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Fall preview: The 20 books you need to read this season

Fall preview: The 20 books you need to read this season

It may be cooling down outside, but reading season is just heating up.

By David Canfield and Seija Rankin

August 24, 2018 at 12:49 PM EDT

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Fall's 20 Must-Reads

Credit: Crown; Random House; Catapult; Scribner; Simon & Schuster

New books by Stephen King and Haruki Murakami. Michelle Obama's long-awaited memoir. Stunning tales tackling slavery, Hollywood's golden age, and the dawning of the Trump era. It may be cooling down outside, but reading season is just heating up.

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Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

Credit: Random House

What do you do if you're a wealthy hedge-fund manager, the subject of an SEC investigation, and avoiding dealing with your son's autism diagnosis? If you're Barry Cohen, center of this social satire, you escape to the country with an ex-girlfriend. That may sound like a downer, but Shteyngart's clear wit makes sure it's anything but. (Sept. 4)

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The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

Credit: Little, Brown

Mason's lyrical WWI-era romance depicts an affair between a doctor and a young nurse. (Sept. 11)

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Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Credit: Knopf

Washington Black paints an unflinching portrait of American slavery before tracing one boy's arduous, globe-trotting journey to freedom. Says the author, "I wanted to show what happens [after] achieving a measure of freedom, with the cruelties of what happened still resonating throughout your life." (Sept. 18)

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The Caregiver by Samuel Park

Credit: Simon & Schuster

This luminous mother-daughter saga marks a posthumous gem from Park, who died of stomach cancer last year. (Sept. 25)

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Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Credit: Little, Brown and Company

Atkinson (Life After Life) offers up an intriguing thriller about a woman whose past — tracking the movements of British Fascist sympathizers in WWII — comes back to haunt her. (Sept. 25)

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All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Credit: Catapult

The former Toast editor beautifully tells her life story, from growing up with adoptive white parents to uncovering the truth of where she came from. (Oct. 2)

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Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Credit: Random House

Calling all Book Thief fans: It's the author's first novel in 13 years, at long last. It centers on a group of tightly-knit brothers as they make their way in the aftermath of their father's disappearance. (Oct. 9)

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Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Credit: Knopf

No one can deny Murakami's range. The beloved Japanese novelist (Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore) has written near-1,000-page epics and intimate slices of life to equal praise, peppered as they always are with his humane surrealistic flourishes. His latest, Killing Commendatore, is an homage to The Great Gatsby, centered on a lonely painter who hits the road to find inspiration. Murakami fans can likely guess it's no ordinary trip; get ready for a wild ride. (Oct. 9)

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The Witch Elm by Tana French

Credit: Viking

Best known for her Dublin Murder Squad series, French is back with her first stand-alone mystery. "I wanted to try something completely different," she says of The Witch Elm, a spooky tale of a man who unearths terrifying secrets at his family's ancestral home. "I've always had detectives for narrators; I liked the idea of seeing the story from the other side." (Oct. 9)

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Everything's Trash, but It's Okay by Phoebe Robinson

Credit: Penguin

The Dope Queen takes on tough subjects in her new essay collection — getting personal and political. Expect a book full of biting humor, with plenty of insights along the way. (Oct. 16)

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Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Credit: Scribner

Laymon provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot. (Oct. 16)

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The Lake on Fire by Rosellen Brown

Credit: Sarabande Books

If you don't know this name, get familiar: Brown is one of our best living fiction writers, spending much of a career well under-the-radar. Her new novel, remarkably her first in nearly 20 years, is an epic that questions the American dream in a 19th-century immigrant saga. (Oct. 16)

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Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Credit: Harper Collins

In a story of two families living on the same corner during two different centuries, both surviving periods of tumult, Kingsolver explores the question of what shelter really means in her first novel since 2012. (Oct. 16)

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The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Credit: Simon & Schuster

An investigation into the still-unsolved Los Angeles Public Library fire of 1986 becomes a love letter to book centers everywhere and a poignant reminder of how desperately we need these institutions. (Oct. 16)

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Elevation by Stephen King

Credit: Scribner

Castle Rock, but make it happier. This novella returns to the iconic fictional town to bring the community together as they rally around a neighbor plagued by a mysterious disease. (Oct. 30)

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Family Trust by Kathy Wang

Credit: William Morrow

Money and family make for a potent mix, and the Huang family proves just that as they butt heads over an inheritance that is haunted by long-held resentment, cultural expectations, and a possibly exaggerated amount of wealth. (Oct. 30)

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The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

Credit: ECCO

The Feral Detective follows Phoebe, a disillusioned New Yorker searching for her friend's missing daughter in the SoCal desert. She pairs up with a strange loner named Charles Heist to solve the case. Another important detail: The novel takes place over a 10-day period surrounding Donald Trump's inauguration. "I felt paralyzed and confused," Lethem says of the period following the 2016 election. But then a hero emerged. "Phoebe is a sassy, unhappy, disgruntled runaway New Yorker—who better to say what I was feeling?" (Nov. 6)

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Becoming by Michelle Obama

Credit: Crown

From the woman who needs no introduction comes a book that needs no exposition. Becoming is the memoir from the First Lady who changed everything. Obama herself has promised a "deeply personal" literary journey, which her publishers have noted will include her upbringing in Chicago, her time as a young mother, and her historic turn in the nation's most famous building—and far be it for the former FLOTUS to do anything but deliver. Whatever she chooses to reveal — and how much she makes mention of the current political situation — the countless readers who (to this day) look to the Obamas as the pinnacle of hope will show up in droves. This one's going to be big. (Nov. 13)

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Seduction by Karina Longworth

Credit: Harper Collins

The You Must Remember This podcast host reexamines the golden age of Hollywood through a #MeToo lens. (Nov. 13)

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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Credit: Doubleday

This slim, scathingly black comedy delves into two sisters' tenuous dynamic — heightened since one of them is, erm, a serial killer. Such morbidity only sharpens the book's comic edge, which emerges via Braithwaite's deadpan prose. She admits, "It was fun to write — even though people were dying." (Nov. 20)

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By David Canfield @davidcanfield97
By Seija Rankin @@seijawrites

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Fall preview: The 20 books you need to read this season

1 of 21

Fall's 20 Must-Reads

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2 of 21

Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

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The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

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Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

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The Caregiver by Samuel Park

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Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

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Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

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Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

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The Witch Elm by Tana French

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Everything's Trash, but It's Okay by Phoebe Robinson

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Heavy by Kiese Laymon

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The Lake on Fire by Rosellen Brown

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Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

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The Library Book by Susan Orlean

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Elevation by Stephen King

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Family Trust by Kathy Wang

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The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem

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Becoming by Michelle Obama

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Seduction by Karina Longworth

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My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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