We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. Find more November titles at our Great Second-Half Preview, and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments! NOVEMBER All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy: This is Roy’s latest offering after a powerful showing in Sleeping on Jupiter, which was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2015. This novel centers around Myshkin, a boy whose life is changed when his mother elopes—no, vanishes—with a German man who appears naked at a river near their house one day and insists he has come for her after first meeting her in Bali. The novel follows the anamnesis of what happened, and his ruminations on its effect on his life. Already published in Britain, the novel has been called “elegiac,” compelling, and powerful, among other things. Conceived during a time Roy spent in Bali—at a festival where I had the pleasure of meeting her in 2015—this is an affecting novel. Readers should look for a conversation between Roy and me on this site around publication date. (Chigozie) Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin: Can you remember a better short story collection in recent years than Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women? I can’t. Maybe once a week I think about that dentist, ripping his own teeth out in front of his granddaughter. Now, Berlin’s estate is back with even more stories, this time all previously uncompiled. In the case of a less talented writer, I’d be worried about publishers scraping the barrel. But with Berlin, there are surely unplucked molars. (Nick M.)  Insurrecto by Gina Apostol: A story that takes across time and place in the Philippines, from the American occupation to the Duterte era, by the winner of the PEN Open Book Award for Gun Dealer’s Daughter. Publishers Weekly calls the novel a "pyrotechnical marvel" and named it one of the best books of 2018. (And don’t miss Apostol’s astute essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Francine Prose and textual appropriation.) (Lydia)   The End of the End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen: Today Franzen is best known as a novelist—even a “Great American Novelist”—but it’s worth noting that he first appeared on many readers’ radar with his 1996 Harper’s essay “Perchance to Dream” about the difficulties of writing fiction in an age of images. Franzen’s essays, like his novels, can be a mixed bag, but he is a man perennially interested in interesting things that others overlook, such as, in this book, the global devastation of seabirds by predators and climate change. (Michael) My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: As the title makes clear, the Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite’s first novel is a dark comedy of sibling rivalry. The beautiful Ayoola leads a charmed life, and thanks to the cleanup efforts of her older sister, Korede, she suffers no repercussions from killing a string of boyfriends. Korede’s loyalty is tested, however, when a man close to her heart asks out her sister. Film producers are already getting in on the fun, as Working Title has optioned what the publisher calls a “hand grenade of a novel.” (Matt) Those Who Knew by Idra Novey: Following up her debut novel, Ways to Disappear, Novey's latest tells the story of a woman who suspects a senator's hand in the death of a young woman on an unnamed island. The great Rebecca Traister says the book "speaks with uncommon prescience to the swirl around us. Novey writes, with acuity and depth, about questions of silence, power, and complicity. The universe she has created is imagined, and all too real." (Lydia) Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard (translated by Charlotte Mandell): From the author of the brilliant, Prix Goncourt-winning Compass, a work of historical fiction that follows Michelangelo to the Ottoman Empire, where he is considering a commission from the Sultan to build a bridge across the Golden Horn. The novel promises to continue Énard’s deep, humanistic explorations of the historical and ongoing connections between Europe and Asia, Islamdom and Christendom. (Lydia) The April 3rd Incident by Yu Hua (translated by Allan H. Barr): A collection of his best early stories from a pioneer in China’s 1980 avant-garde literary movement, renowned for approaching realist subject matters through unconventional techniques. In his writings, reality is punctured and estranged, leading up to a new look at things familiar. Yu Hua is one of the best acclaimed contemporary Chinese authors. His previous works include China in Ten Words, Brothers, and the stunning To Live. (Jianan) The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem: Charles Heist lives in a trailer in the desert outside L.A. and keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer. Phoebe Siegler is a sarcastic motormouth looking for a friend’s missing daughter. Together, they explore California’s sun-blasted Inland Empire, searching for the girl among warring encampments of hippies and vagabonds living off the grid. In other words, we’re in Lethemland, where characters have implausible last names, genre tropes are turned inside out, and no detective is complete without a pet opossum. The Patch by John McPhee: McPhee’s seventh collection of essays is finely curated, as expected for an essayist who lives and breathes structure. Essays on the sporting life fill the first part; the second includes shorter, previously uncollected pieces. The collection’s titular essay is an elegiac classic, which begins with the pursuit of chain pickerel in New Hampshire but soon becomes an essay about his dying father. McPhee flawlessly moves from gravity to levity, as in his writing about the Hershey chocolate factory. Such pieces are tastes of his willingness to let the world around him just be and to marvel at mysteries of all variety: “Pools and pools and pools of chocolate—fifty-thousand-pound, ninety-thousand-pound, Olympic-length pools of chocolate—in the conching rooms...Slip a little spatula in there and see how it tastes. Waxy? Claggy? Gritty? Mild? Taste it soft. That is the way to get the flavor.” One wishes John McPhee would write about everything, his words an introduction to all of life’s flavors. (Nick R.) Useful Phrases for Immigrants by May-lee Chai: Winner of the Doris Bakwin Award selected by Tayari Jones, Chai's collection comprises eight stories detailing life in a globalized world. Edward P. Jones called Useful Phrases "a splendid gem of a story collection...Complementing the vivid characters, the reader has the gift of language―‘a wind so treacherous it had its own name,' 'summer days stretched taffy slow'....Chai's work is a grand event." (Lydia) A Stranger's Pose by Emmanuel Iduma: From Cassava Republic Press, a new Nigerian publishing powerhouse that recently opened up a U.S. office, comes a collection of travel essays describing the New York-residing, Nigerian-born Iduma's peregrinations through over twenty African cities (read an excerpt from the collection here at the site). "I want this book to occupy the space between home and disapora," Iduma narrates in a lovely trailer for the book. The collection also features a foreword by Teju Cole. (Lydia)   The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers (translated by Kit Maude): First published 50 years ago, this is Somers' (1914–1994) first work translated into English. The novella follows one woman's feminist awakening and the ways her transformation leads a rural village to ruin with violent desire. About the novel, Carmen Maria Machado wrote: “I am so grateful that a new generation will be able to read this surreal, nightmarish book about women’s struggle for autonomy—and how that struggle is (always, inevitably) met with violence.” (Carolyn) Death and Other Holidays by Marci Vogel: Winner of the inaugural Miami Book Fair/de Groot Prize for Best Novella, Vogel's debut follows April, the 27-year-old narrator, as she grieves her stepfather's death over the course of one year. In a starred review, Kirkus called it "a moving and graceful novella of overcoming sorrow." (Carolyn)   In/Half by Jasmin B. Frelih (translated by Jason Blake): First published in 2013 in Slovenian, Frelih's debut novel won the 2016 European Union Prize for Literature. Set twenty-five years in the future, the experimental, post-modern novel follows three millennials as they navigate a crumbling world and attempt to find their place in an unrecognizable world. Publisher's Weekly wrote the novel "sustains its ghostly, ethereal tone and will be appreciated by readers looking for a mind-bending puzzle." (Carolyn) Northwood by Maryse Meijer:  A genre-bending novella written in short, formally-transgressive passages. Imbued with myths, fairy tales, and horror, the book follows a young woman who flees to the woods to pursue her artwork and what happens when she falls in love with a violent, married man. Samantha Hunt writes "Meijer has made her own form, something new and wide-open, something as blissful and broken as the language of lovesickness itself.” (Carolyn)

We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. Find more October titles at our Great Second-Half Preview, and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments! OCTOBER Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen): Like many before me, I once fell into Murakami’s fictional world only to emerge six months later wondering what on earth happened. So any anticipation for his new books is tempered by caution. His new novel is about a freshly divorced painter who moves to the mountains, where he finds an eerie and powerful painting called “Killing Commendatore.” Mysteries proliferate, and you will keep reading—not because you are expecting resolution but because it’s Murakami, and you’re under his spell. (Hannah) All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung: This book—the first by the former editor of the much-missed site The Toast—is garnering high praise from lots of great people, among them Alexander Chee, who wrote, “I've been waiting for this writer, and this book—and everything else she'll write.” Born prematurely to Korean parents who had immigrated to America, the author was adopted by a white couple who raised her in rural Oregon, where she encountered bigotry her family couldn’t see. Chung grew curious about her past, which led her to seek out the truth of her origins and identity. (Thom) Heavy by Kiese Laymon: Finally! This memoir has been mentioned as “forthcoming” at the end of every Kiese Laymon interview or magazine article for a few years, and I’ve been excited about it the entire time. Laymon has written one novel and one essay collection about America and race. This memoir focuses on Laymon’s own body—in the personal sense of how he treats it and lives in it, and in the larger sense of the heavy burden of a black body in America. (Janet) Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger by Rebecca Traister: What it says in the title, by one of the foremost contemporary chroniclers of the role(s) of women in American society. It feels as though the timing of this release could not be better (that is to say, worse). Read an interview with Traister here. (Lydia)     Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver: The beloved novelist’s latest tells the story of Willa Knox, whose middle-class life has crumbled: The magazine she built her career around has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has shut down. All she has is a very old house in need of serious repair. Out of desperation, she begins looking into her house’s history, hoping that she might be able to get some funding from the historical society. Through her research, she finds a kindred spirit in Thatcher Greenwood, who occupied the premises in 1871 and was an advocate of the work of Charles Darwin. Though they are separated by more than a century, Knox and Greenwood both know what it’s like to live through cultural upheaval. (Hannah) Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: In his debut short story collection, that garnered him the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" honor, Adjei-Brenyah writes about the injustice black people face every day in America. Tackling issues like criminal justice, consumerism, and racism, these timely stories are searching for humanity in a brutal world. The collection is both heartbreaking and hopeful, and George Saunders called it “an excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny.” (Carolyn) Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan: This debut collection of short fiction is the most recent collaboration between Coffee House Press and Emily Books. The 11 short stories argue that relationships between two people often contain a third presence, whether that means another person or a past or future self. Tan’s sensibility has been compared to that of Joy Williams, David Lynch, and Carmen Maria Machado. (Hannah)   Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III: Whether in his fiction (House of Sand and Fog) or his nonfiction (Townie), Dubus tells blistering stories about broken lives. In his new novel, Daniel Ahern “hasn’t seen his daughter in forty years, and there is so much to tell her, but why would she listen?” Susan, his daughter, has good reason to hate Daniel—his horrific act of violence ruined their family and poisoned her life. Dubus has the preternatural power to make every storyline feel mythic, and Gone So Long rides an inevitable charge of guilt, fear, and stubborn hope. “Even after we’re gone, what we’ve left behind lives on in some way,” Dubus writes—including who we’ve left behind. (Nick R.) Little by Edward Carey: Set in a Revolutionary Paris, a tiny, strange-looking girl named Marie is born—and then orphaned. Carey blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and art and reality, in his fictionalized tale of the little girl who grew up to become Madame Tussaud. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes the novel's "sumptuous turns of phrase, fashions a fantastical world that churns with vitality." (Carolyn)   White Dancing Elephants by Chaya Bhuvaneswar: Drawing comparisons to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, and Sandra Cisneros, Bhuvaneswar’s debut collection pulls together stories of diverse women of color as they face violence, whether it be sexual, racial, or self-inflicted. The Buddha also makes an appearance, as do Hindu myths, incurable diseases, and an android. No wonder Jeff VanderMeer calls White Dancing Elephants “often provocative” as well as bold, honest, and fresh. (Kaulie) Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips: You know meritocratic capitalism is a lie because everyone who wrote during Holly Anderson’s tenure as editor of MTV News is not presently wealthy beyond imagination, but that’s beside the point. Better yet, let’s pour one out for Grantland. Better still, let’s focus on one truth. Brian Phillips’s essays are out of this world: big-hearted, exhaustive, unrelentingly curious, and goddamned fun. It’s about time he graced us with this collection. (Nick M.) Scribe by Alyson Hagy: In a world devastated by a civil war and fevers, an unnamed protagonist uses her gift of writing to protect herself and her family's old Appalachian farmhouse. When Hendricks, a mysterious man with a dark past, asks for a letter, the pair set off an unforeseen chain of events. Steeped in folklore and the supernatural, Kirkus's starred review called it "a deft novel about the consequences and resilience of storytelling." (Carolyn) The Witch Elm by Tana French: For six novels now, French has taken readers inside the squabbling, backstabbing world of the (fictional) Dublin Murder Squad, with each successive book following a different detective working frantically to close a case. Now, in a twist, French has—temporarily, we hope—set aside the Murder Squad for a stand-alone book that follows the victim of a crime, a tall, handsome, faintly clueless public relations man named Toby who is nearly beaten to death when he surprises two burglars in his home. Early reviews online attest that French’s trademark immersive prose and incisive understanding of human psychology remain intact, but readers do seem to miss the Murder Squad. (Michael) Hungry Ghost Theater by Sarah Stone: Siblings Robert and Julia Zamarin want to reveal the dangers of the world with their small political theater company while their neuroscientist sister Eva attempts to find the biological roots of empathy. While contending with fraught family dynamics, the novel touches on themes like art, free will, addiction, desire, and loss. Joan Silber writes she "found this an unforgettable book, astute, vivid, and stubbornly ambitious in its scope." (Carolyn)   Love is Blind by William Boyd: In Boyd's 15th novel, Brodie Moncur—a piano tuner with perfect pitch—flees his oppressive family in Scotland and travels across Europe. In the shadow of a (seemingly) doomed affair, the novel ruminates on the devastating power of passion, secrets, and deception. (Carolyn)   Famous Adopted People by Alice Stephens: Stephens' debut novel follows Lisa, a 27-year-old adoptee, as she travels to South Korea to find her birth mother. Equally tense, tragic, and comedic, Publishers Weekly describes the novel as a "fun-house depiction of the absurdities and horrors of the surveillance state."  (Carolyn)   Girls Write Now by Girls Write Now: Containing more than one hundred essays from young women in the Girls Write Now program, a writing and mentorship program in New York City. The anthology contains stories rife with angst, uncertainty, grief, hope, honesty, and joy, and advice on writing and life from powerhouses like Roxane Gay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Zadie Smith. Kirkus calls the anthology  "an inspiring example of honest writing."  (Carolyn)   A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande: A former undocumented Mexican immigrant, Grande's memoir explores to her journey from poverty to successful author—and the first of her family to graduate from college. Candid and heartfelt in exploring the difficulties of immigration and assimilation, Publishers Weekly's starred review called the book  an "uplifting story of fortitude and resilience." (Carolyn)   Well-Read Black Girl ed. Glory Edim: Glory Edim founded Well-Read Black Girl, a Brooklyn-based book club and an online space that highlights black literature and sisterhood, and last year she produced the inaugural Well-Read Black Girl Festival. Most recently, Edim curated the Well-Read Black Girl anthology, and contributors include Morgan Jerkins, Tayari Jones, Lynn Nottage, Gabourey Sidibe, Rebecca Walker, Jesmyn Ward, Jacqueline Woodson, and Barbara Smith. The collection of essays celebrates the power of representation, visibility, and storytelling. (Zoë) What If This Were Enough? by Heather Havrilesky: Havrilesky's, the acclaimed memoirist and columnist for The Cut's "Ask Polly" advice column, newest collection addresses our culture's obsession with self-improvement. Publishers Weekly's starred review writes "it’s a message she relates with insight, wit, and terrific prose." Tackling subjects like materialism, romance, and social media, she asks readers—who are constantly inundated with messages about productivity and betterment—to ask less of themselves, to realize that they (and their lives) are enough. (Carolyn)   [millions_ad]