“Intertwined stories that explore eternal mysteries and life’s eleventh hour.” It’s an apt publisher description for the first fiction written by the Booker Prize-winning author since the 2022 attempt on his life (he was stabbed more than 12 times, severely injured and left partially blinded). Not surprisingly, themes of mortality and legacy along with his ongoing interests in politics, peace and freedom of speech populate these stories and novellas – all in conversation with one another in such diverse settings as England, the United States and India (one is even set in the Bombay neighborhood of his 1981 novel Midnight’s Children). (Nov. 4)

Inspired by Jonathan, a 191-year-old Seychelles giant tortoise living on St. Helena, this novel unfolds a century of history and social upheaval from the point of view of a fictional wise shell dweller. Brought to the menagerie of a Southern California estate, she observes its many iterations over the course of decades, intuitive and intrigued by popular music and curious about the humans around her. It’s a charming debut for anthropologist Coulter, a professor in animal ethics and sustainability at Western University, who says she wanted to cultivate a novel that “reflects the interconnectedness of multi-species life and the possibilities of imagination, creativity, and compassion.” (Nov. 4)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (now at NBC) makes her fiction debut with a dual narrative about two women divided by a century. Inspired in part by memories her mother shared toward the end of her life, the novel is set between New York, Key West, Fla., and the Canary Islands. The plot is rooted in the tragedy of the SS Valbanera, a steamship carrying Canarian migrants to Cuba that sank during a 1919 Hurricane – an event historians has dubbed “the poor man’s Titanic” –  relevant a hundred years later when a Cuban-born American reporter on routine assignment in the Canary Islands discovers five generations of ancestral secrets. (Nov. 4)

On the eve of the Christmas holidays, a mother shows up on the Tokyo doorstep of her estranged son. Both are vulnerable – he’s protective of the life he’s built, she remains unsettled about her complicated past in Jamaica. Not much actually happens in this contemplative novel but, over the course of conversations and a road trip to the historic temple city of Nara, there is a rapprochement. In Palaver (a finalist for this year’s National Book Award), the celebrated short-story writer richly conjures Japan (and its cuisine), with thoughts on what it means to have layers of identity. (Nov. 4)

When a teenage son is (perhaps wrongly) convicted of killing his father, it sets a reckoning in motion for the guilty and not-so-innocent left in the wake of the crime. Balancing ideas of betrayal and justice, morality and corruption, the New Brunswick writer, who recently retired from the Senate, pens another dark tale of the Miramichi and the intergenerational patterns of small-town families. (Nov. 4)

“I got the idea back in 2017, on the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Voyager spacecraft,” van de Sandt tells People. “NASA placed a Golden Record on board — a selection of music, images and natural sounds — and this kind of canon fascinated me.” An ambient recording might seem at first  counterintuitive, but the novel (recounted in retrospect) deconstructs how a fateful evening dinner party turned disastrous, and is similarly atmospheric in its details. Tensions burble, from domestic inequality and bodily autonomy of the host serving her fiancé and his colleagues, capped with the catalytic force of female rage. (Nov. 4)

The Dutch art critic’s novel that became a sensation in its native country is now available in English. The literary thriller is a slow burn, with our middle-aged narrator Marie recalling the chaotic immediate aftermath of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. The story soon flashes back to various points on the timeline: the life of her reclusive French employer before her arrival in Paris from the Netherlands to work as an au pair for his family; then her high-flying contemporary art studies at home; and at last, she returns to the terror attacks where strangers and serendipity intersect. (Nov. 11)

In the latest from cultural critic Roxane Gay’s imprint, a revolutionary new beauty product that can temporarily change users’ features alters the lives of two Indian American siblings. Teenager Kashmira develops debilitating side-effects after using the lotion to erase her resemblance to the father who abandoned the family – while it’s the corporate culture of the brand that’s toxic to brother Nikhil, who works there. The story examines the dark side of the image industry through the lens of self-care, cultural identity and the allure of belonging. It’s like a literary fiction take on The Substance. (Nov. 11)

After 27 years of journalism and U.S. foreign policy analysis, the Atlantic staff writer (and New Yorker alum) George Packer marks his return to fiction. Packer, who also covered the civil war in Sierra Leone, has seen too much of the world firsthand to be upbeat. Instead, he offers a poignant and meaningful fable: sectarian violence between the urban elite Burghers and rural farming Yeomen is rampant in his alternate-present dystopia about how different groups respond to societal collapse. A disgraced Burgher doctor’s journey to the countryside to unite people across class and generations is at the heart of it, and speaks to remembering shared humanity at a time of fractious polarization. (Nov. 11)

Laing’s historical fiction charts the politically turbulent last days of Italian neorealist filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was brutally murdered in 1975. The period of growing social and political unrest is explored through a fictional protagonist, Nicholas, who’s queer, young and British. Nicholas becomes the lover of (real life) renowned Italian costume designer Danilo Donati. Together they work on Federico Fellini’s Casanova and Pasolini’s Salò, offering a glimpse into both the famed film studio Cinecittà and the volatile climate swirling around Rome. Of a piece with the British author’s narrative non-fiction, The Lonely City and even The Garden Against Time, this novel probes questions of solitude, political anxiety and creativity. (Nov. 11)

It’s challenging to attempt a concise teaser for this captivating novel, a heartbreaker that spans centuries and continents to ruminate on humanity’s evolving threat to the natural world. Over the course of the story, the sea cow, a marine animal of the northern oceans, will go from being sighted and documented by Georg Steller on a perilous 1741 voyage on the Bering Sea to extinct – with adventurous stops in the mid-19th (Russian Alaska) and 20th century (Finland). The evolving attitudes to the precious sirenian and its skeletal specimen knot the timelines together. (Nov. 18)

This buzzy debut novel (already optioned with Greta Lee to star) offers commentary on the housing crisis and punctures the American dream myth through the misadventures of a 30-something on a hunt for the perfect home. She becomes so obsessed with a property that she insinuates herself into the lives of the vendors, stalking and scheming before they’ve even put the house on the market. “I wanted to make this novel fun,” Kashino, a former Washington journalist on the real estate beat, tells PW, “but there is a lot of commentary in there about class.” (Nov. 25)