There's something for every kind of reader in the fall 2024 slate of new book releases. A deluge of spell-bounding and exhilarating reads are incoming this season, and they're all waiting to join your shelves before the year ends.
Sad you had to put your beach reads away? Look no further than Nora Nguyen's Adam and Evie's Matchmaking Tour, a cross-continental romance that's the perfect way to transition your Goodreads reviews from the summer to autumn months. Looking to get into the mood for spooky season? Then you might try Rivers Solomon's Model Home, a modern and incisive spin on tropes commonly found in the supernatural genre.
Maybe you're titillated by sweeping world-building? I'd direct you to Sabaa Tahir's Heir, an action-packed fantasy hinged on the journeys of three young people shaping the fate of an empire. And if you're looking for your next big celebrity memoir, then we got you covered with highly-anticipated titles from the likes of Cher, Ina Garten, Jenny Slate, and the late Lisa Marie Presley.
Ahead, Bazaar's ultimate, curated list of the best fall 2024 books to add to your to-be-read pile.
Sally Rooney's latest offering continues to bolster her longstanding reputation as a writer adept at crafting incisive tales on heartbreak, relationships, and desire. Intermezzo follows two Irish brothers—Dublin-based lawyer Peter and chess aficionado Ivan—as they go through the motions of grief in the wake of their father's death. In the process, they each come face to face with different romantic relationships that throw their delicate connections with each other and the world at large into stark relief. Fans of Rooney's previous novels, like the critically acclaimed Normal People and Conversations with Friends, will undoubtedly find new material to obsess over in Intermezzo.
Who says you have to shelve your beach reads just because the leaves are starting to change colors? Nora Nguyen's latest romantic offering follows Evie Lang, a recently unemployed and newly-single poet who inherits a house from her beloved aunt, and Adam Quyền, the chief marketing officer of a prestigious matchmaking business in Vietnam. When Evie's late aunt stipulates that she must go on a matchmaking tour in their family's home country in order to secure the deed to her San Francisco row house, Evie ends up sparking an unexpected connection with the grumpy Adam.
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First published back in 2022, Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk's eerie World War I-era novel has been recently translated for English readers by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The Empusium explores the strange world of Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort located in Poland's Silesian mountains. When Mieczysław Wojnicz, a young patient suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at the resort in September 1913, he soon discovers that a sinister force has shrouded the Guesthouse. Tokarczuk masterfully maps out a new kind of horror story, one that weaves together elements of folklore and feminist allegory.
Childhood-friends-turned-journalists Rebecca Little and Colleen Long spark an urgent discussion on post-Roe America by sharing their perspectives as two women who went through late-term pregnancy loss. By chronicling their personal experiences and distilling a mountain of reported research, Little and Long reveal the insidious connection between America's legal and political machinery and the stigmatized shame that keeps pregnant women isolated from each other and themselves.
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In this intergenerational family saga, bestselling author Jami Attenberg casts a spell-bounding tale on the bonds that tie bloodlines together—for better or for worse. The death of family patriarch Rudy serves as the catalyst of estrangement for the Cohen women: mom Frieda retreats into a booze bubble in Miami, older sister Nancy marries an obnoxious man at an alarmingly young age, and younger sister Shelly dives headfirst into California's moneyed tech industry. As Nancy's daughter, Jess, grows older, she ends up becoming the anchor that brings all these starkly disparate women back together again.
Get ready for the Barefoot Contessa to bare all. In her highly-anticipated memoir, the acclaimed cookbook writer and Food Network darling details the winding, decades-spanning journey that made her into the cultural sensation we know and love today.
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The latest novel from Native American writer and National Book Award author Louise Erdrich follows the lives of Crystal Frenchette and Kismet Poe, a mother-daughter duo trying to find their way forward in a small town in North Dakota. While firecracker Kismet attempts to stave off teen marriage offers fr0m school quarterback Gary Geist and home-schooled introvert Hugo, their community deals with the consequences of the 2008 economic recession and the ongoing climate crisis. Overall, The Mighty Red is a sweeping, tender-hearted epic about ordinary people who have no option but to forge ahead in the face of tragedy.
If you need a good old fashioned gothic horror story to sustain you through the Halloween season, then look no further than The Bog Wife. Pegged as an Appalachian folktale, Kay Chronister's sophomore novel follows the the Haddesley family and their generational convenant with the cranberry bog that they and their ancestors have long tended to. In exchange for the ritualistic sacrificing of the Haddesley patriarch, the bog produces a woman whose sole purpose is to continue their bloodline. But, when the so-called “bog-wife” refuses to appear, the family's five discordant siblings must instead look to each other in order to plow a way ahead.
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In Ann Liang's debut historical novel, the critically acclaimed young adult novelist introduces her take on the legend of Xishi, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Renowned for her beauty, a young woman named Xishi is expected to make a great marriage match and earn a ranking that will support her family—until famed military advisor Fanli arrives in her village. In Xishi, Fanli finds an opportunity to strike against a rival neighboring kingdom, and he convinces her to infiltrate enemy territory by seducing their king. But, their secret operation gets complicated when Xishi and Fanli inevitably end up falling for each other.
Since they entered adulthood, siblings Ezri, Emmanuelle, and Eve have steered clear of the upper middle class gated community in Texas where they grew up as one of the few Black families on the block. 677 Acacia Drive was emblematic of their parents’ desire for social mobility—even if the house they purchased was home to a series of eerie, inexplicable, and downright scary incidents. Now, after erratic texts and a halt in their parents’ communications, the Maxwell siblings must venture home to discover what has really been haunting their family all along. Author Rivers Solomon turns horror tropes on their head, using the genre's most well-known motifs to explore ideas of race and class. Suffice to say, this isn't your average haunted house.
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In a series of three sweeping essays that take readers through Senegal, South Carolina, Palestine, and Israel, acclaimed social writer Ta-Nehisi Coates examines the myths that animate and guide us—often at the expense of the truth. The Message marks Coates’ first non-fiction book in nearly a decade, and it arrives at a critical flashpoint in our increasingly globalized society.
National Book Award-winning author Sabaa Tahir returns with another exhilarating fantasy that will leave you breathless and desperate for more. Heir follows a trio of rich characters whose journeys overlap with each other's: Aiz, an orphan set on a mission of vengeance; Sirsha, a talented tracker who was hired to hunt down a killer across the Empire; and Quil, the Empire's crown prince grappling with questions of inheritance and power.
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Playwright Cherry Lou Sy's debut novel is a tender-hearted coming-of-age story centered around Queenie, a young Filipina woman who recently immigrated to the U.S. to reunite with her mother, a nurse working in Brooklyn. As Queenie settles into her newfound American life, she feels a chasm grow between her current and past self, constantly juggling between identities, cultures, family expectations, and her dreams.
Lisa Marie Presley set out to tell her life story in the form of a memoir in 2022, and she called on her daughter, the actress Riley Keough, to help her complete it. But, Lisa Marie's unexpected death in 2023 set the book off-course—and inspired the bereaved Riley to finish what her mom started. From Here to the Great Unknown includes an intimate portrait of Lisa Marie's childhood as the daughter of Elvis Presley, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at her famed relationships with Danny Keough and Michael Jackson. Ultimately, the memoir is an extradorinary homage to the enduring love between parent and child, whether that means between the King of Rock and Roll and his only child or between Lisa Marie herself and her daughter Riley.
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The author of best-selling mystery novel The Girl on the Train returns with another spell-binding thriller. The Blue Hour follows art historian James Becker as he sets out to uncover secrets that may undermine the work of his latest exhibition. When a sculpture by the deceased and famed artist Vanessa Chapman is discovered to contain an actual human bone, James ventures out to Eris—an isolated island separated from the Scottish mainland by 12 hours, where Vanessa lived by herself for many years.
Comedian and actor Jenny Slate blurs genres with this collection of essays that chronicle her journey from a desperately lonely misfit to a “new mammal mother.” Told through Slate's unique sense of humor and whimsical voice, Lifeform is a celebrity memoir quite unlike any other that has come before it, offering a candid and vulnerable look into a lionhearted life.
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For the first-ever illustrated monograph on Nora Ephron, culture editor Ilana Kaplan deftly digs into the late filmmaker's prolific career, which spans decades and includes celebrated cult classic titles like When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and Bewitched (2005).While exploring Ephron's indelible impact on the rom-com genre and Hollywood as a whole, Kaplan includes interviews with some of her key collaborators, including Andie MacDowell, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and Lynda Obst.
In Anglo-Nigerian author Nikki May's colorful retelling of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, ideas of race and belonging in the 21st century are explored through cousins Funke and Liv. Tragedy befalls Funke's family, and Funke's quiet life in Lagos is unceremoniously uprooted to her mother's gray and dilapidated family estate in Somerset. While she finds her mother's family cold, Funke quickly develops a warm and affectionate friendship with her older cousin, Liv. But, as the two women grow into adulthood, their lives begin to drift apart—until another unexpected tragedy forces them to truly come to terms with the generational and familial history that lies between them.
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Journalist Lili Anolik casts a light on literary icon Joan Didion by unearthing never-before-published letters and diary entries from another literary icon and Didion's contemporary, Eve Babitz. As Didion and Babitz kicked off their writing careers in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, they shared a unique and complicated relationship, going from close friends to sworn enemies in the span of a decade. Through Anolik's reporting, longtime readers of both women will discover just how much each writer influenced the work and aspirations of the other.
Cher is finally telling her life story—on her own terms. In the first installment of a two-part memoir, the iconic singer details her rise to fame with intimate and never-before-revealed details, from her struggles with dyslexia as a child to her life-changing love story with Sonny Bono.