire de Paris and instead travels to Cuba with a man she’s met at a formal dance and ends up facing revolution. Over a half-century later, former Syrian piano prodigy Naïm Rahil arrives in the United States, his hand damaged by war, and aims for a simple life. Their stories are linked by the immigration experience, the vagaries of history, and a single song. The Pushcart Prize–winning Toutonghi (Red Weather) is the son of immigrants.

Ward, Jesmyn. Let Us Descend. Scribner. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781982104498. $28. CD. LITERARY

As she is marched south to her new owner in Louisiana, having been sold by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis is solaced by memories of her mother, the stories of her African warrior grandmother, and her sense of connection to the spirits of the earth. Another big book from MacArthur Fellow and two-time National Book Award winner Ward.

Short Stories

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Roman Stories. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 224p. tr. from Italian by Todd Portnowitz. ISBN 9780593536322. $27. lrg. prnt. STORIES

Writing in Italian, her adopted language, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lahiri offers nine stories steeped in Rome’s sights, sounds, and scents in her first collection since 2008’s Unaccustomed Earth, taking readers from a staircase uniting two neighborhoods to the surrounding countryside.

Winterson, Jeanette. The Night Side of the River. Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2023. NAp. ISBN 9780802161512. $27. STORIES

In a genre-crossing collection, the Whitbread/Forster–winning Winterson offers ghost stories both imagined and real. A haunted estate pulls a young couple into its past, chaos visits both a ghost tour and a West Village séance, and Winterson reports her own meet-ups with the supernatural.

Yoon, Paul. The Hive and the Honey: Stories. Marysue Rucci: Scribner. Oct. 2023. 160p. ISBN 9781668020791. $26. CD. STORIES

From a boy’s search for his prison-guard father on Sakhalin Island to a man once imprisoned trying to start a family in upstate New York to a woman in Barcelona tracking a prize fighter who could be her estranged son, NYPL Young Lion Yoon investigates shifting identities and cultures.

National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Authors

Chang, K-Ming. Organ Meats. One World. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780593447345. pap. $18. LITERARY

In Chang’s decidedly offbeat new novel (following Gods of Want), best friends Anita and Rainie learn from a pack of stray dogs uncannily able to communicate with humans that they are descended from generations of dog-headed women and women-headed dogs. Now the girls must decide whether to become dogs themselves. 

Jackson, Greg. The Dimensions of a Cave. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9780374298494. $30. LITERARY

In this latest (following Prodigals) from Granta Best of Young American Novelists, investigative reporter Quentin Jones is stunned when his story on military interrogation practices in the Desert War is scotched. Investigating further, he discovers a cutting-edge technology that simulates reality during interrogation. With a 25,000-copy first printing.

Torres, Justin. Blackouts. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780374293574. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

In Torres’s follow-up to the VCU Cabell–winning We the Animals, the protagonist tends a dying man in the desert who will pass along to him a project comprising stories collected in the early 20th century from queer subjects. Inspired by an actual artifact, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Washington, Bryan. Family Meal. Riverhead. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593421093. $27. LITERARY

The multi-award-winning Washington’s new work, following the story collection Lot and the novel Memorial, queer TJ and Cam bond while growing up in Houston and years later must navigate their estrangement.

Veteran Thrills

Child, Lee & Andrew Child. The Secret: A Jack Reacher Novel. Delacorte. (Jack Reacher, Bk. 28). Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9781984818584. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

DeMille, Nelson & Alex DeMille. Blood Lines. Scribner. (Scott Brodie, Bk. 2). Oct. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9781501101816. $29.99. CD. THRILLER

McDermid, Val. Past Lying. Atlantic Monthly. (Karen Pirie Novel, Bk. 7). Sept. 2023. NAp. ISBN 9780802161499. $27. THRILLER

Preston, Douglas. Extinction. Forge. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780765317704. $28.99. THRILLER

Sandford, John. Untitled. Putnam. (Prey, Bk. 33.). Oct. 2023. 416p. ISBN 9780593542811. $29.95. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Woods, Stuart & Brett Battles. Obsession. Putnam. (Teddy Faye Novel, Bk. 6). Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593188484. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

In The Secret, the Child brothers’ latest Jack Reacher adventure, Jack is part of an interagency task force created by the Secretary of Defense to discover what links the deaths of eight prominent individuals nationwide, and he must carefully eye the motives of some of his new colleagues. In Blood Lines, Nelson DeMille and his writer/director son Alex DeMille bring together Army Criminal Investigation agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor to determine who killed a U.S. counterterrorism agent stationed in western Germany but inexplicably found dead in a park within Berlin’s Arab neighborhood. From CWA Diamond Dagger winner McDermid, Past Lying gives Edinburgh’s DCI Karen Pirie a cold case to crack in the midst of pandemic lockdown as mysterious documents surface in the archives of a recently deceased crime novelist. In Preston’s Extinction, a billionaire’s son and his new wife are found murdered within the precincts of the Erebus Resort, a 100,000-acre expanse in the Colorado Rockies where resurrected woolly mammoths, Irish elk, and giant ground sloths roam, and Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash joins with county sheriff James Colcord to discover the culprits. Sandford’s Untitled brings together investigative geniuses Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers in another feverish thriller. With Obsession, the USA Today best-selling and Barry Award–winning Battles picks up the late Woods’s protagonist Teddy Fay, who’s tasked with finding the kidnapped wife of a Croatian billionaire funding a movie studio expansion.

More Thrills

Campbell, Michele. The Intern. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781250274977. $29. Downloadable. THRILLER

Hardworking Harvard Law student Maddy Rivera is thrilled when she wins an internship at the firm of magnetic professor Kathryn Conroy. Then her reprobate younger brother is arrested, with Kathryn the presiding judge at his trial, and she suspects she’s being deployed as a decoy when it appears that someone wants Kathryn dead. With a 75,000-copy first printing; following The Wife Who Knew Too Much, multiply acclaimed a best book of summer.

Chizmar, Richard. Becoming the Bogeyman. Gallery: S. & S. 336p. ISBN 9781668009161. $27.99. CD. THRILLER

In the metafictional New York Times best-selling, LJ -starred Chasing the Bogeyman, a character named Richard Chizmar recalls the murder of four teenage girls in his Maryland hometown in the 1980s. In this wrap-up, which examines our contemporary obsession with true-crime accounts, the characters have been so dangerously seduced by the gruesome events that they’ve put themselves at risk.

Johnston, Tim. Distant Sons. Algonquin: Workman: Hachette. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781643753591. $29. Downloadable. THRILLER

When his rust-rimmed Chevy truck breaks down in a small Wisconsin town, Sean Courtland stays put, drawn by a waitress at the local tavern and picking up carpentry and plumbing jobs with another recent arrival named Dan. The town remains haunted by the disappearance of three boys in the 1970s, and as Det. Corinne Viegas struggles to solve the case (as her father never could), secrets spill forth and events verge toward violence. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Knoll, Jessica. Bright Young Women. Marysue Rucci: Scribner. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781501153228. $27.99. CD. THRILLER

When she learns that a violent attack at a Florida State University sorority has left two women dead and two badly injured, Tina Cannon reaches out to the sorority president, sensing a connection to her friend Ruth’s disappearance in Seattle. And that connection is a smooth-talking, Ted Bundy–like character being called the All-American Sex Killer. The New York Times best-selling Knoll (Luckiest Girl Alive) intends to demythologize her killer, portraying him an unremarkable man built up by the media—certainly nothing like the “bright young women” whose lives he took.

McCloskey, David. Moscow X. Norton. (Damascus Station, Bk. 2). Oct. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9781324050759. $30. THRILLER

When CIA operatives Sia and Max travel to Russia, hoping to recruit Putin’s private banker and his wife, Anna, also a banker and an intelligence officer as well, they soon realize that Anna is the better bet but has her own guarded priorities. From former CIA officer McCloskey, who debuted with Damascus Station, an ITW Best First Novel finalist.

Matheson, Nadine. The Kill List. Hanover Square: Harlequin. (Inspector Anjelica Henley Thriller, Bk. 3). Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9781335455055. $30. CD. THRILLER

After The Jigsaw Man and The Binding Room, Black, London-based Inspector Anjelica Henley takes on another eye-popping, blood-churning case. Andrew Kenan has languished in jail for 25 years, but now fresh DNA evidence proves that he’s not the serial killer who sewed up his victims’ eyes and buried them alive. Then he is found dead in his cell, and Anjelica returns to a case that has long haunted her, looking for the real killer.

Morrissey, Hannah. When I’m Dead. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Black Harbor Novel, Bk. 3). Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781250872340. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

While investigating the death of her daughter’s best friend, Medical Examiner Rowan Winthorp learns that her own daughter, Chloe, is missing. Soon, she and her husband realize how little they know about Chloe and her ultimately transgressive behavior, and Rowan must face the sins of her own past. Following Hello, Transcriber and The Widowmaker, both attention getters.

Pop Fiction

Boyt, Susie. Loved and Missed. New York Review Bks. Sept. 2023. 224p. ISBN 9781681377810. pap. $17.95. FAMILY

When her drug-dependent daughter Eleanor has a baby, Ruth wants to help, eventually giving her a stash of money after discovering a dead body in her apartment and taking the baby home. In the end, the baby rescues disappointed Ruth as much as she rescues the baby. The Pen Ackerley Prize–winning Boyt, daughter of painter Lucian Freud and great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, gets her first U.S. publication; lots of in-house enthusiasm.

Brown, Karma. What Wild Women Do. Dutton. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593186350. $28. WOMEN

Having left Los Angeles, Rowan and fiancé Seth settle in an Adirondacks cabin, where Seth hopes to get moving on the novel he’s been trying to write. Hopeful screenwriter Rowan needs inspiration, too, which she finds in a handbook mentioning that 1970s socialite-turned-feminist Eddie Calloway wanted to host “wild women” at her nearby camp. Then Eddie mysteriously vanished. From the No. 1 internationally best-selling Brown (Recipe for a Perfect Wife).

Kim, Nancy Jooyoun. What We Kept to Ourselves. Atria. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781668004821. $27.99. FAMILY

John Kim is distraught; not only has his wife, Sunny, vanished, but the stranger he’s just found dead in the backyard is carrying a letter addressed to her. With his grown children, he begins investigating, and the story unwinds to the late 1970s, when a pregnant Sunny had just moved with workaholic John from Korea to Los Angeles and finds herself isolated and miserable. From the author of the New York Times best-selling, Reese’s Book Club–honored The Last Story of Mina Lee.

Kwok, Jean. The Leftover Woman. Morrow. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780063031463. $30. CD. WOMEN

Fleeing a controlling husband and searching for the daughter taken from her at birth, Jasmine Yang arrives in New York City from a small village in China. Meanwhile, publishing executive Rebecca Whitney, whose contented life includes a newly adopted Chinese daughter, suddenly faces an industry scandal. Their paths will cross thunderously. From the multi-award-winning, New York Times best-selling Kwok; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Steel, Danielle. Second Act. Delacorte. Oct. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9781984821959. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. WOMEN

When new owners remove Andy Westfield from his longtime job as head of a big-deal Hollywood studio, he recuperates from the shock by retreating to a remote coastal village a few hours from London. To help put his affairs in order, he hires a local woman who’s herself at a turning point, and he thinks the half-finished novel she inadvertently leaves at the house one day would make a smashing film. Next in an audacious Steel schedule of seven original novels in 2023.

Wright, Lawrence. Mr. Texas. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780593537374. $29. lrg. prnt. POLITICAL

New Yorker staffer Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, but he writes fiction as well. Not surprisingly, his latest novel has a political twist. After good-hearted Texas rancher Sonny Lamb rescues the neighbors’ daughter and her horse from a burning barn, he’s asked to run as a Republican for the Texas House of Representatives—and wins. But his new job proves to be a challenge to his life and his beliefs.

Yoshimoto, Banana. The Premonition. Counterpoint. Oct. 2023. 256p. tr. from Japanese by Asa Yoneda. ISBN 9781640093713. $24. FAMILY

Though she comes from a secure, loving family, Yayoi finds herself increasingly unsettled at age 19; she has a sense that she’s forgotten something important from childhood. To discover what it is, she moves in with her eccentric aunt Yukino, who eats when she likes, falls asleep in the hallway, and binge-watches Friday the 13th. Celebrated Japanese author Yoshimoto’s 1988 novel, which became a huge best seller, is finally appearing in English.

Young, Adrienne. The Unmaking of June Farrow. Delacorte. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780593598672. $28. WOMEN

June Farrow of Jasper, NC, wants to rise above the curse that’s shadowed her family for generations, which eventually drove her mother from home—and out of her mind. Digging through her town’s troubling past, June comes to a mysterious door whose threshold she crosses at her risk; though she senses her own mind slipping, she realizes that she could change both past and present and find true love. From the New York Times best-selling author of Spells for Forgetting.

Historical Fiction

Blakemore, A.K. The Glutton. Scribner. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781668030622. $28. HISTORICAL

In 1798 France, a nun watches over a man dying from a monstrous appetite, and the unfolding story reveals that the excesses of the French Revolution drove him to excesses of his own. Thus does Blakemore, winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize for her sparkling The Manningtree Witches, reimagine a real-life figure, the Great Tarrare, the Glutton of Lyon.

Eekhout, Anne. Mary & the Birth of Frankenstein. HarperVia. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780063256743. $30. CD. HISTORICAL

Award-winning Danish author Eekhout roots Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein in Mary's experiences at age 14, when she visited the Baxter family in Dundee, Scotland. As she and young Isabella Baxter explore the nearby woods, dreaming up fantastical Scottish creatures, their feelings for each other flourish. Then they encounter a real monster, even as Isabella’s sinister brother-in-law follows their every move. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Griffith, Nicola. Menewood. MCD: Farrar. Oct. 2023. 736p. ISBN 9780374208080. $35. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

The eponymous heroine of Nebula/World Fantasy honoree Griffiths’s Hild returns, now 18 and married to the childhood love she was once denied. Though evidently no longer possessed of supernatural insight, she’s still a valued adviser to her king in seventh-century Britain, important in a time of regal and religious rivalry. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Morris, Heather. Sisters Under the Rising Sun. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 416p. ISBN 9781250320551. $30. CD/downloadable. HISTORICAL

In 1942, the Japanese military bombed a merchant ship carrying fleeing expats from Singapore to Australia and took the survivors as prisoners of war, moving them from camp to camp until war’s end. Among them were nurse Nesta James and civilian Norah Chambers, whose friendship helped them survive. With a 250,000-copy first printing from the author of the multi-million-copy The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Peters, Amanda. The Berry Pickers. Catapult. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781646221950. $27. HISTORICAL

In July 1962, a Mi’kmaq family travels from Nova Scotia to Maine to pick blueberries, and the four-year-old daughter disappears. Subsequently, little Norma grows up haunted by strange dreams she becomes convinced are memories as one family mourns, another hides secrets, and a mystery slowly unravels over 50 years. Of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry, Peters won the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose.

Salazar, Noelle. The Roaring Days of Zora Lily. Mira: Harlequin. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780778305309. $30; pap. ISBN 9780778305200. $18.99. CD. HISTORICAL

In 2023, costume conservator Sylvia Early is unfolding the centerpiece gown of an exhibit she is readying for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History when she spots the name Zora Lily hidden beneath the designer label. The narrative then unfolds the story of Seattle-born Zora Hough from a poverty-shriveled childhood to Seattle’s Jazz Age speakeasies to the star-spangled couture houses of Hollywood. Best-selling Flight Girls author Salazar was inspired by the life of her own great grandmother; with a 175,000 paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Tan Twan Eng. The House of Doors. Bloomsbury. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781639731930. $28.99. HISTORICAL

Broke, floundering creatively, and miserable in a marriage of convenience meant to hide his homosexuality, Somerset Maugham traveled to Malaya after World War I, where he met Lesley Hamlyn and her lawyer husband, Robert. Tan takes this real-life event and stitches together a narrative featuring Maugham’s bonding with Lesley and a secret she shares about events during the Chinese Revolution. From the Man Booker short-listed, Man Asia Prize–winning Tan.

Ye Chun. Straw Dogs of the Universe. Catapult. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781646220625. $27. HISTORICAL

In the midst of famine, 10-year-old Sixiang’s mother sells her to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and some coins, hoping that she will find a better life in 19th-century California. Once there, Sixiang sets out to find her railroad worker father in a country fraught with violence and anti-Chinese sentiment. Ye’s debut story collection, Hao, was long-listed for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Speculative Fiction

Baker, A. Deborah. Under the Smokestrewn Sky. Tor.com. (The Up-and-Under, Bk. 4). Oct. 2023. 208p. ISBN 9781250848475. $21.99. FANTASY

In wrap-up to the “Up-and-Under” quartet, Avery and Zib have almost arrived at the Impossible City after marching relentlessly across field and through forest, but danger still awaits. From the multi-award-winning Seanan McGuire, writing as Baker; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

Basu, Samit. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport. Tor.com. Oct. 2023. 416p. ISBN 9781250827517. $28.99. SF

Lina was programmed before birth to save her city, Shantiport, a failed gateway to the stars, even as her monkey-bot brother longs to roam the universe. All hell breaks loose when Shantiport's reigning tech billionaire compels Lina to seek out a powerful artifact. From international best-selling Indian novelist Basu (The City Inside); with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Broder, Melissa. Death Valley. Scribner. Oct. 2023. 240p. ISBN 9781668024843. $27. CD. MAGIC REALISM

Undone by the illness of both her father and her husband, a woman escapes to a motel in the California high desert and while hiking discovers a huge, out-of-place cactus that has a gaping hole on one side. She enters to find her life completely changed. Following the multi-best-booked Milk Fed.

Davis-Goff, Sarah. Silent City. Flatiron: Macmillan. Oct. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9781250262622. $27.99. Downloadable. DYSTOPIAN

Fierce shrake, whose bites cause infection or death, have overrun Ireland, with survivors gathering in the authoritarian Phoenix City and protected by an all-women fighting force. When two women are executed, Orpen realizes that she must flee, even if it means heading into grave danger. Irish author David-Goff follows up her well-received Last Ones Left Alive; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Guanzon, Thea. The Hurricane Wars. Harper Voyager. Oct. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9780063277274. $30. CD. FANTASY/ROMANCE

Born and raised in the midst of the Hurricane Wars, her country besieged by the Night Emperor, orphaned Talasyn shimmers with light magic. That magic dangerously threatens the enemy, which is why the emperor’s son, Prince Alaric, targets her on the battlefield. But their clash of powers leads to something unexpected. A debut novel with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Harrow, Alix E. Starling House. Tor. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781250799050. $28.99. Downloadable. FANTASY

In 19th-century Kentucky, E. Starling wrote a well-known fantasy called The Underland and then disappeared, leaving behind the now tumbledown Starling House, inhabited by its last moody heir, Arthur. Opal takes a job there, hoping to earn money to help her brother. But the house starts feeling like home, and soon she’s teaming up with Arthur to uncover its secrets. From the Hugo Award–winning Harrow; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

Kadrey, Richard & Cassandra Khaw. The Dead Take the A Train. Tor Nightfire. (Carrion Duology, Bk. 1). Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781250867025. $28.99. CD/downloadable. FANTASY

Burned-out, bottom-rung Julie Crews wants to make it in New York City’s world of magic, and her obvious ambition gets her hired by an eldritch god to commit an act of revenge. But she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that threatens the entire world. First in the “Carrion City” duology from two top authors; with a 150,000-copy first printing.

Kelly, Greta. The Queen of Days. Harper Voyager. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780063240964. $30. CD. FANTASY/EPIC

For fun, money, and vengeance after his parents are murdered, Balthazar commits his family of thieves to stealing a statue at a celebration for the god Karanis, with the Queen of Days foisted on him as part of the heist. The ceremony ends up unleashing the god himself, and with the statue he intended to inhabit smashed, Balthazar is forced to hunt for a part that went missing or the world’s done for. From the author of the “Warrior Witch” duology; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Maniscalco, Kerri. Throne of the Fallen. Little, Brown. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780316557290. $29. Downloadable. FANTASY/EPIC

To defuse the rakish Lord Phillip Vexley’s threats of blackmail, talented artist Miss Camilla Antonius teams up with a town newcomer, the Prince of Envy himself, and learns about her own true nature as they travel through the Shifting Islands and try not to fall in love. The adult debut of No. 1 New York Times best-selling Maniscalco; with a 350,000-copy first printing.

Mosley, Walter. Touched. Atlantic Monthly. Oct. 2023. 176p. ISBN 9780802161840. $26. SF

Awakening from a deep sleep that might have lasted for centuries, Martin Just realizes that humanity is a deadly virus and that he is the Cure. He lives with his wife and children in the Hollywood hills, the only Black family on their block, and to defend them sometimes finds himself blessed with outsized strength and entering an alternate consciousness as he battles a relentless stalker, a pale-faced embodiment of death. The masterly Mosley in sf mode.

Sanderson, Brandon. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Tor. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781250899699. $29.99. FANTASY

They belong to the Cosmere universe, but Yumi and Painter are two very different people. Yumi comes from a verdant world of spirits and meditation, while Painter’s dark-lit, tech-driven world is full of nightmares. Suddenly, however, their lives are conjoined, and they must work together to save each other’s communities. From the Hugo Award–winning Sanderson; with a 300,000-copy first printing.

Taub, Melinda. The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch. Grand Central. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9781538739204. $30. Downloadable. FANTASY

In this fantastical reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, narrated by youngest sister Lydia Bennet, Kitty is really a barn cat, Wickham is indeed a demon, and Lydia herself is a witch just learning her craft. What will straitlaced Mr. Darcy think of all this magic? From the Emmy Award–winning Taub, author of the YA novel Still Star-Crossed; with a 30,000-copy first printing.

Nonfiction

Memoir

Kurzweil, Amy. Artificial: A Love Story. Catapult. Oct. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9781948226387. $38. MEMOIR

Kurzweil, whose comics have graced the pages of The New Yorker, offers a memoir in graphic format over three persevering generations. Her father, inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil, saved documents belonging to his own conductor/pianist father, Frederic, who fled Nazi-infested Vienna in 1938; Ray recently turned to daughter Amy to help build a chatbot that writes in Fred’s voice. Kurweil’s first graphic memoir since 2016’s award-winning Flying Couch.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. A Man of Two Faces. Grove. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780802160508. $28. MEMOIR

If the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen’s extraordinary fiction is reverberant with the awful pain of colonization, war, and the refugee’s life, imagine what his memoir will be like. The flight his family undertook from Vietnam to the United States, his temporary removal from them, the shooting of his parents one Christmas Eve at their grocery store in San Jose, the fractured sense of identity that has pervaded his life—all are summed up in an account that’s both wide-ranging and deeply personal.

Willis, Raquel. The Risk It Takes To Bloom: On Life and Liberation. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781250275684. $29. MEMOIR

Raised in the South by Catholic parents, Willis discovered the LGBTQ+ community at university and began moving toward a surer sense of herself and her sexuality. A career in journalism led to her recognizing the dangers facing trans women of color in particular, and she has since emerged as a leading Black transgender activist. Here she tracks her life and her liberation; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Current Events

Baron, Martin. Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post. Flatiron: Macmillan. Oct. 2023. 560p. ISBN 9781250844200. $34.99. CD/downloadable. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Appointed executive editor of the Washington Post in 2013, shortly before Jeff Bezos bought the paper, Baron soon had to contend with Donald Trump’s presidency and continuing attacks on the press. Here he recounts being caught squarely between two powerful men while working to maintain the paper’s integrity and quality work. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

Kostyuchenko, Elena. I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2023. 400p. tr. from Russian by Bela Shayevich & Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse. ISBN 9780593655269. $30. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Russian journalist/activist Kostyuchenko entered Ukraine in March 2022 to report on the war for her country’s last independent press, Novaya Gazeta, intent on showing her compatriots the horrors being inflicted in their name and knowing she faced arrest if she returned. (The paper was subsequently shuttered.) Here she combines personal essays with her reportage from the last 15 years, ranging from queer rights to village girls forced into sex work, to document authoritarian Russia today.

Jabali, Malaika. It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On. Algonquin: Workman: Hachette. Oct. 2023. 208p. ISBN 9781643752648. $24. POLITICAL SCIENCE/ECONOMICS

In these deeply income-unequal days, with work hours up and real wages down, capitalism has been coming in for some biting remarks; surveys show that more than half of millennials and Gen Z-ers are suspicious of its tenets. But they don’t know much about socialism, something Jabali, a senior news and politics editor at Essence magazine, intends to correct. Here’s a spirited and reader-friendly discussion from a longtime socialist adherent that also highlights unrecognized socialists of color and the contributions they’ve made. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Levitsky, Steven & Daniel Ziblatt. Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. Crown. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593443071. $28.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

The United States appears to be on its way to becoming a multiracial democracy, but will it make it? Harvard professors Levitsky and Ziblatt aren’t sure, pointing out that unlike other modern democracies (e.g., Germany, Argentina, and New Zealand), it has retained outmoded institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges that perpetuate minority rule. Without correctives, the nation could cease to be a democracy altogether. Following the New York Times best-selling How Democracies Die.

Raymond, Edwin with Jon Sternfeld. An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight To Change Policing in America. Viking. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593653166. $29. MEMOIR/POLITICS

A ranked lieutenant in the New York Police Department, first-generation Haitian American Raymond is also the lead plaintiff in the biggest civil rights lawsuit the NYPD has ever faced. Raised in a poor, mostly immigrant section of Brooklyn, he had joined the force to help his community only to realize that iniquities within the ranks weren't down to a few rogue cops; the entire system was structured to ensure that that racial profiling took place—and was rewarded.

Thrall, Nathan. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. Metropolitan: Holt. Oct. 2023. ISBN 9781250854971. $29.99. Downloadable. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

After a serious accident involving a bus taking schoolchildren to a theme park outside Jerusalem, Abed Salama rushed to the scene in search of his five-year-old son, Milad. Children were missing or unidentified, with those rescued taken to different hospitals, but Abed had another, greater problem: as a Palestinian, he had the wrong papers to pass military checkpoints and enter Jerusalem to find Milad. The former director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, Thrall puts the Jewish-Palestinian struggle in human terms. With a 70,000-copy first printing.

Wingfield, Adia Harvey. Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do To Fix It. Amistad: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780063079816. $29.99. BUSINESS/DISCRIMINATION

Despite efforts to end discrimination and promote diversity, the workplace is still haunted by what C. Wright Mills Award–winning sociologist Wingfield calls “gray areas”—factors like relationships, networking, and cultural dynamics that can determine one’s success on the job. In the end, she says, Black employees are still less likely to be hired or to reach top management levels, and here she highlights the experiences of seven individuals pulled from 200 interviewees. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Biography

Baier, Bret. To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment. Mariner: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780063039582. $29.99. BIOGRAPHY

Conant, Jennet. Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins. Norton. Oct. 2023. 576p. ISBN 9780393882124. $32.50. BIOGRAPHY

Coppins, McKay. Romney: A Reckoning. Scribner. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781982196202. $32.50. BIOGRAPHY

Ford, Tanisha. Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement. Amistad: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 388p. ISBN 9780063115712. $32.99. CD. BIOGRAPHY

Reid, Joy-Ann. Medgar and Myrlie. Mariner: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780063068797. $30. CD. BIOGRAPHY

White, Ronald C. On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Random. Oct. 2023. 512p. ISBN 9780525510086. $35. BIOGRAPHY

In To Rescue the Constitution, Baier, the chief political anchor for Fox News, charts George Washington’s return from retirement post–Revolutionary War to lead the Constitutional Convention that bound together the United States (200,000-copy first printing). New York Times best-selling author Conant investigates the life and Fierce Ambition of journalist Marguerite (Maggie) Higgins, who reported on the liberation of Dachau and, following her dispatches from Korea, became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. From Atlantic staff writer Coppins, Romney draws on exclusive interviews from Sen. Mitt Romney and his family and friends. Ford’s Our Secret Society tells the story of Mollie Moon, whose fundraising efforts as founder of the National Urban League Guild helped support the Civil Rights Movement. MSNBC political analyst Reid (The Man Who Sold America) offers the dual biography Medgar and Myrlie, about assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers and his activist wife, Myrlie. White, the New York Times best-selling biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, here chronicles gentle-souled Bowdoin professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who became a Civil War general and hero, then four-time governor of Maine in On Great Fields.

U.S. History

Ayers, Edward L. American Visions: The United States, 1800–1860. Norton. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780393881264. $32.50. HISTORY

In the early 1800s, as the United States expanded westward toward its Manifest Destiny, with growing enslavement, growing attacks on Indigenous peoples, growing conflict with new immigrants, and wars with neighboring countries, voices of dissent and transformation still flourished. So argues the National Humanities Medal–winning Ayers, citing Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, Samuel Morse, Henry David Thoreau, and biracial Pequod activist William Apess as examples.

Clarren, Rebecca. The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance. Viking. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593655078. $32. HISTORY

To escape antisemitism in Russia, Whiting Grant winner Clarren’s great-great-grandparents fled to the United States with their six children at the turn of the 20th century, finally settling in South Dakota. What they did not acknowledge, and what Clarren knows and explores here, is that their 160-acre homestead was taken from the Lakota by the U.S. government.

Davenport, Matthew J. The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 448p. ISBN 9781250279279. $35. HISTORY

It actually took less than a minute, but the earthquake that struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906, devastated the largest city in the Western United States. Drawing on letters, diaries, unpublished memoirs, and newly discovered archives, plus interviews with engineers and geologists, litigation attorney Davenport, author of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize finalist First Over There, reconstructs what happened. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Inskeep, Steve. Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593297865. $30. HISTORY

Cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition and a Loeb Award winner, Inskeep highlights Abraham Lincoln’s political smarts, showing that he managed a divided nation because he knew how to manage those who opposed him—by working with them or getting around them—even as he succeeded in making his own beliefs reality in clearly contentious times.

Leonhardt, David. Ours Was the Shining Future: The Rise and Fall of the American Dream. Random. Oct. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9780812993202. $30. HISTORY

It’s “the American Dream”: anyone can do well, and anyone can do better. But the dream has corroded in the 21st century as life expectancy falls, living standards flatten, income inequality soars, and the Black-white wage gap endures. A Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist who specializes in the economy, Leonhardt explains why by considering corporate culture, government investments, and the political power of grass-roots movements over the last decades.

World History

Bass, Gary J. Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 912p. ISBN 9781101947104. $45. HISTORY

Not as discussed as the Nuremberg Trials, the trial of Japan’s World War II leaders as war criminals sought redress for the attack on Pearl Harbor; atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and abuses against prisoners of war like the infamous Bataan Death March. The aim was also to create a legal framework for prosecuting future war crimes, even as it gave Japanese leaders an opportunity to argue that the war was waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism. Pulitzer Prize finalist Bass (The Blood Telegram) chronicles the trial, showing how it shaped the Cold War to come.

Beard, Mary. Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World. Liveright: Norton. Oct. 2023. 512p. ISBN 9780871404220. $37.95. HISTORY

Sweeping from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE), celebrated classicist Beard chronicles Rome’s emperors not by repeating familiar stories but by asking astute questions. How much power did they really have? Were their reigns as bloody as we imagine? Who were their wives, lovers, servants, and soldiers? And why do we remain so fascinated with them?

Guy, John & Julia Fox. Hunting the Falcon. Harper. Oct. 2023. 464p. ISBN 9780063073449. $35. CD. HISTORY

As companion to the Tony Award–winning Six, here’s a revisionist history of Anne Boleyn from best-selling, Whitbread-winning Tudor expert Guy and Fox, author of the USA TODAY best-selling Jane Boleyn. They plumb recently discovered archival material and shuffle aside outmoded ways of looking at women to argue that Anne was a shrewd politician, wielding more power and influence than previously thought; apparently, at one point Henry considered making her a joint sovereign. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Mundy, Liza.The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA . Crown. Oct. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9780593238172. $32.50. HISTORY

Women have worked for the CIA since its inception in 1947. Initially not deemed capable of spycraft, they held low-level positions that allowed them to move quietly through foreign capitals, collecting secrets and soon building the CIA archives. Eventually, they did become spies; it was female CIA analysts who first warned about Al Qaeda and tracked down Osama Bin Laden. The New York Times best-selling Mundy (Code Girls) tells their story.

Petraeus, David & Andrew Roberts. Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Harper. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780063293137. $40. CD. HISTORY

Retired U.S. Army general Petraeus and New York Times best-selling, multi-award-winning historian Roberts join forces to see what lessons we can glean from global conflict since the end of World War II. The narrative sweeps from the Arab-Israeli wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the two Gulf wars, to the collapse of Yugoslavia and long-term conflict in Afghanistan, to guerrilla conflicts in Africa and South America and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Reid, Stuart A. The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 640p. ISBN 9781524748814. $30. HISTORY

In 1960, just days after Congo was given its independence by Belgium, the Congo army mutinied, Belgian forces reentered the picture, and prime minister Patrice Lumumba turned to the UN for help. Disappointed by its response, he then turned to the Soviet Union, prompting the CIA to plot Lumumba’s assassination. Eventually, he was deposed in a CIA-backed coup and killed by Congolese assassins, launching brutal times in Congo and nurturing the CIA’s tendency toward violent intervention. The executive editor of Foreign Affairs reports.

Cookbooks

Drummond, Ree. Untitled. William Morrow Cookbooks. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780062962843. $32.50. COOKING

French, Erin. Big Heart Little Stove: Bringing Home Meals & Moments from The Lost Kitchen. Celadon: Macmillan. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250832313. $38. Downloadable. COOKING

Gutierrez, Sandra A. Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America: A Cookbook. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 592p. ISBN 9780525659259. $40. COOKING

Valladolid, Marcela. Familia: 125 Foolproof Mexican Recipes To Feed Your People. Voracious: Hachette. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780316437905. $35. COOKING

El-Waylly, Sohla & Samin Nosrat. Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook; a Cookbook. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 656p. ISBN 9780593320464. $45. COOKING

Culinary sensation Drummond, aka, the Pioneer Woman, returns with an Untitled cookbook that’s clearly highly anticipated; there’s a million-copy first printing. Just named among Time magazine’s “World’s Greatest Places” and Bloomberg’s “12 Restaurants Worth Traveling Across the World to Experience," French’s 40-seat Maine restaurant The Lost Kitchen is the source of the 75-plus recipes found in Big Heart Little Stove. Winner of a Les Dames D’Escoffier M.F.K Fisher Grand Prize Award for Excellence in Food Writing, Gutierrez collects 300-plus recipes from across Latin America in Latinísimo, ranging from Tortillas de Nixtamal (Fresh Masa Tortillas) to Pastel de Tres Leches (Tres Leches Cake). In Familia, Emmy-nominated TV chef Valladolid takes us into home kitchens across Mexico to celebrate and share traditional cuisine. Cooking well requires the right techniques, and from “Temperature Management 101” to “Getting To Know Dough,” El-Waylly’s Start Here delivers the goods—not to mention 200-plus recipes.

Writing About Food

Dunlop, Fuchsia. Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food. Norton. Oct. 2023. 416p. ISBN 9780393867138. $32.50. COOKING/HISTORY

A James Beard Award–winning expert in Chinese cuisine, Dunlop isn’t here to offer recipes. Instead, she uses a menu of 30 dishes from Mapo tofu to drunken crabs to reveal the history, philosophies, and techniques of a cuisine that has linked diet and health for two millennia. Dunlop is the first Westerner to train at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine.

Foster, Kim. The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781250278777. $30. SOCIAL SCIENCE/FOOD

Who we are and where we stand in life is evidenced by the food we eat—or can’t put on the table. As she ranges from a grocery store cashier relieved to be surrounded by food after a childhood marked by hunger to an unhoused woman hopefully growing scallions in the car where she lives, the James Beard Award–winning Foster shows how poverty impacts food consumption in the United States. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Friedman, Andrew. The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food. Mariner: HarperCollins. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780063135970. $29.99. CD. COOKING/NARRATIVES

What does it take to get one plate of food onto a restaurant table? To tell us, chef writer Friedman tracks a single dish at Chicago’s Wherewithall restaurant, moving from the modern farming industry and the food-supply chain, to the server who takes a diner’s order, to the chefs who dreamed up the dish and manage the kitchen, to the line cooks and sous chefs who cook it, and finally to the dishwashers and busers who keep things clean. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Garner, Dwight. The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9780374603427. $27. MEMOIR/CULINARY

New York Times book critic Garner talks about the two things he loves the most, books and food, starting with his mayonnaise-enriched childhood (and his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich) and moving on to his marriage to a chef from a food-passionate family. A narrative framed by breakfast, lunch, shopping, drinking, and dinner weaves the two together. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Harris, Will. A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food. Viking. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593300473. $29. BUSINESS/FOOD INDUSTRY

A fourth-generation farmer, Harris became concerned with the cruelty, excesses, and environmental and small-town devastation wrought by conventional farming when he inherited White Oak Pastures in Georgia. He has sought a different way, an approach he calls radical traditional that works with nature and brings people closer to the food they eat. The result is both manifesto and multigenerational memoir from a man the New York Times calls “Justin Bieber of new agriculture.”

Lohman, Sarah. Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods. Norton. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781324004660. $28.95.

Shocked by the disappearance of comestibles from heirloom cider apples to wild rice long associated with the North American continent, food historian Lohman (Eight Flavors) sets out to discover foods that are fast disappearing—and find a way to save them. In particular, she argues for preserving largely Indigenous culinary customs very nearly lost to colonization.

Language, Literature & Philosophy

Dennett, Daniel C. I’ve Been Thinking. Norton. Oct. 2023. 464p. ISBN 9780393868050. $38. MEMOIR/PHILOSOPHY

Gay, Roxane. Opinions. Harper. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780063341463. $32. CD. LITERATURE/ESSAYS

Hecimovich, Gregg. The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative. Ecco. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780062334732. $40. LITERATURE/BIOGRAPHY

Ogilvie, Sarah. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780593536407. $28. LANGUAGE/HISTORY

Sapolsky, Robert M. Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2023. 528p. ISBN 9780525560975. $32. PHILOSOPHY/BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Sisman, Adam. The Secret Life of John le Carré. Harper. Oct. 2023. 128p. ISBN 9780063341043. $27.99. CD. LITERATURE/BIOGRAPHY

I’ve Been Thinking, muses eminent philosopher and cognitive scientist Dennett (Consciousness Explained), whose memoir examines key influences on his thought (e.g., Gilbert Ryle, Stephen Jay Gould) and both breakthroughs and diversions along the way. Has influential author/editor/commentator Gay got Opinions, which she shares in her first new book in six years, collecting key nonfiction pieces from the last decade (100,000-copy first printing). In The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, Furman University professor Hecimovich uncovers the true identity of Hannah Bonds, credited with authoring The Bondwoman's Narrative, the first novel known to be written by a Black American woman. In The Dictionary People, linguist/lexicographer Ogilvie chronicles the many volunteers—from a Yale president and a suffragette to the daughter or Karl Marx and three murderers—who helped create the Oxford English Dictionary. A Macarthur Fellow and Stanford professor of biology and neurology, Sapolsky argues that we are all Determined—that there is no separate self dictating what our biology does—and considers what this means for morality. A National Book Critics Circle Award–winning biographer, Sisman here reveals The Secret Life of John le Carré, sharing details—particularly regarding affairs—that he could not reveal while writing a biography of le Carré during his lifetime.

Music & Dance

Faber, Michel. Listen: On Music, Sound and Us. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Oct. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781335000620. $30. CD. MUSIC

A multi-prize-winning novelist known especially forThe Crimson Petal and the White and the Whitbread short-listed Under the Skin, Faber here plunges into nonfiction, considering how and why we listen to music, the factors (e.g., age, illness) that influence our musical tastes, and the problems inherent in dividing music into good and bad. He’s loved all kinds of music his whole life.

Gabriel, Mary. Madonna: A Rebel Life. Little, Brown. Oct. 2023. 800p. ISBN 9780316456470. $38. Downloadable. MUSIC/BIOGRAPHY

A Pulitzer Prize finalist (Love and Capital) whose Ninth Street Women has sold more than 95,000-copies across formats, Gabriel limns the life and cultural significance of Madonna, regarding not just music but female empowerment, queer sensibility, and gay rights. With a 65,000-copy first printing and big publicity tied into her 12th tour, starting in July 2023.

Harss, Marina. The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 496p. ISBN 9780374102616. $35. DANCE/BIOGRAPHY

Born in Kyiv and trained at the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow, Ratmansky was named artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet at the young age of 35, then became resident choreographer at the American Ballet Theatre; in Fall 2023, he joins the New York City Ballet as Artist in Residence. Dance journalist Harss explores not just Ratmansky’s ever-rising career and distinctive style, which blends Western and Russian influences, but his outspoken opposition to Vladimir Putin and championing of Ukraine. With a 20,000-copy first printing.

Hermes, Will. Lou Reed: The King of New York. Farrar. Oct. 2023. 560p. ISBN 9780374193393. $35. CD/Downloadable. MUSIC/BIOGRAPHY

Rolling Stone contributor Hermes draws on recent interviews, previously unheard recordings, and the New York Public Library’s Lou Reed Papers to create a study of Reed’s life and outsize influence. Along the way, he chronicles Reed’s working relationships with artists like David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson and presents New York City as a singular locus of culture. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Nelson, Willie & David Ritz. Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs. Morrow. Oct. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780063272200. $50. CD. MUSIC

What better way for an iconic musician like Willie Nelson to celebrate his 90th birthday than to share the stories behind the lyrics of his favorite songs—160 altogether, some not as well known as others but all gems for his fans. Also included: stories about his family, his guitar, and artists he has worked with, from Patsy Cline to Ray Charles to Dolly Parton. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Norman, Philip. George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle. Scribner. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781982195861. $35. MUSIC/BIOGRAPHY

Author of the million-copy-selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and a biographer of numerous Sixties rock stars, Norman turns to George Harrison, the least flashy Beatle. He was not considered a composer on par with the powerhouse Lennon-McCartney team but wrote enduring classics like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”; his solo debut album, All Things Must Pass, has appeared on multiple 100 Best Rock Albums Lists; and he’s ranked among the best Sixties guitarists. Norman examines his contradictions and ultimately generous nature.

Robinson, Staci. Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography. Crown. Oct. 2023. 464p. ISBN 9781524761042. $35. MUSIC/BIOGRAPHY

Because she knew Tupac Shakur as a young man, author/screenwriter Robinson was asked by his mother to write this biography. What results, the first and only Estate-authorized biography of the legendary artist, draws on private notebooks, letters, unpublished lyrics, and forthright conversations to portray a man shaped equally by art and politics, prophetic in his outlook, wildly successful at a young age, and lost too soon.

Stone, Sly with Ben Greenman. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir. AUWA: MCD: Farrar. Oct. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780374606978. $30. CD/downloadable. MUSIC/MEMOIR

A groundbreaker whose famed 1960s–70s songs (e.g., “Everyday People”) created a new kind of music that blended Black and white, male and female, funk and rock, Stone was a galvanizing performer who nevertheless leapt out of the spotlight and has remained a mystery to many. Finally, with this first book, he’s telling his story. With a 200,000-copy first printing and an introduction by Questlove, who has just launched the imprint AUWA with Farrar’s MCD.

Wenner, Jann S. The Masters: Conversations with Dylan, Lennon, Jagger, Townshend, Garcia, Bono, and Springsteen. Little, Brown. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780316571050. $30. MUSIC

Following up his New York Times best-selling memoir, Like a Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone founder Wenner revisits his edited interviews for the magazine with Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Jerry Garcia, and Sonny Bono and adds a new, exclusive interview with Bruce Springsteen. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

TV & Film

Eyman, Scott. Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided. S. & S. Oct. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9781982176358. $29.99. CD. FILM

Charlie Chaplin made some of film’s masterpieces but fell foul of U.S. politics during the Red-Scared post–World War II era owing to his liberal, internationalist views and his having never become a U.S. citizen. His sexual interest in young women was further used as a covert means of condemning his politics. Refused entry into the United States after a trip abroad, he lived his last years in Switzerland. Hollywood biography Eyman (Pieces of My Heart) details his ordeal.

Fitzgerald, Melissa & Mary McCormack.What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service. Dutton. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780593184547.29. TV

Fitzgerald played Assistant Press Secretary Carol Fitzpatrick in all seven seasons of The West Wing, then left film to work for reform of the U.S. justice system, while McCormack played Deputy National Security Advisor Kate Harper on the show. Here they go backstage to explore the conception and production of the hit series.

Herzog, Werner. Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2023. 368p. tr. from German by Michael Hofmann. ISBN 9780593490297. $30. MEMOIR/FILM

Born in 1942 Munich and raised in Bavaria, internationally celebrated director Herzog has made more than 60 feature and documentary films, directed numerous operas, appeared as an actor, and exhibited an art installation at the 2012 Whitney Biennale. He became interested in film at age 15 and made his first film at age 19 (only two years after making his first phone call), and the rest is history. This life-and-work chronicle will likely be worthy of its own film.

Hirsch, Foster. Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher—Television. Knopf. Oct. 2023. 656p. ISBN 9780307958921. $40. FILM

Maybe the 1950s seem gray and conformist, but in Hollywood (Disney notwithstanding), it meant more upheaval than we ever knew: Cinerama, CinemaScope, and VistaVision emerged along with sagas and glittery musicals; anti-heroes, dance-in-the-street teens, socially relevant themes, and viscerally troubled characters hit the screen; and the studio system and the production code collapsed. Brooklyn College film professor Hirsch clues us in.

Singer, Matt. Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever. Putnam. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593540152. $29. FILM

In 1975, Gene Siskel, the film critic for the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Ebert, newly awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism at the Chicago Sun-Times, met for the first time and gingerly agreed to work together on a film review show. An editor and film critic at ScreenCrush.com, Singer follows the success of the project from the participants’ swords-crossed beginnings to close friendship and the triumph of their trademark “two thumbs up!” assessment.

Stamos, John. If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir. Holt. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781250890979. $29.99. CD/downloadable. MEMOIR/PERFORMING ARTS

A two-time Emmy Award–nominated television, film, and theater actor and producer who also toured and recorded with the Beach Boys for over 30 years, Stamos covers a life lived to the fullest in this memoir. With a 400,000-copy first printing.

Wasson, Sam. The Path to Paradise: Francis Ford Coppola, the Apocalypse and the Dream. Harper. Oct. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780063037847. $32.99. FILM

The author of several New York Times best-selling books on film (e.g., Fifth Avenue, Five A.M.), Wasson was given thoroughgoing access to legendary director Francis Ford Coppala’s archives and conducted hundreds of interviews with both Coppola and people who have worked closely with him. What results is a portrait not just of Coppola but of his production company, American Zoetrope, and the involvement of his entire family in this enterprise. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Winkler, Henry. Being Henry: The Fonz . . . and Beyond. Celadon: Macmillan. Oct. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781250888099. $30. CD/downloadable. MEMOIR/TV

For millions, Winkler will forever be the Fonz of the durable TV series Happy Days, but he’s worked steadily since those happy days, recently winning a Primetime Emmy Award and two Television Critics Choice Awards for his work on the HBO comedy series Barry. This memoir moves from his childhood struggles with dyslexia to his success in Hollywood to the joys of family life and sharing, all from an actor known as one of Hollywood’s nicest men. With a 600,000-copy first printing.

Zucker, David & others. Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! St. Martin’s. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781250289315. $35. Downloadable. FILM

Codirectors of the groundbreaking comedy film Airplane! Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker go behind the scenes to offer an oral history of the making of the film and explain what drew them to filmmaking generally and comedy in particular.

Final Nonfiction

Belfort, Jordan. The Wolf of Investing: My Playbook for Making a Fortune on Wall Street. Gallery: S. & S. Oct. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9781982197056. $27.99. CD. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Brooks, David. How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Random. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593230060. $30. lrg. prnt. CD. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Chast, Roz. I Must Be Dreaming. Bloomsbury. Oct. 2023. 128p. ISBN 9781620403228. $27.99. HUMOROUS/GN

Clark, John Lee. Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays. Norton. Oct. 2023. 192p. ISBN 9781324035367. $25. ESSAYS

Cross, Kim. In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child. Grand Central. Oct. 2023. 464p. ISBN 9781538725061. $32.50. Downloadable. TRUE CRIME

Krishnamurthy, Sowmya. Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion. Gallery: S. & S. Oct. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781982176327. $28.99. FASHION

Lorenz, Taylor. Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. S. & S. Oct. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781982146863. $29.99. TECHNOLOGY

Lukianoff, Greg & Rikki Schlott. The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution. S. & S. Oct. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9781668019146. $29.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Spooner, James & Chris L. Terry, eds. Black Punk Now. Soft Skull. Oct. 2023. 352p. 356p. ISBN 9781593767457. pap. $16.95. LITERATURE

Subject of the hit movie The Wolf of Wall Street, investment expert Belfort offers a guide to mastering the stock market with The Wolf of Investing. New York Times columnist Brooks explains How To Know a Person so that we can build better connections at home, on the job, and in life. Chast, the New York Times best-selling, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning New Yorker cartoonist, returns to plumb her sleepytime visions in I Must Be Dreaming (200,000-copy first printing). Born deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, the National Magazine Award–winning Clark is a leader in the Protactile movement, which espouses a special tactile language and a life lived by physical contact; his Touch the Future explains this life to illuminate the DeafBlind experience. Thirty years after the abduction of 12-year-old Polly Klass, the New York Times best-selling Cross's In Light of All Darkness revisits the case and shows what it led to, including the Three-Strikes law, the Amber Alert System, and improved child-abduction protocols nationwide (60,000-copy first printing). For Fashion Killa, Krishnamurthy interviewed leaders in the fashion industry to explain how hip-hop artists and designers have revolutionized fashion in the last decades. Offering a social history of the internet,Washington Post reporter Lorenz’s Extremely Online explains how deeply it has changed our world, toppling traditional barriers, creating new economic sectors, and reinventing our understanding of connection, content, and power. Lukianoff and Schlott follow up The Coddling of the American Mind with The Canceling of the American Mind, which argues that both Left and Right use cancel culture to silence opposition and debate and win arguments through too-easy rhetoric. Celebrated Afro-Punk documentarian Spooner and novelist Terry (Black Card, Zero Fade), who played in various Virginia punk bands in his youth, compile contemporary nonfiction, fiction, illustrations, and comics that help explain Black Punk Now.