Fall Books Already Creating Buzz

The remainder of 2015 is shaping up beautifully for readers of literary fiction. Lists of forthcoming novels by well-known—as well as new—authors promise a rich season ahead and delightful holiday giving.

Flood of Fire, Amitav GhoshThe Millions has a lengthy list of these, and I’ve picked out just few novels, one book of short stories, and one biography:

  • Flood of Fire: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy) by Amitav Ghosh – about the first Opium War. I enjoyed his Sea of Poppies, first in this trilogy and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and The Atlantic Monthly calls him “a writer of supreme skill and intelligence.”
  • Fortune Smiles: Stories by Adam Johnson – a collection of six stories, which I would definitely read having found his Pulitzer-winning The Orphan Master’s Son so powerful.
  • The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood – winner of the Man Booker in 2000. Her new book is about “a near-future in which the lawful are locked up and the lawless roam free.”
  • Fates and Furies, Lauren GroffFates and Furies: A Novel by Lauren Groff – delves into the symbolism of Greek mythology to fully plumb the mysteries of a couple’s marriage. Read the opening sex-on-the-beach scene to find out how it all started. Her story “Ghosts and Empties” appeared in the 7-20-15 issue of The New Yorker.
  • Slade House: A Novel by David Mitchell – I’ve read five of his previous novels and enjoyed them all. Slade House began as a story in tweets.
  • Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell. If you know her from public radio’s This American Life, you know how funny and smart her social commentary is.
  • The Daughters: A Novel by Adrienne Celt—this “virtuosic debut” is “a gorgeous, riveting story about family, mythology, and curses,” says Book Riot.
  • The Big Green Tent: A Novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya – Russia’s most popular novelist describes what tThe Big Green Tent, Ludmila Ulitskayahe USSR was like in the 1950s and has become “a voice of moral authority for differently minded Russians,” said Masha Gessen’s review in The New Yorker. Sounds dangerous.

Also coming soon are books by an impressive phalanx of well-known writers, including Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie, Joyce Carol Oates, Patti Smith, Orhan Pamuk, Jane Smiley, Umberto Eco, Oscar Hijeulos (posthumously), and Marilynne Robinson.