Summer reading may snag all the headlines, but fall is a wonderful time to be a reader. We have rounded up 57 books to watch for, from novels and story collections to books on the most pressing issues of our time. Biographies of Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso and Stephen Crane elucidate some of our greatest artists and thinkers, and memoirs from Stanley Tucci, Katie Couric and others offer a look behind their public personas. No matter what you are searching for this fall, you can find it in the pages of a book.
(Titles without a publication date noted are on sale now.)
— JOUMANA KHATIB
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FICTION
New novels from Jonathan Franzen and Anthony Doerr, a political thriller by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny, a Korean murder mystery — and more.
— By JOUMANA KHATIB
“Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney: Here’s a third smart, sexy novel from Rooney, who received widespread acclaim for her first two, “Conversations With Friends” and “Normal People.” This book has a clear autobiographical bent: Alice is a young novelist who has rocketed to worldwide fame. Her close friendship with Eileen anchors the book, with their email exchanges alighting on everything from political and social upheaval to their romantic lives. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
“Inseparable” by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Sandra Smith: De Beauvoir may be most closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre, but this loosely autobiographical novel, written in 1954 and put aside for decades, suggests that her more significant relationship was with her childhood friend Zaza. Ecco
“Apples Never Fall” by Liane Moriarty: Family tensions bubbling over in Australia, jump cuts between past and present — it’s another novel from Moriarty, known for books like “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers.” This time, she focuses on the Delaney family, headed by two retired tennis stars, and the fallout after their mother goes missing. Holt
“Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead: In 1960s Harlem, Ray Carney, a furniture salesman, is trying to lead a mostly upright life — until he’s drawn into a heist that goes awry. Our reviewer called this, Whitehead’s first novel since he won Pulitzer Prizes for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” “a rich, wild book.” Doubleday
“Palmares” by Gayl Jones: It’s been two decades since Jones released a new novel, and she returns with a multipart series centered on Almeyda, a young enslaved girl in colonial Brazil, who makes her way to a utopia where Black people are free. After the settlement is destroyed, Almeyda crosses the country in search of her lost husband. Beacon Press
“Bewilderment” by Richard Powers: As with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Overstory,” Powers’ new book encourages readers to look beyond ourselves. A widowed father, Theo, is an astrobiologist researching the possibility of life throughout the galaxy. His son, Robin, is struggling with outbursts at school and difficult emotions, but finds relief in an experimental neurofeedback therapy, which allows him to access the feelings of his dead mother. Norton
“The Wrong End of the Telescope” by Rabih Alameddine: Mina, a trans Lebanese American doctor, arrives in Lesbos to volunteer at a refugee camp, and the experience takes on an unexpectedly personal dimension after she meets Sumaiya, a Syrian woman trying to hide the extent of her illness from her family. Grove
“Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth” by Wole Soyinka: The Nobel laureate’s first novel in nearly 50 years reads like a sendup of an imaginary Nigeria, equally a mystery and political satire, centered on a black market for human flesh and the doctor trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Pantheon
“Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr: In his first novel since he won a Pulitzer Prize for “All the Light We Cannot See,” Doerr follows five characters across a millennium, from 15th-century Constantinople to a futuristic spaceship, all linked by a love of books, myth and storytelling. Scribner
“Crossroads” by Jonathan Franzen: Set in the 1970s in a Chicago suburb, this novel, the first in a planned trilogy, follows the Hildebrandt family. Russell, an associate pastor whose ethical code is wavering, and Marion, who deals with long-buried traumas, head up the family, which goes on to confront moral and spiritual questions. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
“Reprieve” by James Han Mattson: It’s 1990s Nebraska, and a group of four contestants is close to completing an escape room known for its horrors. But when one of them is killed by an intruder, the survivors — including a love-struck international student who came to track down a former teacher, and a grieving teenage girl — are left to reckon with a bigger challenge involving guilt, race and power. William Morrow
“The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles: Set over a 10-day stretch in 1954, this novel from the author of “A Gentleman in Moscow” follows a teenager trying to rebuild his life. Emmett has returned to Nebraska after serving a sentence for involuntary manslaughter, with plans to collect his younger brother and start fresh in California. But when he discovers two unexpected interlopers, his path is radically redirected, leading him on a picaresque journey to New York. Viking
“I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness” by Claire Vaye Watkins: An author (also named Claire Vaye Watkins) leaves behind her husband and child for a book event in Nevada, where she re-encounters old friends, memories and, most important, desires. Riverhead
“The Wandering Earth” by Cixin Liu: Liu has built an international following for his groundbreaking speculative trilogy, “The Three-Body Problem,” which leaps from Beijing to Inner Mongolia to a far-off planet. This collection, translated by Ken Liu, Elizabeth Hanlon, Zac Haluza, Adam Lanphier and Holger Nahm, promises to take us “to the edge of the universe and the end of time.” The title novella inspired a popular film adaptation. Tor Books, Oct. 12
“State of Terror” by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny: After four years of political turmoil and diminished American standing overseas, Ellen Adams joins a new presidential administration, headed by a former rival, as secretary of state. At the president’s first congressional address, a State Department employee receives a coded threat — and before long, a wave of terrorist attacks threaten to upend the global order. Simon & Schuster/St. Martin’s Press, Oct. 12
“The Pessimists” by Bethany Ball: The Connecticut suburbs are the backdrop for this satire following three couples, anchored by an upscale school with a megalomaniacal headmistress. Before long, prepper impulses, wandering eyes and a cancer diagnosis emerge, and rattle each of the marriages. Welcome to the neighborhood! Grove, Oct. 12
“Lemon” by Kwon Yeo-sun, translated by Janet Hong: In 2002, as South Korea hosts the World Cup, a striking teenage girl is found dead. The country is transfixed, nicknaming the case the High School Beauty Murder. Years later, the case is still unsolved. The victim’s sister, Da-On, still obsessed with the murder, revisits some of its principal figures in unnerving, elliptical chapters. Kwon is a Korean author, and this is her first book translated into English. Other Press, Oct. 12
“Monster in the Middle” by Tiphanie Yanique: The present-day romance between Fly, a musician, and Stela, a science teacher, in New York City is interspersed with tales of their ancestors’ past loves and losses, in the Virgin Islands, Ghana and the United States. Riverhead, Oct. 19
“Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart: Shteyngart, author of “Super Sad True Love Story,” “Little Failure” and other books, offers readers what may be the first major pandemic novel. In March 2020, a group of friends gather in the country to weather the pandemic together. The ensemble includes the Levin-Senderovskys, a Russian American family; a fabulously wealthy Korean American app developer; and a movie star, whose presence threatens to upend it all. Random House, Nov. 2
“The Perishing” by Natashia Deón: It’s 1930s Los Angeles, and Lou, a teenage girl, wakes up in an alleyway with no recollection of how she got there. She eventually becomes the first Black journalist for The Los Angeles Times but is unnerved by memories from the past and the future; before long she wonders if she’s a god with a specific purpose. Counterpoint, Nov. 2
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NONFICTION
A deeply reported look at the woman behind Roe v. Wade, an investigation of lawbreaking animals, another hilarious essay collection from Phoebe Robinson — and more.
— By MIGUEL SALAZAR and JOUMANA KHATIB
“Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana” by Abe Streep: In 2018, the Arlee Warriors, a boys high school basketball team on Montana’s Flathead Indian reservation, was in the midst of a buzzing championship run as its town reeled from a cluster of suicides. Streep, who previously profiled the team for The New York Times Magazine, delves into the lives of the players, the town’s collective trauma and the therapeutic power of basketball in Arlee, where the sport “occupies emotional terrain somewhere between escape and religion.” Celadon Books
“The Family Roe: An American Story” by Joshua Prager: In his third book, Prager sets out to tell the stories of the overlooked women behind the 1973 Supreme Court decision. Using interviews, letters and previously unseen personal papers, Prager tells the story of Roe through the life of Norma McCorvey, whose unwanted pregnancy gave way to the Supreme Court case, and three other protagonists: Linda Coffee, the lawyer who filed the original lawsuit; Curtis Boyd, a fundamentalist Christian turned abortion provider; and Mildred Jefferson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Norton
“Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law” by Mary Roach: In 1659, an Italian court heard a case against caterpillars after locals complained of them trespassing and pilfering local gardens. In the years since, humans have come up with innovative ways to deal with jaywalking moose, killer elephants, thieving crows and murderous geriatric trees. After a two-year trip across the world, Roach chronicles these methods in her latest book, covering crow blasting in Oklahoma and human-elephant conflict specialists in West Bengal. The result is a rich work of research and reportage revealing the lengths that humanity will go to keep the natural world at bay. Norton
“The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century” by Amia Srinivasan: Srinivasan, an Oxford professor, has developed an enthusiastic following for her shrewd writing in The London Review of Books, with topics ranging from campus culture wars to the intellect of octopuses. Her 2018 meditation on the politics of sex served as a launchpad for this highly anticipated book, which draws on — and complicates — long-standing feminist theory in six essays on pornography, desire, capitalism and more. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
“Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays” by Phoebe Robinson: Robinson, an actress, comedian and co-creator of the podcast 2 Dope Queens, wrote her latest book of essays during the pandemic, taking up everything from Black Lives Matter to dating under lockdown to commercialized self-care. Of course, there’s plenty of levity — her way of coping. “If I can make you laugh and forget your problems for a moment, then I did something,” she writes. Tiny Reparations Books
“Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters” by Steven Pinker: How can a species capable of calculating the age of the universe be so vulnerable to conspiracy theories, folk wisdom and groupthink? Rationality is in critically short supply at a time when humanity faces its greatest challenges yet, argues Pinker, a Harvard cognitive psychologist. Through mental exercises and geeky but accessible writing on topics ranging from cartoons to climate change to Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign, Pinker hopes to save reason — and, by extension, society — from extinction. Viking
“Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City” by Andrea Elliott: Dasani was a precocious and spunky 11-year-old with limitless potential when Elliott, a Times investigative journalist, first met her at a Brooklyn homeless shelter in 2012. That encounter led to a five-part series shadowing Dasani as she navigated child poverty in New York City. For this book, Elliott immersed herself in the lives of Dasani and her family for eight years, at times slipping past security guards at the shelter. She also traces the family’s ancestry back to a North Carolina slave plantation, telling a vivid and devastating story of American inequality. Random House
“All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told” by Douglas Wolk: This book is an ambitious attempt to wrestle with the Marvel Comics universe, a web so expansive that almost no one has bothered to read all of its half-million pages (and counting). No one, that is, besides Wolk, who has pored over yellowing originals at garage sales, abandoned copies at his local Starbucks and even collections on show at Burning Man. The result is 400 pages of insights — for Marvel fans and casual readers alike — and what they reveal about American dreams and fears over the past 60 years. Penguin Press, Oct. 12
“The Loneliest Americans” by Jay Caspian Kang: In his essays and commentaries, Kang, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine who also writes a newsletter for The Times’ Opinion section, has been interrogating the ideas underpinning Asian American identity for years. His nonfiction debut is a culmination of these efforts, blending memoir, historical writing and reportage as he questions the usefulness of this identity in describing people who live profoundly different realities conditioned by class, language and ethnicity. Crown, Oct. 12
“The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA” by Jorge L. Contreras: The ACLU had never before filed a patent case when a policy analyst and a civil rights lawyer teamed up in 2005 to challenge a decades-long practice allowing private companies to patent naturally occurring human genes. Contreras, a law professor at the University of Utah, interviewed nearly 100 lawyers, patients, scientists and policymakers in this behind-the-scenes history of Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, a long-shot lawsuit that culminated in a landmark 2013 Supreme Court decision that opened the human genome to the benefit of researchers, cancer patients and everyday Americans. Algonquin, Oct. 26
“The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth” by Sam Quinones: Our understanding of the opioid epidemic is indebted in part to Quinones and his eye-opening first book, “Dreamland,” which connected the dots between OxyContin’s popularity and a booming heroin market. In this follow-up, Quinones explores the neuroscience of addiction, lays out how the crisis has morphed and deepened with the spread of synthetic drugs, and celebrates the slow efforts at rebuilding community in hard-hit counties across America. Bloomsbury, Nov. 2
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MEMOIRS
Look for reflections from Katie Couric, Stanley Tucci and Joy Harjo — and more.
— By JOUMANA KHATIB and ELISABETH EGAN
“Beautiful Country” by Qian Julie Wang: As a young child, the author fled China for New York, where she and her parents were undocumented for years. Wang, now a civil rights lawyer, focuses on her early years in the United States, and how she and her family grappled with the precarity and vulnerability they faced. Doubleday
“Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11? by Joseph Pfeifer: Pfeifer, a New York Fire Department battalion chief on the scene on 9/11, shares some of the horror — and the valor — he witnessed. (His brother, also a New York City firefighter, died during a rescue mission in one of the towers.) But the book is also a personal exploration; Pfeifer examines his closest relationships, his past as a seminarian and his calling to the Fire Department. Our reviewer said it belongs in “the canon as one of the necessary documents of 9/11.” Portfolio
“Poet Warrior” by Joy Harjo: Harjo, the first Native poet laureate, draws on her family’s ancestral stories and artistic influences in her second autobiography, which she wrote in verse and prose. She puts it simply: “I do not want to forget, though sometimes memory appears to be an enemy bringing only pain.” Norton
“Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood” by Dawn Turner: A former journalist at The Chicago Tribune, Turner revisits her childhood, along with those of her sister and her best friend, in the Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville. The community, Turner writes, is the “cradle of the city’s Great Migration, the epicenter of Black business and culture,” once home to Richard Wright, Ida B. Wells and Gwendolyn Brooks. But Turner’s book is guided by a wrenching question: How did she find success and stability while her sister and friend were left behind? Simon & Schuster
“Taste: My Life Through Food” by Stanley Tucci: Long before he enthralled a world in lockdown with his cocktail-shaking videos, led viewers across Italy on CNN or starred in “Big Night,” Tucci was obsessed with food. Here he returns to his childhood growing up in an Italian American family in the 1960s (yes, there are recipes). Gallery Books
“The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage” by Drew Magary: In 2018, Magary, a writer for Defector, suffered a significant brain hemorrhage after an unexpected fall. For two weeks, he was comatose, leaving him to later reconstruct what happened — and understand the extent of his injury — by poring over medical records and interviewing his family and friends. As he wrote after the episode: “I am the least reliable narrator when it comes to the story of my brain exploding.” It’s harrowing reading, but there are moments of hope and joy, particularly as he navigates fatherhood. Harmony
“Going There” by Katie Couric: For decades, through interviews with Supreme Court justices, prime ministers, presidents and countless ordinary individuals, Couric has brought us the life stories of other people. In “Going There,” she examines her own life — career highs and lows, experiences with sexism, her first husband’s death from colon cancer, her daughters’ reckoning with their father’s enthusiasm for the Confederacy. and the demise of her friendship with her former “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer. Little, Brown, Oct. 26
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BIOGRAPHIES
The first major study of Oscar Wilde in decades, the conclusion of a “magisterial” series on Pablo Picasso, and more.
— By JOUMANA KHATIB
“Oscar Wilde: A Life” by Matthew Sturgis: It’s been more than 30 years since the last major biography of Wilde, and Sturgis draws on new material and research (including a full transcript of his catastrophic libel trial). “The established persona of Oscar Wilde — the unflappable, epigrammatic Aesthete — is so compelling that it is hard not to be seduced by it,” Sturgis writes, as he sets out to restore Wilde to his era and the facts of his life. Knopf, Oct. 12
“Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane” by Paul Auster: Crane, a journalist and writer best remembered for his novel “The Red Badge of Courage,” died in 1900 at 28 — before he could drive an automobile or listen to a radio. And yet, Auster says, “he can now be regarded as the first American modernist, the man most responsible for changing the way we see the world through the lens of the written word.” Auster, who is upfront about his admiration for his subject, sets out to recover Crane from scholars and introduce him to a broader swath of new readers. Henry Holt, Oct. 26
“Scientist: E.O. Wilson: A Life in Nature” by Richard Rhodes: Long considered Darwin’s successor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning naturalist Wilson started his career studying the social lives of ants before his groundbreaking study of human behavior, “Sociobiology.” Wilson, now 92, agreed to participate in this biography, and Rhodes was able to interview his colleagues, too. It’s an impressive account of one of the 20th century’s most prominent biologists, for whom the natural world is “a sanctuary and a realm of boundless adventure; the fewer the people in it, the better.” Doubleday, Oct. 26
“The Young H.G. Wells: Changing the World” by Claire Tomalin: Tomalin, a noted literary biographer whose previous subjects have included Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft and Charles Dickens, turns to the early years of Wells, who is perhaps best remembered for such works of science fiction as “The War of the Worlds” and “The Invisible Man.” She traces his early challenges — poverty, his efforts to get an education and poor health — and explores the sudden success he enjoyed in 1895 with his first novel, “The Time Machine.” Penguin Press, Nov. 2
“A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years 1933-1943? by John Richardson: This book concludes Richardson’s four-volume biography of Picasso, and comes two years after Richardson’s death. He drew on his intimate knowledge of Picasso along with impressive amounts of research to illustrate the artist’s work and life — and the centrality of Picasso to his era. (Our critic praised one installment as “magisterial and definitive.”) This volume, set during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of World War II, follows Picasso as he completed some of his most enduring works: portraits of Marie Thérese and Dora Maar, and his masterpiece “Guernica.” Knopf, Nov. 16
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
“The 1619 Project” expands its Pulitzer Prize-winning argument about our nation’s origins, Huma Abedin reflects on her life, and other titles imagine our post-COVID future.
— By JOUMANA KHATIB and ELISABETH EGAN
“Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation” by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler: Why were our cities and their economies so vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic? Two Harvard economists take stock of the issues that bedevil American cities (or as they put it, the “demons” that often “accompany density”), including health care, affordable housing, education, class disparities and more. The authors approach the questions from different political standpoints and imagine what cities may look like in the future. Penguin Press
“Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy” by Adam Tooze: Even before the extent of the pandemic’s destruction became clear, “there was every reason to think that 2020 might be tumultuous,” writes Tooze. He tends to take up big, epoch-defining events — the 2008 financial crash, global affairs after World War I — and here investigates the economic response to the pandemic. As our reviewer put it: “This book’s great service is that it challenges us to consider the ways in which our institutions and systems, and the assumptions, positions and divisions that undergird them, leave us ill prepared for the next crisis.” Viking
“Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement” by Tarana Burke: Long before #MeToo became a global movement, Burke mobilized women around those two words. Her memoir opens in 2017, with the realization that the hashtag has taken off on Facebook, driven by strangers with a different set of goals than the ones she’s been working for years to achieve. “This can’t happen,” she tells a friend. “Y’all know if these white women start using this hashtag, and it gets popular, they will never believe that a Black woman in her 40s from the Bronx has been building a movement for the same purposes, using those exact words, for years now.” To read “Unbound” is to believe this, and to understand how Burke used empathy and transparency to pave the way for change. Flatiron
“Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa: In two earlier books, “Fear” and “Rage,” Woodward plumbed the turmoil of the Trump presidency. Now, he and Costa focus on the transition from the Trump White House to the Biden administration. They interviewed hundreds of people for this account, which covers the November election, the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the challenges Biden faced in the early months of his presidency. Simon & Schuster
“Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds” by Huma Abedin: Abedin, a longtime political insider, has often been overshadowed by her relationships with two politicians: Hillary Clinton, for whom she worked as a top aide, and former Rep. Anthony Weiner, her ex-husband. “This journey has led me through exhilarating milestones and devastating setbacks. I have walked both with great pride and in overwhelming shame,” Abedin said. Hers is a life she is “enormously grateful for and a story I look forward to sharing.” Scribner, Nov. 2
“The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” created by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine: This book builds on the Pulitzer Prize-winning project published in The New York Times Magazine, which aims to place the “consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,” and includes new essays, poems and works of fiction. One World, Nov. 16
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ARTS & CULTURE
Watch for new memoirs from Gabrielle Union and Alan Cumming, Jamie Foxx’s reflections on parenthood, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries and more.
— By ELISABETH EGAN and JOUMANA KHATIB
“You Got Anything Stronger?: Stories” by Gabrielle Union with Kevin Carr O’Leary: Readers of Union’s first book, “We’re Going to Need More Wine,” know the actor and activist is a brave, funny and irreverent storyteller. In this collection of stories from her life, Union goes there again, whether she’s consulting a Hollywood shaman, suffering from constipation at an Atlanta strip club or celebrating the birth of her long-awaited daughter, Kaavia. If “We’re Going to Need More Wine” was her first date with readers, “You Got Anything Stronger?” is the first weekend away together, Union explains: “Because just as you think you know someone, it turns out you actually have no idea who a person is until you’ve traveled with them.” Dey Street Books
“Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me” by Jamie Foxx: Anyone’s who’s been on the parental end of a teenager’s withering eye roll knows that raising kids can be a humbling experience. Foxx has been there — and the name of his first chapter tells you what to expect from this memoir: “Parenting … You Ain’t Ready for It.” In addition to the actor’s revelations about his triumphs and failures as a dad, readers can expect an intro by Foxx’s 27-year-old daughter, Corinne, who writes, “I feel like my dad wanted to write a book about fatherhood so he could share the lessons he learned along the way.” Grand Central, Oct. 19
“Unprotected” by Billy Porter: “This is not a coming-out story,” says Porter, known for his roles in “Pose” and “Kinky Boots.” Instead, he offers his account of growing up Black and gay in Pittsburgh. “By the time I was 5, it was all too clear to me that something was wrong with me,” Porter, 51, writes. “Everyone knew it, and I knew it too.” He delves into the therapy intended to “fix” him, the bullying and sexual abuse that shaped his childhood, the inspiration he received from his mother and how he found his voice — and his singular sense of style — along the way. Abrams, Oct. 19
“Renegades: Born in the USA” by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen: If you’ve listened to the podcast that inspired their book, you know Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen have a remarkable rapport, whether they’re discussing race, class, music, money, fatherhood — or just joy riding in The Boss’ Corvette (sorry, Secret Service). Their frank, heartfelt conversations travel “the distance between the American Dream and the American reality,” as Obama puts it. With annotated speeches, handwritten lyrics and photographs from their personal libraries, “Renegades” the book promises to delve further into a unique partnership. Crown, Oct. 26
“Baggage: Tales From a Fully Packed Life” by Alan Cumming: Fans of “The Good Wife” may remember the coy reserve of Eli Gold, the Machiavellian political consultant played by Alan Cumming, whose crisp delivery bears no hint of his Scottish roots. The Cumming whom readers encounter in his second memoir is the polar opposite: straightforward, unburdened, devoid of spin. In “Baggage,” he writes, “At some of my greatest career highs I have been my most unhappy and confused. At my most celebrated I have felt the lowest self-esteem.” Cummings goes on, “This is a book about my career, my struggles with mental health, my many forays into love and sexuality and everything in between.” Dey Street Books, Oct. 26
“1,000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir” by Ai Weiwei, translated by Allan H. Barr: After his imprisonment by Chinese authorities in 2011, the artist and activist began thinking more closely about his relationship with his father, a poet who was exiled to Little Siberia after falling out of favor with the Communist regime. Chapters open with lines of his father’s poetry as Ai traces his own artistic development along with the arc of his father’s life. Crown, Nov. 2
“Will” by Will Smith, with Mark Manson: Maybe you watched him in prime time as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Maybe he landed on your radar as a crafty con artist in “Six Degrees of Separation” or as a desperate dad in “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Maybe you’ve hummed along to “Friend Like Me” from the “Aladdin” soundtrack (yes, that’s his voice). No matter how long or how often you’ve enjoyed Smith’s performances, you don’t know him. His memoir promises to take readers from his days as a fearful child in West Philadelphia to his current incarnation, as a celebrity who has, according to the book’s website, undertaken “a profound journey of self-knowledge.” Penguin Press, Nov. 9
“Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995? edited by Anna von Planta: Highsmith was resolutely private: She spurned efforts to write an authorized biography, and interviewers dreaded her yes or no, one-syllable responses. But after she died in 1995, her extensive personal diaries and notebooks were discovered — and it seemed clear she had hoped for their eventual publication, granting readers a window into her self-image, her literary experiments, and some of her darker, discriminatory thoughts. Her longtime editor corralled thousands of those pages into one volume. As Highsmith wrote in one entry from 1950: “Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live.” Liveright, Nov. 16
