The Big Fall 2025 Book Preview: 32 Hot New Reads

Literary fiction

Amity by Nathan Harris (September 2)

Set in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War, Amity focuses on Coleman, an intellectual, quirky Black servant who sets out on a dangerous cross-country journey with Florence Harper, the spoiled daughter of his former enslaver. He wants to reunite with his sister, who has trekked to Mexico with the creepy Mr. Harper. (Florence believes her father wants her to join him.) Swindlers and bandits are around every corner, but they head doggedly westward. It’s an adventure tale, social commentary, love story and vivid slice of Reconstruction Era history from the author of 2021’s The Sweetness of Water.

Boy From the North Country by Sam Sussman (September 16)

There’s an awful lot of autobiography in this heart-wrenching story, which the publisher notes was “inspired by the author’s own uncertain paternity.” Sussman’s fictional incarnation is Evan, 26, who’s called home to upstate New York by his mother, June, and learns that she has late-stage cancer. She’s a remarkable woman, and theirs is a sweet, tender relationship, but beneath it lies a secret: June once had an on-again, off-again relationship with a young Bob Dylan. Yes, the Bob Dylan, whom Evan — and Sussman — resembles and reveres. While Evan shuttles June into New York for cancer treatments, their excruciating effects vividly described, she tells him stories from her bohemian past, including her romance with Dylan. Evan may never know if he’s really the musician’s son, but it’s clear from this lovely novel that the question grows increasingly irrelevant as he grapples with the inevitable loss of his beloved mother.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (September 23)

Other novels have portrayed a future transformed by climate change, but this book, by the author of Atonement, describes one that’s chillingly conceivable. It weaves between two timelines: One, set in 2014, is centered around a famous English poet, Francis Blundy, and his wife, Vivien, for whom he hosts a birthday dinner in order to read aloud an epic poem he’s written in her honor. His wine-drunk friends later spread rumors of its brilliance, but no copies appear to have been saved, so the poem’s reputation grows ever more mythic. The second story is set in 2119, where the world has been radically transformed by rising seas and the subsequent wars and disasters that arrived in their wake. In this depleted, water-logged future, scholar Thomas Metcalfe becomes obsessed with finding the legendary poem and scours all that the couple left behind for clues. When Metcalfe does, eventually, discover what really happened on that celebratory evening, he’s stunned. It’s a brilliant story about, among other things, how little we can truly know about the past and the folly of believing that the future will be anything like today.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (September 23)

Desai won a Booker Prize for her 2006 novel The Inheritance of Loss, and now her sweeping new novel is on the shortlist for the 2025 Booker (the winner will be announced on November 10) and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize (to be announced October 8). Sonia, an aspiring writer, leaves her family in India to study at an isolated Vermont college, where she develops a disturbed relationship with an abusive, soul-sucking older artist. Devastated and traumatized by the experience, she returns home to her ailing father. Sunny has also left his mother in India to become a journalist in New York but ends up adrift. Sonia’s and Sunny’s paths periodically cross, and a relationship develops — then pauses — while each struggles with their family obligations and the insecurity of having one foot in two countries as they try to find their place in the world. This gorgeously written, multilayered novel is a love story of sorts, but it’s arguably more about seeking identity and belonging while navigating two cultures, and intense family ties that both pull and repel. Desai’s mother is the acclaimed novelist Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day, In Custody).

Also of note:

The Elements by John Boyne (September 9): The Irish author of 2006’s bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas offers four absorbing, overlapping novellas, called "Water," "Earth," "Fire," and "Air," about characters who’ve experienced, perpetrated or been associated with terrible crimes, and how their lives are transformed.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy (September 16): Another Kirkus Prize finalist, this novel explores the lifelong friendship between five women through the decades. Publishers Weekly calls it “a knockout.”

Circle of Days by Ken Follett (September 23): Follett writes a weighty epic centered around the building of Stonehenge, conceived by a visionary priestess to unite warring tribes.

The Women of Wild Hill by Kirsten Miller (October 7): A multigenerational family of witches fights evil among the patriarchy in this humorous tale by the author of the 2022 novel The Change. (Miller described her characters as “middle-aged witches who go out and kick bad-guy ass” in a Publishers Weekly interview.)

The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories by Salman Rushdie (November 4): Rushdie’s first work of fiction since his 2022 knife attack (he’s long been threatened with violence since the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988), includes themes of mortality.   

Nonfiction

It Doesn’t Have to Hurt: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life by Sanjay Gupta (September 2)

An estimated one-third of American adults 65 and up experience chronic pain, and options for treating it can be frustratingly limited. But neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta says we each hold the key to pain management — in our heads. Our brains are the control center for pain, Gupta writes, detailing research-backed ways to temper chronic pain — through healthy living (regular exercise, good sleep habits, socialization), for example, and controlled breathing techniques. He also dives into more experimental approaches, such as green light therapy. AARP recently discussed the book with Gupta.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (September 2)

The award-winning author of The God of Small Things (1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) describes growing up in Kerala, India, rising to literary heights, and her complicated relationship with her late mother, Mary Roy, whom she calls “my shelter and my storm.” She told Publishers Weekly that she never thought she’d write a memoir, but after her mother died in 2022, she was so grief-stricken, “I couldn’t write anything else. I didn’t have a choice.” The memoir is a nonfiction finalist for the Kirkus Prize.

Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood by Adam Nicolson (September 16)

This esteemed English naturalist details his efforts to understand and create the ideal environment for the birds that make their home on his farm. While he had never spent much energy considering these feathered creatures, he decided to immerse himself in their lives and learn about their habits. Nicolson writes that he came to appreciate their mysteries despite their reluctance to engage with humans. As he puts it, “I have come to think that the inaccessibility of birds is the heart of their marvellousness.”

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why AI Is on Track to Kill Us All—and How We Can Avert Extinction by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (September 16)

The one is fascinating and downright frightening; I can’t stop thinking about it. The authors, who have been studying artificial intelligence for decades, are among the tech leaders who signed an open letter to AI companies in 2023 calling for a pause in work on AI to assess the technology’s potential dangers. The letter says, “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.” Their book argues that AI companies’ unchecked charge toward superhuman AI will be disastrous, lays out some theoretical scenarios detailing how it could lead to our annihilation and suggests what might be done to change our doomed trajectory. “We do not mean that as hyperbole,” they note of their premise (succinctly summed up in the book title). “We think that is the most direct extrapolation from the knowledge, evidence, and institutional conduct around AI today.” They make a pretty convincing case that we are playing with fire. 

Also of note:

Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face by Scott Eyman (November 18): The author of biographies of other stars (Cary Grant, John Wayne) details the life of the late Hollywood legend.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin (October 14): The author of Too Big to Fail, a dissection of the 2008 banking crisis, tells the story of the legendary stock market crash with dramatic flair.

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (September 16): Lepore, a professor of history and law at Harvard, explores this founding document to mark the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday. She argues that its creators never meant for it to be set in stone but, rather, intended “to allow for change without violence” through the democratic process.

Less Is Liberation: Finding Freedom From a Life of Overwhelm by Christine Platt (October 7): The author of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less argues that you can declutter your home, but it’s most important to declutter your life — including untethering yourself from your phone. “We’re not meant to be on this productivity wheel,” she says.

Poetry, essays and more

Little Alleluias by Mary Oliver (September 9)

Oliver, who passed away in 2019 at age 83, is one of the most beloved American poets in the modern era. The Pulitzer Prize winner spent much of her life in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and is known for her meditations on the natural world. (Among her most famous works is “The Summer Day,” with its pointed final lines: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”) This new collection offers her seven-part, book-length poem, “The Leaf and the Cloud,” poems from What Do We Know and essays from Long Life. (See our Members Edition story on “Poetry for People Who (Think They) Don’t Like Poetry.”

Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round by Paul Hollywood (September 30)

The Great British Baking Show’s cohost and judge is tough; for the contestants, getting a handshake from the handsome taster with the piercing blue eyes is like winning an Oscar in the other Hollywood. Now you can bake like him, or at least try. In Celebrate, he shares delicious-sounding recipes. Some look relatively (deceptively?) simple, such as Miso and Sesame Cheese Twists; others are more daunting, including Christmas Pudding (which involves pouring cognac over the dessert and setting it alight). There’s also an adorable Igloo Cake that looks like something you’d see on the show — a white-domed confection adorned with three little edible penguins in Christmas hats. If you’re up for a challenge, Hollywood offers three pages of instructions on how to build it.

Letter From Japan by Marie Kondo (October 21)

Kondo’s 2010 book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, grew into a phenomenon, with people around the globe using what Kondo calls the KonMari method to declutter their homes of all the stuff that didn’t “spark joy.” She argues that doing so will not only make your house look tidy but also create mental space for a more fulfilled life. In her latest book, she explains how her method is rooted in Japanese culture, and why the customs of her country are the source of the “guiding principles by which I lead my life every day.” 

Also of note:

It Was the Way She Said It: Short Stories, Essays and Wisdom by Terry McMillan (September 9): McMillan, author of Waiting to Exhale, among many others, offers a collection of previously published personal reflections and fiction.

Startlement: New and Selected Poetry by Ada Limón (September 30): The 24h U.S. poet laureate is as much of a star as one can be in the poetry world. This anthology includes some of her previously unpublished work.

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays by Harper Lee (October 21): Yes, these writings are by the late author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Some are newly discovered, and others were published in publications like McCall’s and Vogue.