Booksellers Buzz About Fall Titles

With summer on the wane and holiday titles on order, excitement around this fall’s fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books is building. PW talked with booksellers about what they’ll be handselling and displaying in the coming months.

Fiction for the TBR pile

Rick Simonson, a senior buyer at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle, looks forward to Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red (HarperCollins, Oct.) and what he calls a “less heralded” pick, Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky (Knopf, Aug.), set in ancient Mesopotamia, 1840 London, and 2014 Turkey, with a connecting theme of water.

For a “unique, spiritualist spin on historical fiction,” bookseller Mary O’Malley of Skylark Books in Columbia, Mo., will stock up on Caroline Woods’s The Mesmerist (Doubleday, Sept.). Linda Kass, owner of Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio, recommends The Wildes by Louis Bayard (Algonquin, Sept.), a reimagining of “Oscar Wilde’s family and their secrets, losses, and loves.”

Several works in translation could break out this autumn. Simonson points to Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Knopf, Nov.), translated by Philip Gabriel, and Gramercy booksellers can’t resist the “talking cats, coffee, and astrology” combo in The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Ballantine, Aug.). Gary Lovely, manager of Two Dollar Radio in Columbus, Ohio, praises “Damion Searl’s fantastic translation” of Swiss novelist Ariane Koch’s debut, Overstaying (Dorothy Project, Sept.).

Janet Webster Jones, owner of Source Booksellers in Detroit, Mich., and David Landry, co-owner of Class Bookstore in Houston, stump for Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Riverhead, Sept.), about a novelist whose principles are tested by Hollywood interest in her biracial TV script. “It’s funny and relatable,” Jones says. “A dark comedy addressing the collision of identity, hopes, and afflictions.”

Readers of edgy humor also can turn to Tony Tulathimutte’s novel in stories, Rejection (Morrow, Sept.). Tulathimutte’s 2016 Private Citizens was commonly described as “the best millennial novel,” says Kalani Kapahua, general manager at Third Place Books Ravenna in Seattle, and he expects Rejection to attract similar attention.

Speculative work earns bookseller acclaim as well. O’Malley of Skylark touts Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins (Sourcebooks Landmark, Oct.), a story of an AI mother grieving a human daughter, told entirely through obituaries. DJ Johnson, owner of Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, is eager for Jedediah Berry’s The Naming Song (Tor, Sept.), a literary fantasy about how language shapes society.

And big names are set to drop new murder mysteries, cozy and otherwise. Gramercy owner Kass awaits The Waiting, a Ballard and Bosch book by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, Oct.); Louise Penny’s 19th Chief Inspector Gamache book, The Grey Wolf (Minotaur, Oct.); and Thursday Murder Club author Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders (Viking/Dorman, Sept.). Carolyn Hutton, a bookseller at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley, Calif., picks Laura Dave’s The Night We Lost Him (S&S/Rucci, Sept.), whose “twists kept me riveted,” and bets on a dark horse, Christina Lynch’s Pony Confidential (Berkley, Nov.), whose four-legged equine narrator must clear his former owner of a murder charge: “It’s charming, tender, and so clever.”

Must-reads in nonfiction

With headline-grabbing titles like Bob Woodward’s War (Simon & Schuster, Oct.), announced a scant two months ahead of its pub date, and buzz about the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Patriot: A Memoir (Knopf, Oct.), booksellers foresee nonfiction flying off shelves.

Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Lovely One (Random House, Sept.) promises to top the charts, notes Jones of Source Booksellers. Simonson of Elliott Bay believes Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Message (One World, Oct.) will appeal to readers invested in social justice; Robin Wall Kimmerer’s slim The Serviceberry (Scribner, Nov.), illustrated by John Burgoyne, will woo the Braiding Sweetgrass multitudes; and author-editor Dionne Brand’s Salvage (FSG, Oct.) could build a strong following. Pamela Klinger-Horn, events coordinator at the Valley Bookseller in Stillwater, Minn., says Abbott Kahler’s Eden Undone (Crown, Sept.) “is a real-life adventure that reads like a thriller,” à la David Grann.

Gramercy’s team recommends Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz (Scribner, Nov.), about literary lions Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, and Cher: The Memoir, Part 1 (HarperCollins, Nov.), by the septuagenarian national treasure. “Seriously, who doesn’t love Cher and secretly want to be her?” asks buyer Debra Boggs. The store also salutes Louisiana anticensorship advocate Amanda Jones’s That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America (Bloomsbury, Aug.).

Booksellers named quirky favorites too. Kelly Justice, owner of Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Va., is “overjoyed” by Manboobs by Komail Aijazuddin (Abrams, out now): “This memoir by a gay Pakistani man is fierce, funny, and flawless.” Third Place’s Kapahua bookmarks comedian Youngmi Mayer’s I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying (Little, Brown, Nov.), saying Mayer breaks down Asian American stereotypes and tackles “heavy subjects like growing up biracial, single parenthood, and relationships with immigrant parents, but with her signature humor,” earning comparisons to Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart.

On the children’s shelves
Booksellers predict board books from Tiger Tales—Adventure Babies by Rosamund Lloyd (Aug.), illustrated by Chris Dickason, and Hank Goes Honk by Maudie Powell-Tuck (Sept.), illustrated by Duncan Beedie—and picture books by household-name authors Rosemary Wells (The Little Chefs; Hippo Park, Oct.) and William Joyce (Rocket Puppies; Atheneum/Dlouhy, Nov.) will be popular in the months ahead.

At Ink Spell Books in Half Moon Bay, Calif., owner Cindi Whittemore says young readers “are in a frenzy” waiting for Mac Barnett and illustrator Shawn Harris’s First Cat in Space and the Wrath of the Paperclip (HarperAlley, Nov.). Laura Gahrahmat, owner of Hicklebee’s in San Jose, Calif., recommends two titles based on true stories: Alice Hoffman’s Anne Frank novel When We Flew Away (Scholastic, Sept.) and Ann Clare LeZotte’s Deer Run Home (Scholastic, Oct.), a novel in verse about the Deaf community.

At Baldwin & Co., Johnson cheers the “inspirational” Black Star by Kwame Alexander (Little, Brown, Sept.) as an “uplifting novel about a Black girl in the Jim Crow South who’s determined to become the first female pitcher in pro baseball.” For historical fiction with BIPOC heroes, readers might also pick up Amber McBride’s Onyx and Beyond (Feiwel & Friends, Oct.), about a Black boy aspiring to be an astronaut in the 1960s civil rights era, says Stephanie Ledyard, children’s book buyer at Interabang in Dallas.
Ledyard sees an abundance of inventive middle grade fiction. She “couldn’t let go of” Mishka by Edward van de Vendel and Anoush Elman (Levine Querido, Nov.), illustrated by Annet Schaap and translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, about an Afghan immigrant family, their new home in the Netherlands, and their pet, a tiny rabbit. Other Interabang orders include Jasmine Warga’s art heist novel, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall (HarperCollins, Sept.); Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin’s code-breaker tale, The Bletchley Riddle (Viking, Oct.); and Tracey Baptiste’s Boy 2.0 (Algonquin, Oct.), which Ledyard says combines “fantasy, adventure, themes of social justice—it’s super accessible, with a great plot.”

In YA, Ledyard says, Ransom Riggs will roll out the Sunderworld fantasy series (Dutton). And lest booksellers neglect true love, Candace Rivera, owner of the Book & Nook in Warwick, N.Y., took one look at Alexis Castellanos’s Guava and Grudges (Bloomsbury, Sept.) and blurted to the author, “You had me at guava!” Rivera finds the tale of “two teens from rival Cuban bakeries” irresistible. “Forbidden romance plus delicious Cuban pastries equals a must-read.”

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