19 new books coming in September

“Apples Never Fall”, by Liane Moriarty (Holt, September 14)

This new thriller, from the author of “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers”, follows the Delaney’s, a family led by two aging tennis stars. Stan and Joy have sold their famous tennis academy and hope to relax – until Joy suddenly disappears. As the family grapple with who could have harmed him – one of Stan’s former charges? a mysterious woman who takes refuge with the Delaney? – their secrets and their tensions overflow.

[ Read our review. ]

“Beautiful Country” by Qian Julie Wang (Doubleday, September 7)

In 1994, the author fled China to New York as a young child, where her undocumented family endured hardship and heartache. As Wang puts it, “The Chinese colloquially call being undocumented ‘hei’: being in the dark, fainting. And rightly so, because we have spent these years in darkness while struggling with hope and dignity. Wang, now a civil rights lawyer, focuses on her early years in this country, focusing on the difficulty of adjusting to her new life, but also reveling in the refuge offered to her by Clifford the big red dog and Amelia. Bedelia.

[ Read our review. ]

Rooney is back with another bookish epistolary novel – this time following two intelligent young adults navigating their personal lives amidst the backdrop of environmental and social upheaval. Alice unexpectedly gained worldwide fame as a novelist and settled on the Irish coast after a nervous breakdown, while Eileen works as an assistant in a literary magazine in Dublin. Their long, scholarly emails switch from cultural and philosophical engagements to chatty questions about romantic partners. An email succinctly captures the vibe of the novel: “I agree that it seems vulgar, decadent, even epistemically violent, to invest energy in the banalities of sex and friendship when human civilization is confronted. to collapse. But at the same time, it’s what I do every day.

[ Read our review. | Read our profile of Rooney. ]

“Perplexity”, by Richard Powers (Norton, September 21)

This new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Overstory” explores the connection between Theo, an astrobiologist, and his 9-year-old son Robin. Theo searches for beings beyond Earth, Robin is passionate about the plight of endangered animals, and both mourn the death of Robin’s mother. As Robin struggles to cope, Theo turns to experimental approaches to dampen his son’s emotional outbursts.

[ Read our review. | Read our profile of Powers. ]

Ellis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,” is frank about the limitations of his latest book: “No less an authority that George Washington observed in the end than any historian who has managed to write one. accurate account the war of independence would be accused of writing fiction. Here, the author offers a close look at key years in the country’s history, with a special focus on the unsung heroes who played outsized roles in the independence movement.

[ Read our review. ]

Nobel Prize winner and playwright Soyinka returns with his first novel in nearly 50 years, set in imaginary Nigeria. Dr Menka, a surgeon, is horrified to learn that body parts from his hospital are being sold for use in rituals, and when he tells his old friend about it, neither is ready to find out the truth behind what is happening. There is a lot of political and social commentary in this satire, which resonates with warnings about how the accumulation of power can go wrong.

Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land” (Scribner, September 28)

Doerr was acclaimed for his novel “All the Light We Can’t See”, about a blind girl and a German boy during World War II. His new book follows several characters, all connected by a Greek myth, through three different timelines – to Constantinople in the 15th century, in present-day Idaho, and into the not-so-distant future.

[ Read our profile of Doerr. ]

Over the centuries, humans have had conflicts with various members of the animal kingdom: they have filed complaints against caterpillars and greenish weevils, issued deportation orders to rats, accused a pig of murder. Roach, always intrepid, goes all the way in his study of animals whose behaviors disrupt human life: “I tested the taste of rat bait,” she writes. “I was attacked by a macaque.”

[ Read our review. ]

“Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, September 14)

In Whitehead’s first book since winning two Pulitzer Prizes, it’s Harlem in the 1960s, and Ray Carney, who has a wife, child, and baby on the way, made a good life for him. and his family by selling furniture. But when he finds himself embroiled in a burglary gone wrong – spectacularly wrong – he struggles between the two opposing sides of himself: the (mostly) honest businessman and the eager man. move on and provide for the needs of loved ones. Because for all of his plans, “Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being twisted.”

[ Read our review. | Read our profile of Whitehead. ]

“Inseparable”, by Simone de Beauvoir (Ecco, September 7)

This never-before-published novel builds on Beauvoir’s real friendship with Élisabeth Lacoin, known as Zaza, who died at age 21. Beauvoir’s longtime romantic partner Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the manuscript after reading it, and Beauvoir put it aside, but his daughter and executor is releasing the book to the delight of fans and academics.

[ Read our review. ]

“Palmares”, by Gayl Jones (Beacon Press, September 14)

This novel – Jones’ first in over 20 years – is set in 17th-century Brazil, where Almeyda, a slave girl, hears about Palmares – a community of people who have escaped bondage. When Toni Morrison first encountered Jones’ work in the 1970s, she said: “No novel about a black woman could be the same after this.”

[ Read our review. ]

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Wood distills 50 years of research in this book on “the most creative period of constitutionalism in American history and one of the most creative in modern Western history.” Because the Americans of the day lacked “a semblance of common ancestry,” Wood writes, the principles set forth in America’s founding documents are a critical unifying factor.

[ Read our review. ]

Humans have mapped genomes, developed life-saving therapies, divided atoms, mapped the universe – so why are conspiracy theories and other irrational beliefs still so ubiquitous? Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, worries about the power of widespread disinformation, and simply explains his project: “How do we make sense of meaning – and its opposite?”

As chairman of the New America Foundation, a Google-funded think tank, Slaughter faced backlash in 2017 after firing an academic who criticized Google. People inside and outside the institution said this decision compromised the intellectual freedom of New America. Here, Slaughter builds on the lessons she learned during this professional crisis and attempts to connect them to broader social change. As she writes: “Individual experience can inform us on the path to collective renewal. We often forget that personal transformation can inform and inspire social change.

[ Read our review. ]

This new collection of essays tackles pornography, power, desire and more, drawing on the earlier feminist tradition and connecting issues of freedom to class, race and disability. As Srinivasan, an Oxford professor, puts it, these selections are about “the politics and ethics of sex in this world, driven by the hope of a different world.”

[ Read our review. ]

Kennedy, a professor of law at Harvard, takes everything from Frederick Douglass to the legacy of George Floyd in this collection of new and already published essays.

[ Read our review. ]

Writing about financial catastrophes and historical upheavals is Tooze’s calling card: his previous books have picked up everything from the crash of 2008 to the economic strategies of the Nazis. In this deep dive into 2020, Tooze uses the pandemic as a lens through which to examine the economic, health and climate ramifications, with a clear warning of our preparedness for the next crisis.

[ Read our review. ]

This novel, a window into the European refugee crisis, follows Mina, a Lebanese American doctor who travels to the Greek island of Lesvos to help with the resettlement of refugees. Nothing prepared her for the scale of the disaster, and she quickly becomes close to Sumaiya, a Syrian who has done her best to hide her serious illness from her family.

[ Read our profile of Alameddine. | Read our review. ]

Union’s previous book, “We’re Going to Need More Wine,” covered everything from sexual assault to discrimination in the entertainment industry. Here, she reflects on motherhood, revisits her “Bring It On” character, Isis, and offers a close-up view of a glitzy evening at Chateau Marmont.

[ Read our review. ]