Culled from the 14,000+ titles in PW's Fall Announcements issue (on newsstands now and available in full here), we asked our reviews editors to pick the most notable books publishing in Fall 2015. Links to reviews are included when available. For the most anticipated children's and YA books of fall, click here.
Fiction
Purity by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept.) - In Franzen’s first novel since Freedom, a young woman follows a German peace activist to South America to intern for his WikiLeaks-like organization.
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (Atria, Nov.) - A love story and multigenerational epic encompassing WWII-era Poland and the United States and present-day San Francisco.
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving (Simon & Schuster, Nov.) - Irving’s 14th novel relates what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, and how his past in Mexico collides with his future.
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, trans. by Ann Goldstein (Europa, Sept.) - The fourth and final Neapolitan novel solidifies the masterpiece status of Ferrante’s series.
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, trans. by Ekin Oklap (Knopf, Oct.) - The latest from the Nobel Prize winner is the tale of an Istanbul street vendor and the love of his life, told from the perspectives of several characters.
Mystery/Thriller/Crime
The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel, Continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz (Knopf, Sept.) - Journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker Lisbeth Salander are back in a fourth novel in the late Stieg Larsson’s mega-selling Scandinavian crime series.
Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz (Harper, Sept.) - Horowitz, who successfully channeled Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk, draws on unpublished Ian Fleming material for this James Bond novel, which brings back Pussy Galore of Goldfinger.
Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, Aug.) - The first novel in three years from lauded fantasist Jemisin begins with a world-shaking cataclysm whose devastation is matched by personal betrayals.
Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due (Prime, Sept.) - Fans of horror and dark fantasy will eagerly dive into the first short fiction collection from author and screenwriter Due.
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard (Roc, Aug.) - This intense novel depicts warring factions in a magical alternate version of 20th-century Paris, where decadence mingles with fear.
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com, Sept.) - Wilson brings his rich, graceful prose style to this novella of two men’s love in a fantasy world full of troubles and terrors. This is the launch title for the Tor.com novella imprint.
Romance/Erotica
Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas (Avon, Oct.) - A massive first print run for Kleypas’s first historical romance since 2010 reflects her enduring popularity, especially when she writes forthright, seductive heroines.
Stars of Fortune: Book One of the Guardians Trilogy by Nora Roberts (Berkley, Nov.) - The queen of romantic fiction launches a paranormal romance trilogy with an announced first printing of two million copies—which may actually understate her fans’ devotion.
The Rogue Not Taken by Sarah MacLean (Avon, Dec.) - Close quarters, dark secrets, and unbearable temptation flavor bestseller MacLean’s Regency romance, which begins an exciting new series.
The Lady’s Command by Stephanie Laurens (Mira, Dec.) - Bestseller Laurens launches a new Regency series featuring the adventures of four seafaring brothers and the women who capture their hearts.
Poetry
I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975–2014 by Eileen Myles (Ecco, Sept.) - Myles’s blend of reality and fiction, the sublime and the ephemeral, opens readers to astonishing new considerations of familiar places and invites them into lush—and sometimes horrid—dream worlds.
Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners by John Wieners, edited by C.A. Conrad, Robert Dewhurst, and Joshua Beckman (Wave, Oct.) - This selection of out-of-print and previously unpublished work by the Black Mountain and Beat generation legend includes poems, plus facsimiles, notes, and collages.
Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones: Selected and New Poems by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon, Nov.) - MacArthur Fellow Perillo is a fearless poet whose generous collection draws upon five previous volumes.
Comics/Graphic Novels
The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf (Metropolitan, Oct.) - From Libya to France to Syria, Satouf captures the sights, sound and even smells of his childhood in this memoir as his Arab nationalist father takes his family from one troubled landscape to another.
Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly, Oct.) - A woman who looks like an internet porn star, a man who keeps breaking into his former home, a stuttering girl who wants to be a stand-up comic; Tomine limns the life of each of his troubled characters with understanding and precision.
Trashed by Derf Backderf (Abrams ComicArts, Nov.) - A Rabelaisian excursion into the world of trash collection, that follows a group of garbage men on their daily rounds picking up the detritus of a small Ohio town. It’s a dirty job…and you learn just how dirty.
Memoir
Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1950-2013 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Norton/Liveright, Sept.) - Mined from handwritten notebooks, the edited diaries of 60 years of travel by American literary icon Ferlinghetti offer a view into the social, political and cultural history of these United States.
Negroland by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon, Sept.) - Raised in privilege, Jefferson looks at race, sex, and culture through the lens of her particular experience.
M Train by Patti Smith (Knopf, Oct.) - Following her award winner, Just Kids, Smith shares her favorite haunts around the world.
Literary Essays/Criticism/Biographies
The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct.)- The essays collected in this book calls for a renewed sense of grace and commitment to humanism in response to the challenges of our times, and since they come from the beloved author of such novels as Gilead and Lila, readers will pay attention.
Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art by Julian Barnes (Knopf, Oct.) - From the Booker Prize–winning novelist, a collection of 17 essays on the great masters of 19th and 20th century art.
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr (Harper, Sept.) - According to PW’s starred review, this writing guide from Karr, the author of three memoirs including The Liars’ Club, is a “must-read for memoirists, but will also appeal to memoir lovers and all who are curious about how books evolve.” Karr lays out her own process and explores the work of other writers in the genre, including Hilary Mantel, Vladimir Nabokov, and Frank McCourt.
Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal by Jay Parini (Doubleday, Oct.) - As both Vidal’s longtime friend and an acclaimed biographer (Robert Frost) in his own right, Parini is in an ideal position to equally do justice to his subject’s glittering lifestyle and masterful prose. His biography promises to peel back the writer’s carefully constructed façade to reveal the many contradictions beneath.
Reporting Always: Writings from the ‘New Yorker’ by Lillian Ross (Scribner, Oct.) - Spanning 60 years, this collection assembles pieces by the longtime New Yorker staff writer, who joined the magazine in 1946. They show that that Ross may have invented the modern celebrity profile with her writings on figures like Charles Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway.
History/Military History
Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (Crown/Duggan, Sept.) – A powerful argument for a new understanding of how the Holocaust came to happen, based on an array of new archival sources from eastern Europe and the voices of survivors.
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Aug.) - Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of passing the Voting Rights Act, Berman’s book provides a popular history of the right to vote in America, which, according to the starred PW review, is “not only easily understandable, but riveting.”
The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen (Little, Brown, Oct.) - The latest exposé from Jacobsen paints a picture of DARPA, the military research agency within the Department of Defense, from its inception in 1958 to the present.
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown, Oct.) - Following the extraordinary success of 2011’s Cleopatra, Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff heads to Salem, Mass., to uncover the mysteries of the infamous witch trials.
Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers by Simon Winchester (Harper, Oct.) - A history of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature.
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead, Oct.) - The bestselling author of Unfamiliar Fishes brings a little levity to the history books with this account of the Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero.
Politics
The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? by Dale Russakoff (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept.) - The story of the struggle to reform the Newark school system, with a cast that includes Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Christie, and Cory Booker. PW called veteran Washington Post reporter Russakoff’s account “one of the finest education surveys in recent memory.”
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot (HarperCollins, Oct.) - Salon founder Talbot delivers a biography of Allen Dulles, the first civilian director of the CIA, which doubles as a look at the secretive side of American government power—a very timely topic in our era of WikiLeaks and drone strikes.
Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA by Roberta Kaplan, with Lisa Dickey (Norton, Oct.) - In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, the litigator whose work led to an earlier landmark in marriage equality—the Court’s 2013 overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act—tells her story, both legal and personal, and that of her client, Edie Windsor.
Music
Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown, Nov.) - The author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography Last Train to Memphis explores the life of Sam Phillips, the genius behind Sun Records.
Sinatra: The Chairman by James Kaplan (Doubleday, Oct.) - Just in time for the Chairman’s centennial comes a sequel to Kaplan’s bestselling Frank: The Voice, picking up the story the day after Frank claimed his Academy Award in 1954.
Science
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall (Ecco, Nov.) - Renowned particle physicist Randall uses her research into dark matter to illuminate the connections between the furthest reaches of space and life on Earth.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, Sept.) - Historian Wulf examines the ideas of visionary German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), which continue to influence how we view ourselves and our relationship with the natural world.
The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self by Anil Ananthaswamy (Dutton, Sept.) - Ananthaswamy leads a tour of the latest neuroscience of schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, ecstatic epilepsy, and other disorders to reveal the power of the human sense of self.
Religion
Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell B. Moore (B&H, Aug.) – Moore presents a well-reasoned, unconventional take on how to transform Christianity in the 21st century, arguing for an “engaged alienation” that sees church members move away from traditional practices while delving deeper into the teachers of Christ.
Grounded by Diana Butler Bass (HarperOne, Oct.) – Expanding on the ideas expressed in Christianity After Religion, Bass explores how large shifts in society are actually bringing communities together, forcing people away from large institutional affiliation, and bringing about a Christian transformation.
Not in God's Name by Jonathan Sacks (Schocken, Oct.) - Sacks, chief rabbi emeritus of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, works to untangle the knot of religious violence that threatens world security. With a fresh reading of Genesis, he argues for an end to the sibling rivalry that consumes the three Abrahamic faiths.
Note: a prior version of this story listed Steve Hamilton's The Second Life of Nick Mason under Mystery/Thriller, but was removed when publication was canceled by the author.
