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

Mystery

Adler-Olsen, Jussi. The Shadow Murders: A Department Q Novel. Dutton. Sept. 2022. 464p. tr. from Danish by William Frost. ISBN 9781524742584. $28. lrg. prnt. MYSTERY/INTERNATIONAL

Why is Department Q, the cold cases division of the Copenhagen police, investigating a current suicide? Because Det. Carl Mørck’s superior is convinced that there’s a connection to a mysterious death dating to 1988, and the initially skeptical Qers soon find echoes in a string of odd deaths since then. The penultimate title in the “Department Q” series from Barry and Glass Key winner Adler-Olsen.

Benn, James R. From the Shadows. Soho Crime. (Billy Boyle WWII Mystery, Bk.). Sept. 2022. NAp. ISBN 9781641292986. $27.95. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Tasked with serving as security for Royal Navy Commander Gordon Stewart, head of the Special Operations Executive’s Section F in Algiers, Capt. Billy Boyle and buddies Kaz and Big Mike cooperate with Resistance leaders to flush out Vichy officials and other collaborators as the Germans sound the retreat. Stewart needs all the protection he can get; he’s created enemies in both the SOE and the Resistance. From former librarian Benn, an IMPAC Dublin long-listee and Barry/Macavity finalist.

Box, C.J. Treasure State. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell Novels, Bk. 6). Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250766960. $28.99. CD. CRIME

The former partner of police investigator Cody Hoyt, Cassie Dewell has moved on to become a private investigator in Montana, where she’s now sneaking along behind a con man she hopes to nab for a wealthy client who accuses him of stealing her entire fortune. Her search takes her to a former mining town called Anaconda, where people can easily disappear, and Cassie starts wondering whether she knows the whole truth of this case. Next in the series that inspired ABC-TV’s Big Sky; with a 400,000-copy first printing.

Cleeves, Ann. The Rising Tide. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Vera Stanhope, Bk. 10). Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781250204530. $27.99. CD. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

For a half-century, a group of friends reconvene annually on Holy Island off England’s northeast coast to celebrate meeting there a half-century ago on a school trip and to commemorate a friend lost five years later to tides swamping the causeway. Now one of them is found hanged, and D.I. Vera Stanhope of the fictitious Northumberland and City Police must investigate. The latest in a series from CWA Diamond Dagger winner Cleeves that inspired a hit TV show; with a 150,000-copy printing.

Flower, Amanda. Because I Could Not Stop for Death. Berkley. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593336946. pap. $17. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

As the title clearly indicates, Emily Dickinson is at the heart of this series starter from the USA TODAY best-selling, Agatha Award–winning Flower (also a former librarian). Hired as a housemaid by the Dickinson family, Willa Noble soon develops a warm relationship with the reclusive poet, and the two women together investigate the death of Willa’s brother in what appears to be a stable accident but proves to be something more sinister.

Johnson, Craig. Hell and Back. Viking. (Walt Longmire Mysteries, Bk. 18). Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593297285. $28. MYSTERY/WESTERN

White Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire is back, but he doesn’t know it. He’s awakened blood-soaked and minus a bullet in a Montana town where a devastating boarding-school fire killed 30 Indigenous children over a century ago, and he has no memory of who he is. He does, however, have a pervasive sense of what the Northern Cheyenne call Éveohtsé-heómėse, the Wandering Without that steals souls, which should make for intense and unusual reading as he battles to save himself.

King, Laurie R. Back to the Garden. Bantam. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593496565. $28. MYSTERY

In a stand-alone departure from King’s New York Times best-selling “Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes” series, a decades-old skull has been found at Gardener Estate, a grand mansion on sweeping grounds long owned by an influential California family. Inspector Raquel Laing of the SFPD Cold Case Unit must look back to the Seventies, when young heir Rob Gardener re-created the mansion as a commune from which folks began disappearing. Were they victims of the serial killer known as the Highwayman?

McCall Smith, Alexander. A Song of Comfortable Chairs. Pantheon. (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Bk. 23). Sept. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593316979. $27. MYSTERY

Even as Grace Makutsi’s husband faces cutthroat competition from an international firm seeking to price him out of the office furniture market with a sleezy campaign touting subpar products, he and Mma Makutsi agree to help a friend’s troubled child. Mma Ramotswe and grande dame Mma Potokwani pitch in, and the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency triumphs again.

Mayor, Archer. Fall Guy. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Joe Gunther Series, Bk. 33). Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250224187. $28.99. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

When he’s not working as a Vermont state medical examiner and an investigator for the sheriff's department, Mayor is turning out mysteries in his New York Times best-selling series starring Vermont Bureau of Investigation agent Joe Gunther. Here, Joe’s investigation of a corpse dumped in the trunk of a stolen car gets sticky when it appears that the victim was actually killed in New Hampshire and even stickier when stolen goods found in the car point to a long-ago child abduction case that was never solved. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Miley, Mary. Seven Deadly Spirits. Severn House. Sept. NAp. ISBN 9781448306848. $28.99. MYSTERY

Following two LJ-starred reviews, The Mystic’s Accomplice and Spirits and Smoke, this third in a series set in Prohibition-wracked, gang-ridden Chicago again features young widow Maddie Pastore. Here, Maddie contemplates a terrible thought: her younger sister might be a killer.

Perry, Anne. A Truth to Lie For. Ballantine. (Elena Standish, Bk. 4). Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593359075. $28. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

With Hitler striding toward power in 1934, photographer-turned-spy Elena Standish is sent to Germany to extricate a scientist who’s made a significant breakthrough in germ warfare before he’s forced to share his knowledge with the Nazis. Alas, the head of Germany’s germ warfare division is making things difficult; he’s an old enemy of Elena’s grandfather Lucas, the former head of MI6, and is out for revenge. Following the LJ-starred A Darker Reality.

Robb, J.D. Desperation in Death. St. Martin’s. (In Death, Bk. 55). Sept. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250278234. $28.99. CD. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

In 2061 New York, two abducted girls attempt to escape from the Pleasure Academy, where they are being trained for a life of sexual slavery. Mina is killed, but Lt. Eve Dallas encounters an injured Dorian stumbling desperately through the streets and is determined to put an end to the academy’s operations. Billionaire husband Roarke can help (ultra-wealthy people run the place, and he’s got connections), but he’s concerned that Eve’s boiling rage could do her harm. With a 750,000-copy first printing.

Trinchieri, Camilla. Murder on the Vine. Soho Crime. (A Tuscan Mystery, Bk. 3). Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781641293662. $27.95. MYSTERY/INTERNATIONAL

A widower living in his wife’s hometown in Tuscany, former NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle is dismayed by the disappearance of 80-year-old Cesare Costanzi, a beloved local bartender. Then he goes to rescue café co-owner Jimmy, who’s runs out of gas, and his dog, OneWag, finds Cesare’s dead body in Jimmy’s trunk. How did he end up there? Third in a well-received new series.

Literary Fiction

Margaret Atwood & others. Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering. Harper. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780358616382. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CD. LITERARY

Calling on a Lower East Side tenement as COVID descends, this novel introduces us to 14 characters dealing with the crisis. The cool thing: each character is written by a different author, all of them outstanding; they range from Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, and Emma Donoghue to Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, and Tommy Orange. This conversation starter has a 100,000-copy first printing.

Bialosky, Jill. The Deceptions. Counterpoint. Sept. 2022, 320p. ISBN 9781640090248. $26. LITERARY

An executive editor and vice president at Norton, a poet honored by the Poetry Society of America, and a New York Times best-selling memoirist (History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life), Bialosky is also an accomplished novelist (The Prize). Her protagonist here, an empty nester who teaches Greek mythology at an elite boys’ high school in New York, tries to relocate the meaning of her life and her weakening marriage as she strolls the Greek and Roman wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, anxiously anticipating the forthcoming publication of her debut poetry collection.

Cruz, Angie. How Not To Drown in a Glass of Water. Flatiron: Macmillan. Sept. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9781250208453. $27.99. LITERARY

After decades at the local lamp factory, Cara Romero has lost her job in the Great Recession, and she’s meeting with a job counselor. Instead of talking about work, though, she spends 12 sessions spilling forth her story of wild love affairs, close but querulous relations with neighbor Lulu and sister Angela, her financial struggles and frustration with gentrification, and her heart-rasping estrangement from son Fernando. With a 100,000-copy first printing; from the author most recently of Dominicana, a Women’s Prize finalist and a Good Morning America Book Club pick.

D’Erasmo, Stacey. The Complicities. Algonquin. Sept. 2022. Gree304p. ISBN 9781643751962. $27. LITERARY

When her husband goes to prison for running a Ponzi scheme that lost people millions, Suzanne disappears to a ratty little seaside town and tries to put him and her old life behind her. His early release complicates matters, all the more because Suzanne has self-righteously given whatever money they had left to an oceanic foundation. How much did she know? What are her responsibilities now? Following 2014’s NPR and BBC best-booked Wonderland.

Escoffery, Jonathan. If I Survive You. MCD: Farrar. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780374605988. $27. LITERARY

This debut from Plimpton Prize winner Escoffery links together sharply conceived scenarios to tell the story of a Jamaican family striving to make it in Miami. As they survive hurricane, recession, marital breakup, lousy houses, subpar jobs, and discrimination, they wrestle with issues of self and identity; here they are Black, while back home folks say they’re no longer Jamaican. At the narrative heart is younger son Trelawny, figuring out how to survive. A buzzing debut and at first glance refreshingly original and caustically beautiful; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Gilliss, Meghan. Lungfish. Catapult. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781646220915. $26. LITERARY

From Pushcart and Glimmer Train nominee Gilliss, this debut features a couple driven by debts from the husband's addiction to hide away on a deserted island off the coast of Maine, where they live illegally while trying to scrape together enough money to depart before the winter snows—or maybe the police—arrive. With the husband attempting to detox, the story is essentially the wife’s, following her as she tends to their daughter, forages for berries and mussels, and struggles with the vast emptiness within and without.

Giraldi, William. About Face. Liveright: Norton. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781324091356. $28. LITERARY

Broke 30-year-old journalist Seger Jovi is tasked with profiling Val Face, a Kahlil Gibran–like guru worshiped by millions and surrounded by pumped bodyguards and officious handlers, and promptly crucifies him in print. Then he falls under Val Face’s spell, even as a stalker comes gunning. Giraldi’s LJ-starred Hold the Dark is now a Netflix original film.

Greer, Andrew Sean. Less Is Lost. Little, Brown. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780316498906. $31. lrg. prnt. CD. LITERARY

In his latest, the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Less reveals what his hapless if lovable protagonist is stumbling through next. Faced with a financial shortfall even as he grieves the death of an old lover, Less accepts a series of speaking engagements that send him careening cross-country in a rust-ridden van, with black pug Polly riding shotgun. Alas for his ego, he keeps getting mistaken for someone else; maybe growing that handlebar mustache wasn’t wise.

Homes, A.M. The Unfolding. Viking. Sept. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780735225350. $27. LITERARY

Angered by Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, the Big Guy joins with likeminded buddies as they plan disruptions to the nation’s forward momentum, seeking to hang on to their large slice of the pie. Meanwhile, his wife mourns her wasted life and his daughter realizes that her father’s version of history is not hers. Investigating the meaning of truth, freedom, and democracy—and how those words signify different things to different people—Homes shows us a divided country within a divided household. From the author of the Women's Prize–winning May We Be Forgiven.

House, Silas. Lark Ascending. Algonquin. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781643751597. $27. LITERARY

With much of the United States destroyed by fire, its inhabitants become refugees, and Lark and his family grab room on a boat sailing for Ireland, the last country in an extremist-plagued Europe willing to accept huddled masses from across the water. He alone survives but finds Ireland less welcoming than rumored and is soon on the run, befriending an abandoned dog and a woman seeking her lost son. Near-future dystopia from the author of the award-winning Southernmost.

Jaye, Lola. The Attic Child. Morrow. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063260375. $27.99. LITERARY

In early 1900s Britain, young Celestine lives in an attic in a house by the sea, having been taken from his African home to act as an unpaid servant to English explorer Sir Richard Babbington. In 1974, orphaned Lowra, whose privileged family has suffered misfortune, is trapped in the same attic, where she finds mementos and a message carved in an unknown language by her predecessor. British therapist/novelist Jaye (Being Lara) turns to historical epic in a story inspired by the photograph of a boy named Ndugu M'Hali taken from his home in Tanzania; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Li, Yiyun. The Book of Goose. Farrar. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780374606343. $27. LITERARY

In benighted postwar rural France, Fabienne and Agnès survive by creating a secret world of their own until Fabienne concocts a plan that sends Agnès into the larger world. Ten years later, Agnès is living in the United States when she learns that Fabienne is dead. A study of friendship and the uneasy workings of fate; with a 50,000-copy first printing; from MacArthur Fellow and Windham-Campbell Prize–winning Li.

McEwan, Ian. Lessons. Knopf. Sept. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9780593535202. $30. LITERARY

In a narrative that moves from the Suez Crisis to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines has lessons to learn, starting with adjusting to an unconventional boarding school as an 11-year-old life and experiencing the complexities of his piano teacher’s attentions. Decades later, as Chernobyl scars the landscape, Roland is left with his little son when his wife vanishes, and he starts looking to better understand his life as he seeks comfort in art, friendship, sex, and hard-to-grasp love. From the multi-award-winning author of Atonement.

Mestre-Reed, Ernesto. Sacrificio. Soho. Sept. 2022. 456p. ISBN 9781641293648. $27. LITERARY

In 1998 Havana, fresh-from-the-country Rafa, an African-Cuban orphan, falls in with his boss’s son, Renato. Renato is the mastermind behind “Los Injected Ones,” a group of young, HIV-positive counterrevolutionaries planning to overthrow the Castro government during Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba, and his disappearance sets Rafa on a search through tourist hotels, an AIDS sanatorium, and finally the distinctively slapped-together slum that serves Los Injected Ones as home. From the Guantánamo-born, New York–based author of The Second Death of Única Aveyano.

O’Farrell, Maggie. The Marriage Portrait. Knopf. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593320624. $28. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Having won a stack of awards for the Shakespearian meditation Hamnet, O’Farrell moves on to 1550s Florence, where barely pubescent Lucrezia de Medici is content to be the obscure third daughter of the grand duke. Then an older sister dies on the eve of marrying the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna, and Regio, and the groom opts for Lucrezia instead. Lucrezia can't understand her new husband is both a lover of the arts and a fearsome politician, but her job is clear: to produce an heir.

Serpell, Namwali. The Furrows: An Elegy. Hogarth: Crown. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593448915. $27. LITERARY

When Cassandra Williams is 12, her younger brother, Wayne, vanishes in a terrible accident; his body is never found, and her family crumbles as her father leaves to start another family and her mother begins an organization dedicated to missing children. Cassandra herself goes through life thinking that she sees her brother everywhere, finally meeting a man named Wayne who seems achingly familiar. Windham-Campbell/Caine Prize/Ronna Jaffe honoree Serpell (The Old Drift) offers a study of grief; as Cassandra says, “I don’t want to tell you what happened; I want to tell you how it felt.”

Shamsie, Kamila. Best of Friends. Riverhead. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593421826. $26. LITERARY

Close friends since childhood in Karachi, Zahra and Maryam have successfully bridged differences in their backgrounds and their beliefs, even after one awful night of adolescent excess that changed the directions of their lives. Three decades later, they’re well established in London when two shadowy figures emerge from the past to challenge the very basis of their friendship. From the author of the LJ best-booked, Women’s Prize–winning Home Fire.

Short Story Collections

Barrett, Andrea. Natural History. Norton. Sept. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9781324035190. $26.95. SHORT STORIES

Boyle, T.C. I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories. Ecco. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780063052888. $28.99. SHORT STORIES

Ma, Ling. Bliss Montage: Stories. Farrar. Sept. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780374293512. $25. SHORT STORIES

Means, David. Two Nurses, Smoking: Stories. Farrar. Sept. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780374606077. $26. SHORT STORIES

In six stories set mostly in central New York State, Natural History revisits the family of scientists, teachers, and innovators the expansive Barrett has featured regularly since her National Book Award–winning collection Ship Fever. From passengers quarantined while on cruise to a woman explaining to her barstool companion that she has ESP to a hyena loose in the south of France, I Walk Between the Raindrops shows off the award-winning Boyle’s trenchant prose (50,000-copy first printing). In Bliss Montage, NYPL Young Lion Ma (Severance) reveals the absurdism of the everyday through push-the-envelope stories featuring a woman living with all her former boyfriends, relationships based on an invisibility drug, and the idea that burying oneself alive can cure all manner of ills (75,000-copy first printing). From prolific, icepick-exact short story writer Means, a Pushcart and O. Henry honoree, Two Nurses, Smoking explores grief and survival in pieces ranging from two nurses exchanging quiet support in a parking lot to a couple reuniting on the ski slopes after having met in a bereavement group.

Veteran Thrills

Graham, Heather. Voice of Fear. Mira: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. (Krewe of Hunters, Bk. 38). 336p. ISBN 9780778387183. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9780778386544. $9.99. THRILLER/PARANORMAL

Johansen, Iris. Captive. Grand Central. (Eve Duncan, Bk. 29). Sept. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781538726297. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Lupica, Mike. Robert B. Parker’s Untitled. (Jesse Stone, Bk. 21). Putnam. Sept. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593540275. $29. THRILLER

Maden, Mike. Clive Cussler's Hellburner. (Oregon Files, Bk. 16). Putnam. Sept. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593540640. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Patterson, James & Brendan DuBois. Blowback. Little, Brown. Sept. 2022. 512p. ISBN 9780316499637. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Turow, Scott. Suspect. Grand Central. Sept. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9781538706329. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

In Voice of Fear, the latest in Graham’s long-running paranormal romantic suspense series, FBI agent Jordan Wallace worries about new partner Patrick’s special gift of getting into another’s mind—can he read her thoughts?—but must learn to trust him as they hunt for a nasty killer (400,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Johansen’s Captive, Eve Duncan's daughter, Jane, is happily married to Seth Caleb, but his troubled past means threats from a psychopath. Paradise police chief Jesse Stone returns in Mike Lupica’s Untitled new Robert Parker thriller, though what happens next has yet to be revealed. In Maden’s Clive Cussler’s Hellburner, Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon crew face a particularly violent drug-smuggling criminal syndicate that has been passed down from father to son for generations. In Patterson and Dubois’s Blowback, Liam Grey and Noa Himel are upended when President Keegan Barrett orders them to help execute his secret power grab; as CIA special agents, they must follow the president’s directives but are sworn to uphold the Constitution. In Turow’s Suspect, Clarice “Pinky” Granum—granddaughter of Turow stalwart Sandy Stern—is working second-tier cases as a private investigator and trying to recoup from the mistakes of a mislaid life when she’s asked to help Highland Isle police chief Lucia Gomez, who has been accused of soliciting sex from three male police officers in exchange for promotions.

More Big Thrills  

Abrams, Stacey writing as Selena Montgomery. Rules of Engagement. Berkley. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593439395. $26. lrg. prnt. CD. ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

After two New York Times best sellers, masterly politician/activist Abrams continues flourishing her writing skills with this story of Dr. Raleigh Foster, an intelligence operative asked to infiltrate the terrorist group Scimitar, which has stolen dangerous environmental technology. Handsome new partner Adam Grayson, anxious that he may have caused a friend’s death in another operation countering Scimitar, sets her sparkling.

Hamdy, Adam. The Other Side of Night. Atria. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781982196189. $27. THRILLER

In this new work from Sunday Times best-selling novelist/screenwriter Hamdy, cofounder of the popular UK literary festival Capital Crime, police officer Harriet Kealty is struggling to recoup professionally from a bad call when she finds an inscription in a secondhand book leading her to David Asha, apparently a suicide after his wife’s death. But would he really leave young son Elliot behind? And what does this case have to do with Harri’s old flame Ben Elmys, a family friend to the Ashas and surrogate father to Elliot? With a 75,000-copy first printing.

MacNeal, Susan Elia. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy. Bantam. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593156957. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER/ESPIONAGE

Author of the Barry Award–winning, New York Times best-selling “Maggie Hope” series, MacNeal offers a stand-alone about a mother and daughter who move to Los Angeles in June 1940 to start life afresh. Daughter Veronica quickly realizes that her new boss is a vitriolic antisemite helping to recruit for the Nazi Party in the United States, but the FBI dismisses her claims as baseless. Thus do Veronica and her mother, Violet, end up going underground to assist Ari Lewis, the city’s anti-Nazi spymaster.

Raybourn, Deanna. Killers of a Certain Age. Berkley. Sept. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593200681. $27. Downloadable. THRILLER/ESPIONAGE

Having long worked for an exclusive network of assassins called the Museum, Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie are hitting 60 and being sent to pasture with an all-expenses-paid vacation, their well-honed people skills no longer needed in an age of technology. It’s soon evident that high-ups at the Museum have marked them for assassination, and they must figure out how to survive. From the New York Times best-selling (“Lady Julia Grey series”), Edgar Award–nominated (“Veronica Speedwell Mysteries”) Raybourn.

St. John, Katherine. The Vicious Circle. Morrow. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063224056. $27.99. THRILLER

After triumphing with The Lion’s Den and The Siren, St. John aims to prove that three’s the charm with a story set at a mysterious wellness center called the Mandala, housed at a villa deep in Mexico’s jungles. When its charismatic leader dies, he leaves his entire estate to estranged niece Sveta, who confusedly travels to what’s billed as a flowering paradise and instead finds a sinister conclave of numbed individuals devoted to dangerous beliefs. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Stephenson, Simon. Sometimes People Die. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781335429254. $26.99. THRILLER

Physician–turned–screenwriter Stephenson, who drew on his current career in his recent, nicely received Set My Heart to Five, returns to medicine in this story of a young British doctor working at a hard-pressed east London hospital after returning from a suspension for stealing opioids. When his patients start dying, he suspects murder. With a 75,000-copy first printing; film interest.

Tudor, C.J. A Sliver of Darkness: Stories. Ballantine. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593500163. $27. Downloadable. THRILLER/STORIES

After a string of hits ranging from The Chalk Man, winner of ITW and Strand debut novel honors, to the NYPL best-booked The Burning Girls, Tudor offers several slivers of corrosive mayhem in a debut story collection. A deadly case of mistaken identity, a hatbox hiding something decidedly unpleasant, and a chilly killer falling for an odd girl he meets at a service station—these are some of the scenarios that should hold readers’ attention.

Historical Fiction

Harris, Robert. Act of Oblivion. Harper. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063248007. $28.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Robards, Karen. The Girl from Guernica. Mira: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780778309963. $27.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Sexton, Margaret Wilkerson. On the Rooftop. Ecco. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063139961. $28.99. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

West, Catherine Adel. The Two Lives of Sara. Park Row: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780778333227. $27.99. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Among the 59 men who signed the death warrant that led to the beheading of King Charles I, Gen. Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Col. William Goffe flee to 1600s New England in an attempted Act of Oblivion when the royalists regain power, pursued by the secretary of the regicide committee, in internationally best-selling Harris’s first substantial departure to North America’s shores (75,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Robards’s The Girl from Guernica, 17-year-old Sibil’s mother and sister are killed in the German bombing of Guernica, and with two other sisters she joins her scientist father in Germany, where he works on jet propulsion engines for the Nazis and secretly helps the Resistance (50,000-copy first printing). Having spent their lives rehearsing strenuously On the Rooftop to achieve their mother’s dream of stardom, sisters Ruth, Esther, and Chloe—known as the Salvations—are having dreams of their own even as their Black neighborhood 1950s San Francisco resists gentrification in this latest from National Book Award finalist Sexton (150,000-copy first printing). West’s follow-up to her striking debut, Saving Ruby King, The Two Lives of Sara features a young, unwed Black mother who flees Chicago for Memphis during the tumultuous Civil Rights era, finding refuge at sweet Mama Sugar’s boardinghouse and possible love with schoolteacher Jonas—all of which could be jeopardized by a secret from Mama Sugar’s past (75,000-copy first printing).

Contemporary Fiction  

Allen, Sarah Addison. Other Birds. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250019868. $19.99. CD. CONTEMPORARY

Emmons, Cai. Unleashed. Dutton. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593471449. $26. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Finger, Bobby. The Old Place. Putnam. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593422342. $27. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Huynh, Carolyn. The Fortunes of Jaded Women. Atria. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781982188733. $27. CD/downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Sparks, Nicholas. Dreamland. Random. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593449554. $28.99. CD/downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

In Other Birds, next from the New York Times best-selling Allen, Zoey encounters a runaway girl, two grumpy middle-aged sisters, a famed writer, an isolated chef, and three ghosts when she returns to her recently deceased mother’s apartment in a horseshoe-shaped house on South Carolina’s Mallow Island, where tiny turquoise birds called Dellawisps flit (200,000-copy first printing). In Emmons’s Unleashed, deep cracks in Lu and George Barnes’s marriage become evident once only daughter Pippa goes to college, even as Pippa struggles to retain her budding sense of independence amid loneliness and the California wine country surrounding them all threatens to burn. Cohost of the popular podcast Who? Weekly, Finger sets his debut, The Old Place, in a small Texas town where a reluctantly retired schoolteacher Mary Alice finds her life—especially her friendship with close neighbor Ellie—suddenly in question when a long-buried secret is revealed. In debuter Huynh’s The Fortunes of Jaded Women, three estranged Vietnamese American sisters living in Orange County’s Little Saigon must find a way to lift a curse placed on their family long ago never to find love or happiness (100,000-copy first printing). Blockbuster author Sparks again takes readers to Dreamland in a book about pursuing one’s desires possibly at the cost of abandoning the past.

Stephen King:  Fairy Tale

King, Stephen. Fairy Tale. Scribner. Sept. 2022. 608p. ISBN 9781668002179. $32.50. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER/SUPERNATURAL

As the pandemic descended, King asked himself: “What could you write that would make you happy?” Here’s the result, inspired by a sudden vision he had of an immense but empty, shattered city, with life pulsing just beneath the surface. His protagonist is Charlie Reade, whose mother died in a hit-and-run when he was ten and whose father subsequently disappeared into drink. At 17, self-sufficient Charlie befriends a dog named Radar and his crusty, reclusive master, Howard Bowditch, for whom he starts doing odd jobs. A cassette Bowditch leaves for Charlie at his death shares a secret: that funny shed at the back of his house contains a portal to another world, where a battle between good and evil is roaring. Boy and dog pass through the portal for the adventure of their lives. With a 1.5 million copy first printing.

Current Concerns

Appleman, Deborah. Literature and the New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, and the Teacher's Dilemma. Norton. Sept. 2022. 168p. ISBN 9781324019183. $19.95. EDUCATION

With book challenges coming from both the left and the right, school reading lists are in upheaval. Appleman, the Hollis L. Caswell Professor of Educational Studies at Carleton College, argues for the continuing value of a broad range of literary texts and shows how to teach those that are unsettling. Food for thought, and not just for professionals.

Baker, Peter & Susan Glasser. The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017–2021. Doubleday. Sept. 2022. 544p. ISBN 9780385546539. $30. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, and New Yorker staffer Glasser yank aside the curtain on the Trump White House, aiming to provide a thoroughgoing history embedded with new information and insights, from the shock beginning to the violent end. Their main argument: Trump spent four years seeking to emulate the foreign autocrats he so admired.

Collins-Dexter, Brandi. Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. Celadon: Macmillan. Sept. 2022. ISBN 9781250824073. $28.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE/CIVIL RIGHTS

Former senior campaign manager for Color of Change, a nonprofit civil rights organization advocating for Black Americans, Collins-Dexter calls on voting statistics and personal experience, plus music, film, and sports, to examine Black America’s disaffection with the politics and false promises of the United States. In particular, she considers the strained relationship between Black Americans and the Democratic Party; the book originated in her shock that some Black voters opted for Trump, which compelled her to examine her own identity. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Faloyin, Dipo. Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Black Continent. Norton. Sept. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780393881530. $30. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Too often, Africa is seen monolithically, without regard to the distinctive cultures of its different countries, and as characterized primarily by poverty, political strife, and swishy safaris. Specializing in race, culture, and identity worldwide, Vice senior editor Faloyin aims to explode these stereotypes as he tracks contemporary cultural and political movements in various countries; reveals the rivalries that fire up the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament; considers the ongoing struggle between democracy and dictatorship, contextualized with reference to the ongoing consequences of colonialism; and risks entering the debate on which West African country makes the best jollof rice.

Jealous, Benjamin Todd. Never Forget We Were Always Free: A Parable of American Healing. Amistad: HarperCollins. Sept. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780062961747. $27.99. MEMOIR/POLITICAL SCIENCE

Born to a Black mother and a white father forced to leave Maryland, where their marriage was illegal, Jealous has since returned and been named Marylander of the Year for helping to secure marriage equality, abolition of the death penalty, and passage of the DREAM Act there. He’s also a former NAACP president, now heading up People for the American Way, and aNew York Times best-selling author ( Reach: 40 Black Men Speak on Living). Here he uses parable format to examine enduring social divides and ways to bridge them. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent. Flatiron: Macmillan. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250210722. $29.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

The New York Times best-selling Kendzior (Hiding in Plain Sight) takes a long, hard look at the conspiracy theories—and real conspiracies—prevailing in the United States and concludes that they stem not from on-the-fringe crackpots but from a blind faith in ailing institutions and a desire to maintain power. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Lithwick, Dahlia. Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle To Save America. Penguin Pr. Sept. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780525561385. $29. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Stacey Abrams, who battled to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians. Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates, who refused to approve the Muslim travel ban. Commercial litigator Roberta Kaplan, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. These are among the women lawyers who challenged the moral vacuity of the Trump administration, chronicled here by Slate’s senior legal correspondent.

Mogelson, Luke. The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible. Penguin Pr. Sept. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593489215. $28. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Having covered the War on Terror for The New Yorker since 2013, National Magazine and George Polk honoree Mogelson returned home in 2020 to assess growing civic violence in the United States. From there, it was a quick step to being embedded with the militias marching on the Michigan state capitol, covering events in Minneapolis and Portland, and standing in the U.S. Senate Chamber with the insurrectionists to tell readers what really happened that day.

Rushkoff, Douglas. Survival of the Richest: The Tech Elite’s Ultimate Exit Strategy. Norton. Sept. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9780393881066. $26.95. POLITICAL SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

A CUNY media theory and digital economics professor, Rushkoff was named one of the world’s ten most influential intellectuals by MIT in 2013, which may explain why five tech billionaires invited him to a desert hideaway to explain their plans for surviving the sociopolitical apocalypse they anticipated. Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse—these were among the solutions they were considering, having everything to do with protecting themselves and nothing to do with protecting the rest of us. Rushkoff delineates the Silicon Valley mindset while suggesting alternatives.

Spencer, Kyle. Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement—and Its Plot for Power. Ecco. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063041363. $29.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

With the rise of the far right, there’s also arisen a concerted campaign to bring youth into ultraconservative efforts to maintain the status quo as the nation pushes toward greater inclusiveness. Facilitated by social media and funding from billionaire donors, the campaign is conducted by prominent figures like Trump supporter Charlie Kirk, founder of the youth activist group Turning Point USA, and Black Fox News fixture Candace Owens. Herself progressive, veteran reporter Spencer still got these folks to talk to her; with a 125,000-copy first printing.

Tomasky, Michael. The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity. Doubleday. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780385547161. $28. ECONOMICS

While the Keynesian economics that dominated through the early 1970s proclaimed government spending as essential to economic growth, the conservative counterthrust that then emerged saw a minimally regulated free market as the real economy booster. Top editor at the New Republic , longtime political journalist Tomasky argues that this counterthrust has not been successful, with today’s concentrated wealth built on wringing workers dry. Instead, he proposes “middle out economics” that focuses on (re)building a thriving middle class.

Yacovone, Donald. Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. Pantheon. Sept. 2022. 496p. ISBN 9780593316634. $32.50. HISTORY/EDUCATION

Recipient of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal and a lifetime associate at the university’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Yacovone here digs up racist ideology’s deep, deep roots in the U.S. education system, starting with the earliest days of white settlers. Moving through educators, educational theory, and textbooks, he argues that it has been the North and not the South that has done the most to repress Black Americans and other marginalized groups through education and culture generally.

History  

Burnham, Margaret A. By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. Norton. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780393867855. $30. HISTORY

Director of Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Burnham draws on more than 1,000 cases of racial violence in the United States from 1920 to 1960 to reveal the legal structures that allowed them, focusing on the South as she shows the quick step from slavery to Jim Crow injustice and the continuing legacy today. In her new view, issues of state vs. federal jurisdiction and the undue power of local sheriffs emerge as key legal underpinnings to such violence.

Chorin, Ethan. Benghazi!: A New History of the Fiasco That Pushed America and Its World to the Brink. Hachette. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780306829727. $30. HISTORY

Chorin is well placed to provide an unvarnished account of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. From 2004 to 2006, he was among the diplomats posted to Libya to establish a U.S. mission there upon rapprochement with Colonel Gaddafi, then witnessed the Benghazi attack and its aftermath after becoming codirector of an NGO helping to improve eastern Libya’s medical infrastructure. The aim here is to remove the attack from politicized conversation and provide a serious examination of the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

Hämäläinen, Pekka. Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America. Liveright: Norton. Sept. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9781631496998. $40. HISTORY

Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford, Hämäläinen concentrates on North America through the 19th century, specializing in Indigenous, colonial, imperial, environmental, and borderlands history; his works include the Bancroft Prize–winning The Comanche Empire. Here he offers a large-scale revisionist look at the Indigenous peoples of North America, tracking their dominance on the continent through the end of the 1800s.

Horowitz, Sarah. The Red Widow: The Scandal That Shook Paris and the Woman Behind It All. Sourcebooks Landmark. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781728226323. $26.99. BIOGRAPHY

Professor of history at Washington & Lee University, where she heads up the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, Horowitz tells the story of Marguerite Steinheil, born into a middle-class French family in 1869. Stuck without options in marriage to a no-count artist many years her senior, Steinheil hungered for glamour and power, seeking to reach the highest rungs of French society by taking important men as lovers. Needless to say, notoriety followed; she was even accused of killing her husband and mother. Horowitz tracks the so-called Red Widow’s rise and fall.

McGreevy, John T. Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis. Norton. Sept. 2022. 512p. ISBN 9781324003885. $35. HISTORY/RELIGION

Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at Notre Dame University, McGreevy investigates the tension between progress and tradition that has animated the Catholic Church worldwide for over 200 years. He starts with antimonarchist French clerics celebrating the Revolution, only to have the murder of priests and destruction of churches create a fierce conservative backlash; shows the power the Church gleaned from missionaries; and ends by highlighting African Catholics fighting for independence, Latin Americans creating a theology of liberation, and Polish and South Korean Catholics countering repression—all defying cautious tradition.

Sattin, Anthony. Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World. Norton. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781324035459. $28.95. HISTORY

A distinguished journalist focusing on the Middle East and Africa, Sattin discovered and edited Harriet Tytler's memoir of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and Florence Nightingale's correspondence home from her journey up the Nile in 1849-50. Here he follows up his LJ-starred Young Lawrence with an expanded purview, considering the tension between nomadic and settled societies from biblical times while highlighting the great Arabic, Mongol, and Mughal nomadic empires.

Stashower, Daniel. American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America’s Jack the Ripper. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250041166. $29.99. HISTORY/TRUE CRIME

Having brought down Al Capone, Eliot Ness faced a new challenge when he was appointed director of public safety in Cleveland: stopping the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, who left behind more than a dozen cleanly severed and blood-drained torsos over the course of four years in the mid-1930s. The New York Times best-selling Stashower (The Hour of Peril), a winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Anthony awards, reveals what happened. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

World War II/Cold War

Frank, Michael (text) & Maira Kalma (illus.). One Hundred Saturdays: In Search of a Lost World. Avid Reader: S. & S. Sept. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9781982167226. $28. HISTORY

Friedman, Tova & Malcolm Brabant. The Daughter of Auschwitz: A Memoir. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781335449306. pap. $16.99. MEMOIR

Henderson, Bruce. Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II. Knopf. Sept. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9780525655817. $35. HISTORY

Holt, Nathalia. Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage. Putnam. Sept. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593328484. $28. HISTORY

Macintyre, Ben. Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis’ Fortress Prison. Crown. Sept. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593136331. $28. lrg. prnt. CD. HISTORY

Scott, James M. Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb. Norton. Sept. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781324002994. $35. HISTORY

After meeting 99-year-old Stella Levi at her Greenwich Village apartment to discuss the Juderia, the 500-year-old Jewish neighborhood in Rhodes where she lived until Germans deported the entire community to Auschwitz, the JQ Wingate Prize–winning Frank ended up spending One Hundred Saturdays visiting Levi to discuss her community and her resilience in the face of the Holocaust (125,000-copy first printing). Among the youngest survivors of Auschwitz still alive, 83-year-old Friedman, a retired therapist who actively campaigns against antisemitism, recounts her Holocaust experiences and the unerring instinct for survival that kept her alive in The Daughter of Auschwitz. In Bridge to the Sun, the New York Times best-selling Henderson (Sons and Soldiers) lays bare the plight of Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater even as their families back home faced racial hatred and imprisonment in concentration camps. Directly after World War II, four tough-minded Wise Gals—Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier—were instrumental in forging the CIA, and the New York Times best-selling Holt (Rise of the Rocket Girls) finally tells their story. Author of theNew York Times best-selling, multi-best-booked Agent Sonya, Macintyre relies on declassified archives, private papers, and previously unseen photos to introduce readers to the Prisoners of the Castle, that is, Colditz Castle, the high-security POW camp run by the Wehrmacht during World War II and, says Macintyre, organized according to its own officer-class structure. In Black Snow, Pulitzer Prize finalist Scott (Target Tokyo) chronicles the March 9, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo by nearly 300 U.S. B-29s, which left 16 square miles in ruins and 100,000 residents dead.

Memoir

Corbin, Keith & Kevin Alexander. California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival. Random. Sept. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593243824. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Raised in L.A. projects where the Grape Street Watts Crips held sway, Corbin was cooking crack by age 13, then learned cooking for real during ten years in prison (he was inspired by inmates making tamales out of ground-up Fritos). Upon his release, he was hired as a kitchen manager at Locol, a string of restaurants meant to bring chef-quality meals and jobs to underserved neighborhoods. Battling ongoing personal tragedy and the burdens of sudden celebrity, Corbin rose to become chef of the highly regarded Alta West Adams. His vision: California soul food using local produce and West African cooking techniques. Told with the James Beard Award–winning food journalist Alexander.

Enninful, Edward. A Visible Man. Penguin Pr. Sept. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593299487. $30. Downloadable. MEMOIR

When he became the first Black editor in chief of British Vogue, Enninful lit up the insular, exclusionary world of fashion by putting first responders, octogenarians, and civil rights activists on the cover and championing diverse designers, models, and photographers. His memoir chronicles the life of a gay, working-class refugee from Ghana who found a home in fashion and has helped change not just our sense of style but our understanding of what beauty really means.

Farah, Boyah J. America Made Me a Black Man: A Memoir. Harper. Sept. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780063073357. $24.99. MEMOIR

Shaped by codes of conduct that helped him survive tough living conditions and civil war in Somalia, a self-confident Farah felt he would thrive when he arrived in America. Instead, he was shocked by the racism and police brutality he encountered. As an African refugee and a Black man in America, he offers a unique insider-outsider perspective on these issues. With a 30,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for September 2021.

Geter, Hafizah Augustus. The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin. Random. Sept. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780593448649. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

The queer, Nigerian-born daughter of a Nigerian Muslim woman and a Black Southern American Baptist man, Geter is a distinguished poet whose debut collection, Un-American, was an NAACP Image Award winner and PEN Open Book Award finalist. Here, she can be expected to use the ringingly lucid, nail-sharp language evident in her poems as she blends memoir and Afrofuturist thought to trace her journey through an unwelcoming United States even as she turns to art, music, and love to survive and thrive.

Granda, Giancarlo & Mark Ebner. Off the Deep End. Morrow. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063227347. $29.99. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. MEMOIR

When Miami Beach pool attendant Granda reported that he had had a longtime affair with Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife Becki, claiming that he often had sex with her while her husband watched, the fallout forced Falwell Jr.’s resignation as president of Liberty University. The Falwells portray him as a predator who launched the relationship and then wanted to blackmail them; here’s Granda’s side of this seamy, steamy mess. With a 100,000-copy first printing

Hassan, Ali. Is There Bacon in Heaven?: A Memoir. S. & S. Sept. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781982149178. pap. $17.99. MEMOIR

Actor (e.g., Goon), stand-up comic, and popular host of CBC’s Canada Reads, Hassan navigated a childhood encompassing friends of multiple religions and ethnicities and grew up to embrace his own sense of identity as a Muslim, which includes failing to learn Arabic and loving pepperoni. Family and friends can be either supportive or skeptical of his stance, and he still wonders how to explain to his children what being Muslim really means to him. With a 20,000-copy first printing.

Hsu, Hua. Stay True. Doubleday. Sept. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780385547772. $26. Downloadable. MEMOIR

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, New Yorker staff writer Hsu grew up in the Bay Area and as a teenager befriended Ken, whose Japanese American family had been in the United States for generations. Abercrombie & Fitch–loving frat boy Ken was very different from the scrubby, zine-reading Hsu, but they bonded over their outsider status in the United States. Then Ken was killed in a carjacking, and Hsu uses this memoir to explore friendship, identity, and belonging.

Marshall, Cynt. You’ve Been Chosen: Thriving Through the Unexpected. Ballantine. Sept. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593359419. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Raised in the Richmond, CA, projects by an abusive father and a mother who often gave up dinner so her children could eat, Marshall studied hard and rose to become one of the first Black female officers at AT&T by age 40. A decade later, as president of AT&T North Carolina, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. Here she shares how she helped along aggressive chemotherapy with prayer and strong spiritual conviction, creating uplifting online posts that inspired followers around the world. Now she’s breaking ground again as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks.

Milch, David. Life’s Work. Random. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780525510741. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Son of a drug-addicted surgeon. Stealing liquor at age eight. Summa cum laude graduate of Yale. Thrown out of Yale Law School for shooting out streetlights. Taking off time from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca. Becoming sober, creating and writing Deadwood and NYPD Blue, and losing a fortune by horse betting like his dad. And now facing Alzheimer’s. Milch has some story to tell.

Tamimi, Ahed & Dena Takruri. They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom. One World: Ballantine. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593134580. $27. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Palestinian activist Tamimi grew up in the occupied West Bank with checkpoints and home raids, her father imprisoned, her mother shot, and her uncle killed by the Israeli army. She herself gained fame as a child for confronting Israeli soldiers during weekly demonstrations and was jailed at age 16. To many, she’s a freedom fighter, to some a gullible agitator. Here she joins forces with award-winning Palestinian American journalist Takruri of Al Jazeera Media Network to share her viewpoint.

Totenberg, Nina. Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. S. & S. Sept. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781982188085. $27.99. MEMOIR

In a memoir constructed around the strength of women’s friendships to bring about social change, NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent Totenberg focuses on her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They met when Totenberg was a reporter at the National Observer, seeking information on Ginsberg’s legal brief asking the Supreme Court to declare a law that discriminated on the basis of sex to be unconstitutional, and the result was a 50-year friendship. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Wenner, Jann. S. Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir. Little, Brown. Sept. 2022. 592p. ISBN 9780316415194. $35. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Cofounder and publisher of Rolling Stone and the youngest inductee ever to the American Society of Magazine Editor’s Hall of Fame, Wenner here tells the story not just of the magazine or of rock music since the Sixties but of the generational change he has witnessed and the huge cultural upheaval that resulted.

Young, Daniella Mestyanek. Uncultured: A Memoir. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250280114. $28.99. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Raised in Brazil in a religious cult called the Children of God, which originated in the United States and is currently called the Family International, Young was denied an education and was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. She escaped to Texas, enrolled in high school, and graduated from college as valedictorian of her class. She then entered the army, achieving the rank of captain and becoming one of the first women to conduct ground combat operations. In the military, though, she found an atmosphere remarkably similar to that of her cult upbringing. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Zamora, Javier. Solito: A Memoir. Hogarth. Sept. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593498064. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

When Zamora was nine, he traveled from El Salvador to Guatemala and Mexico, finally crossing the border into the United States to join his parents, having not seen his mother for four years and his father since he was one. What was to have been a two-week journey lasted two harrowing months. He has since become a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and published a debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, that began his exploration of how war and immigration have affected his family. Here he provides a detailed memoir of his traveling “solito”—alone, but surrounded by people who became a surrogate family.

Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns  

STEM Titles

Aviv, Rachel. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. Farrar. Sept. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780374600846. $28. MENTAL HEALTH

In a debut, New Yorker staffer Aviv considers how we cope with profound mental crises and then make stories of these experiences as we come up against the limits of psychiatry. Among individuals she portrays: a woman who goes off her meds to learn who she is and a man intent on delivering revenge upon his psychoanalysts. With a 100,000-copy first printing

Carroll, Sean. The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. Dutton. Sept. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593186589. $22. Downloadable. SCIENCE

As he ranges over the edgy-exciting concepts of physics, from the theory of general relativity to black holes, award-winning Caltech theoretical physicist Carroll (The Big Picture) reveals them to be as gorgeous—and graspable—as art or literature. From one of my favorite scientists, who explained the Higgs-Boson particle to us all.

Fisher, Max. The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World . Little, Brown. Sept. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780316703321. $29. SOCIAL SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, New York Times investigative reporter Fisher debuts with a critique of social networks, traveling worldwide to show that their rage for maximum engagement has radically restructured the world and led to extreme thought and, more crucially, extreme action. Homing in on pandemic, election, and insurrection; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Horowitz, Alexandra. The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves. Viking. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593298008. $28. Downloadable. $28. PETS

Head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, Horowitz complements her No. 1 New York Times best-selling Inside a Dog by taking us inside a puppy’s life—specifically her puppy, tracked from birth to boisterous age one—to give insight into the early canine development that people getting a dog after its first months will miss.

Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns  

Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns  

Arts & Literature

Cave, Nick & Sean O'Hagan. Faith, Hope, and Carnage. Farrar. Sept. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9780374607371. $27. MUSIC/MEMOIR

After the death of his 15-year-old son five years ago, raucous but durable Australian musician Nick Cave stopped doing big interviews. But in 2020, when his international tour was shut down by pandemic, he decided to open up at length to friend and Observer/Guardian journalist O’Hagan. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Ebersol, Dick. From Saturday Night to Sunday Night: My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears and Touchdowns in TV. MEMOIR/TELEVISION. S. & S. Sept. 2022. ISBN 9781982194468. $28.

With a career ranging from co-creating Saturday Night Live with Lorne Michaels to heading up NBC Sports to lofting overhead an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, TV executive Ebersol can offer an insider’s view on decades of television history. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Lispector, Clarice. Too Much of life: The Complete Crônicas. New Directions. Sept. 2022. 864p. tr. from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. ISBN 9780811226790. $44.95. LITERATURE

The great Brazilian writer Lispector didn’t write just novels and short stories but short, immediate, combustible pieces particular to Brazilian newspapers that are called crônicas. As she muses in one, “The things I’ve learned from taxi drivers would be enough to fill a book.” Calling all literati.

Roth, Rob. WARHOLCAPOTE: A Non-Fiction Invention. S. & S. Sept. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9781982103828. $26.99. DRAMA

In 1978, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote decided to collaborate on a play, with Warhol suggesting that they record their conversations as source material. The play languished, and the abandoned tapes gathered dust until Tony-nominated director Roth located them and constructed this “non-fiction invention,” using the artists’ own words to reveal their thoughts on art, love, and life. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Shriver, Lionel. Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction. Harper. Sept. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063094291. $33.50. LITERATURE

Shriver waded through her numerous columns, features, essays, and op-eds (from the Guardian, the New York Times, and more) plus speeches, reviews, and unpublished works, to produce a collection readers will likely find sharp-tongued and bracing. What else would you expect from the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin? With a 30,000-copy first printing.

VandeHei, Jim & others. Smart Brevity: Write Less. Say More. Get Heard. Workman. Sept. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9781523516971. $27. COMPOSITION

Cofounder and CEO of Politico and now cofounder and CEO/Chair of Axios, which offers breaking news on business, technology, and politics, VandeHei must have an eye for the “smart brevity” recommended in this writing and communications manifesto for the information age. The publisher’s big book of the year.

Wulf, Andrea. Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self. Knopf. Sept. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780525657118. $35. HISTORY/PHILOSOPHY

Author of The Invention of Nature, a New York Times best seller that grabbed 15 literary awards worldwide, Wulf looks back at the German poets, philosophers, and intellectuals who launched Romanticism (think Goethe, Schiller, and Hegel, not to mention the influential Caroline Schlegel) to understand our absorption with the self today. Not just for the philosophizing set.

Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns