This year, same as last, there are simply too many books coming out in the fall to make one single list palatable or easy to compile at once. So here’s the first part of our fall list, covering novels and journalistic works from September to October, some of which have already been longlisted for prizes or buzzed about in literary coverage. Let us know which picks you added to your to-read list and enjoy a couple more months of long sunsets.
The Disappearers, Marlon James (Sept 1)
Already receiving rapturous praise, the Booker Prize finalist’s newest maximalist novel follows a group of closeted gay men in 1980s Jamaica reeling from a homophobic attack.
Switzy, Emma Cline (Sept 8)
Another early Booker Prize nod goes to Emma Cline’s latest novel, Switzy, where an aging man travels through Europe to Zurich with his assistant, reminiscing on his life.
Everyman: The Untold Story of Economics, Antara Haldar (Sept 8)
The debut book from the economist, philosopher and lawyer is fittingly hard to label, a blend of fact and fiction that traces the arc of global capitalism.
The Living Realm, Jordan Tannahill (Sept 8)
The playwright returns with a crisp novel set in the dog days of summer, when an attempt at gay cruising stirs memories of a long-lost lover for a young queer man.
Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships, James Muldoon (Sept 8)
In our uncanny age, it’s not out of the ordinary to need a book like this, even if the technology at our hands is upending most facts of life. The journalist and author breaks down how bots impact our relationships with others, and themselves.
Fallow, Sarah Anderson (Sept 15)
Combining the absurdity of contemporary motherhood and the drudgery of corporate life, Sarah Anderson’s debut novel follows Natalie, who signs up to become the first ever in-house surrogate. Can she meet the demands the family has placed on her, which require seven babies in ten years?
Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease, Gabe Bullard (Sept 15)
The journalist’s first book advocates taking a pill that’s quite tough to swallow: that our age of endless convenience is smoothing our brains and might not even save time (or money!). Is “frictionmaxxing” the way out of our malaise?
Exit Party, Emily St. John Mandel (Sept 15)
The sci-fi legend and author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with her newest novel, where shortly after the collapse of the United States, a glitzy hotshot Angelean disappears from the glitzy party he’s in the middle of throwing.
Cloud Six, Amy Fusselman (Sept 22)
In the author’s tender-hearted and quite silly new novel, Mam and Bunko are flying over the United States when their plane suddenly explodes, sending them to not-quite-heaven. In this strange new environment with shooters and demons, they must make it back to their child, Penny, before they’re stuck there for good.
Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser (Sept 22)
The Pulitzer Prize winner, who has written previously about Susan Sontag and Clarice Lispector, returns with a necessary history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which throughout history has been met with censorship and death.
The Cosmopolitan Girl, Rosalyn Drexler (Sept 29)
In the latest from Hagfish, an independent publisher celebrating out-of-print works, a woman falls in love with a dog, horrifying her friends and poking fun at our own endless and unreachable expectations. Cosmopolitan indeed!
The Floating World, Ben Eastham (Sept 29)
Ben Eastham’s elegant and blistering debut novel follows an unnamed narrator who accepts a suspicious job working for a corporation that sets up a dystopian island-slash-art-installation off the coast of Greece. From the editor-in-chief of e-flux Criticism and co-founder of The White Review, this absurdist art-world satire comes with a bite.
I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity, Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber (Sept 29)
In their first book, the cult podcast Who? Weekly hosts divide the world—somewhat crudely—into Whos and Thems. But their celebrity-addled vision shifts in the new era, when the lines are smudged and anyone can transcend the boundary with ease.
Sophie, Standing There, Meg Mason (Sept 29)
The brilliant Meg Mason, the author of one of my all-time favorite novels, Sorrow and Bliss, returns with a new novel where a woman happily married and surrounded by books reconnects with an author and dreams of their possible meeting.
The Occidental Book of the Dead, T. Geronimo Johnson (Oct 6)
From the author of Welcome to Braggsville comes a starkly funny crime novel where a Black cop’s life after shooting a white teen, unraveling the white-washing he’s covered his life with.
Carrying, Samantha Josephs (Oct 6)
In this captivating, horrific debut, Martha has everything a woman could want: a beautiful husband, a loving stepdaughter, yet her own family doesn’t even know she’s trans. When she finds out one day that she’s impossibly pregnant, she struggles to decipher the life she’s always wanted with the one she never thought she’d have.
The First Reader: On Writers and Editors, Luiz Schwarcz, translated by Alison Entrekin (Oct 6)
The founder of Brazilian publishing house Companhia das Letras offers advice from his nearly 40 years of writing, craft and editing. The First Reader is a tender book for the metafictionally-geared.
The Names of the New World, Kawai Strong Washburn (Oct 6)
From the author of 2020’s splashy Sharks in the Time of Saviors comes a new novel where an enormous storm destroys Minneapolis that forces three people together, where they orbit for the next twenty years from Washington, DC, to Hawaii.
Book of David, Mallory Smart (October 7)
The latest short story collection from the Maudlin House publisher and editor-in-chief is a Midwest horror showstopper, full of black cats, Ouija boards and religious fanaticism. Sure to be a creepy riot.
The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia, Richard Cooke (Oct 13)
One of the most important—and most undervalued—human invention gets its necessary due in Richard Cooke’s meticulous history of the internet’s community gathering place.
Paradise Burns, Pol Guasch, translated by Mara Faye Lethem (Oct 20)
The Spanish novelist returns with Paradise Burns, where two friends who meet at a party form a bond despite the fires ravaging the dystopian landscape and the mines where men are put to work.
Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, Blake J. Harris (Oct 20)
As a huge fan of Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I couldn’t be more excited for the first authorized biography of the Seinfeld and comedy legend, which compiles more than five years of research and interviews.
Doppelgänger, Sam Riviere (Oct 20)
For fans of Black Bag, Sam Riviere’s hotly anticipated and quite absurd follow-up to Dead Souls takes place in a fictional university where a new “twinning” trend takes over the campus, starting with a student who begs another to punch him, part performance art and social experiment.
Thousands of Eyes, Maximiliano Barrientos, translated by Thomas Bunstead (Oct 27)
In this high-speed, post-apocalyptic maximalist thrill ride, a man and his young son escape a cult attempting to unleash a primordial specter known as The Dream in 1970s Bolivia. Centuries later, after The Dream has been enacted, a girl returns to the land to carry out her father’s dying wish.
To Stay, To Stay, To Stay, Devon Halliday (Oct 27)
Already enjoying the benefits of a tight-knit community, seven distinct lives in a small Appalachian town collide over one hot summer week in this debut, already longlisted for the 2026 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Shelter is Necessary for Existence, Brenda Iijima (Oct 27)
Both a scathing critique of colonialism and a chilling horror story, a quiet family purchases a beautiful brownstone and learns of the deaths of the previous residents through manifestations within the house.