Do you know what pairs nicely with a pumpkin spice latte? New-book smell.
The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer, which puts us in the mood to get cozy under a warm blanket, light a candle and settle in with a good book. Lucky for us, there are plenty to choose from in the months ahead: soul-baring celebrity memoirs from Matthew Perry, Constance Wu, Geena Davis and Kelly Ripa; fine literary fiction from Cormac McCarthy, George Saunders and Celeste Ng; and even a new treat from the undisputed queen of the bestsellers list, Michelle Obama, her first book since her 2018 smash debut, “Becoming.”
Here’s a look at those and other books we can’t wait to dig into this fall:
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By Betty Gilpin
Out Sept. 6 (Flatiron, nonfiction)
Emmy Award-nominated actor Gilpin, star of “The Hunt” and Netflix’s “GLOW,” is deeply weird and very, very funny in this off-kilter collection of essays about her childhood, Hollywood, modern Hollywood and everything chaotic thought that enters her brain.
By Stephen King
Out Sept. 6 (Scribner, fiction)
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Reade looks like a regular high-schooler, but he has just inherited a dog sidekick and the keys to a parallel world where a war is raging between good and evil. This is vintage King, in the best way.
By Yiyun Li
Out Sept. 20 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, fiction)
Agnès and Fabienne were inseparable as children, growing up in post–World War II rural France, where they built a private world that would launch one of them to fame and fortune in this story of obsession and all-consuming adolescent friendship.
By Kelly Ripa
Out Sept. 27 (Dey Street, nonfiction)
In her debut book, the longtime daytime talk show host shares real-life stories, from the set to her home and everywhere between, to show the real woman off screen.
By Namwali Serpell
Out Sept. 27 (Hogarth, fiction)
When Cassandra was a child, her little brother, Wayne, was lost in an accident, his body never found. As she grows older, twisted with grief, she starts to see Wayne everywhere. It can’t be him, though – or can it?
By Danielle Prescod
Out Oct. 1 (Little A, nonfiction)
The former BET style director gives an eye-opening account of growing up in an elite white community and her career in fashion, where racist beauty standards are the norm. After decades of assimilation and being the industry’s “Token Black Girl,” she decided to confront her social conditioning.
By Celeste Ng
Out Oct. 4 (Penguin Press, fiction)
The bestselling author of “Little Fires Everywhere” returns with a dystopian tale set in the near future, when Asian Americans are marked by the government with distrust and their art destroyed. Twelve-year-old Bird doesn’t ask too many questions after his mother, a Chinese American poet, leaves the family. But a mysterious letter sends him on a quest to find her.
By Constance Wu
Out Oct. 4 (Scribner, nonfiction)
The star of “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” who recently revealed that she survived a suicide attempt after a social media backlash, offers a raw, behind-the-scenes look at her experience as an Asian American in the entertainment industry and shaping her identity in the public eye.
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By Geena Davis
Out Oct. 11 (HarperOne, nonfiction)
The Academy Award-winning actor and star of classics including “Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own” shares her journey from a polite childhood to Hollywood powerhouse and women’s rights advocate.
By John Grisham
Out Oct. 18 (Doubleday, fiction)
In the bestselling author’s latest legal thriller, two sons of immigrant families who grew up childhood friends – Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco – find themselves on opposite sides of the law, one a prosecutor and the other the scion of the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground.
By Barbara Kingsolver
Out Oct. 18 (Harper, fiction)
In the mountains of southern Appalachia, a boy born in a trailer to a teenage single mother grows up and survives foster care, addiction, heartbreak and institutional poverty in a modern American reimagining of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield.”
By Ralph Macchio
Out Oct. 18 (Dutton, nonfiction)
The “Karate Kid” and “Cobra Kai” star reflects on the legacy of the classic 1984 film and Daniel LaRusso, the character that brought him fame. He examines how they shaped him and why the story has continued to resonate with audiences.
By George Saunders
Out Oct. 18 (Random House, fiction)
The Booker Prize-winning author of “Lincoln in the Bardo” returns with a new collection of short fiction, bringing his hilarious, absurdist prose and humane touch to subversive stories that get to the heart of what it means to be alive.
By Ross Gay
Out Oct. 25 (Algonquin, nonfiction)
The award-winning poet considers joy – how we incite it, how we can expand it and most importantly, how we experience it by caring for others – in this timely collection that defies divisiveness.
By Cormac McCarthy
Out Oct. 25 and Dec. 6 (Knopf, fiction)
The reclusive and revered writer has not one but two new novels coming this fall. The linked books are his first fiction releases since his Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic novel “The Road” in 2006. “The Passenger” tells the story of a haunted salvage diver who happens across a crashed plane, while its follow-up is an intimate portrait of grief set in a psychiatric hospital.
By Bob Dylan
Out Nov. 1 (Simon & Schuster, nonfiction)
In his first book of new writing since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Dylan offers his singular insight into popular music in more than 60 essays focusing on songs by other artists, breaking down their composition.
By Laurie Notaro
Out Nov. 1 (Little A, nonfiction)
The fearless and funny author of “The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club” faces her greatest challenge yet: middle age. Though her hair is gray and she’s getting junk mail from mortuaries, with every passing day she grows a little less afraid.
By Matthew Perry
Out Nov. 1 (Flatiron, nonfiction)
“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.” So begins the bracing new memoir from the “Friends” star, who played Chandler Bing on the hit NBC sitcom. He takes fans of the show behind the scenes and opens up about his struggle with addiction and a life-threatening health scare.
By Kevin Wilson
Out Nov. 8 (Ecco, fiction)
Romantic (and creative) sparks fly in the 1990s, when 16-year-old aspiring writer Frankie Budge meets Zeke, a talented artist just as awkward as she is. Together they create a poster that goes viral before virality was a thing and sets their small Tennessee town abuzz.
By Michelle Obama
Out Nov. 15 (Crown, nonfiction)
Her 2018 book “Becoming” became a bestseller with more than 17 million copies sold. The former first lady seeks to strike gold twice with a new book in which she reflects on navigating an increasingly stressful world. “We become bolder in brightness. If you know your light, you know yourself,” Obama writes in the introduction.
