Set in the last decades of the Ottoman empire, the Turkish Nobel Laureate’s historical novel tackles nationalism and pandemics on an imaginary island equally populated by Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims (not unlike Cyprus). The suspenseful story will inevitably be called his COVID novel, but it’s much more, as the story probes identity and history in entertaining loops and spirals that shift forward and back between 1900 and the 1950s. (Oct. 4)

The intense new literary page-turner from Massachusetts writer Ng (whose 2017 hit Little Fires Everywhere was made into a mini-series by Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon) posits an alternate near future where anti-Asian sentiment and violence has been normalized. All so-called foreign cultural traditions are considered dangerous, and nativist legislation – reminiscent of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s and Texas’s recent anti-transgender laws – has the power to remove children from “un-American” parents and assign them to other families. In this paranoid climate, 12-year-old Bird begins receiving missives from his mother, a dissident poet (and child of Chinese immigrants) – who disappeared when he was nine – and discovers a resistance network. To her credit, Ng’s cautionary novel has big ideas about the power of art and the precarious state of present-day America yet never loses sight of the touching family drama at its heart. (Oct 4)

You know you’re in for a grand story when a novel about early 20th century society is likened to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s sumptuous Cazalet Chronicles. Quinn, a British creative writing teacher, makes an assured debut that follows three siblings on the Dorset coast from their childhood just after the Great War through to service in the Second World War. The main heroine is 12-year-old Cristabel, whose taste for amateur acting in a theatre made from a whale ribcage gives the book its name, and who becomes an undercover agent. A captivating delight. (Oct. 4)

This engaging novel imagines a fictional relationship between Billy Wilder (the Austrian-born refugee from Nazi Germany who directed great films like The Apartment and Some Like It Hot), his close pal and screenwriter, Iz Diamond, and Calista, an aspiring young Greek composer they meet and hire in 1978 as an interpreter on Fedora, Wilder’s penultimate film. Calista tells the story, looking back at that year when the gilded era of classic Hollywood was well behind them. Rooted in the making of the movie about an aging film star, shot on location in France, Germany and Greece (and with sensuous descriptions of the settings), English novelist Coe (Middle England) crafts two bittersweet portraits – of a hopeful coming-of-age and of a man in his twilight — both suffused with humour and nostalgia. (Oct. 7)

American writer Millet was raised in Toronto and now lives in the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, Ariz.; her novel A Children’s Bible anatomized a world that easily slipped into climate change-fuelled anarchy and was one of the best books of 2020. The follow-up is completely different. The story is about a vastly wealthy, acutely despairing young man as he recovers from heartbreak after he becomes engrossed in the lives of his Arizona neighbours (who live a literal glass house, naturally), and makes him a study of the nature of virtue. (Oct. 11)

The first short story collection by legendary Alan Moore, widely acknowledged as one of the most influential writers in the history of comics, the British creator of Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell ranges from playful paranormal and cerebral sci-fi to imaginative medical horrors and the spooky nostalgia trip of the titular story. The main event, however, is “What We Can Know About Thunderman,” a bitter novella à clef that mines the author’s experience of mainstream American comics and offers a withering portrait of the state of politics and the decay of popular entertainment — one where Hollywood movies are based on comic books and superheroes, but can never hope to measure up to the magic on the page. (Oct. 11)

Time magazine once anointed the award-winning California-based author of Lincoln in the Bardo “the best short story writer in English.”  He delivers nine stories in his first collection in nearly a decade, each polished to a gleam, and considering human nature. They cover varied ground, perhaps with more explicit political and social commentary than usual, like the one about an elderly man in a near-future dystopia attempting to impart wisdom to his grandson in a letter, and another about octogenarian whose memories are erased and rewired as part of a predatory program. (Oct. 18)

The bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible transports Charles Dickens’ cradle-to-grave tale, David Copperfield, to contemporary Southwest Virginia, her own milieu. The novel was inspired, she said when the book was announced, by the man who spent his career raising awareness about the ravages of poverty on children. (With a cast of outlandishly memorable characters and at 546 pages, it’s as hefty as the original, too.) “I live in a beautiful, rural place where a generation of kids have been damaged or orphaned by prescription drug addiction,” Kingsolver explains of the Appalachian setting. ”It’s such an important story, but not an easy one to tell.” (Oct. 18)

I’m intrigued by this debut from the Winnipeg-born, Toronto-based political insider. The well-known economist and health care authority (and former deputy minister of health for Ontario) is a self-confessed book lover who collects rare titles by 20th century women writers. This is the first in a planned trilogy about Matthew Rice, a 60-year-old Toronto politico with a penchant for good scotch, who is reeling after serving on the jury for a child homicide case. He takes a medical leave to retreat to the majestic landscape of Georgian Bay, where he questions his memories and personal mythology. (Oct. 22)

Across centuries and species, the stories of four disparate characters (including Goethe) come together in imaginative and complex ways to bring to life the idea that plants have inherent vitality. Through each of these travellers, who avidly explore botany, philosophy and the natural world, the novel also touches on contrasting themes. “Written by a novelist with the eye of a poet, and a poet with the narrative powers of a novelist,” nature writer Robert Macfarlane says, describing the latest by acclaimed writer Pariat, who is based in New Delhi. (Oct. 25)

Twenty-five years ago Freddie, the murderer from the Irish writer’s The Book of Evidence, went to prison. As he’s released, Freddie becomes embroiled with the descendants of a character from another Banville novel, The Infinities. This overlapping romp of the Booker Prize winner’s own multiverse is as cheeky as it is lyrical. (Oct. 25)

For many of us, the past few years have felt like chapters from The Road, and 16 years after that grim Pulitzer-winning apocalyptic tale, the 89-year-old literary lion (Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses) returns with not one, but two new novels. The Passenger concerns a salvage diver named Bobby, who is haunted by the suicide of his sister in 1980 New Orleans, and is investigating a plane crash where one of the 10 passenger’s bodies is missing. (Conspiracy theories are one of McCarthy’s themes). Its second part, Stella Maris, comes out a few weeks later, and explores the backstory of Bobby’s math-whiz sister Alicia, who lived with schizophrenia. Talk about making up for lost time. (Oct. 25)