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Buzz Books Fall/Winter Preview: Literary & Debut Fiction

May 13, 2021
By Erin Somers

Earlier this week we launched our Buzz Books 2021 Fall/Winter sampler, with excerpts from an array of great forthcoming literary and debut fiction. Did you download your copy yet? The “trade edition” is available now from NetGalley or Edelweiss, or find the consumer editions all linked at our main Buzz Books website.

As usual, we begin our free ebook with a broad overview of the upcoming publishing season, featuring hundreds of notable titles on the way. We’ll be presenting extracts from that season preview in the coming days. There are plenty of notable names with new books out this fall, including new work from Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout, and Colson Whitehead. Meanwhile, our sampler features excerpts from Lauren Groff, Ruth Ozeki, emerging talent Mesha Maren and Patti Callahan, and more.

Here is our full list of literary fiction titles for the fall and winter season, alphabetically by author. Titles excerpted in Buzz Books are noted with an asterisk. (Please remember: Because we prepared this preview many months in advance, titles, content, and publication dates are all subject to change.)

The Notables

John Banville, April in Spain (Hanover Square, 10/5)
T.C. Boyle, Talk to Me (Ecco, 9/14)
A. S. Byatt, Medusa’s Ankles (Knopf, 11/23)
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner, 9/28)
Dave Eggers, The Every (Knopf, 10/19)
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence (Harper, 10/12)
Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes (Little, Brown, 9/28)
Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads (FSG, 10/5)
Lauren Groff, Matrix (Riverhead, 9/7)*
David Guterson, The Final Case (Knopf, 1/11)

Peter Heller, The Guide (Knopf, 8/24)
Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic (Simon & Schuster, 10/5)
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Morning Star (Penguin Press, 9/28)
Mario Vargas Llosa, Harsh Times (FSG, 11/2)
Tom McCarthy, The Making of Incarnation (Knopf, 11/2)
Benjamin Percy, The Unfamiliar Garden (HMH, 1/4)
Richard Powers, Bewilderment (Norton, 9/21)
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You (FSG, 9/7)
Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends (Random House, 11/2)
Wole Soyinka, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Pantheon, 9/28)

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House, 10/19) –  Strout’s heroine Lucy Barton, of My Name Is Lucy Barton, returns in a new novel.
Miriam Toews, Fight Night (Bloomsbury, 10/5)
Colm Toibin, The Magician (Scribner, 9/7)
Edmund White, A Previous Life (Bloomsbury, 9/30)
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday, 9/14) – From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, the story of a 1960s con man.
John Edgar Wideman, Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone (Scribner, 11/9)
Joy Williams, Harrow (Knopf, 9/14)

Highly Anticipated

Laurent Binet, Civilizations (FSG, 9/14)
Patti Callahan, Once Upon a Wardrobe (Harper Muse, 10/19)*
Clare Chambers, Small Pleasures (Custom House, 10/5)
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat (Custom House, 11/2)
Jennifer Haigh, Mercy Street (Ecco, 2/2)
James Hannaham, Pilot Impostor (Soft Skull, 11/2)
Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria (Knopf, 9/7)
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove, 12/1)*
Jon McGregor, Lean, Fall, Stand (Catapult, 9/21)
Chibundu Onuzu, Sankofa (Catapult, 10/5)
Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness (Viking, 9/21)*

Anna Pitoniak, Our American Friend (Simon & Schuster, February)*
Bernhard Schlink, Olga (HarperVia, 9/1)*
Francesca Stanfill, The Falcon’s Eyes (Harper, 2/1)
Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (Viking, 10/5) – From The Gentleman of Moscow author.
Margaret Verble, When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky (HMH, 10/12)
Claire Vaye Watkins, I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness (Riverhead, 10/5) – The author’s follow-up to Gold Fame Citrus.
Sarah Winman, Still Life (Putnam, 11/2)

Emerging Voices

Hannah Lillith Assadi, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells (Riverhead, 1/11)
Monica Byrne, The Actual Star (HarperVoyager, 9/14)
Sophie Cousens, Just Haven’t Met You Yet (Putnam, 11/9)
María Amparo Escandón, L.A. Weather (Flatiron, 9/7)
Lisa Harding, Bright Burning Things (HarperVia, 12/7)
Mesha Maren, Perpetual West (Algonquin, 1/25)* – The sophomore novel from the author of Sugar Run.
Lincoln Michel, The Body Scout (Orbit, 9/21)
Sofi Oksanen, Dog Park (Knopf, 9/21) 9780525659471
Neel Patel, Tell Me How to Be (Flatiron, 12/7)
Josh Ritter, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All (Hanover Square, 9/1)
Aysegul Savas, White on White (Riverhead, 11/30)
Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete (FSG, 10/19)
Shruti Swamy, The Archer (Algonquin, 9/7)*
Tiphanie Yanique, Monster in the Middle (Riverhead, 10/19)*
Sarai Walker, The Cherry Robbers (HMH, 2/1)

Debut

The upcoming season is packed with debuts. Our sampler features a range of new voices including Jessamine Chan, Ash Davidson, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, Juhea Kim, and more.

Bisi Adjapon, The Teller of Secrets (HarperVia, 11/1) *
Uwem Akpan, New York, My Village (Norton, 11/2)
Daphne Palasi Andreades, Brown Girls (Random House, 1/4)
Natasha Brown, Assembly (Little, Brown, 9/14)
Jai Chakrabarti, A Play for the End of the World (Knopf, 9/7)
Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers (Simon & Schuster, 1/4)*
Catherine Dang, Nice Girls (William Morrow, 9/7)
Ash Davidson, Damnation Spring (Scribner, 8/3)*
Katherine Faulkner, Greenwich Park (Gallery, 1/4)
Xochilt Gonzalez, Olga Dies Dreaming (Flatiron, 1/11)*

Toni Halleen, The Surrogate (Harper, 11/1)
Hazel Hayes, Out of Love (Dutton, 11/26)*
Jean Chen Ho, Fiona and Jane (Viking, 1/4)
Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother (Scribner, 10/5)
Emily Itami, Fault Lines (Custom House, 9/28)
Lucy Jago, A Net For Small Fishes (Flatiron, 11/9)
Amanda Jayatissa, My Sweet Girl (Berkley, 11/14)*
Ethan Joella, A Little Hope (Scribner, 9/2)
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello (Holt, 10/5)*
Julia May Jonas, Vladimir (Avid Reader, February)*
Eva Jurczyk, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen 1/25)*

Rachel Kapelke-Dale, The Ballerinas (St. Martin’s, 12/7)
Calvin Kasulke, Several People Are Typing (Doubleday, 9/7)
James Kennedy, Dare to Know (Quirk, 9/14)*
Juhea Kim, Beasts of a Little Land (Ecco, 12/7)*
Naomi Krupitsky, The Family (Putnam, 9/7)*
Vera Kurian, Never Saw Me Coming (Park Row, 9/7)*
Katie Lattari, Dark Things I Adore (Sourcebooks Landmark, 9/14)*
Louise Nealon, Snowflake (Harper, 9/7)
Claire Oshetsky, Chouette (Ecco, 11/1)*
Nita Prose, The Maid (Ballantine, 1/4)
Kirthana Ramisetti, Dava Shastri’s Last Day (Grand Central, 12/21)*

David Sanchez, All Day Is a Long Time (HMH, 1/18)
Tamara Shopsin, LaserWriter II (MCD, 10/12)
Alison Stine, Trashlands (Mira, 10/26)
Elizabeth Weiss, The Sisters Sweet (Dial, 1/11)

Filed Under: Buzz21, Free

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