Baumgartner, by Paul Auster
In Auster’s new novel, an aging philosophy professor struggles to move on after the accidental death of his wife nearly a decade earlier. The book shuttles between present and past, between a solitary life of writing and a passionate, decades-long relationship that continues to haunt him.
Grove, Nov. 7
Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, by Stephanie Land
In her second memoir, Land describes the challenges of trying to get a college degree as a single mother living below the poverty line. As in her debut book, the blockbuster “Maid,” Land is not just exploring her own story, but also the larger implications of what it means to fall between the cracks of American capitalism.
One Signal, Nov. 7
A Death in Malta: An Assassination and a Family’s Quest for Justice, by Paul Caruana Galizia
The investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a tireless critic of her government’s rampant corruption, was murdered in 2017. Now her son, also a journalist, takes up her cause, exposing the sins of Malta’s insular power structures while celebrating his mother’s life.
Riverhead, Nov. 7
The Future, by Naomi Alderman
This new novel by the author of “The Power” is set in a near-future apocalypse in which only the wealthiest members of society — tech oligarchs who control everything from weapons to the weather — have the means to assure their own safety. But corporate power comes into conflict with social media survivalists who attempt to save the world from destruction.
Simon & Schuster, Nov. 7
How to Build a Boat, by Elaine Feeney
This tender novel, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, follows a boy as he works to build a perpetual motion machine, which to him is not just an engineering project, but a way to get closer to the mother he never knew.
Biblioasis, Nov. 7
My Name Is Barbra, by Barbra Streisand
“I’m the greatest star!” the 21-year-old actress defiantly sang in Broadway’s 1964 hit “Funny Girl.” Nearly six decades later, Streisand chronicles how she delivered on that promise, a rocket ride from Brooklyn to Malibu that features Elliott Gould, Don Johnson and Bill Clinton, among many others, in supporting roles.
Viking, Nov. 7
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789, by Robert Darnton
This captivating history of the decades leading up to the French Revolution offers a populist account of a fervent political moment. Darnton goes beyond what everyday people thought and said to immerse readers in what agitated Parisians read, wore, ate and sang on the way to toppling the monarchy of Louis XVI.
Norton, Nov. 7
Same Bed Different Dreams, by Ed Park
In this new novel, a long awaited follow-up to “Personal Days,” Park examines Korean history, pop culture and digital obsession through the eyes of a writer working at a tech juggernaut.
Random House, Nov. 7
The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez
An author spends the pandemic lockdown in a Manhattan apartment with a college student and a parrot named Eureka in this genre-bending novel. How will the world — and their lives, including the parrot’s — change during this time out of time?
Riverhead, Nov. 7
What’s Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire With a Knife and Fork, by Witold Szablowski. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Szablowski recounts Russia’s political history through its food, recipes included, noting that he completed his research before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was interrogated only once by Russian special services: “It never occurred to any of Putin’s state agencies that it’s possible to show the mechanism of power — Putin’s and his predecessors’ — through the kitchen.”
Penguin, Nov. 7
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire, by Tim Schwab
Schwab, a longtime critic of the tech billionaire, presents a searing indictment of the Gates Foundation as a labyrinthine operation that wields disproportionate political power and influence under the guise of philanthropy.
Metropolitan Books, Nov. 14
Day, by Michael Cunningham
This novel, Cunningham’s first in nearly a decade, explores the knotty dilemmas of a single Brooklyn family — marriage problems, evictions, middle-age yearning and more — by looking at the same day across three years: April 5, 2019; April 5, 2020; and April 5, 2021.
Random House, Nov. 14
Eyeliner: A Cultural History, by Zahra Hankir
Cosmetic, tool of rebellion, status signifier: Eyeliner has been all these and more. Moving through millenniums and across civilizations, Hankir gives the makeup its eye-opening due.
Penguin, Nov. 14
Flight of the WASP: The Rise, Fall, and Future of America’s Original Ruling Class, by Michael Gross
Their names adorn some of the nation’s most august institutions — the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Morgan Library and the Peabody Institute — and their values have profoundly shaped American history. But what role do white Protestant elite families play in the country today?
Atlantic Monthly Press, Nov. 14
The New Naturals, by Gabriel Bump
In this new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society. Their subterranean commune is meant to be an alternative to the violent and conflict-ridden country around it, but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.
Algonquin, Nov. 14
Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, by Omid Scobie
Scobie, a British journalist focused on the royal family, wrote the tell-all “Finding Freedom,” about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s married life. Now, he turns his sights on the royal family in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death — and its path forward.
Dey Street, Nov. 28
