Margaret Atwood, Bryan Washington, Salman Rushdie, and more: 25 new books out today!

It’s the first Tuesday of a new fall month, meaning the sheer number of books coming out is reaching a fever pitch. It’s harder than ever to choose which titles to highlight in such a season, but below you will find a smattering of the best and brightest books to emerge from the week’s releases.

There’s Salman Rushdie’s first work of fiction since his stabbing. There’s a long awaited memoir “of sorts” by Margaret Atwood. Patti Smith wrote a new reflection on her life, a follow up to her other wildly popular memoirs, ten years in the making. There’s new fiction by Bryan Washington, Cynthia Zarin, Sarah Helm, and Anika Jade Levy. There’s something for everyone, as much as we could imagine, more than we deserve. Enjoy!

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Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
(Doubleday)

“Engaging, wise, and marvelously witty—illuminating both the craft of writing and the art of living.”
–Kirkus

Bryan Washington, Palaver
(FSG)

“With deep understanding of human relationships, Palaver is a rare novel that offers companionship to solitary readers and lonely souls.”
–Yiyun Li

Salman Rushdie, The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories
(Random House)

“A marvelous story collection focused on themes of legacy and death … Grounded in moving ruminations on the afterlife and what a person leaves behind, these stories sing.”
–Publishers Weekly

Patti Smith, Bread of Angels: A Memoir
(Random House)

“The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years when the first glimmers of art and romance take hold.”
–From the publisher

Sarah Hall, Helm
(Mariner)

“A monumental literary tribute to the interconnection, as old as time, of weather and humanity … Variously playful, irreverent, and lyrical.”
–Kirkus

Tim Wu, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity
(Knopf)

“A must-read. This is a book for anyone—from senator to student—who seeks to understand our digital economy and why we need common sense rules of the road.”
–Amy Kobluchar

Oyinkan Braithwaite, Cursed Daughters
(Doubleday)

“A triumph: bold, searing, and utterly original. From the first page, it grips with an electric pulse. Funny and fearless, soaked in secrets, spirit, heartbreak, and love, it’s told in a voice as scalding as it is tender.”
–Abi Daré

Gerald Howard, The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature
(Penguin Press)

“Howard has performed a service to the republic of letters, restoring Cowley to his rightful eminence as a critic, editor, personal essayist, talent spotter, and redeemer of lost reputations.”
–James Wolcott

Harriet Lane, Other People’s Fun
(Little Brown)

“Biting yet entertaining … It is also a contemporary fable about the role social media plays in the lives of people in a look-at-me world.”
–Library Journal

Richard Bell, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
(Riverhead)

“Riveting profiles provide a clear-eyed accounting of a formative conflict for the modern world.”
–Publishers Weekly

Lea Ypi, Indignity: A Life Reimagined
(FSG)

“A beguiling, elegant book whose surprise ending, just one of its many real-life twists and turns, befits a mystery.”
–Kirkus

Cynthia Zarin, Estate
(FSG)

“A dense, dizzying exploration of desire and the mystery of the self.”
–Kirkus

Colin Woodard, Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America
(Viking)

“An in-depth, nuanced look at the regional differences that influence values and belief systems within large geographical swaths of the U.S.”
–Booklist

Anika Jade Levy, Flat Earth
(Catapult)

“The prose in this book makes other books feel like dull knives … I read this book in a night, breathless and enraptured—wanting to save everyone in it, and wanting to watch them burn forever.”
–Leslie Jamison

Aja Gabel, Lightbreakers
(Riverhead)

“Exists in a category all its own: a novel about grief, ambition, and love that is somehow both gripping and deeply felt, as breath-taking as it is mind-bending.”
–Rachel Khong

Elizabeth Kolbert, Life on a Little Known Planet: Dispatches From a Changing World
(Crown)

“Despair and hope dance together [in these] thought-provoking speculations about a world on the edge of violent change.”
–Kirkus

Gráinne O’Hare, Thirst Trap
(Crown)

“Compulsively readable and brilliant on friendship and grief.”
–Daily Mail

Robert M. Dowling, Coyote: The Dramatic Lives of Sam Shepard
(Scribner)

“Scrupulously researched and elegantly written…required reading for anyone in the theater.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Erin O. White, Like Family
(Dial Press)

“So warm, joyful, smart, and nuanced … I absolutely love this novel and can’t wait to share it with everyone I know.”
–Curtis Sittenfeld

Jonathan C. Slaght, Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China
(FSG)

“This feast of a book is as rare a creature as the animals, people, and wild places it brings to life: it’s an epic and breathless adventure, stuffed with campfire stories, laughs, brushes with death, and the deep history of a place so rich and strange it seems conjured from ancient myths.”
–Jonathan Meiburg

Karina Pacheco Medrano, The Year of the Wind
(Graywolf)

“A powerful meditation on the irrevocable toll of political violence.”
–Publishers Weekly

Alan Light, Don’t Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours
(Atria)

“Informative [and] a lot of fun. Enjoyable writing and real insight power this fascinating look at a band who went their own way.”
–Kirkus

MaKshya Tolbert, Shade is a Place
(Penguin Books)

“Consciously extends the American tradition of documentary poetics, plaited here with a Black feminist, ecopoetic vision distinctly Tolbert’s own … This is simply an extraordinary book.”
–Maggie Milner

Sir Anthony Hopkins, We Did Okay, Kid: A Memoir
(Summit Books)

“Significant honesty and thoughtful reminiscence, resulting in a rich, satisfying read.”
–Booklist

Benjamin Wood, Seascraper
(Scribner)

“One of the most moving and most perfect novels I’ve ever read. A deep, soul-yearning love song for the forgotten and the lost. I am in awe of it.”
–Paul Yoon