This season, we’ve got all your Language Arts favorites: women on the verge, gays behaving badly, girls walking around New York City, fundamentalist religious communities, searing family memoirs, unbearable cultural tastemakers, and so much more.
Read on for the 25 books we’re excited about this fall.
Bottle Episodes by Michael Colbert - Bottlecap Press, September 2
Last night was a bottle episode…and Michael Colbert’s features gay panic, catfishing, totally consuming short-term love affairs, Girls references…need we say more?
Discontent by Beatriz Serrano, translated by Mara Faye Lethem - Vintage, September 2
The second novel from a rising Spanish literary star is a wry look at corporate life today, featuring the most terrifying premise of all: A woman forced to attend a corporate retreat.
Trip by Amie Barrodale - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2
In one of the most deliciously cuckoo novel plots in, well, forever , a mother who unexpectedly dies must trek through the afterlife to help her son who — wait for it! — is literally lost at sea. Get ready for Buddhism, mystics, annoying academics, and going to soul-to-soul.
Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno - Scribner, September 2
So, there’s this downtown dinner party from hell…Zoe Dubno’s debut novel unfolds over the course of a pretentious, art world-adjacent dinner in a loft on the Bowery filled with frenemies from her past. A blistering encapsulation of everything that’s hollow and mangled among the ostensible cultural tastemakers.
Palaver by Bryan Washington - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 4
Mommy issues know no borders in Bryan Washington’s Palaver. From Jamaica to Houston to Tokyo, Washington explores all the prickly thorns of when a family truly, finally, decides to go on the mend.
Hot Wax by M.L. Rio - Simon & Schuster, September 9
Rocking out, being the only witness to a murder, and trying to repress it through the stupor of suburbia and a gentle husband…that was Suzanne’s life until the death of her father. Now that her skeletons are fully out of the closet, she decides to fuck off and get free. But will her husband let her embrace this newfound embodiment?
Calls May Be Recorded by Katharina Volckmer - Two Dollar Radio, September 16.
Watercooler relationships are skewered in this witty workplace satire about a gaggle of freaks working in a London call center.
BREAKING AWAKE: A Reporter’s Search for a New Life, and a New World, Through Drugs by P.E. Moskowitz - Atria Books, September 9
Mental health, the drugs we take to cope, and the healing journey we all hope we’re doing right. P.E. Moskowitz’s questioning look at this quotidian new world might be the medicine we’ve needed all along.
The Waterbearers by Sasha Bonét - Knopf, September 16
Breaking generational curses is not for the weak! In her memoir The Waterbearers, Sasha Bonét takes up the task for her daughter with hopes of forging a new path for motherhood without abandoning the painful road that brought her there.
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy - Mariner Books, September 16
Angela Flournoy’s latest novel is an intimate, life-affirming, and sometimes soul-crushing exploration of a group of five Black women navigating the proverbial wilderness of modern adulthood and their decades-spanning friendship.
What a Time to Be Alive by Jade Chang - Ecco, September 30
The fickle nature of going viral, fame, and shifting public opinion has come for Lola. Grieving the loss of her best friend, she accidentally becomes a self-help guru overnight – but can she help others find their truth when hers remains a mystery to herself?
Perverts by Kay Gabriel - Nightboat, September 30
Kay Gabriel collected the dreams of friends and strangers to weave an epic poem about desires subconscious and realized amidst anti-trans panic. Bursting with liberation, and love, it is an urgent and truly satisfying read.
The Eternal Forest: A Memoir of the Cuban Diaspora by Elena Sheppard - St. Martins Press, September 30
This gripping family memoir set amidst and in the aftermath of Cuban Revolution and its diaspora blends cultural myth, historical texts, and personal narrative in an effort to understand the nature of inheritance, and what it means to excavate, resurrect, and mourn a world lost.
The Living god by Sam Heaps - SARKA, October 1
Some of our favorite authors Ben Fama and Kimberly King Parsons have praised this riveting and truly original debut novel, which, over 24 hours, tells the story of the young lover of an aging prophetess and the father of a toddler messiah, as they struggle together in exile after a catastrophe in their Montana religious community.
Cat by Rebecca van Laer - Bloomsbury, October 2
It’s never just about the cat. Inspired by Maggie Smith’s Argonauts, this autotheory is about a cohabitating couple deciding whether to have kids or remain "cat people” amidst various personal and global crises.
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide edited by Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro - Verso, October 7
A harrowing collection of testimonials, photography, reporting, and more from those on the ground in the Zionist entity’s ongoing genocide on the Gazan people. It’s genuinely chilling to write out “ongoing genocide.” How the fuck is this still happening? Buy this book. That being said: Free Palestine.
Near Flesh by Katherine Dunn - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 7
There’s something about Katherine Dunn that captures the strange, unrecognized romance of the Pacific Northwest. The characters in her posthumous short story collection are women in less than ideal situations: stuck with a shed of violent roosters, or at the bottoms of wells, longing for companionship (even automated). Each is surreal and totally addicting.
Herculine by Grace Byron - Saga Press, October 7
In Grace Byron’s batshit brilliant debut, a jobless, aspiring Hot Freelance Girl writer escapes New York City for the Indiana woods to join an all-trans girl commune—only to discover that demons are haunting the girls, and she might be the next victim.
Workhorse by Caroline Palmer - Flatiron, October 14
In a banner year for Conde Nast revelations, this novel by former Vogue editor traces the still-glossy days of 2000s magazines and a career filled with stiletto high highs and humiliating lows.
Happy Bad by Delaney Nolan - Astra House, October 14
The last thing an underfunded treatment center packed with angry teenage girls on varying levels of medication is a heat wave-induced blackout. Throw in more climate catastrophe, mounting withdrawal symptoms, and political rage coming to a boil, and you have a tense, touching, and sly novel for our collective near-future.
Crawl By Max Delsohn - Graywolf Press, October 21
Max Delsohn’s wry debut story collection delves into the pleasure and pain of transmasc life in 2010s Seattle. (Siri, play Death Cab).
Female Loneliness Epidemic by Danielle Chelosky - Far West Press, October 21
Twenty-one short stories from the dizzyingly brilliant mind of Danielle Chelosky, about everything from SoundCloud rapper boyfriends and AA rendezvous to toxic e-boys and porn-addicted paramours.
Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy - Catapult, November 4
Anika is one of our favorite writers and we can’t recommend her brilliant debut enough. Following grad student Avery and her wealth BFF Francis, Flat Earth is a sharp, very now novel about being young and hungry (physically, spiritually, etc.) in downtown New York City.
Give Me Danger by Tea Hačić-Vlahović - CLASH, November 4
The new splintering, truly sexy novel from celebrated cult favorite writer Tea Hacic-Vlahovic is decadent and damning of New York, LA, and the clout-obsessed cultural class that inhabits both.
Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare - Crown, November 4
A group of three roomies have been hitting the Belfast bars for the better part of their 20s talking about jobs, boyfriends, and everything except the empty room of their fourth housemate who died. As the fault lines in the group grow deeper, they must decide if their friendships are coming along with them as they barrel into their 30s.
Girls Play Dead: Acts of Self-Preservation by Jen Percy - Doubleday, November 11
In a post-Girl Boss world, Jen Percy is interested in reckoning with the myths of self-empowerment. The result is groundbreaking, fearless reporting and cultural criticism about women’s complex and sometimes taboo responses to sexual violence.
Lucky Girl by Allie Tagle-Dokus - Tin House, November 11
Dance Moms, but make it a novel about ambition, infamy, and the cage that is fame. When 12-year-old Lucy is cast on a new dance reality show, its popstar judge becomes obsessed with her. As she skyrockets to fame, must eventually free herself from the golden cage she’s created and decide where home truly is.
Wow so many stars! ✨✨✨
Reading and LOVING The Discontent!