Fall 2026 Books Preview: 41 of the Season’s Top Reads

Partita by Barbara Kingsolver (October 6): A brilliant pianist studying music in college meets a young man who changes the course of her life. She must reckon with the past when he reaches out decades later in the latest from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Demon Copperhead.

The Occidental Book of the Dead by T. Geronimo Johnson (October 6): This novel, which has received some early praise, features a Black police officer, an accident that ends in gunfire and questions about who’s to blame. Publisher’s Weekly calls it a “spellbinding and profanely funny novel about race, police violence and distorted narratives.”  

Evie Takes the Wheel by Kathleen Fox (October 6): Evie Walters, 71, receives an egret orchid on the day of her husband’s funeral, which could only be from one person: a Montana ranch hand who once stole her heart. What does she do? Buys a camper van, packs up her dog and heads out from her North Carolina home on a westward road trip in a heartwarming story about second chances.

Queen of Lombard Street by Lisa Kleypas (October 20): Kleypas is a hugely popular romantic fiction writer who’s now delving into historical fiction. This Victorian-era story is about Reina Martin, an economist who sets out to open Britain’s first bank for women. And, yes, there’s romance too.

Ahn Love by Frances Park (November 3): This slim novel follows a woman who visits her widowed Korean American father in suburban Washington, D.C., for his 90th birthday, stirring memories of a long-ago family cruise that changed their lives.

Mysteries/Thrillers

We Chase Shadows: A We Solve Murders Mystery by Richard Osman (September 15)

Osman is best known for his Thursday Murder Club series, but his newer series is gaining steam. It began with 2024’s We Solve Murders, introducing 30-something Amy Wheeler, a private security officer who thrives on dangerous assignments, and her beloved 50-something retired police officer father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, who just wants a quiet pint at the pub, thank you very much. In the second book, they and Amy’s former client and current investor in her detective agency, the famous author Rosie D’Antonio, take on a new murder mystery that sends them to Italy, California and Spain.

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (September 22)

Bestselling thriller writer Foley (The Guest List) channels Agatha Christie — at the request of the legendary mystery writer’s estate — in a new Miss Marple mystery set high in the Swiss Alps at a luxurious hotel. Good thing Miss Marple’s on hand to examine the clues after a body is found and a blizzard has everyone trapped inside. Foley tells AARP that she tried to capture the spirit of the author’s writing “without creating a paint-by-numbers carbon copy.” As for the setting, she says, “I really felt Miss Marple deserved another holiday! Why should Poirot have all the fun?” 

The Taper Man: A Novel of John le Carré’s Circus by Nick Harkaway (November 17)

Harkaway, a novelist and le Carré’s son, revived his father’s famed protagonist, the iconic Cold War-era British spy George Smiley, in 2024’s Karla’s Choice. Now Smiley is back, this time for a case that takes him to Los Angeles to find a sleeper agent who threatens to compromise British intelligence’s Moscow operation. 

Also of note:

Mother Daughter Sister Stranger by Hank Phillippi Ryan (September 1): Eleven years after sisters Eliza and Bea survived a plane crash that killed their parents, Eliza may be facing another tragedy: Bea has gone missing, and her disappearance may be related to darkness in the family’s past.

The French Illusion by John Grisham (September 29): An international investigation is kicked off after a young American couple is kidnapped while honeymooning in Paris.

Miss Wolcott’s Ghost by Louise Penny (October 20): In Penny’s 21st Inspector Gamache novel, the Quebec homicide detective is aroused from sleep in the (murder-prone) village of Three Pines with news of a dead body left atop a cemetery grave. With the help of his team and fellow residents, he unravels the elaborate backstory.

The Natural Order by Matthew Aldrich (October 27): The debut novel by screenwriter Aldrich centers on a billionaire tech entrepreneur who has developed a three-step process known as The Method that arrests the aging process. Opponents are determined to stop him from making it public and changing life as we know it.

Bad Company by Sara Paretsky (November 10): This new stand-alone thriller from Paretsky, known for her V.I. Warshawski detective novels, features a former CIA agent in her 70s who’s drawn into a dangerous case.

Revenge Plot by Stephanie Wrobel (November 10): The author of 2020’s chilling Darling Rose Gold centers her latest thriller on a writer desperate to become a published author. To do so, he’s determined to hire the best agent around — so determined, in fact, he follows her to the Catskill Mountains, where she’s spending her holiday alone, to make his (twisted) case for her assistance. 

Nonfiction

The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia by Robert Kolker (September 29)

Kolker is the author of the absorbing Hidden Valley Road (2020), about a family with a remarkably high number of cases of schizophrenia. Now he tells the intimate story of another family contending with an inherited medical condition: Its members carry a gene that leads to a brutal form of early-onset dementia, frontotemporal dementia (FTD, a diagnosis Bruce Willis has received as well) in half their offspring. The fascinating book reads like a horror story, in a way, as sibling after sibling begins to exhibit the strange, antisocial symptoms of the disease. Kolker also writes of the quest to find ways to prevent and treat dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, as he described in a 2023 article in The New York Times.

The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World by Nathaniel Philbrick (October 6)

National Book Award-winning Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea) details the colorful history of the gold rush, which is also the story of the state of California’s chaotic birth — from the 1848 discovery of the first few flakes by carpenter James Marshall to the mania of the fortune-seekers who flooded the West Coast hungry for a golden windfall. Philbrick describes the forty-niners’ mad dash as “desperate” and “patently ridiculous,” yet the upheaval forced Americans to confront some hard questions. The rush, he writes, “sent the nation hurtling toward a reckoning not only with slavery but with its geographic immensity.”  

Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes by Lindsey Fitzharris (October 20)

A must for fans of Sherlock Holmes or true crime, this fascinating history is centered on Joseph Bell, a 19th-century surgeon in Edinburgh, Scotland, who used his uncanny deductive skills to diagnose maladies. He also helped investigate crimes when forensic science was relatively rudimentary (some practitioners studied the eyeballs of murder victims, believing they’d captured an image of the last thing — the murderer — they’d seen) and serial killers like Jack the Ripper were terrifying Britain. Arthur Conan Doyle, who’d studied medicine with Bell, later used his teacher as “the living prototype” for the legendary fictional detective, Fitzharris writes.  

Redemption: Faith, Justice, and Sisterhood on Death Row by Lawrence Wright (October 20)

In 2014, Catholic deacon Ronnie Lastovica visited a Texas prison to minister to seven women on death row and felt called to help. His improbable idea: to ask a group of contemplative nuns, who lived mostly in silence, to visit and hear their stories. They did, and a remarkable relationship grew among these women, all of whom lived constricted lives — some, perhaps unjustly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wright suggests in this thought-provoking book. 

42 Tales from Life: A Modern Bestiary by Richard Dawkins (October 20)

Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene, among others, views 42 creatures through a Darwinian lens to explain, for instance, “why horses gallop and kangaroos bound” and how some cephalopods (marine animals that include the squid and octopus) can miraculously transform their skin to match any color of the rainbow. Whether he’s demystifying the vascular system of the starfish or the segmentation of worms’ bodies, his enthusiasm for the subject is palpable. The book features beautiful illustrations by the 19th-century German scientist Ernst Haeckel.

Also of note:

I’ve Got a New Complaint: On Aging Disgracefully and Other Small Disasters by Laurie Notaro (September 1): The author of Excuse Me While I Disappear finds humor in the changes she’s experiencing as a woman on the high end of middle age.

The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less and Never Run Out of Money by Jean Chatzky (September 8): AARP’s personal finance columnist tackles the conundrum of how much to spend after you retire without running out of money. Read an excerpt here.

True North: On the Road in Canada by Paul Theroux (September 22): The famed travel writer explored the U.S.’s vast northern neighbor, talking to residents in cities and small towns, to paint this portrait of the country and its people.

Tidal Wave: The Pilots, the Princess, and the Enemy Ace by Adam Makos (November 3): Makos describes a dramatic air raid on Hitler’s oil reserves in 1943. He was assisted by survivor Lt. Ernie Poulson, who was 97 when Makos interviewed him for the book.

The Telephone: A New History by James Gleick (November 10): The science historian takes us through the creation and eventual ubiquity of this device that continues to transform our world. 

Celebrity Memoirs

Ms. American Dream: A Memoir of Making It No Matter What by Patricia “Ms. Pat” Williams-Lee (September 29)

Fans know her as Ms. Pat: Patricia Williams-Lee, 54, a comedian and host of the hugely popular podcast The Patdown With Ms. Pat. Her first memoir, 2017’s Rabbit, was a hit (it was on Amazon’s Best Books of the Year list), and now she has a follow-up. In her usual f-bomb-studded style, she traces her rise from a 15-year-old with two babies and a drug-dealing mother to a celebrity whose “dogs’ house has its own built-in washer and dryer” — and the gritty perseverance that fueled her ascent.

The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity and My Longest Love Affair by Willie Nelson (November 10)

Nelson’s reflections on creativity double as a lovely tribute to Annie — his wife of 35 years, best friend and, as he puts it, the “heroine” who helped save him when he nearly died from COVID in 2022: “I was hurting so bad I wanted out,” he writes. “But Annie wouldn’t let me go.” He describes the inspiration behind his music making, in the past and today, at age 93; he’s recorded 21 studio albums in the past 12 years alone. “Like love,” he writes, “creativity can never die.”

Also of note:

An Unexpected Life by Gloria Steinem (September 22): Steinem, 92, describes her youth and rise to become one of the most visible activists in her generation, including her work for women’s rights around the globe, and her hopes for the future.

The Steps by Sylvester Stallone (September 29): Stallone, 80, recounts stories from his early life and rise to fame as Rocky Balboa in the 1970s. 

One Helluva Ride by Michael Douglas (October 6): Douglas, 81, shares his thoughts on growing up with his famous dad, Kirk Douglas, and finding his own path to Hollywood stardom.

Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea (November 3): Dench, 91, relays key stories from her long career in theater and film, marriage to actor Michael Williams and more.

Look at Me by Dustin Hoffman (November 10): The actor, 89, reveals the high and low points from his life and career, including his trials while filming The Graduate.

Promise Me, America by Joe Biden (November 17): The former president, 83, discusses his years in and after the White House.