Fall 2023 book releases to read

Tea mug with warm scarf open book and apple on wooden surface

Grab a warm drink, sweater and fresh stack of books

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published 29 August 2023

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Even though reading is a year-round activity, autumn is the perfect season to curl up with a new book. So as the end of summer draws closer, grab a warm drink, sweater and fresh stack of books, because these are some highly anticipated book releases you won't want to miss.

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Bestselling author Zadie Smith's newest historical fiction novel, "The Fraud," is based on a real-life court case that divided 19th-century England. The Tichborne trial, in which a working-class butcher claimed to be the heir to a vast fortune, captivated Victorian England for years. Smith tries to capture that feverish interest through a cast of characters, including Eliza Touchet, the housekeeper of Victorian novelist William Ainsworth, and Andrew Bogle, the formerly enslaved Jamaican man and star witness for the Tichborne case. Smith's fans will instantly recognize the earmarks of her style: "the boisterous narrative intelligence; the ear for dialogue; the chronic absence of boring sentences," Abhrajyoti Chakraborty wrote for The Guardian. Preorder here.

C Pam Zhang's "exquisite and seductive second novel" centers on an unnamed young chef living in a post-apocalyptic, not-so-distant future, where smog has spread and blocked out the sun, Publisher's Weekly summarized. With food crops disappearing, the chef takes a job, working for an "elite research community" on a mountain in Italy where the fridges are packed with endangered meats and bountiful produce. As she begins cooking exclusively for those who can afford to escape the climate disaster, the narrator grapples with what it means to survive in a highly inequitable world. "Mournful and luscious," Kirkus Reviews raved, "a gothic novel for the twilight of the Anthropocene Era." Preorder here.

Two-time National Book Award–winning author Jesmyn Ward is set to deliver what Oprah Daily called "her most masterful work yet" with "Let Us Descend." Born enslaved in pre-Civil War rice fields of North Carolina, Annis also happens to be the daughter of the man who owns her. A combination of magical realism and historical fiction, the novel pits "ancestral wisdom and human connection against the arbitrary brutality of slavery," Oprah Daily added. Ward may not say anything new about slavery in "Let Us Descend," Kirkus Reviews noted, "but her language is saturated with terror and enchantment." Preorder here.

Britney Spears' long-awaited memoir finally arrives this October. The pop icon chronicles her fight to be released from court-ordered conservatorship, which spawned the #FreeBritney movement. The memoir is described as a "brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith and hope" in the book's blurb. This celebrity memoir will likely be causing a huge buzz this fall and is a must-read for pop culture enthusiasts. Preorder here.

Naomi Alderman, the author of the critically acclaimed novel "The Power," is back with another speculative fiction book set in the near future. "The Future" tells the story of an international group of rogues fighting against the billionaires of the tech world. An overly controlling social media mogul and a survivalist influencer clash in this hauntingly familiar speculative tale. Announcing the boos release last year, publisher Simon & Schuster called the novel a blend of "intelligence and storytelling, marrying white-knuckle narrative propulsion with an intellectually dazzling critique of the world we have made," per The Associated Press. Preorder here.

This anthology features a collection of essays that explore the cultural impact of video games from the perspective of an exciting group of writers, including Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Alexander Chee and Hanif Abdurraqib. Likely to be more personal than most books about the video game industry, "Critical Hits" offers a group of "stylish, passionate and searching essays" in which the authors use the medium as a lens to discuss culture, representation, grief and the ways technology reflects all that, per publisher Graywolf Press. Preorder here.

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Theara Coleman has worked as a staff writer at The Week since September 2022. She frequently writes about technology, education, literature and general news. She was previously a contributing writer and assistant editor at Honeysuckle Magazine, where she covered racial politics and cannabis industry news.