After the sleepy months of summer, September brings a windfall of new titles.
Fans of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” rejoice: Decades after the novel was published,argaret Atwood returns with a sequel. A new biography of Susan Sontag — a 700-page, exhaustive, doorstop of a book — explores her intellectual development and sexuality in unsparing detail. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel tells the story of an enslaved man who cheats death, and a new thriller by Stephen King imagines a chilling, mysterious center that steals and experiments on child prodigies. Two new books by Times
journalists take on the #MeToo movement, focusing on Harvey Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh.
Whether you’re looking for a literary love story, an innovative illustrator’s masterwork years in the making or a look at corporate America’s hand in inequality, you’ll find something thrilling in September.
‘Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America,’ by James Poniewozik (Liveright, Sept. 10)
Theimes’s chief TV criticraces the long, tangled history of mass entertainment and politics, positioning President Trump as an antihero. Would he have been elected without “The Apprentice?” Poniewozik doesn’t say, but he does argue that Trump’s reality-TV experience helped prepare him for his political career.
‘Coventry: Essays,’ by Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Sept. 17)
This collection, from the author of the “Outline” trilogy, touches on family life, gender and literature.
‘Dominicana: A Novel,’ by Angie Cruz (Flatiron, Sept. 3)
When readers meet Ana, she’s a teenager who has just agreed to marry a man twice her age to help her family immigrate to the United States from the Dominican Republic. She’s terribly unhappy in New York and soon dreams of ways to escape. When her husband has to return to the Dominican Republic, she begins to imagine a new life for herself.
‘The Dutch House,’ by Ann Patchett (Harper, Sept. 24)
All the themesf a quintessential Patchett novel are present in her latest, a layered multigenerational story about a family and their grand old house in the Philadelphia suburbs.
‘The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation,’ by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly (Portfolio, Sept. 17)
This deeply reported dive into the Supreme Court justice’s backgroundrom two Times reportersncludes new interviews with two women who accused him of misconduct: Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.
‘The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir,’ by Samantha Power (Dey Street, Sept. 10)
Power, best known as one of President Obama’s ambassadors to the United Nations, traces the evolution of her views from her years as a journalist and activist to a more pragmatic policymaker. Along the way, she weaves in moral arguments and diplomatic history.
‘Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS,’ by Azadeh Moaveni (Random House, Sept. 10)
This book tackles many of the taboos surrounding women, political activity and extremism in the Middle East. Moaveni, an investigative reporter who has worked in the region for decades, focuses on 13 women who were inspired to join the terrorist group — and the political and religious dissatisfactions that set them on that path.
‘The Institute,’ by Stephen King (Scribner, Sept. 10)
Brilliant children are kidnapped and sent to a terrifying center, where they are subjected to mysterious medical examinations and abuse. They live in fear of the Back Half, a section of the Institute from which no children have ever come back. The greatest evil in this novel is banal inhumanity — which is what gives the book its horror.
‘Out of Darkness, Shining Light,’ by Petina Gappah (Scribner, Sept. 10)
David Livingstone, the 19th-century Scottish missionary who set out to find the source of the Nile, casts a long shadow over East Africa, and Gappah explores his legacy in her new novel. Narrated by Halima, Livingstone’s cook and slave, and Jacob, a pious freed slave, as Livingstone’s corpse is taken to the coast of Africa, the story offers a fresh look at the enduring history of colonialism.
‘Permanent Record,’ by Edward Snowden (Metropolitan, Sept. 17)
Theational Security Agency whistle-blowerutlines the system of mass surveillance the agency used to monitor citizens, and details the “crisis of conscience” that led him to disavow the system he helped create.