Buzz Books 2020: Fall/Winter

By Publishers Lunch

Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at 30 of the buzziest books due out this fall season. Our “digital convention” features such major bestselling authors as Ken Follett, Matt Haig, Jonathan Lethem, and Sue Miller. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Rumaan Alam, J’nell Ciesielski, Vendela Vida, and Bryan Washington.

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors. Simon Stephenson’s novel about a humanlike bot has already been optioned for film, while Finnish sensation Max Seeck’s thriller is due out as a television series. Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club were both sold at auction.

Our nonfiction selections include an inspirational World War II story, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story Of Hannie Schaft And The Oversteegen Sisters, Teenaged Saboteurs And Nazi Assassins by Tim Brady); a true crime read, We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper; and the incisive Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation by BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen.

Finally, we present early looks at new work from up-and-coming young adult authors: Alexandra Bracken, Caroline George, and Cole Nagamatsu.

And be sure to download Buzz Books 2020: Romance, also available now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishers Lunch
• Release date: May 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781948586368

Book preview

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Buzz Books 2020

Fall/Winter®

Lunch box logo

Contents

Introduction

The Fall/Winter 2020 Publishing Preview

Part One: Fiction

Rumaan Alam, Leave The World Behind (Ecco)

Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite (Berkley)

J’nell Ciesielski, Beauty Among Ruins (Thomas Nelson)

Sean Dietrich, The Incredible Winston Browne (Thomas Nelson)

Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead)

Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning (Viking)

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Viking)

Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest (Ecco)

Judithe Little, The Chanel Sisters (Graydon House)

Sam J. Miller, The Blade Between (Ecco)

Sue Miller, Monogamy (Harper)

Cate Quinn, Black Widows (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Kathleen Rooney Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin Books)

Vendela Vida, We Run The Tides (Ecco)

Bryan Washington, Memorial (Riverhead)

Part Two: Debut

Ashley Audrain, The Push (Pamela Dorman Books)

Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins (Holt)

Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith, Make Them Cry (Ecco)

Robert Jones, Jr., The Prophets (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Nancy Jooyoun Kim, The Last Story of Mina Lee (Park Row)

Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club (Pamela Dorman Books/ Viking)

Max Seeck, The Witch Hunter (Berkley)

Simon Stephenson, Set My Heart to Five (Hanover Square)

Gina Wilkinson, When The Apricots Bloom (Kensington)

Part Three: Nonfiction

Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls (Citadel)

Becky Cooper, We Keep the Dead Close (Grand Central)

Anne Helen Petersen, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (HMH)

Part Four: Young Adult

Alexandra Bracken, Lore (Disney Hyperion)

Caroline George, Dearest Josephine (Thomas Nelson)

Cole Nagamatsu, We Were Restless Things (Sourcebooks Fire)

Copyright

Credits

Introduction

Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at 30 of the buzziest books due out this fall season. Our digital convention features such major bestselling authors as Ken Follett, Matt Haig, Jonathan Lethem, and Sue Miller. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Rumaan Alam, J’nell Ciesielski, Vendela Vida, and Bryan Washington.

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors. Simon Stephenson’s novel about a humanlike bot has already been optioned for film, while Finnish sensation Max Seeck’s thriller is due out as a television series. Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club were both sold at auction.

Our nonfiction selections include an inspirational World War II story, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story Of Hannie Schaft And The Oversteegen Sisters, Teenaged Saboteurs And Nazi Assassins by Tim Brady); a true crime read, We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper; and the incisive Can’t Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation by BuzzFeed columnist Anne Helen Petersen.

Finally, we present early looks at new work from up-and-coming young adult authors: Alexandra Bracken, Caroline George, and Cole Nagamatsu.

And be sure to download Buzz Books 2020: Romance, also available now.

The Fall/Winter 2020 Publishing Preview

To help you sift through the thousands of planned fall and winter releases, we’ve selected what we think are among the most noteworthy titles, separated into four key categories. You’ll be able to sample many of these highlighted titles right now in this volume: Buzz Books excerpts are noted with an asterisk.

As always, keep in mind that because we prepare this preview many months in advance, titles, content and publications dates are all subject to change.

FICTION

There are plenty of notable names with new books out this fall, including titles from Marilynne Robinson, Phil Klay, Nicole Krauss, Sigrid Nunez and more. In our sampler, enjoy new titles from Jonathan Lethem, Rumaan Alam Danielle Evans, and Bryan Washington, among others.

The Notables

Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown, 9/8) - A new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winner.

Fredrik Backman, Anxious People (Atria, 9/8)

John Banville, Snow (Hanover Square Press, 10/6)

Charles Baxter, The Sun Collective (Pantheon, 11/17)

Roberto Bolaño, Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas (Penguin Press, 2/16)

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (Bloomsbury, 9/15) - A new novel from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa, 9/1)

Shirley Hazzard, Brigitta Olubas (Edited by), Collected Stories (FSG, 11/3)

Alice Hoffman, Magic Lessons (Simon & Schuster, 10/6) - The prequel to Practical Magic.

Nick Hornby, Just Like You (Riverhead, 9/29)

Phil Klay, Missionaries (Penguin Press, 10/6)

Nicole Krauss, To Be a Man: Stories (Harper, 11/3)

Hari Kunzru, Red Pill (Knopf, 9/1)

*Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest (Ecco, 11/10)

Mark Leyner, Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (Little, Brown, 1/19)

Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through (Riverhead, 9/8) - A new novel from the National Book Award winner.

Chuck Palahniuk, The Invention of Sound (Grand Central, 9/8)

Marilynne Robinson, Jack (FSG, 9/15) - The Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal winner returns to the world of Gilead.

Jane Smiley, Perestroika in Paris (Knopf, 12/1)

Graham Swift, Here We Are (Knopf, 9/14)

Jeff VanderMeer, Ambergris: City of Saints and Madmen; Shriek: An Afterword; Finch (MCD, 12/1)

Jess Walter, The Cold Millions (Harper, 10/6)

Highly Anticipated

* Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind (Ecco, 10/6)

Kevin Barry, That Old Country Music (Doubleday, 1/12)

Tom Bissell, Creative Types: and Other Stories (Pantheon, 10/13)

Kevin Brockmeier, The Ghost Variations (Pantheon, 10/6)

Edward Carey, The Swallowed Man (Riverhead, 10/27)

*J’nell Cielsielski, Beauty Among Ruins (Thomas Nelson, 1/12)

Emma Cline, Daddy (Random House, 9/1)

Paulo Coelho, The Archer (Knopf, 11/10)

Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (HMH, 1/5)

*Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories (Riverhead, 11/10)

Mary Gordon, Payback (Pantheon, 9/15)

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom (Knopf, 9/8) – The sophomore novel from the author of Homegoing.

*Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Viking, 10/20)

Yasmina Khadra, Khalil (Nan A. Talese, 11/10)

David Leavitt, Shelter in Place (Bloomsbury, 10/13)

*Judithe Little, The Chanel Sisters (Graydon House, 12/29)

Bobbie Ann Mason, Dear Ann (Harper, 9/8)

* Sue Miller, Monogamy (Harper, 9/8)

*Bryan Washington, Memorial (Riverhead, 10/6)

Emerging Voices

Hala Alyan, The Arsonists’ City (HMH, 1/12)

Shalom Auslander, Mother for Dinner (Riverhead, 9/22)

*Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite (Berkley, 1/19)

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Likes (FSG, 9/1)

Mauro Javier Cárdenas, Aphasia (FSG, 11/3)

Leesa Cross-Smith, This Close to Okay (Grand Central, 2/2)

Emily M. Danforth, Sara Lautman (Illustrated by), Plain Bad Heroines (William Morrow, 10/20)

*Sean Dietrich, The Incredible Winston Browne (Thomas Nelson, 12/1)

Mariana Enriquez, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Hogarth, 1/12)

Stuart Evers, The Blind Light (Norton, 10/13)

Amy Gentry, Bad Habits (HMH, 2/2)

Peter Geye, Northernmost (Knopf, 9/14)

Emma Glass, Rest and Be Thankful (Bloomsbury, 12/1)

Caitlin Horrocks, Life Among the Terranauts (Little, Brown, 1/12)

Maxim Loskutoff, Ruthie Fear (Norton, 9/1)

*Sam J. Miller, The Blade Between (Ecco, 12/1)

Neel Patel, Tell Me How to Be (Flatiron, 12/8)

*Cate Quinn, Black Widows (Sourcebooks, 1/1)

Vanessa Veselka, The Great Offshore Grounds (Knopf, 8/25)

*Vendela Vida, The Raft of the Medusa (Ecco, 1/21)

Evie Wyld, The Bass Rock (Pantheon, 9/1)

Zeyn Joukhadar, The Thirty Names of Night (Atria, 11/3/20)

DEBUT

Our sampler features a number of newcomers including Fiona King Foster, Nancy Jooyoun Kim, G. D. Wilkinson, Victoria Gosling, and Kathleen Rooney.

Maria Adelmann, Girls of a Certain Age (Little, Brown, 2/16)

*Ashley Audrain, The Push (Pamela Dorman Books, 1/5)

Natalka Burian, Daughters of the Wild (Park Row, 9/22)

Keisha Bush, No Heaven for Good Boys (Random House, 10/13)

Rose Carlyle, The Girl in the Mirror (William Morrow, 10/13)

K-Ming Chang, Bestiary (One World, 9/8)

Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers (HMH, 2/2)

Polly Crosby, The Book of Hidden Wonders (Park Row, 9/1)

Sarah Crossan, Here Is the Beehive (Little, Brown, 11/17)

Fiona King Foster, The Captive (Ecco, 1/21)

*Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins (Holt, 11/17)

Max Gross, The Lost Shtetl (HarperVia, 10/13)

Simon Han, Nights When Nothing Happened (Riverhead, 11/17)

Amanda Harlowe, Consensual Hex (Grand Central, 10/6)

Claire Holroyde, The Effort (Grand Central, 1/12)

David Hopen, The Orchard (Ecco, 11/17)

*Robert Jones, Jr., The Prophets (Putnam, 1/5)

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Hanover Square Press, 11/17)

*Nancy Jooyoun Kim, The Last Story of Mina Lee (Park Row, 9/8)

Asha Lemmie, Fifty Words for Rain (Dutton, 9/22)

Daniel Loedel, Hades, Argentina (Riverhead, 1/21)

Syed M. Masood, The Bad Muslim Discount (Doubleday, 11/17)

Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights (Harper, 9/15)

*Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club (Pamela Dorman Books, 9/22)

Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby (One World, 1/12)

James Lawrence Powell, The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming (Atria, 9/1)

*Kathleen Rooney, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin Books, 8/11)

*Max Seeck, The Witch Hunter (Berkley, 9/9)

Brian Selfon, The Nightworkers (MCD, 10/6)

* Simon Stephenson, Set My Heart to Five (Hanover Square Press, 9/1)

Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment (Avid Reader, 9/1)

*G. D. Wilkinson, When the Apricots Bloom (Kensington, 12/29)

Susie Yang, White Ivy (Simon & Schuster, 9/8)

COMMERCIAL FICTION

This season of Buzz Books includes work from Ken Follett and Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith. Plus the season promises new work from a number of big names including Jodi Picoult, Carl Hiaasen, Nora Roberts, and more.

Ellen Alpsten, Tsarina (St. Martin’s, 10/13)

Jeffrey Archer, Hidden in Plain Sight (St. Martin’s, 11/3)

Ace Atkins, Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me (Putnam, 11/17)

David Baldacci, David Baldacci Fall 2020 (Grand Central, 11/17)

Sandra Brown, Thick as Thieves (Grand Central, 9/15)

Marc Cameron, Untitled Jack Ryan #20 (Putnam, 11/17)

Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library (Atria, 2/2/21)

Lee Child, Andrew Child, The Sentinel: A Jack Reacher Novel (Delacorte, 10/27)

Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston, The Scorpion’s Tail (Grand Central, 1/12)

Mary Higgins Clark, Alafair Burke, Piece of My Heart (Simon & Schuster, 11/17)

Michael Connelly, New Lincoln Lawyer Novel (Little, Brown, 11/10)

Bernard Cornwell, Unti Bernard Cornwell #3 (Harper, 11/24)

Clive Cussler, Boyd Morrison, Untitled Oregon #15 (Putnam, 10/27)

Cory Doctorow, Attack Surface (Tor, 10/13)

Janet Evanovich, Fortune and Glory (Atria, 11/10)

Layne Fargo, They Never Learn (Gallery/Scout Press, 10/13)

Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit (Viking, 9/29)

Fannie Flagg, The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop (Random House, 10/27)

Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, Total Power (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 9/15)

*Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning (Viking, 9/15) - A prequel to The Pillars of Earth.

Caz Frear, Shed No Tears (Harper, 12/1)

Robert Galbraith, Troubled Blood (Mulholland, 9/29)

Harald Gilbers, Germania (Thomas Dunne, 12/1)

Philippa Gregory, Dark Tides (Atria, 11/24)

John Grisham, A Time for Mercy (Doubleday, 10/13)

Robert Harris, V2: A novel of World War II (Knopf, 9/29)

Romy Hausmann, Dear Child (Flatiron, 10/6)

* Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith, Make Them Cry (Ecco, 9/22)

Carl Hiaasen, Squeeze Me (Knopf, 9/29)

Elin Hilderbrand, Troubles in Paradise (Little, Brown, 10/6)

Anthony Horowitz, Moonflower Murders (Harper, 11/10)

Joe Ide, Smoke (Mulholland, 2/23)

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl (Atria, 10/13)

Iris Johansen, Chaos (Grand Central, 9/1)

Roy Johansen and Iris Johansen, Blink of an Eye (Grand Central, 2/2)

Craig Johnson, Next to Last Stand: A Longmire Mystery (Viking, 9/22)

Faye Kellerman, The Lost Boys (William Morrow, 10/20)

Lars Kepler, Lazarus (Knopf, 12/1)

Christina Baker Kline, The Exiles (William Morrow, 9/15)

Jeff Lindsay, Fool Me Twice (Dutton, 12/1)

Mike Lupica, Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise (Putnam, 9/8)

Gregory Maguire, A Wild Winter Swan (William Morrow, 10/6)

Ian McGuire, The Abstainer (Random House, 9/15)

Josh Malerman, A House at the Bottom of a Lake (Del Rey, 12/1)

Aimee Molloy, Goodnight Beautiful (Harper, 10/13)

Walter Mosley, Blood Grove (Mulholland, 2/2)

Jo Nesbo, The Kingdom (Knopf, 9/15)

James Patterson, Deadly Cross (Little, Brown, 11/23)

James Patterson and James O. Born, The Russian (Little, Brown, 1/25)

James Patterson with J. D. Barker, The Coast-to-Coast Murders (Little, Brown, 9/21)

James Patterson and Shan Serafin, Three Women Disappear (Little, Brown, 10/26)

Nick Petrie, The Breaker (Putnam, 1/12)

Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways (Ballantine, 9/22)

JP Pomare, In the Clearing (Mulholland, 9/8)

Ian Rankin, A Song for the Dark Times: An Inspector Rebus Novel (Little, Brown, 10/13)

J. D. Robb, Shadows in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death, Book 51) (St. Martin’s, 9/8)

Nora Roberts, The Awakening: The Dragon Heart Legacy, Book 1 (St. Martin’s, 11/24)

Anders Roslund, Knock Knock (Putnam, 1/19)

Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War (Tor, 11/17)

V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (Flatiron, 10/6)

Nicholas Sparks, The Return (Grand Central, 9/29)

Martin Cruz Smith, The Siberian Dilemma (Simon & Schuster, 10/13)

Alexander McCall Smith, How to Raise an Elephant: No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (21) (Pantheon, 10/6)

Alexander McCall Smith, Pianos and Flowers: Brief Encounters of the Romantic Kind (Pantheon, 1/19)

Stephen Spotswood, Fortune Favors the Dead (Doubleday, 10/27)

Danielle Steel, All That Glitters (Delacorte, 11/17)

Danielle Steel, Neighbors (Delacorte, 1/5)

C. J. Tudor, The Burning Girls (Ballantine, 1/26)

Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45 (Park Row, 10/6)

Wendy Walker, Don’t Look for Me (St. Martin’s, 9/15)

Ben Winters, The Quiet Boy (Mulholland, 1/26)

Stuart Woods, Untitled Stone Barrington #56 (Putnam, 12/29)

Stuart Woods, Shakeup (Putnam, 10/13)

Cecily von Ziegesar, Cobble Hill (Atria, 10/20)

NONFICTION

This season is a bonanza of biographies and memoirs, from a diverse cast of characters. Autobiographical works include contributions from Michael J. Fox, Elijah Cummins, the Jonas Brothers, Ree Drummond, Megan Rapinoe, Jerry Seinfeld, the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Elvira, and more. In biography, highlights include Jonathan Alter on Jimmy Carter, Sarah Smarsh on Dolly Parton, David S. Reynolds on Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Salter on John McCain.

Politics & Current Events

Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains (St. Martin’s, 9/1)

Sharyl Attkisson, Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism (Harper, 11/24)

Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, A Perfect Phone Call: The Impeachment of Donald Trump (William Morrow, 1/5)

Devlin Barrett, October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election (PublicAffairs, 9/29)

Erin Brockovich, Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It (Pantheon, 8/25)

Ray Dalio, The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (Avid Reader, 9/15)

Jessica Donati, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War (PublicAffairs, 1/19)

Carl Hoffman, Liar’s Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies (William Morrow, 9/22)

Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power (Hachette, 9/1)

Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, Trump: America First: The President Succeeds Against All Odds (Center Street, 9/29)

Carlos Lozada, What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (S&S, 10/6)

H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (9/1)

Desmond Meade, Let My People Vote (Beacon, 10/6)

Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race (Bloomsbury, 9/29)

Al Sharpton, Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads (Hanover Square, 9/15)

Mychal Denzel Smith, Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream (Bold Type, 9/15)

Jon Tester, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America (Ecco, 9/15)

Matthew Yglesias, One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger (Portfolio, 9/15)

Social Issues

Eula Biss, Having and Being Had (Riverhead, 9/1)

Bishop Michael Curry with Sara Grace, Love is the Way: Holding onto Hope in Troubling Times (Avery, 9/15)[RD1]

Elliott Currie, A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America (Metropolitan, 9/15)

Marco D’Eramo, The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age (Verso, 1/12)

David Goodhart, Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Overrated, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect (Free Press, 9/8)

Nancy Grace with John Hassan, Don’t Be a Victim: Fighting Back Against America’s Crime Wave (Grand Central, 9/22)

Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (FSG, 9/1)

Sally Hubbard, Monopolies Suck: 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life and How to Take Back Control (S&S, 10/13)

Kenya Hunt, Girl (Amistad, 10/13)

Sasha Issenberg, The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage (Pantheon, 9/1)

Sarah Jaffe, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Bold Type, 1/26)

Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America (Pantheon, 9/22)

Diana Lind, Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing (Bold Type, 10/13)

Jamie K. McCallum, Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work Is Killing the American Dream (Basic, 9/8)

Grant McCracken, The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names (Tiller Press, 12/29)

Reuben Jonathan Miller, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration (Little, Brown, 2/2)

Ijeoma Oluo, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (Seal, 12/1)

Amelia Pang, Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods (Algonquin, 2/2)

*Anne Helen Petersen, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (HMH, 9/22)

Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (S&S, 10/13)

Claudia Rankine, Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf, 9/8)

Andrew Reiner, Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency (HarperOne, 12/15)

Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (FSG, 9/15)

Dianne M Stewart, Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage (Seal, 10/6)

Shreve Stockton, Meditations with Cows: What I’ve Learned from Daisy, the Dairy Cow Who Changed My Life (9/29)

Deborah Stone, Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters (Liveright, 10/6)

Jennifer Taub, Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime (Viking, 9/29)

Ethan Zuckerman, Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them (Norton, 11/10)

Science & Technology

Damon Centola, Change: The Surprising Science of How New Ideas, Behaviors, and Innovations Take Off and Take Hold (Little, Brown Spark, 1/19)

John Colapinto, This Is the Voice (S&S, 11/10)

Jason Dearen, Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, A Deadly Disease (Avery, 10/6)

Seb Falk, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science (Norton, 11/17)

Paul Farmer, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History (FSG, 11/17)

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind (FSG, 11/10)

Sanjay Gupta, Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age (S&S, 1/5)

Eben Kirksey, The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin’s, 10/20)

Elizabeth Lesser, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes (Harper Wave, 9/15)

Janna Levin, Black Hole Survival Guide (Knopf, 11/10)

Daniel Lieberman, Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding (Pantheon, 9/8)

Avi Loeb, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth (HMH, 1/26)

Jo Marchant, The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars (Dutton, 9/1)

Roy A. Meals, Bones: Inside and Out (Norton, 10/20)

David Owen, Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World (10/27)

Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (Eamon Dolan, 2/9)

Jess Phoenix, Ms. Adventure: My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava, and Life (Timber, 3/2)

James Raffan, Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey through the Fragile Arctic (S&S, 9/29)

David Remnick and Henry Finder (edited by), The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change (Ecco, 10/6)

Jacob Shell, Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants (Norton, 10/27)

Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

(Liveright, 10/13)

Terry Virts, How to Astronaut: An Insider’s Guide to Leaving Planet Earth (Workman, 9/15)

Lee van der Voo, As the World Burns: How a New Generation of Activists is Leading the Landmark Case Against Climate Change (Timber, 9/29)

Frank Wilczek, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality (Penguin Press, 1/12)

History & Crime

Glenn Adamson, Craft: An American History (Bloomsbury, 9/8)

Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (William Morrow, 10/6)

Scott Anderson, The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts (Doubleday, 9/15)

Natalie Baszile, We Are Each Other’s Harvest : Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy (Amistad, 11/17)

Michael Bellesiles, Inventing Equality: Reconstructing the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War (St. Martin’s, 10/20)

Paul Betts, Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II (Basic, 11/17)

Mark Bittman, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal (HMH, 2/2)

Julian Bond, Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement (Beacon, 1/12)

Mark A. Bradley, Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America (Norton, 10/13)

*Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Hannie Schaft and the Oversteegen Sisters, Teenaged Saboteurs and Nazi Assassins (Kensington, 2/23)

H. W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom (Doubleday, 10/6)

Ian Buruma, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit (Penguin Press, 9/1)

Michael Cannell, A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc. (Minotaur, 10/6)

Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 9/8)

Jennet Conant, The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer (Norton, 9/8)

*Becky Cooper, We Keep The Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence (Grand Central, 11/20)

Ellis Cose, The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America (Amistad, 9/15)

Peter Cozzens, Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation (Knopf, 9/15)

Jane Dailey, White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America’s Racist History (Basic, 11/17)

Michael Daly, New York’s Finest: The Greatest Stories of the NYPD and the Hero Cops Who Save the City (Twelve, 12/1)

Steven Dudley, MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (Hanover Square, 9/8)

Tom Dunkel, White Knights in the Black Orchestra: An Extraordinary Story of Germans Fighting Nazism from Inside the Third Reich (Hachette, 2/9)

Craig Fehrman (edited by), The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present (Avid Reader, 10/13)

Robin Lane Fox, The Invention of Medicine: A History from Homer to Hippocrates (Basic, 12/7)

Ernest Freeberg, A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement (Basic, 9/22)

Eleanor Herman, Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House (William Morrow, 9/22)

Scott James, Trial by Fire: A Devastating Tragedy, 100 Lives Lost, and A 15-Year Search for Truth (Thomas Dunne, 10/27)

Martha S. Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (Basic, 9/8)

Catherine Grace Katz, The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War (HMH, 9/29)

John Kelly, Saving Stalin: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Cost of Allied Victory in Europe (Basic, 10/6)

Denise Kiernan, We Gather Together: A Nation at War, a President in Turmoil, and One Woman’s Campaign to Return Us All to a State of Grace (Dutton, 11/10)

Jill Lepore, If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future (Liveright, 9/15)

Nicole LaPorte, Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies behind the College Cheating Scandal (Twelve, 9/8)

Jillian Lauren, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer and Uncovering the Women Society Forgot (Dutton, 10/13)

Laura L. Lovett, With Her Fist Raised: Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the Transformative Power of Black Community Activism (Beacon, 1/19)

Wendy Lower, The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed (HMH, 2/16)

Melissa Maerz, Alright, Alright, Alright: An Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (Harper, 11/17)

Ben Montgomery, A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South (Little, Brown Spark, 1/26)

Wes Moore with Erica L. Green, Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City (One World, 9/14)

David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (Penguin Press, 9/15)

Connor Towne O’Neill, Down Along with That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy (Algonquin, 10/13)

Jeff Pearlman, Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty (HMH, 9/29)

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Crazy Horse: The Merciless Indian Wars in America (Henry Holt, 9/15)

Jacques Olivier-Boudon, Joachim’s Floor: The Incredible Diary Of A 19th-Century Village Carpenter Rediscovered On The Floorboards Of An Alpine Chateau (Cassell, 10/6)

Vicky Osterweil, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action (Bold Type, 10/13)

James Patterson with Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, The Last Days of John Lennon (Little, Brown, 12/7)

Virginia Postrel, Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World (Basic, 11/10)

Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (Harper, 11/10)

Michael Riedel, Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway (Avid Reader, 11/10)

Joe Scarborough, Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for the Future of Europe (Harper, 11/17)

Geraldine Schwarz, Laura Marris (Translated by), Those Who Forget: My Family’s Story in Nazi Europe – A Memoir, A History, A Warning (Scribner, 9/22)

Jared Yates Sexton, American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People (Dutton, 9/15)

Frank Sisson with Robert L. Wise, I Marched with Patton: A Firsthand Account of World War II Alongside One of the U.S. Army’s Greatest Generals (William Morrow, 10/6)

Ali H. Soufan with Daniel Freedman, The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11 (Norton, 9/8)

James Suzman, Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots (Penguin Press, 1/19)

Jamie Thompson, Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation (Henry Holt, 9/8)

Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945 (Knopf, 9/1)

Michael Walsh, Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost (St. Martin’s, 12/1)

Joby Warrick, Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World (Doubleday, 10/6)

Tim Weiner, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020 (Henry Holt, 10/20)

Chris Whipple, The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future (Scribner, 9/15)

Toby Wilkinson, A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology (Norton, 10/20)

Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 11/10)

Essays, Criticism, & More

André Aciman and Robert Atwan (edited by), The Best American Essays 2020 (Mariner, 11/3)

Daniel Borzutzky, Written after a Massacre in the Year 2018 (Coffee House, March)

Gretel Ehrlich, Unsolaced: Along the Way to All That Is (Pantheon, 1/5)

Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind (Penguin Press, 9/8)

Jana Larson, Reel Bay: A Cinematic Essay (Coffee House, January)

Phillip Lopate (edited by), The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (Pantheon, 11/17)

Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, Dan Richards, Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places (Norton, 11/24)

Biography & Memoir

Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life (S&S, 9/29)

Travis M. Andrews, Because He’s Jeff Goldblum: The Movies, Memes, and Meaning of Hollywood’s Most Enigmatic Actor (Plume, 11/10)

Helena Andrews-Dyer and R. Eric Thomas, Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters (Dey Street, 9/29)

Lamorna Ash, Dark, Salt, Clear: The Life of a Fishing Town (Bloomsbury, 12/1)

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III (Doubleday, 9/29)

John Birdsall, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (Norton, 10/6)

Arthur Blank, Good Company (William Morrow, 9/15)

Rick Bragg, Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South (Knopf, 10/27)

Leslie Brody, Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy (Seal, 12/1)

Barrett Brown, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir (MCD, 12/1)

Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao, Family in Six Tones: A Refugee Mother, an American Daughter (Viking, 9/1)

Kat Chow, Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir (Grand Central, 1/26)

Louis Chude-Sokei, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir (HMH, 2/2)

Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf, 10/6)

Jason Cole, Elway: A Relentless Life (Hachette, 9/15)

Elijah Cummings with James Dale, We’re Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy (Harper, 9/22)

Alexander Danchev and Sarah Whitfield, Magritte: A Life (Pantheon, 11/10)

Anthony Daniels, I Am C-3PO - The Inside Story (DK, 11/3)

Leonard Downie Jr, All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post (PublicAffairs, 9/22)

Ree Drummond, Untitled by the ‘Pioneer Woman’ (William Morrow, 10/6)

Scott Eyman, Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise (S&S, 10/20)

William Feaver, The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame, 1968-2011 (Knopf, 11/10)

Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron, 11/17)

Jamie Foxx, Act Like You Got Some Sense (Grand Central, 10/6)

Peter Frampton with Alan Light, Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir (Hachette, 10/20)

Philip Gefter, What Becomes a Legend Most: The Biography of Richard Avedon (Harper, 10/13)

Jim Gray, Talking to GOATs (William Morrow, 11/10)

Richard Greene, The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene (Norton, 11/10)

André Gregory and Todd London, This Is Not My Memoir (FSG, 11/17)

Rob Halford, Confess (Hachette, 9/29)

Debora Harding, Dancing with the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime (Bloomsbury, 9/22)

Liz Heinecke, Radiant: The Dancer, The Scientist and a Friendship Forged in Light (Grand Central, 2/16)

Maria Hinojosa, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America (Atria, 9/15)

Hilary Holladay, The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography (Nan A. Talese, 11/17)

Sunny Hostin, I Am These Truths: A Memoir of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds (HarperOne, 9/22)

Noah Hurowitz, El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Drug Lord (Atria, 12/1)

Toni Jensen, Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land (Ballantine, 9/8)

Joe Jonas, Kevin Jonas, Nick Jonas, with Neil Strauss, Blood: A Memoir by the Jonas Brothers (Feiwel & Friends, 10/20)

Franz Kafka, translated by Ross Benjamin, The Diaries of Franz Kafka (Schocken, 1/26)

Neal Karlen, This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey, On and Off the Record (St. Martin’s, 10/6)

Rob Kenner, The Marathon Don’t Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle (Atria, 11/10)

Dave Kindred, Leave Out the Tragic Parts: A Grandfather’s Search for a Boy Lost to Addiction (PublicAffairs, 2/2)

Leonard A. Lauder, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty (Harper Business, 11/17)

Deborah Madison, An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables (Knopf, 9/29)

Chelsea Manning, Untitled Chelsea Manning Memoir (FSG, 10/6)

Lauren Martin, The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life (Grand Central, 12/8)

Bruce McCall, How Did I Get Here?: A Memoir (Blue Rider, 11/24)

Sid Meier, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games (Norton, 9/8)

David Michaelis, Eleanor: A Life (S&S, 10/6)

Marcus J. Moore, The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America (Atria, 10/13)

Dave Mustaine with Joel Selvin, Rust in Peace: The Inside Story of the Megadeth Masterpiece (Hachette, 9/8)

Philip Norman, Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix (Liveright, 9/15)

Mayumi Oda, Sarasvati’s Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda, Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary (Shambala, 11/10)

Christa Parravani, Loved and Wanted: A Memoir of Choice, Children, and Womanhood (Henry Holt, 10/13)

James Patterson with Chris Mooney, Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from America’s Bravest Warriors (Little, Brown, 2/8)

Les Payne, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (Liveright, 9/29)

Cassandra Peterson, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: My Wild Life as the Mistress of the Dark (Hachette, 9/22)

David Polfeldt, The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry (Grand Central, 9/8)

Michael Posner, Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years (S&S, 10/6)

Homeira Qaderi, Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son (Harper, 12/1)

Megan Rapinoe, One Life (Penguin Press, 11/10)

David S. Reynolds, Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times (Penguin Press, 9/29)

Hans Rosling, How I Learned to Understand the World: A Memoir (Flatiron, 11/10)

Erno Rubik, Cubed: The Puzzle of Us All (Flatiron, 9/15)

Peter Salmon, An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida (Verso, 10/13)

Mark Salter, The Luckiest Man: Life with John McCain (S&S, 10/13)

Sarah Smarsh, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (Scribner, 10/13)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House (St. Martin’s, 9/8)

Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI The Biography: Volume One (Bloomsbury Continuum, 11/17)

Jerry Seinfeld, Untitled (S&S, 10/6)

Ingrid Seward, Prince Philip: A Biography (Atria, 11/3)

Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy, Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People (PublicAffairs, 9/1)

Nikki Sixx, The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx (Hachette, 11/10)

William Souder, Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck (Norton, 10/13)

Gustavus Stadler, Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life (Beacon, 10/6)

Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, Francis Bacon: Revelations (Knopf, 11/17)

Jan Swafford, Mozart: The Reign of Love (Harper, 10/20)

André Leon Talley, The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir (Ballantine, 9/8)

Christie Tate, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life (Avid Reader, 10/6)

Martha Teichner, When Harry Met Minnie: A True Story of Love and Friendship (Celadon, 9/15)

Wright Thompson, Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last (11/10)

Cicely Tyson, Just As I Am (HarperCollins, 10/20)

Dwyane Wade, Dwyane (William Morrow, 10/13)

Thomas Chatterton Williams, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race (Norton, 9/15)

Part One: Fiction

Rumaan Alam, Leave The World Behind (Ecco)

SUMMARY

A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other? Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.

EXCERPT

Chapter 1

Well, the sun was shining. They felt that boded well—people turn any old thing into an omen. It was all just to say no clouds were to be seen. The sun where the sun always was. The sun persistent and indifferent.

Roads merged into one another. The traffic congealed. Their gray car was a bell jar, a microclimate: air conditioning, the funk of adolescence (sweat, feet, sebum), Amanda’s French shampoo, the rustle of debris, for there always was that. The car was Clay’s domain, and he was lax enough that it accrued, the talus of oats from granola bars bought in bulk, the unexplained tube sock, a subscription insert from the New Yorker, a twisted tissue, ossified with snot, that wisp of white plastic peeled from the back of a Band-Aid who knew when. Kids were always needing a Band-Aid, pink skin splitting like summer fruit.

The sunlight on their arms was reassuring. The windows were tinted with a protectant to keep cancer at bay. There was news of an intensifying hurricane season, storms with fanciful names from a preapproved list. Amanda turned down the radio. Was it sexist, somehow, that Clay drove, and always did? Well: Amanda had no patience for the attendant sacraments of alternate-side-of-the-street parking and the twelve-thousand-mile checkup. Besides, Clay took pride in that kind of thing. He was a professor, and that seemed to correlate with his relish for life’s useful tasks: bundling old newspapers for recycling, scattering chemical pellets on the sidewalk when the weather turned icy, replacing lightbulbs, unclogging stopped sinks with a miniature plunger.

The car was not so new as to be luxurious nor so old as to be bohemian. A middle-class thing for middle-class people, engineered not to offend more than to appeal, purchased at a showroom with mirrored walls, some half-hearted balloons, and several more salesmen than customers, lingering in twos or threes, jingling the change in the pockets of their Men’s Wearhouse slacks. Sometimes, in the parking lot, Clay would approach some other iteration of the car (it was a popular model, graphite), frustrated when the keyless entry system failed to engage.

Archie was fifteen. He wore misshapen sneakers the size of bread loaves. There was a scent of milk about him, as there was to young babies, and beneath that, sweat and hormone. To mitigate all this Archie sprayed a chemical into the thatch under his arms, a smell unlike any in nature, a focus group’s consensus of the masculine ideal. Rose paid better attention. The shadow of a young girl in flower; a bloodhound might find the metal beneath the whiff of entry-level cosmetics, the pubescent predilection for fake apples and cherries. They smelled, everyone did, but you couldn’t drive the expressway with the windows open, it was too loud. I have to take this. Amanda held the telephone aloft, warning them, even though no one was saying anything. Archie looked at his own phone, Rose at hers, both with games and parentally preapproved social media. Archie was texting with his friend Dillon, whose two dads were atoning for their ongoing divorce by letting him spend the summer smoking pot in the uppermost floor of their Bergen Street brownstone. Rose had already posted multiple photographs of the trip, though they’d only just crossed the county line.

Hey Jocelyn— That telephones knew who was calling obviated nicety. Amanda was account director, Jocelyn account supervisor and one of her three direct reports in the parlance of the modern office. Jocelyn, of Korean parentage, had been born in South Carolina, and Amanda continued to feel that the woman’s mealymouthed accent was incongruous. This was so racist she could never admit it to anyone.

I’m so sorry to bother you— Jocelyn’s syncopated breath. It was less that Amanda was fearsome than that power was. Amanda had started her career in the studio of a temperamental Dane with a haircut like a tonsure. She’d run into the man at a restaurant the previous winter and felt queasy.

It’s not a problem. Amanda wasn’t magnanimous. The call was a relief. She wanted her colleagues to need her as God wants people to keep praying.

Clay drummed fingers on the leather steering wheel, earning a sideways glance from his wife. He looked at the mirror to confirm that his children were still there, a habit forged in their infancy. The rhythm of their breath was steady. The phones worked on them like those bulbous flutes did on cobras.

None of them really saw the highway landscape. The brain abets the eye; eventually your expectations of a thing supersede the thing itself. Yellow-and-black pictographs, hillocks fading into prefab concrete walls, the occasional glimpse of split-level, railroad crossing, baseball diamond, aboveground pool. Amanda nodded when she took calls, not for the benefit of the person on the other end of the phone but to prove to herself that she was engaged. Sometimes, amid the head nodding, she forgot to listen.

Jocelyn— Amanda tried to find some wisdom. Jocelyn didn’t need Amanda’s input as much as she did her consent. Office hierarchy was arbitrary, like everything. That’s fine. I think that’s wise. We’re just on the expressway. You can call, don’t worry about it. But service is spotty once we get farther out. I had this problem last summer, you remember? She paused, and was embarrassed; why would her underling remember Amanda’s previous year’s vacation plans? We’re going farther out this year! She made it into a joke. But call, or email, of course, it’s fine. Good luck.

Everything’s okay back at the office? Clay could never resist pronouncing the office with a twist of something. It was synecdoche for her profession, which he largely—but not entirely—understood. A spouse should have her own life, and Amanda’s was quite apart from his. Maybe that helped explain their happiness. At least half of the couples they knew were divorced.

It’s fine. One of her most reached-for truisms was that some percentage of jobs were indistinguishable from one another, as they all involved the sending of emails assessing the job itself. A workday was several communiqués about the workday then under way, some bureaucratic politesse, seventy minutes at lunch, twenty minutes caroming around the open-plan, twenty-five minutes drinking coffee. Sometimes her part in the charade felt silly and other times it felt urgent.

The traffic was not so bad, and then, as highways narrowed into streets, it was. Akin to the final, arduous leg of a salmon’s trip back home, only with lush green medians and mini malls of rain-stained stucco. The towns were either blue collar and full of Central Americans or prosperous and populated by the white demimonde of plumbers and interior designers and real estate brokers. The actual rich lived in some other realm, like Narnia. You had to happen onto it, trace speedbumpy roads to their inevitable terminus, a cul-de-sac, a shingled mansion, a view of a pond. The air was that sweet cocktail of ocean breeze and happenstance, good for tomatoes and corn, but you thought you could also catch a note of luxury cars, fine art, those soft textiles rich people leave piled on their sofas.

Should we stop for a bite? Clay yawned at the end of this sentence, a strangled sound.

I’m starving. Archie’s hyperbole.

Let’s go to Burger King! Rose had spied the restaurant.

Clay could feel his wife tense up. She preferred that they eat healthily (especially Rose). He could pick up her disapproval like sonar. It was like the swell that presaged an erection. They’d been married sixteen years.

Amanda ate French fries. Archie requested a grotesque number of little briquettes of fried chicken. He dumped these into a paper bag, mixed in some French fries, dribbled in the contents of a small foil-topped container of a sweet and sticky brown sauce, and chewed contentedly.

Gross. Rose did not approve of her brother, because he was her brother. She ate, less primly than she thought, a hamburger, mayonnaise ringing her pink lips. Mom, Hazel dropped a pin—can you look at this and see how far her house is?

Amanda remembered being shocked by how loud the children had been as infants at her breast. Draining and suckling like the sound of plumbing, dispassionate burps and muted flatulence like a dud firecracker, animal and unashamed. She reached behind her for the girl’s phone, greasy from food and fingers, hot from overuse. Honey, this is not going to be anywhere near us. Hazel was less a friend than one of Rose’s obsessions. Rose was too young to understand, but Hazel’s father was a director at Lazard; the two family’s vacations would not much resemble one another.

"Just look. You said maybe we could drive over there."

That was the kind of thing she would suggest when half paying attention and come to rue, later, because the kids remembered her promises. Amanda looked at the phone. It’s East Hampton, honey. It’s an hour at least. More than, depending on the day.

Rose leaned back in her seat, audibly disgusted. Can I have my phone back, please?

Amanda turned and looked at her daughter, frustrated and flushed. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to sit through two hours of summer traffic for a play date. Not when I’m on vacation.

The girl folded her arms across her chest, a pout like a weapon. Play date! She was insulted.

Archie chewed at his reflection in the window.

Clay ate as he drove. Amanda would be furious if they were killed in a collision because he’d been distracted by a seven-hundred-calorie sandwich.

The roads narrowed further. Farm stands—honor system: felted green pints of hairy raspberries, moldering in their juices, and a wooden box for your five-dollar bill—on some of the drives wending off the main road. Everything was so green it was frankly a little crazy. You wanted to eat it: get out of the car, get down on all fours, and bite into the earth itself.

Let’s get some air. Clay opened all of the windows, banishing the stink of his farting children. He slowed the car because the road was curvy, seductive, a hip switched back and forth. Designer mailboxes like a hobo sign: good taste and great wealth, pass on by. You couldn’t see anything, the trees were that full. Signs warned of deer, idiotic and inured to the presence of humans. They strutted into the streets confidently, walleyed and therefore blind. You saw their corpses everywhere, nut brown and pneumatic with death.

They rounded a bend and confronted a vehicle. Archie, at age four, would have known the word for it: gooseneck trailer, a huge, empty conveyance being towed by a determined tractor. The driver ignored the car at his back, the local’s nonchalance for a familiar invasive species, as the trailer huffed over the road’s swells. It was more than a mile before it turned off toward its home homestead, and by that point Ariadne’s thread, or whatever bound them to the satellites overhead, had snapped. The GPS had no idea where they were, and they had to follow the directions that Amanda, adept planner, had thought to copy into her notebook. Left then right then left then left then another mile or so, then left again, then two more miles, then right, not quite lost but not quite not lost.

Chapter 2

The house was brick, painted white. There was something alluring about that red so transformed. The house looked old but new. It looked solid but light. Perhaps that was a fundamentally American desire, or just a modern urge, to want a house, a car, a book, a pair of shoes, to embody these contradictions.

Amanda had found the place on Airbnb. The Ultimate Escape, the ad proclaimed. She respected the chummy advertising-speak of the description. Step into our beautiful house and leave the world behind. She’d handed the laptop, hot enough to incubate tumors in her abdomen, over to Clay. He nodded, said something noncommittal.

But Amanda had insisted upon this vacation. The promotion came with a raise. So soon, Rose would vanish into high school disdain. For this fleeting moment, the children were still mostly children, even if Archie approached six feet tall. Amanda could if not conjure at least remember Archie’s high girlish voice, the chunk of Rose against her hip. An old saw, but on your deathbed would you remember the night you took the clients to that old steakhouse on Thirty-Sixth Street and asked after their wives, or bobbing about in the pool with your kids, dark lashes beaded with chlorinated water?

This looks nice. Clay switched off the car. The kids released seat belts and pushed open doors and leaped onto the gravel, eager as Stasi.

Don’t go far, Amanda said, though this was nonsense. There was nowhere to go. Maybe the woods. She did worry about Lyme disease. This was just her maternal practice, to interject with authority. The children had long since ceased hearing her daily plaints.

The gravel made its gravelly sound under Clay’s leather driving shoes. How do we get in?

There’s a lockbox. Amanda consulted her phone. There was no service. They weren’t even on a road. She held the thing over her head, but the little bars refused to fill. She had saved this information. The lockbox . . . on the fence by the pool heater. Code six two nine two. The key inside opens the side door.

The house was obscured by a sculpted hedgerow, someone’s pride, like a snowbank, like a wall. The front yard was bound by a picket fence, white, not a trace of irony in it. There was another fence, this one wood and wire, around the pool, which made the insurance more affordable, and also the home’s owners knew that sometimes deer strayed into attractive nuisances, and if you were away for a couple of weeks, the stupid thing would drown, swell, explode, a horrifying mess. Clay fetched the key. Amanda stood in the astonishing, humid afternoon, listening to that strange sound of almost quiet that she missed, or claimed she missed, because they lived in the city. You could hear the thrum of some insect or frog or maybe it was both, the wind tossing about the leaves, the sense of a plane or a lawn mower or maybe it was traffic on a highway somewhere distant that reached you just as the persistent beat of the ocean did when you were near the ocean. They were not near the ocean. No, they could not afford to be, but they could almost hear it, an act of will, of recompense.

"Here