Buzz Books 2024: Fall/Winter

By Publishers Lunch

Buzz Books 2024: Fall/Winter is the 25th volume in our popular sampler series. This Buzz Books presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at nearly fifty of the buzziest books due out this season. Such major bestselling authors as Jamie Attenberg, Kira Jane Buxton, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Dava Sobel are featured, along with literary figures like John Larison, Mason Coile, Kira Jane Buxton, and more.
Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting, and diverse debut authors, and this edition is no exception. Anna Montague, editor at Dey Street Books, offers a novel about an unlikely late-in-life road trip for fans of Remarkably Bright Creatures. Among others are Julie Leong, Kristin Koval, Helena Echlin, Jane Yang, and Cebo Campbell. In this edition we’ve also included a selection of a graphic novel by the author known as unfins.
Our robust nonfiction section covers such important subjects as pregnancy loss and the winter blues; a literary memoir from singer-songwriter Neko Case; and a biography of Marie Curie by Pulitzer Prize finalist Dava Sobel.
Finally, we present early looks at new work from young adult authors, including the New York Times best-selling authors Kwame Mbalia, Judy I. Lin, and Robert Beatty; as well as new titles from Logan-Ashley Kisner, Amanda M. Helander, and Jill Tew.
And be sure to look out for Buzz Books 2025: Spring/Summer, coming in January, for next season’s most talked about books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishers Lunch
• Release date: May 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9781948586658

Book preview

Cover of Buzz Books: 2024 Fall/Winter by Publishers Lunch

Buzz Books® 2024

Fall/Winter

Logo: Publishers LunchLogo: Ingram

Contents

Introduction

The Fall/Winter 2024 Publishing Preview

Part One: Fiction

Jami Attenberg, A Reason to See You Again (Ecco)

Susan Barker, Old Soul (Putnam)

Kimberly Brock, The Fabled Earth (Harper Muse)

Nickolas Butler, A Forty-Year Kiss (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Kira Jane Buxton, Tartufo (Grand Central)

Karissa Chen, Homeseeking (Putnam)

Mason Coile, William (Putnam)

Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen (Dutton)

Ava Dellaira, Exposure (Zibby Books)

Kate Greathead, The Book of George (Holt)

Juhea Kim, City of Night Birds (Ecco)

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Sequel (Celadon Books)

John Larison, The Ancients (Viking)

Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters (Grove Press)

Ally Malinenko, Linda Epstein, and Liz Parker, The Other March Sisters (Kensington)

Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody (Berkley)

Emily Rath, North Is the Night (Erewhon)

Ingvild Rishøi, translated from the Norwegian by Caroline Waight, Brightly Shining (Grove Press)

Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story (Dutton)

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, Every Moment Since (Harper Muse)

Part Two: Debut

Stephanie Booth, Libby Lost and Found (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants (Simon & Schuster)

A. Rae Dunlap, The Resurrectionist (Kensington)

Helena Echlin, Clever Little Thing (Pamela Dorman Books)

Becca Grischow, I’ll Get Back to You (Penguin)

Kristin Koval, Penitence (Celadon Books)

Julie Leong, The Teller of Small Fortunes (Ace)

Anna Montague, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? (Ecco)

Anna Rasche, The Stone Witch of Florence (Park Row Books)

Del Sandeen, This Cursed House (Berkley)

Sarah Sawyer, The Undercurrent (Zibby Books)

Unfins, Love Advice From the Great Duke of Hell (WEBTOON Unscrolled)

Jane Yang, The Lotus Shoes (Park Row Books)

Part Three: Nonfiction

Neko Case, The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You (Grand Central)

Molly Fletcher, Dynamic Drive (Hachette Go)

Kari Leibowitz, PhD, How to Winter (Penguin Life)

Rebecca Little and Colleen Long, I’m Sorry For My Loss (Sourcebooks)

Dava Sobel, THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Part Four: Young Adult

Robert Beatty, Sylvia Doe and the 100-Year Flood (Disney Hyperion)

Amanda M. Helander, Divine Mortals (Disney Hyperion)

Logan-Ashley Kisner, Old Wounds (Delacorte Press)

Judy I. Lin, The Dark Becomes Her (Rick Riordan Presents)

Kwame Mbalia, Jax Freeman and the Phantom Shriek (Freedom Fire)

Jill Tew, The Dividing Sky (Joy Revolution)

Credits

Copyright

Introduction

Buzz Books 2024: Fall/Winter is the 25th volume in our popular sampler series. This Buzz Books presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at nearly fifty of the buzziest books due out this season. Such major bestselling authors as Jamie Attenberg, Kira Jane Buxton, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Dava Sobel are featured, along with literary figures like John Larison, Mason Coile, Kira Jane Buxton and more.

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting, and diverse debut authors, and this edition is no exception. Anna Montague, editor at Dey Street Books, offers a novel about an unlikely late-in-life road trip for fans of Remarkably Bright Creatures. Among others are Julie Leong, Kristin Koval, Helena Echlin, Jane Yang, and Cebo Campbell. In this edition we’ve also included a selection of a graphic novel by the author known as unfins.

Our robust nonfiction section covers such important subjects as pregnancy loss and the winter blues; a literary memoir from singer-songwriter Neko Case; and a biography of Marie Curie by Pulitzer Prize finalist Dava Sobel.

Finally, we present early looks at new work from young adult authors, including the New York Times best-selling authors Kwame Mbalia, Judy I. Lin, and Robert Beatty; as well as new titles from Logan-Ashley Kisner, Amanda M. Helander, and Jill Tew.

And be sure to look out for Buzz Books 2025: Spring/Summer, coming in January, for next season’s most talked about books.

The Fall/Winter 2024 Publishing Preview

It’s another exciting season of new books ahead. Readers will find their way to the books previewed here and others yet to be discovered. To help you sift through the many thousands of planned fall and winter titles, we’ve selected what we think are among the most noteworthy literary, commercial, and breakout titles for adults, separated into four key categories.

You’ll be able to sample some of the highlighted titles right now in Buzz Books 2024: Fall/Winter; they are noted with an asterisk. And please remember: because we prepare this preview many months in advance, titles, content, and publication dates are all subject to change.

FICTION

Spring promises new titles from some of the most exciting voices in literature. Haruki Murakami, Sally Rooney, Olga Tokarczuk, Louise Erdrich and many more have new books coming out. In our sampler, you’ll find highly anticipated work from Jean Hanff Korelitz and Jami Attenberg.

Notables

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count (Knopf, 10/1)

Rumaan Alam, Entitlement (Riverhead Books, 9/17)

Pedro Almodóvar, Frank Wynne (Translated by), The Last Dream (HarperVia, 9/24)

Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook (Doubleday, 9/3)

Jami Attenberg, A Reason to See You Again (Ecco, 9/24)*

John Banville, The Drowned (Hanover Square, 10/1)

Charles Baxter, Blood Test (Pantheon, 11/12)

Susanna Clarke, The Wood at Midwinter (Bloomsbury, 10/22)

Virginie Despentes, Frank Wynne (Translated by), Dear Dickhead (FSG, 9/10)

Hernan Diaz, In the Distance (Riverhead, 10/14)

Roddy Doyle, The Women Behind The Door (Viking, 9/10)

Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red (Harper, 10/1)

Richard Flanagan, Question 7 (Knopf, 9/17)

Garth Greenwell, Small Rain (FSG, 9/3)

Mark Haddon, Dogs and Monsters (Doubleday, 10/15)

Matt Haig, The Life Impossible (Viking, 9/3)

Vigdis Hjorth, If Only (Verso, 9/3)

Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings (Random House, 10/8)

Michel Houellebecq, Shaun Whiteside (Translated by), Annihilation (FSG, 10/8)

Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Sequel (Celadon, 10/1)*

Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake (Scribner, 9/3)

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm (Penguin Press, 10/1)

Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Knopf, 11/26)

Susan Minot, Don’t Be a Stranger (Knopf, 10/15)

Chuck Palahniuk, Shock Induction (Simon & Schuster, 10/8)

Richard Powers, Playground (Norton, 9/24)

Richard Price, Lazarus Man (FSG, 11/12)

Sally Rooney, Intermezzo (FSG, 9/24)

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium (Riverhead, 9/24)

Lily Tuck, The Rest Is Memory (Liveright, 12/17)

Anne Tyler, Three Days in June (Knopf, 2/11)

Highly Anticipated

Pat Barker, The Voyage Home (Doubleday, 12/3)

Susan Barker, Old Soul (Putnam, 1/28)*

Christopher Bollen, Havoc (Harper, 12/3)

Nickolas Butler, A Forty-Year Kiss (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2/4)*

Gu Byeong-mo, Apartment Women (Hanover Square, 12/3)

Laura Dave, The Night We Lost Him (S&S/Marysue Rucci, 10/1)

Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell (Translated by), A Sunny Place for Shady People: Stories (Hogarth, 9/17)

Layne Fargo, The Favorites (Random House, 1/14)

Linda Grant, The Story of the Forest (SJP Lit, 10/1)

Yuri Herrera, Season of the Swamp (Graywolf, 10/1)

Sanaka Hiiragi, The Lantern of Lost Memories (Grand Central, 9/17)

Crystal King, In the Garden of Monsters (Mira, 9/24)

Amanda Lee Koe, Sister Snake (Ecco, 12/2)

Ann Liang, A Song to Drown Rivers (St. Martin’s, 10/1)

Ally Malinenko, Linda Epstein, and Liz Parker, The Other March Sisters (Kensington Books, 2/25)*

Cesca Major, If I Were You (William Morrow, 9/24)

Alan Moore, The Great When (Blooomsbury, 10/1)

Sergio De La Pava, Every Arc Bends Its Radian (S&S, 11/12)

Jamie Quatro, Two-Step Devil (Grove Press, 10/1)

Emily Rath, North Is the Night (Erewhon, 12/24)*

Ingvild Rishøi, translated by Caroline Waight, Brightly Shining (Grove Press, 11/19)*

Monique Roffey, Passiontide (Knopf, 9/10)

Adam Ross, Playworld (Knopf, 1/7)

Keith Rosson, The Devil by Name (Random House, 9/10)

Marissa Stapley, The Lightning Bottles (S&S, 9/17)

Izumi Suzuki, Set My Heart on Fire (Verso, 11/11)

Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection (William Morrow, 9/17)

Weike Wang, Rental House (Riverhead Books, 11/12)

Marybeth Whalen, Every Moment Since (Harper Muse, 10/1)*

Emerging

Julia Armfield, Private Rites (Flatiron, 12/3)

Isa Arsén, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf (Putnam, 1/7)

Yvonne Battle-Felton, Curdle Creek (Holt, 10/15)

Chelsea Bieker, Madwoman (Little, Brown, 9/3)

Kimberly Brock, The Fabled Earth (Harper Muse, 10/1)*

Kira Jane Buxton, Tartufo (Grand Central, 1/28)*

Karissa Chen, Homeseeking (Putnam, 1/7)*

Allison Epstein, Our Rotten Hearts (Doubleday, 2/25)

Kate Greathead, The Book of George (Holt, 10/8)*

John Larison, The Ancients (Viking, 10/15)*

Juhea Kim, City of Night Birds (Ecco, 11/26)*

Emily Layden, Once More from the Top (Mariner, 9/10)

Betsy Lerner, Shred Sisters (Grove Press, 10/1)*

Nikki May, This Motherless Land (Mariner Books, 9/3)

Marcie R. Rendon, Where They Last Saw Her (Bantam, 9/3)

Susan Rieger, Like Mother, Like Mother (The Dial Press, 10/29)

Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story (Dutton, 2/4)*

Rivers Solomon, Model Home (MCD, 10/1)

Caroline Woods, The Mesmerist (Doubleday, 9/10)

DEBUT

The coming season is packed with debuts, including first novels from Lauren Elkin and Daniel Lavery. Our sampler highlights work from Helena Echlin, Adam Haslett, Cebo Campbell, and more.

Riley August, The Last Gifts of the Universe (Hanover Square, 10/1)

Maame Blue, The Rest of You (Amistad, 10/8)

Stephanie Booth, Libby Lost and Found (Sourcebooks Landmark, 10/15)*

Katherine Packert Burke, Still Life (Norton, 9/10)

Cebo Campbell, Sky Full of Elephants (Simon & Schuster, 9/10)*

Aaron John Curtis, Old School Indian (Hillman Grad Books, 1/28)

Ava Dellaira, Exposure (Zibby Books, 9/10)*

A. Rae Dunlap, The Resurrectionist (Kensington Books, 12/24)*

Helena Echlin, Clever Little Thing (Pamela Dorman, 1/14)*

Erin Crosby Eckstine, Junie (Ballantine, 1/21)

Lauren Elkin, Scaffolding (FSG, 9/17)

Becca Grischow, I’ll Get Back to You (Penguin Books, 9/17)*

Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons (Little, Brown, 1/20)

Anna Johnston, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife (William Morrow, 9/10)

Beth Kander, I Made It Out of Clay (Mira, 12/10)

Jakob Kerr, Dead Money (Bantam, 1/28)

Maya Kessler, Rosenfeld (Avid Reader, 11/19)

Kristin Koval, Penitence (Celadon, 2/18)*

Tom Lamont, Going Home (Knopf, 1/14)

Daniel M. Lavery, Women’s Hotel (HarperVia, 10/15)

Julie Leong, The Teller of Small Fortunes (Ace, 11/5)*

Bruna Dantas Lobato, Blue Light Hours (Black Cat, 10/15)

Anna Montague, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? (Ecco, 10/22)*

Eliza Moss, What It’s Like in Words (Holt, 12/3)

Zahid Rafiq, The World With Its Mouth Open (Tin House, 12/2)

Anna Rasche, The Stone Witch of Florence (Park Row Books), 10/8)*

Devika Rege, Quarterlife (Liveright, 9/24)

Benjamin Resnick, Next Stop (Avid Reader, 9/10)

Ava Robinson, Definitely Better Now (Mira, 12/31)

Nayantara Roy, The Magnificent Ruins (Algonquin, 11/12)

Del Sandeen, This Cursed House (Berkley, 10/8)*

Sarah Sawyer, The Undercurrent (Zibby Books, 10/8)*

Chloe Seager, Open Minded (William Morrow, 11/12)

Cherry Lou Sy, Love Can’t Feed You (Dutton, 10/8)

Marie Tierney, Deadly Animals (Holt, 11/12)

Vincent Tirado, We Came to Welcome You (William Morrow, 9/3)

Ayelet Tsabari, Songs for the Brokenhearted (Random House, 9/10)

Ledia Xhoga, Misinterpretation (Tin House, 9/3)

Jane Yang, The Lotus Shoes (Park Row Books, 1/7)*

COMMERCIAL

Some of the biggest names in publishing have books coming out in spring and summer, including Alafair Burke, Paula Hawkins, Brandon Sanderson, Attica Locke, and many more.

Samantha Allen, Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet (Zando, 9/10)

Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, Tom Clancy Defense Protocol (Putnam, 12/3)

V.C. Andrews, Dreaming of Autumn Skies (Gallery, 10/1)

Jeffrey Archer, An Eye for an Eye (HarperCollins, 9/24)

David Baldacci, David Baldacci November 2024 (Grand Central, 11/12)

Brett Battles, Stuart Woods’ Golden Hour (Putnam, 10/29)

Louis Bayard, The Wildes (Algonquin, 9/17)

Alan Bradley, What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust (Bantam, 9/3)

Graham Brown, Clive Cussler Untitled NUMA 21 (Putnam, 11/12)

Alafair Burke, The Note (Knopf, 1/14)

Lee Child, Andrew Child, In Too Deep: A Jack Reacher Novel (Delacort, 10/22)

Richard Chizmar, Memorials (Gallery, 10/22)

Mason Coile, William (Putnam, 9/10)*

Michael Connelly, The Waiting (Little, Brown 11/5)

Robin Cook, Bellevue (Putnam, 12/3)

Helen Cooper, My Darling Boy (Putnam, 12/3)

Patricia Cornwell, Identity Unknown (Grand Central, 10/15)

M. W. Craven, Nobody’s Hero (Flatiron, 12/3)

Fiona Davis, The Stolen Queen (Dutton, 1/7)*

Pip Drysdale, The Close-Up (Gallery, 12,3)

Janet Evanovich, Now or Never (Atria, 11/5)

Brian Freeman, Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Vendetta (Putnam, 1/14)

Vince Flynn, Don Bentley, Capture or Kill (Atria/Emily Bestler, 9/3)

Alison Gaylin, Robert B. Parker’s Buzz Kill (Putnam, 9/10)

Ava Glass, The Trap (Bantam, 9/3)

Adam Hamdy, Deadbeat (Atria, 12/3)

Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice: A John le Carre Novel (Viking, 10/22)

Paula Hawkins, The Blue Hour (Mariner, 10/8)

Tami Hoag, Bad Liar (Dutton, 9/24)

Michael Idov, The Collaborators (Scribner, 11/19)

J. A. Jance, Den of Iniquity (William Morrow, 9/10)

Iris Johansen, On the Hunt (Grand Central, 9/3)

Leah Konen, The Last Room on the Left (Putnam, 1/14)

Attica Locke, Guide Me Home (Mulholland Books, 9/3)

Mike Lupica, Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property (Putnam, 11/26)

Mike Maden, Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier (Putnam, 9/3)

Gregory Maguire, Elphie (William Morrow, 10/1)

David McCloskey, The Seventh Floor (Norton, 10/1)

Ben Mezrich, The Mistress and the Key (Grand Central, 10/8)

Karen Marie Moning, The House at Watch Hill (William Morrow, 10/1)

Taylor Moore, Cold Trail (William Morrow, 9/17)

Victoria Christopher Murray, Harlem Rhapsody (Berkley, 2/4)*

Richard Osman, We Solve Murders (Pamela Dorman, 9/17)

Jo Nesbo, Blood Ties (Knopf, 2/11)

Jason Pargin, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom (St. Martin’s, 9/24)

James Patterson, The House of Cross (Little, Brown, 11/25)

James Patterson, David Ellis, Lies He Told Me (Little, Brown 9/30)

Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf (Minotaur, 10/29)

Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding (Flatiron, 10/8)

J. D. Robb, Passions in Death (St. Martin’s, 9/3)

Lawrence Robbins, The President’s Lawyer (Atria, 10/8)

Nora Roberts, The Mirror (St. Martin’s, 11/19)

Tom Ryan, The Treasure Hunters Club (Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/15)

Trisha Sakhlecha, The Inheritance (Pamela Dorman, 1/21)

Brandon Sanderson, Wind and Truth (Tor Books, 12/6)

Alex Segura, Alter Ego (Flatiron, 12/3)

Alexander McCall Smith, The Great Hippopotamus Hotel (Pantheon, 10/15)

Nicholas Sparks, Counting Miracles (Random House, 9/24)

Stephen Spotswood, Dead in the Frame (Doubleday, 2/4)

Danielle Steel, Never Say Never (Delacort, 1/7)

Danielle Steel, Trial by Fire (Delacorte, 11/19)

Danielle Steel, Triangle (Delacorte, 10/1)

Neal Stephenson, Polostan (William Morrow, 10/15)

Danielle Trussoni, The Puzzle Box (Random House, 10/8)

Alaina Urquhart, The Butcher Game (Zando, 9/17)

Adrienne Young, A Sea of Unspoken Things (Delacorte, 1/7)

Kiersten White, Lucy Undying (Del Rey, 9/10)

NONFICTION

This season’s nonfiction works include collected essays, memoirs, letters, and ephemera from celebrated writers, including Oliver Sacks, David Graeber, Tariq Ali, Orhan Pamuk, Edwidge Danticat, and Deborah Levy. In September, Yuval Noah Harari publishes a history on information networks, his first major release in six years. Speaking of information networks, new titles from Deepak Chopra and James Rickards examine the possible benefits and threats of AI technology. Pulitzer Prize finalist Dava Sobel highlights the work of Marie Curie and the women who came after her, and Rebecca Little and Colleen Long examine reproductive care in the US.

In the ever-popular realm of celebrity memoirs, books from Eve, Al Pacino, Neko Case, Donald Sutherland, and Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough are sure to spark conversation. Plus, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tells the story of her public and private life, and Mary L. Trump sheds light on her infamous family.

Essays, Criticism, & More

Tariq Ali, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2023 (Verso, 11/5)

Gillian Anderson, Want: Women’s Fantasies in the Twenty-First Century (Abrams, 9/17)

Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant…and Completely Over It (Tiny Reparations, 9/10)

Edwidge Danticat, We’re Alone: Essays (Graywolf, 9/3)

David Graeber, Nika Dubrovsky (ed.), The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World…: Essays (Farrar, Straus, 11/12)

Robert Hunter, The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead—The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter (Hachette, 10/8)

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry (Scribner, 11/19)

Deborah Levy, The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies (Farrar, Straus, 10/1)

Youngmi Mayer, I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 11/12)

National Public Radio, How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music (HarperOne, 10/1)

Jennifer Neal, My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant’s Search for Home Across Four Continents (Catapult, 10/22)

Jim O’Heir, Welcome to Pawnee (William Morrow, 11/19)

Orhan Pamuk, Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022 (Knopf, 11/26)

Maria Popova, The Universe in Verse (Workman/Storey, 10/1)

John Preston, Elton John, Watford Forever: How Graham Taylor and Elton John Saved a Football Club, a Town and Each Other (Liveright, 8/27)

Randy Rainbow, Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda (St. Martin’s, 10/8)

Jenny Slate, Lifeform (Little, Brown, 10/22)

Sarah Smarsh, Bone of the Bone: Essays on America from a Daughter of the Working Class (Scribner, 9/10)

Ashley Spencer, Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire (St. Martin’s, 9/24)

Biography & Memoir

Uzo Aduba, The Road Is Good: How a Mother’s Strength Became a Daughter’s Purpose (Viking, 9/24)

André Aciman, Roman Year: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus, 10/22)

Lili Anolik, Didion and Babitz (Scribner, 11/12)

April Balascio, Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth About My Father (Gallery, 12/3)

Rich Benjamin, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (Pantheon, 2/11)

Kelly Bishop, The Third Gilmore Girl (Gallery, 9/17)

Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend (Liveright, 9/10)

Josh Brolin, From Under the Truck: A Memoir (Harper, 11/19)

Neko Case, The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You (Grand Central, 1/28) *

Neneh Cherry, A Thousand Threads: A Memoir (Scribner, 10/8)

Connie Chung, Connie: A Memoir (Grand Central, 9/17)

Mark L. Clifford, The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic (Free Press, 12/3)

Amy Bowers Cordalis, The Water Remembers: My Indigenous American Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life (Little, Brown, 12/10)

Jaha Marie Dukureh, I Will Scream to the World: My Story. My Fight. My Hope for Girls Everywhere (Kensington/Dafina, 12/24)

Glory Edim, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me (Ballantine, 10/29)

Arielle Egozi, Being Bad: Breaking the Rules and Becoming Everything You’re Not Supposed to Be (Chronicle Prism, 9/17)

Eve with Kathy Iandoli, Who’s That Girl?: A Memoir (Hanover Square, 9/17)

S.H. Fernando, The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast (Astra, 10/29)

Jessi Gold, How Do You Feel?: One Doctor’s Search for Humanity in Medicine (Simon Element, 10/8)

David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 10/1)

Nikkya Hargrove, Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found (Algonquin, 10/15)

Jessica Hoppe, First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream (Flatiron, 9/10)

Patrick Hutchison, CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman (St. Martin’s, 12/3)

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Lovely One: A Memoir (Random, 9/3)

Bruce Eric Kaplan, They Went Another Way: A Hollywood Memoir (Holt, 10/22)

Don Lemon, I Once Was Lost: My Search for God in America (Little, Brown, 9/10)

Bethany Joy Lenz, Dinner for Vampires (Simon & Schuster, 10/22)

Joanna Levesque, Too Much, Too Soon: A Memoir (Hachette, 9/17)

Abi Maxwell, One Day I’ll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother’s Story (Knopf, 9/17)

Stanley Milford, Jr., The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator’s Search for the Unexplained (William Morrow, 10/22)

Elliot Mintz, We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me (Dutton 10/22)

Saad Mohseni, Jenna Krajeski, Radio Free Afghanistan: The Twenty-Year Struggle for an Independent Media in Kabul (Harper, 9/24)

Omo Moses, The White Peril: A Black Family’s Struggle for Freedom from Jim Crow to Hip-Hop (Beacon, 1/21)

Kristian Nairn, Beyond the Throne: Epic Journeys, Enduring Friendships, and Surprising Tales (Hachette, 9/24)

Nemonte Nenquimo with Mitch Anderson, We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People (Abrams, 9/17)

Robert Novogratz and Cortney Novogratz, The Novogratz Chronicles: Lessons Learned from Twenty-Five Years of Buying and Renovating Houses (Princeton Architectural Press, 10/22)

Oliver Radclyffe, Frighten the Horses (Grove/Roxane Gay, 9/17)

Al Pacino, Sonny Boy: A Memoir (Penguin Press, 10/8)

Keke Palmer, Untitled (Flatiron, 11/19)

Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough, Untitled (Random, 10/15)

Sonia Purnell, Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue (Viking, 9/17)

Eric Roberts with Sam Kashner, Runaway Train: or, The Story of My Life So Far (St. Martin’s, 9/17)

Marian Schembari, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole (Flatiron, 9/24)

Dava Sobel, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science (Atlantic Monthly, 10/8) *

Ron Stallworth, The Gangs of Zion: A Black Cop’s Crusade in Mormon Country (Legacy Lit, 9/17)

Donald Sutherland, Made Up, But Still True (Crown, 11/12)

Mary L. Trump, PhD, Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir (St. Martin’s, 9/10)

Alex van Halen, Brothers (Harper, 10/22)

Maya Wiley, Remember, You Are a Wiley: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote (Grand Central, 9/10)

Emily Witt, Health and Safety: A Trip Through the Age of Dissociation (Pantheon, 9/17)

Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas, Carson the Magnificent (Simon & Schuster, 11/5)

Politics & Current Events

Bill Adair, Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy (Atria, 10/15)

Sharyl Attkisson, Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails (Harper, 9/3)

Stephanie Baker, Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia (Scribner, 9/10)

Dana Bash with David Fisher, America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History (Hanover Square, 9/3)

David Brock, Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America (Knopf, 9/17)

Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success (Penguin Press, 9/10)

Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World (Penguin Press, 10/08)

Sandy Hudson, Defund: Black Lives, Policing, and Safety for All (Pantheon, 2/4)

Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (Legacy Lit, 10/8)

Leigh McGowan, A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It (Atria/One Signal, 9/17)

Jessica Pishko, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy (Dutton, 9/17)

Paola Ramos, Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America (Pantheon, 9/24)

Timothy Snyder, On Freedom (Crown, 9/17)

Amir Tibon, The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands (Little, Brown, 10/1)

Social Issues

Amanda Becker, You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America (Bloomsbury, 9/10)

Sara C. Bronin, Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World (Norton, 10/1)

Molly Fletcher, Dynamic Drive: The Purpose-Fueled Formula For Sustainable Success (Hachette Go, 9/3) *

Malcolm Gladwell, The New Tipping Point: Why and Where Epidemics Happen (Little, Brown, 10/15)

Kate Hamilton, Mad Wife: A Memoir (Beacon, 10/15)

Tricia Hersey, We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape (Little, Brown Spark, 11/12)

Theodore Johnson, If We Are Brave: Essays from Black Americana (Amistad, 10/1)

Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury, 8/27)

Rebecca Little and Colleen Long, I’m Sorry For My Loss (Sourcebooks, 10/1) *

Alishia McCullough, Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within (Dial, 1/14)

Michael Morris, Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together (Portfolio/Thesis, 10/1)

Melissa Petro, Shame On You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification (Putnam, 9/10)

Kristian Rönn, The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future) (Crown Currency, 9/24)

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz, The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America (Flatiron, 10/29)

Sunita Sah, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes (One World, 1/14)

Harel Shapira, Basic Pistol (Pantheon, 2/25)

Dan Slepian, The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice (Celadon, 9/3)

Courtney B. Vance, Robin Smith, The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power (Balance, 11/5)

Keon West, The Science of Racism: Everything You Need to Know but Probably Don’t—Yet (Abrams, 2/18)

Tiffany Yu, The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World (Hachette Go, 10/8)

Jamil Zaki, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness (Grand Central, 9/3)

History & Crime

Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth: A History (Norton, 9/24)

Mary Frances Berry, Slavery After Slavery: Revealing the Legacy of Forced Child Apprenticeships on Black Families, from Emancipation to the Present (Beacon, 1/21)

Jerry Brotton, Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction (Atlantic Monthly, 11/5)

Tom Clavin, Bandit Heaven: The Hole-in-the-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West (St. Martin’s, 11/5)

Russell Cobb, Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land (Beacon, 10/8)

Kate Winkler Dawson, The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne (Putnam, 1/7)

Elyse Graham, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II (Ecco, 9/17)

John Grisham and Jim McCloskey, Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions (Doubleday, 10/8)

Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Random, 9/10)

Chris Heath, No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust (Schocken, 9/3)

Stacy Horn, The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood (Zando/Gillian Flynn, 1/28)

Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia,from Revolution to Autocracy (Ecco, 10/1)

Dan Jones, Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King (Viking, 10/1)

Abbott Kahler, Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II (Crown, 9/24)

Charles King, Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah (Doubleday, 10/29)

Ben Macintyre, The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World (Crown, 9/10)

Aaron Mahnke with Harry Marks, Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre (St. Martin’s, 11/12)

Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (Harper, 9/10)

Bill O’Reilly, Martin Dugard, Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden (St. Martin’s, 9/10)

James Patterson, Matt Eversmann, with Tim Malloy, Medal of Honor: True Stories of America’s Most Decorated Military Heroes (Little, Brown, 10/21)

Joe Posnanski, Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments (Dutton, 9/17)

Evan Rail, The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit (Melville House, 10/15)

Lydia Reeder, The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever (St. Martin’s, 12/3)

Aaron Robertson, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (Farrar, Straus, 10/1)

David M. Rubenstein, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency (Simon & Schuster, 9/17)

Aran Robert Shetterly, Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City’s Soul (Amistad, 10/15)

Wright Thompson, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi (Penguin Press, 9/24)

Business, Science & Technology

Eugenia Bone, Have a Good Trip: Exploring the Magic Mushroom Experience (Flatiron, 10/22)

Paulina Bren, She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street (Norton, 9/17)

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (Penguin Press, 9/17)

Deepak Chopra, MD, Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being (Harmony, 12/3)

Ray Dalio, Principles: Investment and Economic (Avid Reader, 9/17)

Eva Dou, House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company (Portfolio, 1/21)

Peter Godfrey-Smith, Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World (Farrar, Straus, 9/3)

Johanna Hedva, How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom (Zando/Hillman Grad, 9/3)

Chase Jarvis, Never Play It Safe: A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity, and a Life You Love (Harper Business, 10/8)

Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (Little, Brown, 11/19)

Daniel J. Levitin, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine (Norton, 8/27)

Kari Leibowitz, PhD, How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days (Penguin Life, 10/22) *

Alan Lightman, The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature (Pantheon, 11/19)

Marty Makary, M.D., Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health (Bloomsbury, 9/17)

Shigehiro Oishi, Life in Three Dimensions (Doubleday, 2/4)

Lynne Peeples, The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms (Riverhead, 9/24)

James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy (Portfolio, 11/12)

Elizabeth Rosner, Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening (Counterpoint, 9/17)

Katherine Rundell, Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures (Doubleday, 11/12)

Oliver Sacks, Letters (Knopf, 11/5) 9780451492913

Alok Sama, The Money Trap: Spies, Lies, and Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble (St. Martin’s, 9/17)

Marietje Schaake, The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton University Press, 9/24)

Brigid Schulte, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life (Holt, 9/17)

Lauren Sherman, Chantal Fernandez, Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon (Holt, 10/8)

Robert Skidelsky, Mindless: The Human Condition in the Machine Age (Other Press, 9/24)

Representative Michael Waltz, Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret (St. Martin’s, 10/22)

Part One: Fiction

Jami Attenberg, A Reason to See You Again (Ecco)

SUMMARY

From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling novel of family, following a troubled mother and her two daughters over forty years and through a swiftly changing American landscape as they seek lives they can fully claim as their own. The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn. Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her. But they each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you—and then must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need to move forward. Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.

EXCERPT

Chapter 1: 1971

Oh, the games families play with each other.

In the Cohen household, it was Scrabble, and they played it every Saturday night. This was one of Frieda’s rules. Telephone unplugged, the whole family together. The girls were still young enough that they had nowhere urgent to be but right there. Nancy, sixteen; Shelly, twelve. Idling in the living room with their father, Rudy, while Frieda made popcorn in the kitchen. Tonight Lawrence Welk led some orchestral tribute to America on the television set, Rudy nodding his head along to the music. Rudy: frail, angular, fading, but loving and present. A real bon vivant when he had the energy. I want him alive, thought Frieda. I must feed him. A frantic feeling. Him, she must take care of him. She salted and buttered the popcorn in good, thick, fatty layers. Humming as she delivered it in a Tupperware bowl to the family, who sat, sunken in a green velvet conversation pit. A Lucite table at the center, set up with the game board. A family waiting. Press play.

Shelly clapped for the popcorn. It smells divine, she said. What a delicious and satisfying treat. Shelly always trying on words for size. She popped one piece after another into her mouth; she liked to have something to do with her hands. A place to direct her nervous energy, thought Frieda. This whole family was nervous. Everyone was worried about Rudy, who had been sick and then not sick and then sick again. It had been this way for years. Malnutrition in his youth, in the camps, and all the stress, then and always. Now he had a bad heart. He was forty-one and looked sixty. A little worse this year, but then again, what did worse mean when things had been bad for so long? So, it was good for them all to be together, thought Frieda, every Saturday. A regular moment for the family, private, after the crowds at shul the night before. But also: she wanted to win at Scrabble.

The girls were good at the game. Competitive enough to keep things interesting. Frieda had taught them some tricks. All the two-letter words, the most potent available ways to use Q and X. Their little sponge minds preparing for their next moves.

There was Nancy, organizing her tiles to be just so. She liked it when ideas clicked together easily and was sharp enough to find a few five- or six-letter words here and there. A tidy girl. Demure, pretty. Mildly interested in lots of things but not one thing especially. She’d do all right, thought Frieda. At this game. In life.

Shelly was the real challenger in the family: strategic, focused, unflappable. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, healthy, peach-toned skin, a generally intense presence, even for a child. She left no loose ends behind, blocked every exit and entry point if she could help it. Our little winner, thought Frieda. Smarter than everyone in the room, perhaps. But she better not beat me, thought Frieda. Not yet.

Rudy was a useless competitor, just there to have fun with his family. English was his second language and though he spoke it well, he didn’t have the same competitive spirit attached to the game. Now if this were in German, I would defeat you all, he said. Lawrence Welk is who I should be playing. He was daydreamy and faint and beautiful; their thin, pale Papa, who had been released from the camps barely a teenager, starved, starving, and made his way to America to exist as a hero in their eyes. The girls could not ever imagine being as hungry as he had been. All of them wondered, marveled at his presence. He knew how to hold a room—even if it was simply by being alive.

For a while, when he was younger, he had given speeches to temples across America about his journey. What was it like in the camps? The American Jews really wanted to know. Most survivors didn’t want to talk about it, but Rudy thought it was important they hear the truth. When Frieda had met him, he had seemed so sophisticated even in his frailty. An elegant speaker, and funny, too. That silk scarf he had tied around his neck. What a story. He told it well. People warmed to him quickly. He had needed a secretary, he said, and she traveled with him, until it was just easier to be married. Frieda was only nineteen. Attached, already, to a man. She thought he’d be the breadwinner forever. He should be paid for what he went through; she firmly believed that.

Once, Hollywood had even been interested in what had happened to him. Rudy and Frieda as newlyweds, poolside, sunburned, giddy. A cabana boy dipping to serve them. A producer who had rushed in, ordering a drink from no one in particular as he moved along the patio, then shaking Frieda’s hand and holding it for a moment with both of his.

And then: nothing happened. Letters still arrived on occasion, typed, formal, offering a travel stipend and maybe a small speaker’s fee. They saved them up and placed a down payment on this house that Rudy, with all his stylish desires, had wanted. This modern home. But then there had been new wars. And then fewer speeches to give, and, after a while, less of everything else in their lives. Book-keeping work for him, shifts in a nursing home for her. Popcorn at home cost less than popcorn in the movie theater. No one knew how to budget quite like Frieda. Scrabble—Frieda’s favorite—was entirely free, of course. And tonight, Shelly was winning. By a lot.

Does anyone want some more popcorn? Frieda didn’t wait for an answer. In the kitchen, she stole sips of slivovitz from a handle of it hidden in the cupboard behind the teakettle. A fresh bottle, purchased last week, after she had started work in a new home. She was an aide like her mother, Goldie, had been before her in her way, always tending, tending to people. One husband for Goldie, and then another, until there was no one left, and certainly no one to take care of her, Frieda already long gone. She, too, had liked her sips of slivovitz to pass the time, sometimes sharing it with young Frieda to keep her quiet.

Frieda didn’t even like the taste of it, hadn’t then, still didn’t now, but the general effect of it was soothing and familiar. Someday she would develop a new favorite drink. Someday she would drink whatever was around, no matter what, just to be drunk. Thoughtlessly. In between caring for others. Care was what she was good at. The care of strangers. Strangers and husbands. Not children. Whose children were these? she sometimes thought. Now they were people. Who beat her at Scrabble. They would leave her someday and not look back for a long time. But she didn’t know that yet.

When she returned to the living room with the popcorn, she snuck a glance at Shelly’s tiles from behind. Maybe she had a chance yet. She rubbed her hands together as she sat, a little less steady now from the slivovitz. But buoyant for the moment.

***

This game they played on Saturday nights did not bring Rudy the same kind of pleasure it did his wife. He watched now as she taunted Nancy, who had put down BOY and missed a nearby double-word score. That’s all you have to show me? said Frieda. A tart, sharp laugh.

Frieda, my dear, he said, but did not continue. He did not have the energy tonight to either start or finish a fight.

Is there something you need to say? she said. A curdled flirtatiousness.

We’re just having fun, he said gently. More and more lately he’d had to step in between her and the children. She seemed angry at them. He couldn’t bring himself to discuss it with her, not in a real way. Her competitive energy wasted, he thought. Stuck with all of us. Here in the suburbs. With the wrong man, he thought. The wrong house, the wrong life. (Or was he thinking of himself?) But the girls were sane, and healthy, and smart. He had wanted children desperately, to bring more Jews back into the world. A kind of compensation. Sometimes he had nightmares that he couldn’t protect them. Last year he had given them both matching gold necklaces with paper-thin gold chai pendants, and oh, how they had hugged him. They loved him, even though he hid from them. On Thursday nights. That was the night just for him, in the silk robes.

What if things had gone differently? He thought about California all the time, though it had been years since he had been there, the sun imbuing his flesh and bones with possibility. Alive, I could be alive there, he thought. What that producer had wanted, he had wanted, too. The three of them in a cabana, the curtain closed. An old, hairy, horny, powerful man, with a stiff grin on his face. Loosened Rudy’s robe for him. Took him in his warm hands. It had confused Frieda. She didn’t understand that kind of decadence. She wasn’t built that way. I married this young girl, he thought. Still, I thought maybe she knew. My fault. That day, she had asked the two men to stop, and he couldn’t argue. They never heard from the producer again. California sun, so far away now. At least he had his Thursdays.

And now they had Shelly to manage, their champion. Another shot at the sun. Her test scores were off the charts, her school had reported. She’d skipped a grade already. The school wanted her to start competing on the math team. She would be bored soon enough with what they could do for her. Last week, she’d asked if she could study Latin. Just to try it. He looked up at his youngest daughter. Casually chewing on popcorn. This wasn’t even a game to her. Just a problem to solve. She had put down PETRIFY.

Excellent work, darling, he said.

Sure, sure, mumbled Frieda, who was frantically reordering her tiles. Auburn, frizzy hair, tall, strong, handsome, with mountainous tits he fondled helplessly upon her request once a month. Why do I always have to follow Shelly? she said.

But this was the order they played in—every time. Shelly before Frieda, Frieda before Nancy, Nancy before Rudy, and Rudy before Shelly. They had tried it in other formations over the years, but it never worked. Frieda wanted to follow Rudy, who scattered letters on the board carelessly until some sort of shape formed. Shelly had no feelings about anyone else, one way or the other, who she wanted to beat: she was simply a machine, looking for the best path.

Nancy would spark when challenged but was also happy to coast. This wasn’t her game and never would be.

***

What was Nancy’s game? In this house, she existed in the context of others, specifically Shelly. Nancy, aware that there was a specialness to her younger sister, or at least that Shelly was more special than she was, more obviously bright, quantifiably brilliant, real brains that could be measured, tested. Perfect math scores. The Golden Ticket, her brain, like Charlie had sung in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, a movie Frieda had let them sit through two Saturday matinees back-to-back because they had loved it. Nancy, mixed with jealousy and admiration for Shelly, who already knew so much. But also, maybe Shelly was too eccentric. A disqualification, in Nancy’s eyes.

Outside the house, Nancy moved easily through the world. Hair, already curled; clothes, just so, pristine. Impeccable makeup. Boys liked her. She got invited to all the parties first, bar mitzvahs, and birthdays, and then the dances. Shelly obviously thought her older sister’s concerns were ridiculous. Parties and boys, who cares? said Shelly. I’m going to rule the world someday. But nevertheless, Nancy sensed Shelly envied and was curious about Nancy’s life. Catching Shelly alone in their room, fingering a blouse laid out on the bed. Poor jealous girl, said Nancy. Did they snap at each other sometimes? Yes. Never like their mother did at them, though.

But Nancy would always tell her the truth, and Shelly would do the same for her. Even as they challenged each other, moved in and out of each other’s lives over the years, disappearing entirely at times, it was a thing they thought they could count on when they needed it. The truth. Even if other people lied to them, they knew where to go for answers. If not each other, then who? Truth or dare, and they always chose truth. Until it turned into another kind of game: How close could they come to saying something to each other that they’d regret forever? Chicken.

***

They would play three games every Saturday, this family. That’s how long they could tolerate it, the game, each other. The first game was fun and loose, the second game the girls were warmed up, absorbed by it all, prodded by Frieda to pay attention, and the third game, Frieda was tense, and a little mean. Maybe even the girls were scared to win.

Rudy didn’t care about any of that. He just liked to move things along. His wife claimed he wasn’t fun to play with, but the girls would have been desperate without him there. He didn’t care if he won or lost. Saturdays weren’t about him. They were about the family. He had his own day, when he could dress as he pleased in those garments made of silk, sashes at the waist, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of others like him, or who admired people like him. A small club on River North, a private lounge. Rich and luxurious perfume scents, musky, sexy, mingled with cigarette and cigar and hash smoke. He was an elder there, but at last no one saw him as a survivor. He was simply beautiful.

He had caught the girls playing in his trunk a few times and had let them try on some of his clothes. But don’t tell your mother—I’ll get in trouble.

Why?

It is just the way it is. We are doing nothing wrong, but still we must not discuss, OK, liebchen? Nancy twirling around, Shelly sniffing the sweet, scented material. Why couldn’t he tell her? Wouldn’t it make their lives easier? He didn’t have the answers, though.

What he did know was that he felt better and more like himself on Thursday nights. He could shut off the noise of his past that made him toss and turn every other night of the week. On Thursdays he entered his house quietly, late, showered, and then slept soundly, completely, through till the morning.

But on Saturdays he was meant to sit in the middle, between his sharp and ferocious wife and their children. Frieda complained about where they sat, but it was the best order for them to play the game. He was supposed to shield them from who she was, at least the way she was on Saturday nights, after a long week of work, tending to the sick and dying, sneaking sips of slivovitz—oh, he knew about that, and he did that, too, could you blame him? Parents, children, secrets. These rules that other people wrote for them before they were even born. Give the man a drink already.

When Rudy dies a year later, the Scrabble box will gather dust for a while, and then the three remaining Cohens will try and play it again, and it will not end well: Frieda, now entirely incapable of playing nice, taking big, blatant swipes at her daughters, Shelly grimly staring at the board, and finally, Nancy bawling, and stomping out of the room. (Why am I always the baby here, thought Nancy that night, wistful, alone, in her room, when I’m the oldest? How did it end up like this?) They needed Rudy to balance things out. But Rudy was gone.

***

It was Shelly’s turn again. Queer, a triple-word score. Frieda threw her hands in the air. You set her up, Rudy! Don’t you care at all about winning?

No, he said, and his daughters chimed in with him, a loud, laughing, united, No!

You’re the only one who cares, he said.

I care, too, said Shelly.

OK, Shelly cares, too, said Rudy. I care about having a nice time with my family.

Shelly patted the bag of Scrabble letters before she picked her next round, feeling for how many tiles were left. She glanced at her score on the pad in front of her mother. She counted what letters had been used, and what remained. She could hold all that information in her head. She looked at the faces of her family members. She knew what they had to give, how much they cared, what their stakes were in the game, what they were capable of. She did all the math. There were actual numbers and then the people were numbers in their way, too. She calculated, and then she realized she’d won. And I can do it again. She’d figured out a way to beat her mother.

Then she saw the look on her mother’s face. Was there even an ounce of pride or just pure annoyance? She looked to Rudy instead. Smiling at his smart little girl. There, now, was the love she needed.

Her mother bumped the board with her arm and the girls gasped as the tiles suddenly shifted, and the words scattered. The game was ruined. Whoops, she said. No, we can fix it, said Shelly. I think I remember all the words. And she did, she could have. She had the entire board frozen picture-perfect in her head.

But it was enough already, for everyone. I think that’s it for now, said Rudy. Bedtime for this family.

You’ve just read an excerpt from A REASON TO SEE YOU AGAIN.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You, and, most recently, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. She is the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She lives in New Orleans.

Print ISBN: 9780063039841

Print Price: $28.00

Ebook ISBN: 9780063039865

Ebook Price: $14.99

Publication Date: 09/24/2024

Susan Barker, Old Soul (Putnam)

SUMMARY

In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, miss their flight, and over dinner discover they have both brutally lost loved ones whose paths crossed with a beguiling woman no one has laid eyes on since.

Following the traces this woman left behind, Jake gathers testimonies from other troubled souls who encountered her across the years, and lands on a sculptor in Taos County, New Mexico. She knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is. Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a wildly innovative and fearlessly bold genre-defying tale that explores vulnerability, loss, and predation, spanning centuries and crossing the globe, and is ultimately a moving portrait of love and the will to live.

EXCERPT

Taos County, 1982

August 1st

I woke before dawn to an empty mattress. Wrapped myself in a bedsheet & went outside to find E. on the bench in the clearing, staring out across the drought stripped plains to the Sangre de Cristo mountains; a jagged line against the shadowy blue sky. She was naked, near luminescent in the half dark. Hearing my footsteps, she spoke without turning.

I couldn’t sleep.

The wooden bench creaked as I sat besides her. I could sense she didn’t want to be touched & chilly though it was, I suppressed the urge to wrap her up with me in the bedsheet, or reach for her face or dark waves of hair. E. still didn’t turn to me. She remained gazing at the low peaks, beneath the constellations fading in the end of night sky.

T: What are you looking at? E: I’m waiting for Venus.

T: O Venus beauty of the night. To whom a thousand temples rise…

I faltered, embarrassed. I couldn’t remember the rest.

E: The beauty’s a mask. Venus was once like Earth, but now it’s an inferno. Its oceans boiled away and the continents are just black volcanic rock and rivers of lava. The atmosphere is crushing, vaporising—sulphuric acid & carbon dioxide. Can you imagine it?

T: Not really.

Lately my imagination’s limited to the block of Oaxaca granite I’m pounding away at w/ mallet & chisel for 10 hours a day in the studio.

E: Venus spins backwards, opposite to the spin of Earth or any other planet. And it spins slowly, at the pace of a walking man. A day on Venus is longer than a year. There.

I followed the end of her pointing finger. A tiny sphere of celestial light was appearing in the dip between two low summits. Eerie. Haunted. Pale. We watched silently for a while.

E: I dream I’m there sometimes. Walking towards the sunset at the speed that Venus slowly turns, so the sun never disappears. It just continues to set, forever.

I shivered, pulled the sheet tighter around me.

T: Sounds lonely.

Venus shone at the lower edge of the dusky, purple-streaked sky.

E: No. It’s not.

Testimony 1 – Mariko

It begins at Kansai International Airport, by the gate for flight KL378 to Amsterdam. I’d sprinted there through Terminal One, after realising at security the departure time I’d thought was 19.05 was actually 17.05. Sweaty, breathless and frantic from the repeated ‘last call’ of my name over the tannoy, I reached the empty lounge and ran over to the Dutch agent at the gate desk, pleadingly holding out my passport and misread boarding pass. She told me Gate 27 had just closed.

But the plane hasn’t detached from the skybridge, a voice called out behind me.

A woman with a small wheeled suitcase was clipping towards us in low heels, her sleek black hair shimmering in the light streaming through the high Terminal One ceiling of glass and curvilinear steel. Her grey trouser suit, silk blouse and leather shoulder bag all exuded the wealth of business class.

The luggage is still being loaded on, she added.

Glancing through the glass wall at the Boeing 787, I saw she was right. The jetbridge was still connected and cargo containers were being lifted into the underbelly of plane. The portholes showed passengers shuffling up the aisle or reaching up to stow bags overhead. Tapping at her computer, the blonde chignoned agent frowned at the monitor and shook her head.

The gate’s definitely closed, she repeated, and your checked baggage has just been removed. I can book you on the next flight to Amsterdam tomorrow. Change your connecting flights too if they’re with us.

By now my heart rate and anxiety levels were returning to normal and I was resigned to the change in travel itinerary—it was my own fault for misreading the boarding pass after all. The other passenger however, small though she was, looked ready to throw some weight around. Though her demeanour was poised, her eyes flashed entitlement.

I fly business class with your airline several times a year. I have over four hundred thousand frequent flyer miles and an important meeting in Paris tomorrow. The skybridge is still attached and I see no reason why you can’t let us on.

The gate’s closed, the agent repeated evenly, her professional veneer showing no signs of cracking. The re-booking fee’s 20,000 yen, but I’ll waive it this time.

Informing us where to collect our suitcases, she scanned our passports and printed out new tickets for the following morning. Sighing, the woman accepted her ticket and cast a disdainful eye over her new itinerary. Then she left without a word, pulling her wheeled cabin bag over the vast and shining marble floors to navigate her way out of the terminal.

I took the express train one stop back to Rinku Town, checked into a budget hotel and WhatsApp called my partner to tell him what an idiot I’d been. Then I headed out towards the seafront and ended up on the white pebble beach across the water from the manmade airport island, three kilometres out in the Seto Inland Sea. The orange sun was setting in the polluted sky, turning the cirrostratus clouds pink and gilding the waves so they scintillated towards the shore. I sat on the desolate stretch of pebbles and watched the blinking trajectories of planes taking off with a weird sense of being split in two—that a more functional version of me had made the 17.05 flight and was now crammed into economy, soaring over China or Inner Mongolia at an altitude of 35,000 feet, leaving the foggier, more hapless version behind.

The tide was coming in and I inched up the beach to keep the water from my Converse. It was chilly and dusk was falling, but something about the place exerted a pull on me, keeping me watching the half-sun vanishing beneath the dark gleaming waves as my backside numbed through my jeans. The giant Ferris wheel in the nearby Rinku Park lit up a lurid green, and as the wheel and its many passenger cars turned in slow revolutions, I remembered the time me and Lena got stuck on the Big Wheel in Southend-on-Sea. We were fifty feet up when it broke down—just the two of us shivering in one of those barred cages, Lena’s long black hair whipping about in the freezing wind coming off the gull shrieking North Sea. All she had on was a denim jacket over a vintage dress, so I lent her my jumper and we swigged Lambrini, smoked roll-ups and danced about to The Cramps on my discman, listening through one earbud each, the cage creaking and groaning as we tried to stay warm. It wasn’t long before Lena was half bent over, crossing her legs because she needed to pee.

Please, Lena, I said. Can’t you hold it in?

I can’t…she laughed. I’m bursting.

She squatted on the floor of the cage, dress gathered up in her lap, knickers around her knees, sighing in relief as a stream appeared between her ballet flats. And I climbed up on the seat as the stream trickled over to me, cracking up at Lena’s panicked cry of fuck as the Big Wheel suddenly jolted and we started moving down.

That grey and drizzly day on South End Pier had been back in February ’05, and seventeen years later on the beach in Osaka, watching the last orange beams on the sea, I thought about how sad and strange it was that everything still reminded me of Lena. But perhaps it was important too. She’d been so alone in her thirty two years, I doubted anyone ever thought of Lena anymore, other than me.

Around seven or eight, I went to buy dinner in the FamilyMart in Rinku Town Station and bumped into the other late passenger who’d been refused entry at Gate 27. She’d changed out of her trouser suit into a black cashmere sweater dress and had a shiny red apple and a bottle of Evian in her basket. Our eyes met, recognition clicked, and without any greeting or remark on the coincidence of us meeting again, she said,

I emailed the airline HQ in Amsterdam about that gate attendant. If you do likewise we could have a stronger case. That attendant should be re-trained and we deserve a refund.

Under the bright convenience store lights, she looked airbrushed, of an indeterminate age between thirty five and forty five, her luminous face reminding me of the commercials for skin whitening lotions ubiquitous in Japan. An auburn tint shone in her black hair as she looked up at me, intent on recruiting me to her cause.

D’you think so? I said. I mean, we were really late. And she was only doing her job.

She wanted to avoid the paperwork, that’s all. And her laziness has caused me a lot of inconvenience. I just spent two hours re-scheduling a week of meetings.

The woman looked stressed, and I supposed being flexible and grudgeless was easy when I had nothing important to rush back to London for.

Okay. I’ll send an email too then. If you think it’ll help.

And though her expression didn’t change, I could feel her warm to me—an ally. She extended a hand.

I’m Mariko.

I was holding a bento from the chiller cabinet, which I transferred awkwardly from right hand to left before shaking hers.

Jake.

Mariko glanced at the katsu curry I was holding—sweating beneath the plastic lid of the bento container. An appalled look twisted her face.

You aren’t seriously going to eat that are you?

I laughed.

Either this or one of the corn dogs at the