Summer is basically over. And as the nights grow colder, and the sweaters come out, so too, it seems, do all the books. So, what to read? With that ever-difficult question in mind, we turned to some of our favorite booksellers across the country (and Canada!) to find out what books they’re most excited about this fall.
Loner, Teddy Wayne
(9/1, Simon & Schuster)
My quick pitch for Loner is “Humbert Humbert goes to Harvard.” Teddy Wayne, author of the Bieber-inspired novel The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, drops his readers inside his young characters’ heads with a vibrant sense of authenticity and authority that is almost intoxicating. In Loner, you realize far too late how far off the rails you’ve followed its first-year student protagonist in his obsessions.
–Alex Meriwether, Harvard Bookstore
The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time, Steven Sherrill
(9/1, John F. Blair, Publisher)
I was delighted to read this sequel released SIXTEEN YEARS after the original, The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break. Instead of the steakhouse in the South, the Minotaur (“M”) is now working in the North as a Confederate soldier impersonator at a reenactment park. M’s perspective on the human race (he has been living with them for thousands of years now, after all) is a voice unique in all fiction. And while his observations may be from an immortal perspective, his personal problems are all too human and small. He loves. He pines. He suffers. He has moments of heroism and humility. He still makes stupid mistakes, like humans, fueled by impulses he feels helpless to resist. For me, he is one of the most sympathetic characters I have ever read. If you think you’re going to have trouble getting past the minotaur thing, you won’t. Sherrill’s prose is captivating from page one. The poet novelist has hit it out of the park again!
–Kelly Justice, Fountain Bookstore
Mischling, Affinity Konar
(9/6, Lee Boudreaux Books)
Maybe we must bear witness to unspeakable evil, the way it twists and terrorizes and destroys, before we can (ironically) even begin to comprehend what is truly magnificent about humanity. Konar, in her tale of twin girls in the hands of Josef Mengele, has accomplished this miracle. In a book shot full of joy and anguish, she shows us that courage can be as boundless as the evil of Auschwitz. Her narrative genius, her power to turn the unimaginable into vivid, harrowing reality, the leavening quality of her humor do more than transport us, they make us SEE.
–Betsy Burton, The King’s English Bookshop
If you read one book this year, prepare to be swept away by this luminous story of twins surviving the horrors of Auschwitz. Pearl and Stasha both narrate this journey from cattle car to a park in Warsaw. The sisters are forced to endure the experiments of Josef Mengele and yet they survive—participating in camp events, plotting the death of Mengele and finding hope in despair. The pace is so beautiful that you must take your time with her words—imaginative, humorous, and transcendent.
–Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop
The story is focused on two 12-year-old Polish twin sisters taken to Auschwitz in 1944, and explores the world of the children who were subjects of Nazi doctor and scientist Josef Mengele, and his horrifying experiments. The two characters narrate alternating chapters of their story with Pearl being the more restrained and observant sister and Stasha, the more impulsive one. The strength and bond between the two of them is what drew me to this story. Although the subject matter may be difficult to read for some, the story of survival and hope among the atrocities of war is what makes this a must read.
–Jessica Brudner, Galiano Island Books
A Gentleman In Moscow, Amor Towles
(9/6, Viking)
What does a certain Russian Count do when the Bolshevik Revolution occurs? Why, he travels home to Russia and takes up residence in the Metropol Hotel in the heart of Moscow. As the revolutionaries take control of the government, however, the Count is declared a Former Person, and is confined to the Metropol for the rest of his life. It is better than taking up the cause of the White Russians and getting shot. In fact, though forced from his suite of rooms on the third floor to a tiny garret room, the Count faces every hardship with optimism, a small library, many friends, and a stash of gold coins that he cashes in when necessary. A young girl named Nina, also living at the hotel, befriends the Count, and the two strike up a strong relationship. Nina eventually joins a young communist party group, marries, and follows her arrested husband to Siberia, but not before dropping off her six-year-old daughter, Sophie, at the Metropol to be cared for by the Count. When Nina fails to return, the Count raises Sophie as his own daughter, watching her become a talented musician, who one day has the opportunity to travel to Paris. Using this opportunity, the Count, now 63 years old, concocts a plan to liberate both Sophie and himself from under the thumb of the Soviet government.
Towles’ Count Rostov is a wonderfully imagined character, and this novel is witty, just a tad quirky, full of literary allusions, a lot of fun and games and suspenseful turns of event. One gets the impression that the Count enjoyed toying with the communist authorities, outwitting them with the help of many friends within and outside of the Metropol. The novel reads a little bit like The 100 Year Old Man…, a little bit like City of Thieves, a little bit like “Casablanca,” and is simply a joy to read.
–Alice Meloy, Blue Willow Bookshop
We Eat Our Own, Kea Wilson
(9/6, Scribner)
Written by fellow bookseller Kea Wilson, We Eat Our Own is her debut novel about an enigmatic film shoot in the Amazon jungle, helmed by a director with a serious sadistic streak. This wonderfully compelling novel blurs the line between art and life (or is it death?) and is infused with the author’s love of Italian horror films of the 1970s.
–Andy Bellows, City Lights Books
Power Ballads, Garrett Caples
(9/6, Wave Books)
This is probably one of the funniest and most playful poetry collections to be published this year, but it is also filled to the brim with refreshingly direct and tender love poems and dedications to friends (and a particularly great poem for the city of Oakland). Also included: a prose chapter analyzing Marlon Brando’s gut, lines stolen from Dylan and Tupac, many guest appearances by Bay Area poets, and a poem called ‘Garrett Caples Rides Again.’
–Chris Carosi, City Lights Books
Calamities, Renee Gladman
(9/6, Wave Books)
Renee Gladman is one of the great hybridizers of contemporary letters. Both familiar and disorienting, Calamities reads like a series of personal essays-cum prose poems, cum belles letters—immediate and personal. The book focuses on the minute dilemmas of a contemporary life: theoretically Gladman’s, but possibly our own. Calamities draws us into its own looking-glass world of language and time, the spaces of life happening and not happening all at once, and Gladman balances everything gracefully atop her sparse, nearly ambient prose. So rarely can syntax catch the heart off guard.
–Jarrod Annis, Greenlight Bookstore
The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas
(9/6, Coffee House Press)
This dazzling debut by Mauro Javier Cardenas reads like António Lobo Antunes having a cup of coffee (or a beer) with Garcia Marquez. Dense, political and stylistically innovative, Cardenas reunites four friends in Ecuador in an attempt to bring about a political and social transformation. Challenging, complex and bursting with voices, The Revolutionaries Try Again is the arrival of an incredible new voice.
–Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore
How should a book reflect its world? So often we read books that try to straighten things out, but here is a book whose form is like the content of lives. Shaken, complex, and usually in the end the joke is on us.
–Sam Goldstein, Skylight Books
The Evil Wizard Smallbone, Delia Sherman
(9/13, Candlewick)
When Nick runs away from home in the Maine woods, he winds up apprenticed to the foul-tempered Evil Wizard Smallbone, who runs a sentient bookshop. Only the bookshop seems to want Nick to learn magic—but he’d better learn magic quick, to stand up to the gang of were-coyotes threatening him, the Wizard Smallbone, and the peculiarly peaceful nearby village of… wait. That part’s definitely a surprise.
–Alex S., Brookline Booksmith
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Peter Wohlleben
(9/13, Greystone Books)
Fascinating stories supported by scientific research, stories revealing an amazing world of trees and forest and processes the author observed himself in the woodland. Wohlleben shares his deep love for woods and illustrates how trees communicate, and compares the life of trees to human families, where tree parents live with their children, care for and support each other, share nutrients etc. They create whole ecosystems unknown to us before.
–Hanna Kaczerowska, Galiano Island Books
Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
(9/13, Harper)
Because Ann Patchett and I own a bookstore together, you could say I’m a little biased. That said, this is my favorite of Ann’s books so far. Coming from a family that was affected by divorce and remarriage with kids thrown together whether they liked it or not, I found a lot I could relate to in this memorable story. Irony, humor, drama, love—it’s all there in this complex, satisfying novel.
–Karen Hayes, Parnassus Books
Eve Out of Her Ruins, Ananda Devi
(9/13, Deep Vellum Books)
Set in a poor section of Port-Louis, Mauritius, this prize-winning novel is a poetic and intense exploration of young lives thrown away by society. Told in four different voices and haunted by the specter of Rimbaud, Devi explores the violence, identity, and dreams of young people living discarded lives. For fans of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
–Josh, Porter Square Books
Little Nothing, Marisa Silver
(9/13, Blue Rider Press)
I loved God of War and Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, neither of which prepared me for this fabulist novel, Little Nothing. Following a dream logic all of its own, this magical telling of the story of a dwarf girl’s tortured transformations through unspecified Eastern European landscapes early in the 20th century, is a modern-day tale told in an almost oral storytelling style. You give up your disbelief early on, and hang it on the coatrack, leaving you comfortably seated for a hallucinogenic ride exploring Time, nothingness, change, love, poverty, cruelty, all delivered in comfortingly cadenced prose. It’s a marvel.
–John Evans, Diesel Bookstores
Black Wave, Michelle Tea
(9/13, Feminist Press)
It’s 1999. It’s the apocalypse. But first there’s sex, and drugs, and drinking; first there’s writing, and sobriety, and meta-narrative. Comparisons are odious, but I can’t resist: this is the queer, left coast, working-class 10:04, and I absolutely loved it. I want to put Black Waves (so hilarious! so terrifying!) into everybody’s hands.
–Kyle McCarthy, BookCourt
After James, Michael Helm
(9/13, Tin House)
A 21st-century masterclass in the use of genre to explore our ever-changing, and ever-slipping, grasp on reality. Helm draws on a base of knowledge broad and deep, from etymology to neuropharmaceuticals, from poetry to cybersecurity, to craft three murkily connected tales that point toward the best kind of cosmic disquiet: beyond comprehension and just out of sight.
–Chris Phipps, Diesel Bookstores
If Venice Dies, Salvatore Settis trans. André Naffis-Sahely
(9/13, New Vessel Press)
An alarming look at how the tourism industry is threatening to destroy Venetian culture—and with it, its history and identity—and what this means for the world at large. Written with a sense of urgency that mirrors its subject, If Venice Dies will fascinate anyone interested in Venice, Italy, architecture, cities, culture, politics, and history.
–Hannah Jansen, Harvard Bookstore
Ghosts, Raina Telgemeier
(9/13, GRAPHIX)
This highly anticipated new graphic novel from Telgemeier has all the warmth, heart, family and friend love of her previous books, but delves for the first time into magical realism. Such an exciting new path from an author we already love to pieces.
–Katherine Fergason, Harvard Bookstore
The Journey, Francesca Sanna
(9/13, Flying Eye Books)
At first glance The Journey seems to be a picture book for children but quickly reveals itself as a troubling mirror for adults today. This masterpiece—and I do not use that word lightly—is a story of a refugee family escaping their unnamed country in pursuit of safety. What is unsaid speaks volumes, and the illustrations will remain in mind long after The Journey ends.
–Cressida Hanson, Kepler’s
Nine Island, Jane Alison
(9/13, Catapult)
Readers know there is only one thing better than finding the perfect book, and that is when the perfect book finds you. Falling out of the ARC pile onto my foot, Nine Island by Jane Alison, just as sharply, unexpectedly and comically delivered, demanded my full attention from the first page to the last. Brief, rapid-fire chapters will escort you into the mind and life of J through her seemingly random, yet intricately entwined thoughts and observations. Set in the tropical concrete mecca of Miami, J weaves through relationships: past and present, furry and feathered, solid and fluid, on her road to rediscovering how to “live that life.”
–Kim Britt, Bookmark It
Shakespeare and Co., Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, ed. Krista Halverson
(9/16, Shakespeare and Co.)
There’s nothing better than bookstores publishing books and this one is nothing short of magnificent. To celebrate its 65th anniversary, the legendary Paris bookshop presents us a bookish feast with this gorgeously designed book, filled to the brim with photographs and texts of and by the literary legends it helped shape. It’s gritty, indulgent, wild, perfect and pure inspiration. A must-have for anyone who believes in the power of the independent bookstore.
–Kate Layte, Papercuts
Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill, Candice Millard
(9/20, Doubleday)
Churchill, in his early twenties and determined to make a military mark for himself, was frustrated again and again—until finally, he plunged into the Boer War as a civilian correspondent, finding himself unscathed while others around him dropped in the thick of fighting that offered him the opportunity for the mantle of heroism he so craved. As we now know, Churchill was destined for greatness, but in his early twenties, he showed the British Empire why he was someone to be watched and followed.
–Sue Fleming, The King’s English Bookshop
The Wonder, Emma Donoghue
(9/20, Little, Brown)
In this riveting historical fiction novel, Donoghue introduces us to Anna, child of poor Irish folk, who by all accounts has not eaten in 4 months. Two nurses are dispatched to observe the child and either prove or disprove this “miracle.” The narrator is a Nightingale nurse, horrified by the blind Catholic devotion of the family. As the days go by, she slowly realizes that possibly her presence has changed the dynamic and indeed the child is starving to death. Nurse Lib offers us an incredible peek into a dark time in Irish history. Highly recommended.
–Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop
Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Our Children from an Oversanitized World, Marie–Clair Arrieta & B. Brett Finlay
(9/20, Workman Publishing)
This gutsy book’s promises to be a sandbox of cutting-edge research on super-sensitive topics like the import of natural childbirth, sterilization of food implements and the worthiness of having hairy pets around the house! An eye opener for parents focused daily on improving the lives of their children and grandchildren by eradicating nasty ailments and lifelong conditions like autism and asthma by exposing them to bacteria rather than shielding them as they have been for at least the last two hundred years! Co-author UBC professor Brett Finlay’s an award-winning microbiologist, talented jazz musician and energetic trail builder on Galiano Island in the Salish Sea.
–Elizabeth Olson, Galiano Island Books
The Lesser Bohemians, Eimear McBride
(9/20, Hogarth)
Simply, the story in one year of an 18–year–old Irish girl gone to London for drama school, and her relationship with an actor twice her age and experience. Both of them —carrying trauma from childhood—are damaged, he, perhaps, irrevocably. Musical, poetic, stream of consciousness prose put me right inside her head. McBride uses language and voice in a way that make possible a sometimes violent, twisting intimacy with her characters. The Lesser Bohemians is a remarkable, unforgettable novel.
–Leigh Atkins, Keplers
This story will beautifully blindsiding. McBride’s lyrical stream-of-consciousness style transforms a narrative of unlikely love between an aging actor and a young student into an intimate, visceral exploration of love and loss. Come for the story, but stay for the writing.
–Alison, WORD Bookstores
Reputations, Juan Gabriel Vasquez
(9/20 , Riverhead Books)
Vasquez’s novel is a mesmerizing tale of the political cartoonist for a prominent Latin American newspaper looking back on his successful career, confronted by a figure from the past who causes him to contemplate the power of his profession’s moral authority. Bam! I will never look at political cartoons in the same way!
–Mary, Newtonville Books
Trainwreck, Sady Doyle
(9/20, Melville House)
Trainwreck is an enlightening, terrifying look at the history behind the modern female “trainwreck.” When I think of Mary Wollstonecraft, I don’t usually connect her to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Doyle’s writing is hilarious and insightful, and so timely. One recurring question throughout Trainwreck, “Were you a nice girl?” is a hauntingly familiar refrain to any woman who has been a “trainwreck” themselves. This should be required reading for everyone.
–Tanwaporn Watanaporn, Book Culture
Trainwreck is a much needed revelation of a book. Sady Doyle chronicles in devastating detail the ways in which society picks apart and destroys women from Mary Wollstonecraft to Britney Spears. Fierce as hell, well-researched, and wonderfully written, Trainwreck is eye-opening, mind-blowing, and life-changing.
–Katie Eelman, Papercuts
Bottom’s Dream, Arno Schmidt, trans. John E. Woods
(9/23, Dalkey Archive)
Judged solely by its dimensions, Arno Schmidt’s modernist masterpiece is the biggest book of the fall. Weighing in at nearly 13 lbs (!), this long-awaited translation by the great John E. Woods, whose previous translations of Thomas Mann, Gunter Grass, and others set the standard by which all English translations of German are judged, is one of postwar Europe’s literary monuments. A playful, delirious, and dizzying masterpiece of high modernism, Bottom’s Dream is a testament to patience and fortitude—both on the part of the translator and any reader brave enough to take on Schmidt’s classic.
–Stephen, Green Apple Books
Admittedly, a nearly 1500 page novel presented in shifting columns of notes, collages and typewritten pages by a largely unknown German author is a tough sell, but fans of House of Leaves, Finnegans Wake and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym probably won’t be deterred by the format or length of this long awaited translation of Arno Schmidt’s magnum opus. Award-winning translator John E. Woods gifts to English readers what could very well be the most important work of German literature in the last century.
–The Wild Detectives
Bowie, Simon Critchley
(9/23, OR Books)
“A brief, insightful, heartfelt bio of the late great Thin White Duke from internationally acclaimed philosopher and lifelong fan, Simon Critchley. Weaving autobiographical details with cultural and literary analysis, this is an addictive little book, easily readable in a single sitting. Critchley expertly unpacks Bowie’s famously oblique lyrics, offering terrific considerations of the iconic musician’s place in the everch-ch-changing sociocultural zeitgeist of his career. This book is a true testament to Bowie’s impact not only on his fans, but on the worlds of music, culture and art. Bowie is bittersweet, melancholy and lovely.”
–Keaton Patterson, Brazos Bookstore
Time Travel: A History, James Gleick
(9/27, Pantheon)
Never did I imagine that I’d one day read something so thorough about something so hypothetical! I am immediately reminded of the conversations (and let’s face it, arguments) I’ve had about the DOs and DON’Ts of time travel—this book elevates that discussion. Time Travel: A History is fun, challenging, and well paced. Gleick is a huuuge nerd and if this isn’t a labor of love, I don’t know what is!
–Jasper, Skylight Books
Mercury, Margot Livesey
(9/27, Harper)
The inimitable Margot Livesey has written an unforgettable story of a couple in the midst of their marriage’s dissolution. No one has a better understanding of human nature.
–Carole Horne, Harvard Bookstore
This riveting psychological novel delves into the lives of Donald and Vivian, a married couple whose stability is threatened and ultimately undermined when Vivian, whose former life as an aspiring equestrian was cut short, meets Mercury, a magnificent horse with a tragic backstory. What unfolds may seem like destiny to Vivian, but to Donald, the staid and deliberate ophthalmologist still mourning the death of his beloved father, it tests everything he’s ever known, including his faculty for navigating in the world. A truly remarkable study of human nature and the blindspots that hamstring us all.
–Mary, Newtonville Books
The Last Wolf & Herman, László Krasznahorkai
(9/27, New Directions)
As long as Krasznahorkai’s books usually are, I’ve always found them to feel like short bursts of intensity. His extravagantly (but never gimmicky) long sentences unfold at a loping pace. The narrative distance covered feels small, until you retrace your steps. The combining of two novellas, The Last Wolf and Herman, is a perfect introduction to my favorite living author.
–Brad Johnson, Diesel Bookstores
Reading The Last Wolf is the literary equivalent of sitting for a daguerreotype: best done in a moment while letting the imagery of the single sentence coil around and fix you to the chair until finished.
–Lucy Kogler, Talking Leaves… Books
The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or the Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, Alan Gidwitz
(9/27, Dutton Books for Young Readers)
In the middle of the Dark Ages Will, an oversized, strong, young monk; Jeanne, a peasant girl who sees the future during her seizures; and Jacob, an orphaned Jewish boy who can heal people, are bound together by their own version of the “Crusade.” This unlikely company’s stories will keep you turning the pages, the plot will keep even the best readers entranced, the Author’s Notes add surprising historical depth, while the artwork contributes authenticity and whimsy. In one of the most creative books of the season, Gidwitz explores friendship and prejudice while valuing knowledge and learning. A great counterweight to the current election season!
–Margaret Brennan Neville, The King’s English Bookshop
Gidwitz (A Tale Dark and Grim) makes a triumphant return with The Inquisitor’s Tale. Set in the 13th century, this is the story of three children and their greyhound. All three children are fleeing persecution and trying to save holy books from being burned. Told in the style of the Canterbury Tales, this is delightful historical fiction for grades 5 and up. Bravo!
–Cathy Berner, Blue Willow Bookshop
Told Chaucer-style by numerous onlookers, this is the story of three miracle–slinging kids and a resurrected dog in medieval France on a holy quest to save the nation’s Jewish books from death by fire—if our heroes (and dog) can avoid the king who’s hunting them down. This page-flipping and consciously thought-provoking adventure captures everything weird and wonderful about medieval literature and medieval living.
–Alex S., Brookline Booksmith
In a twist on The Canterbury Tales, travelers at a French inn in 1242 tell stories of three children, among them, Jeanne, a peasant girl who has visions of the future. At once funny, subversive, fantastical, and moving, this beautifully researched and illuminated novel will delight readers from ages 9 to 90.
–Franny, 57th Street Books
Alice, Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute, Eds. Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus
(10/3 , Heyday)
Winner of the 2015 California Historical Society Award, this book is a much–needed addition to the oeuvre of San Francisco history and is edited by one of our very own booksellers, Ivy Anderson! This book brings to our consciousness an otherwise forgotten serially-published ghostwritten memoir from Alice Smith, a prostitute working in the Barbary Coast at the beginning of the 20th century. Letters from working class women are also included, poignantly showing that the development of third-wave feminism can be traced back as early as 1913 San Francisco. Not only for Bay Area history buffs, Alice will enlighten all readers to early shifts in gender roles and societal correlations today.
–Cassie Duggan, City Lights Books
El Paso, Winston Groom
(10/4, Liveright)
A lot of people don’t realize that Forrest Gump is based on a novel. El Paso, though remarkably different from Groom’s 1986 novel, is another sweeping epic. Dark and daring, El Paso does for the West what Gump did for the South-it takes a tumultuous, crucial time in American history and feeds it to us in ways acute and unforgettable.
–Laura Taylor, Oxford Exchange
My Private Property, Mary Ruefle
(10/4, Wave Books)
Mary Ruefle is, in this humble bookseller’s opinion, the best prose–writing poet in America. (And one of our best poets, too.) My Private Property, her latest collection of stories, essays, and asides, is as joyous and singular a book as you’ll read this fall. Ranging from meditations on shrunken heads to a chronicle of menopausal tears, this may be the ideal introduction to this eye-opening writer.
–Stephen, Green Apple Books
The Mortifications, Derek Palacio
(10/4, Tim Duggan Books)
One of my favorite movies is a Russian film called “The Return”, where two young boys spend a long weekend with their father, who abandoned them 12 years earlier. The film is a masterpiece, beautifully asking questions about purpose, desire, manhood, and the hazy and at-times painful meaning of home. Palacio’s debut puts these same questions under the microscope and the result is just as absorbing. It buries itself somewhere deep down and doesn’t go away.
–Mike Matesich, Oxford Exchange
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