34 Books You Need to Read This Fall

The weather has become untrustworthy, for determining the seasons and otherwise. As I write this introduction, the leaves remain stubbornly green, and outside my window there is torrential rain. But at the farmer’s market this past weekend, I walked down a crowded row and saw watermelons on my left and the first pumpkins on my right.

So I can say with some confidence that fall is coming. Of course I knew that already, because fall is famously publishing’s biggest season, and it is also, anecdotally, the season in which I field the most recommendation requests from my friends and neighbors. Maybe it has to do with the back-to-school muscle memory—buy new books in September for 20-odd years and you’ll want to do it forever—or maybe it’s just the subtle shift in emotional energy, our attention turning from the immediacy of summer to a more speculative view toward the end of the year.

Either way, there are plenty of good books being published this season. Here is just a selection of those that the Lit Hub staff have read and loved so far, and would like to recommend to you. We should get this out of the way: the Hype.

The award nominations and the breathless reviews are coming in hot with this one; so too the contrarian backlash. And yes, Marlon James’ epic was perhaps destined from premise to be so discussed. It’s a heavily anticipated doorstop from the man who brought us A Brief History of Seven Killings.

It’s a maximalist, polyphonic unabashedly gay historical epic on national themes. It’s a consuming, vivid reading experience that will drag you through the rank heart of humanity, both hard to believe and describe. This is so annoying, friends?

But I am here to tell you: it’s all true. This novel begins with a group of queer men in 1980s Kingston who have gathered to rehearse a play. It’s not a spoiler to say that horrific violence befalls them.