Fall 2024 Books Preview: 37 of the Season’s Top Reads

Thrillers, crime novels and mysteries

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (September 17)

Osman’s 2020 cozy mystery The Thursday Murder Club (read our excerpt) and its follow-ups were massive hits, with movie rights snapped up by Steven Spielberg’s production house Amblin Entertainment for a Netflix adaptation starring Helen Mirren (79), Pierce Brosnan (71) and Ben Kingsley (80). Well, he’s back with a cozy new crew of mystery solvers — slightly younger detectives: 30-something Amy Wheeler, a private security officer who thrives on her dangerous assignments, and her beloved 50-something retired police officer father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, who just wants to drink a quiet pint at the pub, thank you very much. He gets pulled into Amy’s search for a killer, with the assistance of her current client, the famous author Rosie D’Antonio, that takes them around the world. Expect madcap fun.

The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (October 1)

This is soooo good – a page-turner for sure and a worthy follow up (sequel!) to the author’s fantastic thriller The Plot, about a novelist who can’t come up with a good plot for his next book, so he steals one from a student who mysteriously passes away. Turns out the idea was based on real life, and the person or people who know the true story are not pleased that their tale has been stolen. In this sequel, the author’s wife writes her own novel with a related plot. That’s all I’ll say. Just read them both.  

Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (October 22)

Novelist Harkaway, John le Carré’s son, revives his father’s famed protagonist, the iconic spy George Smiley, with aplomb in this complex tale. It’s 1963, and Smiley is pulled from his quiet married life to help in a case involving a defected Russian agent who’d been sent to London to murder a now-missing man, and ends up on the trail of a dangerous nemesis in East Berlin.

Also notable: 

A stand-alone novel from another blockbuster author, Dean Koontz, The Forest of Lost Souls (September 24), features a woman, Vida, who was raised in the forest, wanted by some dangerous characters because she knows too much about a long-ago “accident” that befell the man she loved.

Many authors known for their bestselling series have new installments out this fall. Kate Atkinson fans can look forward to a new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook (September 3), and in The Waiting by Michael Connelly (October 15), LAPD Detective Renée Ballard seeks a serial rapist, helped by a volunteer — Harry’s daughter, officer Maddie Bosch.

Jack Reacher returns in In Too Deep by Lee Child and his brother Andrew Child (October 22), and Louise Penny offers her 19th Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, The Grey Wolf (October 29), with the inspector and his team on the trail of another killer.

For a lighter read, check out the latest from British novelist Sophie Cousens (This Time Next Year). Is She Really Going Out With Him? (November 19) features Anna Appleby, a divorced mother whose kids decide they’re going to play matchmaker.

Celeb Biographies and Memoirs

A few highlights from the many celebrity memoirs and bios on the way this fall include:

Connie by Connie Chung (September 17)

This once-shy daughter of Chinese parents takes us on an entertaining tour through her childhood, marriage to Maury Povich and, of course, barrier-breaking career. Among other firsts, Chung, 78 was the first Asian American woman to coanchor the CBS Evening News — in what she describes as an unapologetically sexist industry.

Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot (September 10)

Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, captures the life of the “poor boy from Tampico, Illinois,” who became a movie star, then went on to, the author writes, “transform the geopolitics of the entire world” as the 40th U.S. president. The book explores the highs and lows of Reagan’s political and often dysfunctional family life to build a nuanced portrait of the influential Republican leader.

Sonny Boy by Al Pacino (October 15)

Pacino fans will enjoy the actor’s nostalgic telling of his humble beginnings, raised by a single mom in the South Bronx, and stellar career. He describes his early passion for the stage — bellowing lines from Shakespeare into the New York night — life-changing role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, thoughts on aging (while dad to a baby boy) and more.

Also notable:

The incomparable Cher, meanwhile, comes out with the first installment of her two-part memoir on November 19. It’s called, straightforwardly, Cher: The Memoir (Part One). As her publisher puts it, “It is a life too immense for only one book.”

And new band biographies include Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac by Mark Blake (October 1) — who interviewed Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, among others, for his deep dive — and The Name of This Band Is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin (November 5), catnip for Gen Xers who came of age listening to these eccentric, groundbreaking musicians. 

Celebrity foodies  

Famous folks love to share their favorite recipes, particularly this year, it seems.

Among the season’s big-name cookbooks: country music icon Dolly Parton’s Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals (September 17), written with her sister, Rachel Parton George, and including homey family recipes like country ham and biscuits and a “slaw of many colors.”

Stephen Colbert and his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, dish up Does This Taste Funny: Recipes Our Family Loves (September 17), with recipes for dishes like boiled peanuts, the beef Wellington that Stephen makes every Christmas and other foods their family enjoys in their Charleston, S.C., home.

And actor Stanley Tucci offers What I Ate in One Year (October 15), a diary of his culinary highlights, and a heartfelt homage to wonderful food. “[Food] may be the only significant aspect of my life that brings me peace … a beautiful, varied thing waiting to bring satiety and solace and offer hope while death and arithmetic haunt me,” he writes. But wait, there’s more!

I Love You: Recipes From the Heart by Baywatch actress and model Pamela Anderson (October 15) is a whimsical collection of 80 vegetarian recipes that she likes to whip up for family and friends in her Vancouver Island home.

My Mexican Kitchen: 100 Recipes Rich With Tradition by actress Eva Longoria (October 29), host of the CNN show Searching for Mexico, is packed with recipes for delicious sounding dishes from chicken enchiladas with salsa verde to butternut squash with coconut oil and cayenne.

And we can’t leave out singer Willie and Annie Nelson’s Cannabis Cookbook (November 12), for anyone who’d like to add some mellow vibes to their fried chicken or chocolate cake.  

Other nonfiction

Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments by Joe Posnanski (September 17)

So why do we love football? Posnanski, who last year told us Why We Love Baseball, captures the excitement and drama of the game by highlighting some of the sport’s most memorable plays, including Mark Sanchez’s infamous Thanksgiving Day “butt fumble” in 2012. I emailed the author about the team closest to his own heart, and he pointed to the Cleveland Browns, “which means that I have lived a lifetime of suffering.” This one could be a fun gift for your favorite sports nut.

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell (October 1)

Some 25 years of change and reflection compelled Gladwell to revisit his 2000 mega-bestseller about the mechanics of social epidemics and change, The Tipping Point. Hence, his latest book, which offers a new set of theories and stories about “the strange pathways that ideas and behaviors follow through our world.”

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg (October 8)

Greenberg, a journalist and historian, tells the story of the late civil rights leader and congressman who grew up in poverty in Alabama, and later became an activist, then a 17-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives known as “the conscience of the Congress.” The author relied on, among other sources, interviews with hundreds of people who knew him to paint his portrait. 

Also notable:

In Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for our Health by Marty Makary (September 17), a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, points to all kinds of medical recommendations based on shaky research (not feeding children peanuts until they’re 3, for instance, which he thinks has contributed to the rise in peanut allergies), as well as many possibly unnecessary surgeries — appendectomies he himself has performed included.

There’s also Anatomy of Desire: Five Secrets to Create Connection and Cultivate Passion (November 5) where sex and relationship therapist Dr. Emily Jamea explains why the secrets (not Victoria’s!) to better sex at any age are sensuality, curiosity, adaptability, vulnerability and attunement.

Finally, this fall brings The Joy Document: Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight by Jennifer McGaha (November 19), a collection of essays by McGaha, a University of North Carolina-Asheville writing professor in her 50s, about finding beauty and joy in the world at a time of life when we’re ripe for renewal and growth.