Publishing is starting to wind down for the year. November means fewer releases overall, but there are still plenty of quality to sink your teeth into.
Contemporary & Literary Fiction
The Happy Couple
Naoise Dolan
An intimate, sharply funny novel about a couple heading toward their wedding, and the three friends who may draw them apart. In her wry, sprightly, and unmistakable voice, Naoise Dolan makes the marriage plot entirely her own in a sparkling ensemble novel that is both ferociously clever and supremely enjoyable.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Ecco
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Same Bed Different Dreams
Ed Park
A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media. From the acclaimed author of Personal Days, Same Bed Different Dreams is a raucously funny feat of imagination and a thrilling meld of history and fiction that pulls readers into another dimension—one in which utopia is possible.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Random House
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A Nearby Country Called Love
Salar Abdoh
A sweeping, propulsive novel about the families we are born into and the families we make for ourselves, in which a man struggles to find his place in an Iran on the brink of combusting. Vibrant and evocative, intimate and intelligent, A Nearby Country Called Love is both a captivating window into contemporary Iran and a portrait of the parallel fates of a man and his country—a man who acknowledges the sullen and rumbling baggage of history but then chooses to step past its violent inheritance.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Viking
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Search History
Amy Taylor
Perceptive and original, full of both pathos and humor, Search History explores the contradictions and uncertainties of twenty-first-century romance. Ana’s journey down the internet rabbit hole of modern dating asks the question: Which is our “true” self—the one we show to the world online, or the one we keep to ourselves?
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: The Dial Press
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The Vulnerables
Sigrid Nunez
The New York Times–bestselling, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through brings her singular voice to a story about modern life and connection. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Riverhead Books
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Again and Again
Jonathan Evison
Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it. Who is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago?
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Dutton
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A Grandmother Begins the Story
Michelle Porter
Award-winning author Michelle Porter makes her fiction debut with an enchanting and original story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them. This extraordinary novel, told by a chorus of vividly realized, funny, wise, confused, struggling characters—including descendants of the bison that once freely roamed the land—heralds the arrival of a stunning new voice in literary fiction.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Day
Michael Cunningham
A “quietly stunning” (Ocean Vuong) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life—and how we all must learn to live together and apart—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours.
Publication date: November 14
Publisher: Random House
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The New Naturals
Gabriel Bump
From the Ernest J. Gaines Award-winning author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong, a touching, timely novel—called a “tour de force” and “wry and astonishing”—about an attempt to found an underground utopia and the interwoven stories of those drawn to it. From one of the most exciting new literary voices out there, The New Naturals is fresh and deeply perceptive, capturing the absurdity of life in the 21st century, for readers of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House. In this remarkable feat of imagination, Bump shows us that, ultimately, it is our love for and connection to each other that will save us.
Publication date: November 14
Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Alice Sadie Celine
Sarah Blakely-Cartwright
A hypnotic, sexy, and incisive debut adult novel following one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend that tests the limits of love and ambition from #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Riding Hood. When Sadie cannot attend her best friend Alice’s play, she send her mother, Celine, in her stead only for her to become entranced with Alice. Set over the course of decades—from Alice and Sadie’s early friendship days and Celine’s decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood—Alice and Celine’s affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.
Publication date: November 28
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Historical Fiction
The Porcelain Maker
Sarah Freethy
An epic story of love, betrayal, and art that spans decades, through the horrors of World War II to 21st century America, inspired by an actual porcelain factory in Dachau.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
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The Liberators
E.J. Koh
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Tin House
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Good Taste
Caroline Scott
With delectable prose, a sharp heroine ahead of her time, and an adventure across the English countryside in search of great food, Good Taste is the perfect historical novel for fans of Dear Mrs. Bird and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Full of wit, life, and—against all odds—delicious food, Good Taste is a story of discovery and one woman’s desire to make her own way as a modern woman.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: William Morrow
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Above the Salt
Katherine Vaz
An irresistible and sweeping love story that follows two Portuguese refugees who flee religious violence and reignite their budding romance in Civil-War America. In poignant and lyrical prose, Katherine Vaz’s Above the Salt is a captivating and beautiful tribute to the power of true love and the sacrifices we make to harness it.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Flatiron Books
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The Madstone
Elizabeth Crook
With echoes of Lonesome Dove and News of the World, the riveting story of a pregnant young mother, her child, and the frontier tradesman who helps them flee vengeful outlaws, even as an unlikely love blossoms, in “a brilliant, beautiful page-turner”.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen
Sarah James
Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars to get her movie made. But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes any one of the Canteen’s luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime. To catch the killer, Annie falls in with Fiona’s friends that call themselves the Ambassador’s Club.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
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Romance
Courting Samira
Amal Awad
Set in Sydney, Australia, Courting Samira is a charming, big-hearted rom-com about a twenty-seven-year-old Palestinian woman who finds herself in an unexpected love triangle—a sparkling ode to meddling best friends, traditional courtship, The Princess Bride, and, of course, the possibility of love.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: HarperVia
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The Good Part
Sophie Cousens
Lucy Young is twenty-six and tired. Tired of fetching coffees for senior TV producers, sick of going on disastrous dates, and done with living in a damp flat with roommates who never buy toilet paper. After another disappointing date, Lucy stumbles upon a wishing machine. Pushing a coin into the slot, Lucy closes her eyes and wishes with all her might: Please, let me skip to the good part of my life. When she wakes the next morning to a handsome man, a ring on her finger, a high-powered job, and two storybook-perfect children, Lucy can’t believe this is real. Has she really skipped ahead like she’s always wanted, or has she simply forgotten a huge chunk of her life?
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
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Do Your Worst
Rosie Danan
Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she’s pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival—until he tries to get her fired. Sparks fly when an occult expert and a disgraced archeologist become enemies-with-benefits in this steamy romance from “go-to author” Rosie Danan.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Berkley
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Next-Door Nemesis
Alexa Martin
Two rival candidates for a homeowner’s association presidency are about to find out how dirty suburbanites fight in this steamy new romantic comedy from Alexa Martin. From secret board meetings to vicious smear campaigns whispered over backyard fences, Collins and Nate sink to levels their sleepy suburb has never seen before. But as hate turns into lust, these two enemies are forced to reckon with the feelings they’ve ignored for years. If only there were bylaws for real life.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Berkley
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Never Met A Duke Like You
Amalie Howard
Clueless meets Bridgerton in this spicy opposites-attract Regency romance. Lady Vesper Lyndhurst is beautiful, clever, and popular. Afforded every luxury as a duke’s daughter, she fills her days with friends, intrigues, and a self-professed knack for matchmaking. She may have sworn off love for herself, but she is rather excellent at arranging it. Faced with an insolvent estate, the Duke of Greydon has no choice but to return to England in a final attempt to revive his family’s fortunes. To his dismay, not much has changed, including the beautiful and vexing heiress next door. But when an accident of fate traps the friends-turned-enemies in an attic together, the explosive attraction between them becomes impossible to ignore and even harder to resist.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Forever
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Plot Twist
Erin La Rosa
Romance author Sophie Lyon’s ironic secret just went viral: she’s never been in love—and it’s ruining her reputation. With a manuscript deadline looming, Sophie makes an ambitious plan to overcome her writer’s block: reunite with her exes (including her last girlfriend Carla, the one person she could have loved) to learn why she’s never fallen in love, and document it all for her millions of new online followers. Luckily, Sophie’s reclusive landlord, Dash Montrose—a former teen heartthrob—has social media all figured out and is willing to help.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Canary Street Press
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Four Weddings and a Puppy
Lizzie Shane
When two childhood friends return home after their sports careers don’t go as planned, a puppy just may give them a second chance at happiness together. Brody and Kendall are both lost somewhere between their past and a future they can’t yet see. But four weddings, one mischievous puppy, and a few steamy kisses later, these two might just realize that they are both exactly where they need to be…with each other.
Publication Date: November 21
Publisher: Forever
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Thrillers, Mysteries, & Horror
The Beautiful and the Wild
Peggy Townsend
It’s summer in Alaska and the light surrounding the shipping-container-turned-storage shed where Liv Russo is being held prisoner is fuzzy and gray. Around her is thick forest and jagged mountains. In front of her, across a clearing, is a low-slung cabin with a single window that spills a wash of yellow light onto bare ground. Illuminated in that light is the father of her child, a man she once loved. A man who is now her jailor. Liv vows to do anything to escape.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Berkley
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Keep Your Friends Close
Lucinda Berry
From the bestselling author of The Best of Friends comes a fast-paced thriller about how one woman’s murder unravels the tangled web of lies and deceit connecting a group of Hollywood elite. When Kiersten McCann, president of the West Hollywood Moms’ Club, turns up dead in her own pool, it quickly becomes clear this wasn’t an accident. And the party guests―all members of the exclusive club―are now key suspects in her murder.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
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Hot Springs Drive
Lindsay Hunter
Hot Springs Drive is a dark, heart-pounding exploration of one woman’s deepest desires, and how the consequences of betrayal can ripple outward beyond the initial strike point. Jackie Stinson’s best friend is dead, and everyone knows who killed her. Acclaimed literary voice Lindsay Hunter deftly peels back the fragile veneer of two suburban families and the secrets roiling between them.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Roxane Gay Books
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The Manor House
Gilly Macmillan
Childhood sweethearts Nicole and Tom are a normal, loving couple—until a massive lottery win changes their lives overnight. Soon they’ve moved into a custom-built state-of-the-art Glass Barn on the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in Gloucestershire. They have fancy cars, expensive hobbies, and an exclusive lifestyle they never could have imagined. But this dream world quickly turns into a nightmare when Tom is found dead in the swimming pool. Was Tom’s death a tragic accident, or was it something worse?
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: William Morrow
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The Helsinki Affair
Anna Pitoniak
Spying is the family business. Amanda Cole is a brilliant young CIA officer following in the footsteps of her father, who was a spy during the Cold War. It takes grit to succeed in this male-dominated world—but one hot summer day, when a Russian defector walks into her post, Amanda is given the ultimate chance to prove herself. The defector warns of the imminent assassination of a US senator. Though Amanda takes the warning seriously, her superiors don’t. Twenty-four hours later, the senator is dead. And the assassination is just the beginning.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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The Professor
Lauren Nossett
For fans of Tana French, The Professor investigates the darkest corners of academic life: ambition, lies, and obsession. On a spring afternoon in Athens, Georgia, Ethan Haddock is discovered in his apartment, dead, apparently by his own hand. His fatality immediately garners media attention: not because his death reflects the troubling increase of depression and mental health issues among college students, but because the media has caught the whiff of a scandal.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Flatiron Books
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The Other Half
Charlotte Vassell
Rupert’s 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald’s—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.
Publication Date: November 21
Publisher: Anchor
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There Should Have Been Eight
Nalini Singh
In this chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh, a remote estate in New Zealand’s Southern Alps hosts a reunion no one will ever forget. Seven friends. One last weekend. A mansion half in ruins. No room for lies. Someone is going to confess. Because there should have been eight. . . .
Publication Date: November 21
Publisher: Berkley
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The Mystery Guest (Maid #2)
Nita Prose
A new mess. A new mystery. It’s up to Molly the maid to uncover the truth, no matter how dirty, in this standalone novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid. Molly Gray is not like anyone else. With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid. But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J. D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tearoom floor.
Publication Date: November 28
Publisher: Ballantine
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Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Magical Realism
The Future
Naomi Alderman
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Power delivers a dazzling tour de force where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it. By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at a breakneck speed, highlighting how power corrupts the few who have it and what it means to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Bookshops & Bonedust
Travis Baldree
When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn’t always what we seek. Set in the world of New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and secondhand books.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Tor
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Iron Flame (The Empyrean #2)
Rebecca Yarros
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College―Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Red Tower
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The Princess of Thornwood Drive
Khalia Moreau
Two sisters are trapped on opposite sides of reality in this entrancing and deeply moving debut novel that weaves together a contemporary narrative with a parallel fantasy world.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Forever
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Calamity
Constance Fay
Winter’s Orbit meets Ilona Andrews in this sexy enemies-to-lovers romance. The captain of a ragtag mercenary ship is given an offer she can’t refuse by the ruthless head of an intergalactic noble family. The only catch? She’ll have to team up with his son–an upsettingly competent hardbody with his own agenda–to get her reward. She’s got a ramshackle spaceship, a misfit crew, and a big problem with its sexy newest member…
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Tor/Bramble
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Good Girls Don’t Die
Christina Henry
A sharp-edged, supremely twisty thriller about three women who find themselves trapped inside stories they know aren’t their own, from the author of Alice and Near the Bone. Three women. Three stories. Only one way out. This captivating novel will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Berkley
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The Kingdom of Sweets
Erika Johansen
Light and dark—this is the cursed birthright placed upon Clara and Natasha by their godfather, Drosselmeyer, whose power and greed hold an entire city in his sway. Charming Clara, the favorite, grows into a life of beauty and ease, while Natasha is relegated to her sister’s shadow, ignored and unloved. But Natasha seizes the opportunity for revenge one Christmas Eve, when Drosselmeyer arrives at the family gala with the Nutcracker, an enchanted gift that offers entry into an alternate world: the Kingdom of Sweets. This gloriously transportive reimagining of The Nutcracker tells the tale of twin sisters, divided by envy and magic, set against each another one fateful Christmas Eve.
Publication Date: November 28
Publisher: Dutton
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Young Adult
Check & Mate
Ali Hazelwood
In this clever and swoonworthy YA debut from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis, life’s moving pieces bring rival chess players together in a match for the heart.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons for Young Readers
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Something About Her
Clementine Taylor
A heartfelt and delicately crafted debut novel about two young women who become entangled in one another and embark on a surprising journey of self-discovery and modern love. Moving between Ireland, Scotland, and London, Something About Her is a story about the fragility and transformative power of first love. With vivid insight and tenderness, it exposes the fear, hope, and longing that can consume us, particularly when there’s so much you still don’t know about love, about life, and about yourself.
Publication date: November 7
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
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Godly Heathens
H.E. Edgmon
Godly Heathens is the first book in H.E. Edgmon’s YA contemporary fantasy duology The Ouroboros, in which a teen, Gem, finds out they’re a reincarnated god from another world.
Publication Date: November 28
Publisher: Wednesday Books
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Betting on You
Lynn Painter
From the New York Times bestselling author of Better Than the Movies, this swoon-worthy rom-com in the vein of She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You follows a teen girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center of a bet while working at a waterpark.
Publication Date: November 28
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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No One Left But You
Tash McAdam
A trans teen is swept up in a whirlwind friendship with lethal consequences in this taut YA thriller, for fans of Sadie, Andrew Joseph White, and HBO’s Euphoria.
Publication Date: November 28
Publisher: Soho Teen
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Nonfiction
Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change
Ben Austen
From the critically acclaimed author of High-Risers comes a groundbreaking and honest investigation into the crisis of the American criminal justice system–through the lens of parole. Ben Austen’s powerful exploration offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of parole. Told through the portraits of two men imprisoned for murder, and the parole board that holds their freedom in the balance, Austen’s unflinching storytelling forces us to reckon with some of the most profound questions underlying the country’s values around crime and punishment. What must someone who commits a terrible act do to get a second chance? What does incarceration seek to accomplish? Perfect for fans of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Flatiron Books
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Call You When I Land
Nikki Vargas
A soul-stirring memoir from Colombian immigrant and travel journalist Nikki Vargas, whisking us through the countries that brought her new love, self-discovery, and the inspiration to launch the first international feminist travel magazine, Unearth Women. Told in transporting detail and candid reflections, Call You When I Land takes the familiar story of a woman going abroad to find herself and turns it on its head, as the act of traveling becomes, for Nikki, an exhilarating career path – and ultimately a tool to champion women’s voices across the world.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
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Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, & Higher Education
Stephanie Land
From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner—a gripping memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid. Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers
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Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl
Mary Mahoney & Allison Horrocks
Combining history, travelogue, and memoir, Dolls of Our Lives follows Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney on an unforgettable journey to the past as they delve into the origins of this iconic brand. Continuing the conversations that began on their podcast, they set out to answer the lingering questions that keep them up at night. What did American Girl inventor Pleasant Rowland hope to say to children with these dolls? Was girl power something that could be ordered from a catalogue, described by a magazine, or modeled in the plot lines of books? And how – and why – did this brand shape an entire generation?
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
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Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World
Joe Roman
A fascinating of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe. From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world—and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
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A Death in Malta: An Assassination & a Family’s Quest for Justice
Paul Caruana Galizia
Daphne Caruana Galizia fashioned herself into Malta’s lonely voice of conscience, her muckraking and editorializing sending shock waves that threatened to topple those in power and made her at once the island’s best-known figure and its most reviled. In 2017, a campaign of intimidation against her culminated in a car bombing that took her life. Daphne was also he devoted and inspiring mother to three sons, who with their father have carried on the quest for justice and transparency after her death. Spellbindingly narrated by the youngest of them, the award-winning journalist Paul Caruana Galizia, A Death in Malta is at once a study in heroism and the powerful story of a family’s crusade for accountability in a society built on lies, with reverberations far beyond their homeland.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Riverhead
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To Free the Captives: A Please for the American Soul
Tracy K. Smith
In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the “din of human division and strife.” With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking—personal, documentary, and spiritual—to understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another. This stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history explores how we in America might—together—come to a new view of our shared past.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Knopf
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In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning
Grace Elizabeth Hale
In this courageous and compelling book, an award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America. A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, In the Pines casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences
Jedidiah Jenkins
When his mother, Barbara, turns seventy, Jedidiah Jenkins is reminded of a sobering truth: Our parents won’t live forever. For years, he and Barbara have talked about taking a trip together, just the two of them. They land on an idea: to retrace the thousands of miles Barbara trekked with Jedidiah’s father, travel writer Peter Jenkins, as part of the Walk Across America book trilogy that became a sensation in the 1970s. Along the way, he peels back the layers of questions millions are asking today: How do we stay in relationship when it hurts? When do boundaries turn into separation? When do we stand up for ourselves, and when do we let it go? Tender, smart, and profound, Mother, Nature is a story of a remarkable mother-son bond and a moving meditation on the complexities of love.
Publication Date: November 7
Publisher: Convergent Books
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Eyeliner: A Cultural History
Zahra Hankir’
From the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic. Seen through Zahra Hankir’s (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations—with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more—Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of color. What emerges is an unexpectedly moving portrait of a tool that, in various corners of the globe, can signal religious devotion, attract potential partners, ward off evil forces, shield eyes from the sun, transform faces into fantasies, and communicate volumes without saying a word.
Publication Date: November 14
Publisher: Penguin Books
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