Ten of the Best Fall 2016 Novels

Early Fall is a great time for those of us who love quality fiction because this is when publishers, with an eye on the holiday season and best of year lists, release many of their strongest titles.

Here are ten of the most anticipated. You'll find more of this season's best books in our recently published/coming soon section. Enjoy!

A Great Reckoning: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny

Aug 30, 2016. 400 pages. Published by Minotaur Books

Bestselling author Louise Penny just seems to get better and better with each book. A Great Reckoning is the twelth volume in her much loved Inspector Armand Gamache series, which are perennial favorites on BookBrowse's best of year lists. It has already earned starred reviews from all four of the major pre-publication review magazines, and a 5-star review from BookBrowse (which will publish next week). If you're new to the series, you're likely best starting earlier on (see Penny's bio on BookBrowse for series order and links to all books.) For the rest of us, it's time to hit the book shelves!
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Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

Sep 6, 2016. 592 pages. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux

While some authors pop out a new book every year, a new book from Jonathan Safran Foer is an event. Safran Foer's bibliography consists of just three novels in the past fifteen years. Now within waving distance of his 40th birthday, Safran puts aside much of the narrative and typographical experimentation that charmed many (and irritated others) in Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, to deliver a mature story about a fractured family. The novel is set over four weeks in present-day Washington, D.C. and ask, among other questions, how we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult?
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Mischling by Affinity Konar

Hardcover Sep 6, 2016. 352 pages. Published by Lee Boudreaux Books

Mischling begins when twelve-year-old twins Pearl and Stasha Zamborski arrive at Auschwitz in a cattle car with their mother and grandfather and are immediately plucked out to join Dr. Josef Mengele's "human zoo." After liberation, the girls are separated and must find their own paths back to each other and to rebuild their lives, in the process overcoming their traumas, with rage or with kindness, vengeance or forgiveness. Inspired by the lives of Eva and Miriam Mozes, Mischling is a captivating story of survival in the worst circumstances. Konar's first novel, The Illustrated Version of Things, was published by an indie press some years back. This, her second novel, is being published by Lee Boudreaux who in two years running her eponymous imprint as part of Hachette Books has yet to pick a dud. Expect to be hearing much more about Affinity Konar this season and in future years!
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Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Sep 13, 2016. 336 pages. Published by Harper

Ann Patchett, beloved author, bookstore owner (she co-owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee) and advocate for independent bookstores returns with her first novel in five years (following State of Wonder). Balancing humor and heartbreak she tells the story of how the dissolution of two marriages impacts the lives of four parents and six children over a five-decade span - and how the ties of love bind us together.
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Jerusalem by Alan Moore

Sep 13, 2016. 1280 pages. Published by Liveright / WW Norton

Alan Moore is best known for his graphic novels, indeed some consider him the best graphic novel writer of all time for his works including Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Jerusalem is only his second non-graphic novel (following Voice of the Fire, 1996) and at well over 1000 pages it's not for the faint of heart. Set in a half square mile of Moore's hometown of Northampton, UK, the book jacket describes Jerusalem "an opulent mythology for those without a pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth, poverty, and our threadbare millennium." Fans will be flocking.
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Nutshell: A Novel by Ian McEwan

Sep 13, 2016. 208 pages. Published by Nan A. Talese

A story ripped from the pages of Hamlet told from the point of view of a foetus doesn't sound like a winner, but this latest from the author of Atonement and The Children Act has reviewers' hearts beating fast with The Guardian describing it as "an elegiac masterpiece", and the associate publisher of Jonathan Cape (McEwan's UK publisher) saying: "This is an amazing book. You first gasp with astonishment, then laugh with delight."
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The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Sep 20, 2016. 304 pages. Published by Little Brown & Company

Many know Emma Donoghue for her runaway bestseller, Room (2010) but before that she had written half a dozen novels, some historical including hard-hitting works such as Slammerkin. The Wonder takes us to a small Irish village in the middle of the 19th century where Lib, a journalist and nurse, has been sent to observe the purported miracle of a girl who has survived without food for months, and instead finds herself fighting for the girl's life. Informed by Donoghue's usual prodigious research, the novel draws on a number of reported cases of "fasting girls" from the Victorian era.
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Cruel Beautiful World: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt

Oct 4, 2016. 352 pages. Published by Algonquin Books

Backdropped by the Vietnam War and the Manson Murders, this is a tale of youthful naiveté and malignant power. BookBrowse members who've been reading Cruel Beautiful World for First Impressions love, love, love this book rating it an average 4.8 out of 5. Veteran novelist Leavitt has been writing since the 1980s but really came into focus in the last fifteen years. Expect her to reach "overnight sensation" status with Cruel Beautiful World.
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Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

Oct 4, 2016. 272 pages. Published by Little Brown & Company

The author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, returns to Seattle for another hilarious and heart-felt novel. This time the topic is a single day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future. If you loved Bernadette then there's a good chance you'll agree with the reviewer for Kirkus who opines that Semple is on her way to becoming a national treasure.
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Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Nov 15, 2016. 416 pages. Published by Penguin Press

Zadie Smith knocked the ball out of the court with her award-winning debut novel White Teeth, and has kept critical and reader attention ever since. Like White Teeth and NW, Swing Time is set in North London, but also in West Africa and follows the dreams of two girls, both who dream of being dancers. It is a story about friendship and music, and how our roots shape us and how we survive them.
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