The Fall book line-up is crucial for the publishing industry. The noted, the celebrated, the most-awaited are published in September, right before the chill sets in – giving everybody enough time to recognize, read, and spread the good word before the holiday season kicks in. It is strategic marketing, based on commonplace lifestyle factors. Big debuts, returning prize-winning authors, and celebrity memoirs hit the shelves and lend themselves as perfect companions to the winter months spent indoors.
This year, too, some of the most cheered contenders for the bestseller lists are set to release in quick succession, making for an eventful literary season. Here are eight titles coming out in September that have readers worldwide thrilled. And us, too!
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney's upcoming is undoubtedly, unequivocally, the most anticipated book of this year. Rooney specializes in suffusing simple plotlines with deep, sensitive, and nuanced emotional layers. Following her global success of Normal People, in her latest, she reflects on the lives of four youngsters – Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon – and their desires, their heartbreaks, their relationships, and motivations in modern-day Ireland.
Hardcover, 368 pages. Expected publication: September 7, 2021, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
With a wife, a child and another on the way, Ray Carney, a Harlem furniture store owner struggling to escape the legacy of his criminal father, finds himself engulfed in the mayhem of a heist gone wrong. Now, Ray is not crooked. But he is not far from it, either. Two times Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead returns with a blazing crime novel, setting loose his memorable characters in the vivid chaos of the early 1960s New York City.
Hardcover, 336 pages. Expected publication: September 14, 2021, by Doubleday
Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
Pinker belts an engaging primer on developing logical and factual arguments while demonstrating to improve and employ critical thinking, causation, correlation, and probability to avoid fake news, biases, and conspiracy theories. Focussing on collective rationality driving essential social change, Pinker explores notions and tools to help readers correctly discern information presented to them.
Hardcover, 432 pages. Expected publication: September 28, 2021, by Allen Lane
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anthony Doerr, recreates the literary magic he achieved with All The Light You Cannot See with his latest, braiding together complicated timelines, characters, and narratives with the timeless themes of adventure, sorrow, hope, and the essential and limitless bounty of storytelling. Early reviews are raving tirelessly about Doerr's genius in incorporating ageless inquiries of the human heart with his graceful and nuanced writing.
Hardcover, 640 pages. Expected publication: September 28, 2021, by Scribner
Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang
Wang, currently a Civil Rights lawyer, traces her family's early years in Chinatown, New York City, where their everyday struggles with xenophobia and poverty are compounded by varying personal setbacks, pushing them to savour the small joys and faint silver linings. Replete with wonder, resilience, and love, Wang's deeply compelling study of growing up undocumented in America is equal parts heartbreaking and hopeful.
Hardcover, 320 pages. Expected publication: September 7, 2021, by Doubleday Books
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers's upcoming novel follows Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist and a single parent, who resorts to experimental neurofeedback techniques to ease his troubled nine-year-old's worsening emotional state. While shining a light on climate change, the natural world, and the complicated equation we share with our planet, Powers, above all else, excellently portrays a father's fierce love for his son.
Hardcover, 288 pages. Expected publication: September 21, 2021, by W. W. Norton Company
A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris
Things usually don't go well for Charlie. He lives in a house he hates, is too often divorced, and severely, feverishly aches for the great American Dream. When all odds are stacked against him, something miraculously goes right, granting Charlie a second shot at getting his life right. National Book Award-finalist, Joshua Ferris, hilariously and with brutal honesty, offers a stirring portrait of a man desperate to be loved but is pushed to earning it first.
Hardcover, 352 pages. Expected publication: September 28, 2021, by Little, Brown and Company
Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune
Wallace Price is convinced he's dead since a reaper has come to collect him at his funeral. But Wallace does not want to give up living just yet. Hugo, the owner of a peculiar teashop on the outskirts, has promised to help him cross over when it's time. And when the Manager, a powerful being, gives Wallace a week, Wallace sets out to live a lifetime in seven days. Hilarious and winsome, Klune's story is an uplifting take on grief, loss, and moving on.
Hardcover, 384 pages. Expected publication: September 21, 2021, by Tor Books