Top 10

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel. Knopf, Nov. 19 ($35, ISBN 978-0-593-80197-0)

Murakami revisits the setting of 1985’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, where shadows become disconnected from a person’s body and a Dream Reader reviews people’s dreams.

Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner. Scribner, Sept. 3 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-9821-1652-1)

What happens when a spy is seduced by her quarry? Kushner explores this question in her story of an American agent who worms her way into a French anarchist commune.

Entitlement

Rumaan Alam. Riverhead, Sept. 17 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-71846-9)

A young woman hopes to make a difference in the world by working for a billionaire philanthropist in the latest novel of class differences from Alam.

Herscht 07769

László Krasznahorkai, trans. by Ottilie Mulzet. New Directions, Sept. 3 ($18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8112-3153-4)

A German man studies physics and carries on imaginary conversations with Angela Merkel while he’s not busy with his job cleaning up anti-Bach graffiti for a Bach-loving neo-Nazi.

Lazarus Man

Richard Price. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov. 12 ($29, ISBN 978-0-374-16815-5)

Gentrification, the housing crisis, and urban blight figure into the latest from Price, about a tenement collapse in 2008 Harlem and the people affected by it.

The Mighty Red

Louise Erdrich. Harper, Oct. 1 ($32, ISBN 978-0-06-327705-2)

Erdrich looks back on the economic crash of 2008 in this story of a North Dakota sugar beet farm, the young man set to inherit it, and the employee’s daughter he’s in love with.

Our Evenings

Alan Hollinghurst. Random House, Oct. 8 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-24306-0)

Hollinghurst again follows his characters across decades, this time beginning with two boys’ boarding school days and tracing their divergent lives in theater and politics.

Playground

Richard Powers. Norton, Sept. 24 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-08603-1)

Powers’s recurring interest in AI, the natural world, and the work of scientists drive his latest, which centers on the launch of new floating cities in the Pacific Ocean.

Rejection

Tony Tulathimutte. Morrow, Sept. 17 ($28, ISBN 978-0-06-333787-9)

In Tulathimutte’s linked collection, characters deal with various forms of rejection and contend with how the internet has warped their sense of reality.

We Do Not Part

Han Kang, trans. by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris. Hogarth, Jan. 21
($28, ISBN 978-0-593-59545-9)

A woman travels from Seoul to a remote island to care for her friend’s pet bird. As a snowstorm sets in, she discovers troubling news about her friend’s family.

Literary Fiction longlist

Algonquin

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard (Sept. 17, $29, ISBN 978-1-64375-530-4) portrays how Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment for having an affair with a man threw the lives of his wife and sons into tumult.

Amistad

The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston (Jan. 7, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-316100-9). The latest rediscovered work from Hurston, written in the 1950s but never published, complicates the New Testament’s demonizing portrait of the Judean king accused of attempting to kill Christ.

Archipelago

Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukasonga, trans. by Mark Polizzotti (Oct. 8, $19 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-953861-94-8). Years after a Rwandan woman was healed from an illness by an American missionary, she begins to question the missionary’s mysterious prophesies.

Avid Reader

Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick (Sept. 10, $28, ISBN 978-1-6680-6663-8). Resnick debuts with a fantastical allegory of displacement and paranoia about a black hole that swallows the state of Israel, prompting a wave of antisemitic scapegoating.

Beacon

The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones (Aug. 20, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-8070-3003-5) depicts disenchantment with the Jim Crow South through the story of a Black WWII veteran who travels from Kentucky to Tennessee in search of meaning.

Berkley

Mask of the Deer Woman by Laurie L. Dove (Jan. 21, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-81610-3). A Chicago detective takes a missing person case on the reservation where her father was raised and is haunted by a mythical figure from her father’s stories.

Bloomsbury

Time of the Child by Niall Williams (Nov. 19, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-63973-420-7) revisits the Irish village depicted in This Is Happiness for a Christmas story about a doctor and his grown daughter who are left with a baby to take care of.

Catapult

The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball (Sept. 24, $27, ISBN 978-1-64622-140-0) is a speculative novel about a criminal
justice system in which one juror is selected to pass judgment on the accused after tapping into the accused’s consciousness through an advanced technology.

Celadon

What Happened to the McCrays? by Tracey Lange (Jan. 14, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-32843-4). The author of We Are the Brennans again chronicles a wayward Irish American family member’s uneasy homecoming, this time with the story of a broken marriage and a man offered a second chance as a middle school hockey coach.

Coffee House

Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber (Oct. 8, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-56689-719-8) depicts a retired literature professor’s obsessive and distraction-prone effort to finish a book about the philosopher Montaigne.

Del Rey

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Aug. 6, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-60026-9) concerns a rivalry between two women costarring in a 1950s Hollywood epic and includes a parallel narrative based on the movie’s source material, the biblical story of Salome and the dance of the seven veils.

Dial

Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger (Oct. 29, $29, ISBN 978-0-525-51249-3) tells the stories of Lila Pereira, whose mother was committed to an asylum when Lila was two and never seen again, and of Lila’s daughter’s desire to know the truth about her grandmother.

Doubleday

Dogs and Monsters: Stories by Mark Haddon (Oct. 15, $28, ISBN 978-0-385-55086-4). The author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time blends retellings of Greek myths with contemporary stories of cruelty and hubris in his latest collection.

Dutton

And So I Roar by Abi Daré (Aug. 6, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-18655-8). A Nigerian woman comes to terms with her family’s secrets while trying to help a teen runaway and other troubled girls in Lagos.

Ecco

A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg (Sept. 24, $28, ISBN 978-0-06-303984-1) unfolds across decades as two 20-something sisters and their mother seek to reinvent themselves in different parts of the U.S. following the sudden death of the family patriarch.

Europa

Fathers and Fugitives by S.J. Naudé, trans. by Michiel Heyns (Sept. 10, $27, ISBN 979-8-88966-039-2). Questions of filial piety and inheritance come into play in Naudé’s story of a London journalist who returns to South Africa to care for his ailing father.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Sept. 24, $29, ISBN 978-0-374-60263-5) follows two brothers—a suave lawyer and an awkward competitive chess player—as their lives are altered by news of their father’s death.

Flatiron

Private Rites by Julia Armfield
(Dec. 3, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-34431-1). This contemporary riff on King Lear revolves around the reunion of a late architect’s three estranged daughters.

Gallery

The Champagne Letters by Kate Macintosh (Dec. 10, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-6188-6) features a recently divorced Chicago woman intrigued by the life of a 19th-century champagne maker.

Graydon House

The Book Swap by Tessa Bickers (Sept. 3, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-5258-3670-1) follows two lonely hearts who correspond via notes in the margins of their favorite books, which they leave for each other in a Little Free Library box.

Grove

Elaine by Will Self (Sept. 17, $27, ISBN 978-0-8021-6353-0) draws on decades of diary entries written by the author’s mother for a novel about her tumultuous marriage and affair in the 1950s and fears of repercussions for her earlier membership in the Communist Party.

Harper Via

Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery (Oct. 15, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-334353-5). Advice columnist Lavery’s first novel depicts the workers and residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.

Hogarth

A Sunny Place for Shady People: Stories by Mariana Enriquez, trans. by Megan McDowell (Sept. 17, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-73325-7). Enriquez’s collection of horror stories illuminates the dark side of contemporary Buenos Aires.

Holt

The Book of George by Kate Greathead (Oct. 8, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-250-35102-9) satirizes millennial masculinity with the tale of a man­ who’s unable to follow through on his potential, can’t commit to his girlfriend, and knows full well just how big of a disappointment he is.

Kensington

Turistas by Lauren E. Rico (Dec. 24, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4967-4466-1). A Puerto Rican woman tries to track down her long-lost first husband after learning he’s still alive.

Knopf

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Aug. 20, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-80171-0) interweaves the stories of a Yazidi girl in 2014 Iraq, a hydrologist in 2018 London, and an autodidact in 19th-century London who becomes obsessed with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Little, Brown

Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker (Sept. 3, $29, ISBN 978-0-316-57329-0). A young mother who escaped her poverty-stricken upbringing in Waikiki provides comfort and stability to her two children in Portland, Ore., until secrets about her past disrupt her new life.

Liveright

Villa E by Jane Alison (Aug. 6, $23.99, ISBN 978-1-324-09505-7) takes inspiration from the famed modernist house built by furniture designer Eileen Gray in southern France, whose walls were defaced by the architect Le Corbusier after he came to believe Gray ripped off his style.

Mariner

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers (Nov. 12, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-325822-8). An art therapist in 1960s London grows fond of a new patient at her psychiatric hospital, a 30-something artist who’s been a disappointment to his wealthy family.

Melville House

The Italy Letters by Vi Khi Nao (Aug. 13, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68589-130-5) is an experimental love story in the form of lyrical and digressive letters from the Las Vegas–based narrator to her lover in Italy.

New York Review Books

The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant by Mavis Gallant, edited by Garth Risk Hallberg (Nov. 12, $22.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68137-874-9), brings together more than 30 stories by the post-WWII Canadian master, including “The Accident” (1967), about Americans abroad who face death and reinvent themselves.

Overlook

The Heartbeat Library by Laura Imai Messina (Oct. 22, $27, ISBN 978-1-4197-7249-8). A middle-aged man and an eight-year-old boy forge a connection on the Japanese island of Teshima, where they’re both drawn to a library of recordings of human heartbeats.

Pantheon

Blood Test: A Comedy by Charles Baxter (Oct. 22, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-70085-3) follows a Sunday school teacher through dark days after he tests positive on a test meant to indicate whether one is capable of murder.

Park Row

The Stone Witch of Florence by Anna Rasche (Oct. 8, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-7783-1045-7) offers a twist on the recent spate of witch novels with the story of a woman accused of witchcraft in 14th-century Italy who’s tapped by authorities to heal people afflicted with the Black Death.

Penguin Press

The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Oct. 1, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-65521-4) marks the third entry in Knausgaard’s cycle of novels about a bright new star in the sky and the people affected by it.

Random House

Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey (Aug. 13, $29, ISBN 978-0-385-53828-2). Godfrey’s novel, which was completed by essayist Leslie Jamison after Godfrey’s death in 2022, portrays the challenging and remarkable life of art collector Peggy Guggenheim.

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Sept. 10, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-44609-6) brings together characters from Strout’s previous novels set in Crosby, Maine—including Lucy Barton, lawyer Bob Burgess, and the irascible Olive Kitteridge—for a story of a suspicious death and second chances.

Riverhead

Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Sept. 3, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-54437-2). Novelists and Hollywood have long made strange bedfellows, a dynamic that Senna mines for comedy in her satire about a biracial woman who partners with a TV producer on the lookout for “diverse content.”

The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk (Sept. 24, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-71294-8) echoes Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and is set in a Polish sanitarium in 1913, where a young man is overcome by a sense of foreboding.

Scribner

Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman (Oct. 8, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5721-6). The latest linked collection from Wideman reckons with the “slaveroad” running through U.S. history from the Atlantic slave trade, to American Christian missionaries in Africa, and today’s criminal justice system.

Seven Stories

Camp Jeff by Tova Reich (Oct. 29, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-64421-421-3). In Reich’s satire, a man named Jeffrey Epstein (not that one) sponsors a Catskills reeducation camp for celebrities facing allegations of sexual assault and harassment.

Simon & Schuster

Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio de la Pava (Nov. 12, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5670-7) recounts the story of a New York City private investigator who takes a missing person case in Colombia.

S&S/Rucci

Hum by Helen Phillips (Aug. 6, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-0883-6). Phillips’s speculative novel centers on a desperate mother who, after losing her job to AI, takes part in a research program in which her face is altered to be unrecognizable by surveillance technology.

Soho Press

Darkmotherland by Samrat Upadhyay (Jan. 7, $32, ISBN 978-1-64129-472-0) takes place in a dystopian version of the Whiting Award winner’s native Nepal and follows two women who are bound to powerful men.

Sourcebooks Landmark

Libby Lost and Found by Stephanie Booth (Oct. 15, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-7282-7850-6). After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a bestselling fantasy author receives help with her work from an 11-year-old fan.

Spiegel & Grau

The Way by Cary Groner (Dec. 3, $28, ISBN 978-1-954118-42-3). In Groner’s postapocalyptic road novel, a man travels to California to deliver a potential cure to the lethal pandemic that’s ravaged the world.

St. Martin’s

The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn (Dec. 3, $29, ISBN 978-1-250-32348-4) unfolds across dual timelines. In 2041, a woman desperately tries to reunite with her daughter as wildfires burn out of control across America. Forty years later, another mother and her daughter flee a dehumanizing climate relief program for parts unknown.

Tin House

The World with Its Mouth Open by Zahid Rafiq (Dec. 3, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-959030-85-0) comprises gritty and surreal stories set in war-scarred Kashmir.

Two Dollar Radio

Us Fools by Nora Lange (Sept. 17, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-953387-51-6). This debut novel explores the ravages of the 1980s farm crisis through the story of a family of farmers displaced from rural Illinois to Chicago.

Verso Fiction

If Only by Vigdis Hjorth, trans. by Charlotte Barslund (Sept. 3, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83976-888-0), examines the allure of illicit passion with the tale of a writer and a professor who leave their spouses for each other only to find misery.

The summary of the book Intermezzo has been updated.

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