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September 8, 2026

The New York Times

	By Joumana Khatib

Dear readers,

Summer may get all the glory as the best time to read, but really, the best literary season is fall, and it’s not even close.

Publishers tend to save many of their biggest offerings for autumn — serious nonfiction, major works of fiction — and this year is no different.

Here are 35 novels and 29 works of nonfiction to watch for this fall. You’ll see new work by Min Jin Lee, Ayad Akhtar and Barbara Kingsolver along with memoirs by Francis Fukuyama and Sylvester Stallone, an investigation of Sean Combs and a new medical family saga by the journalist Robert Kolker. And in case you missed it, we devoted last week’s Book Review podcast to discussing several of these titles.

Happy browsing! I’ll see you on Friday.

WHAT TO READ THIS FALL

The New York Times 35 Novels Coming This Fall New fiction from Marlon James, Barbara Kingsolver, John Green, John Grisham and much more.

The New York Times 29 Nonfiction Books Coming This Fall Memoirs, biographies, true crime, history and more.

The Book Review Fall Books Preview From horror to history to literary fiction, our editors on the titles that deserve a look. 49 MIN LISTEN

RECENT BOOK REVIEWS

Fiction In ‘Switzy,’ a Final Flight Allows a Reckoning With Life on the Ground In an impressive change of pace, Emma Cline’s new novel gets inside the head of a stoic businessman with dementia. By Alexandra Jacobs

Nonfiction The Dog Isn’t the Only One Rescued in This Memoir In “Living With Freddie,” Anna Heyward recalls the pet who taught her “to be human.” By John Williams

Nonfiction He Gave Millions to Jeffrey Epstein. What Did He Get in Return? In “Money to Burn,” William D. Cohan charts the rise and fall of the Wall Street billionaire Leon Black. By Jonathan Mahler

Fiction Meet the Pirate Queen History Has Forgotten In a new novel, the author Ariel Lawhon revives a 16th-century sea captain previously pushed to the margins. By S. Kirk Walsh

Nonfiction Why the War on Terror Is Still Haunting Us In “All the Presidents’ Wars,” the journalist Peter Bergen traces the many missteps of U.S. military action in the Middle East. By Scott Anderson

Fiction A Slim, Astonishing Novel of a Man Haunted by His Dead Boyfriends In “The Living Realm,” an expat in Germany is visited by phantoms. By Christopher Bollen

Nonfiction Piercing the Delusions of a ‘Humane’ Plantation In “Tower Hill,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar Alan Taylor pulls apart the twisted logic of a Virginia slave owner and his descendants. By Richard Kreitner

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