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The Best of Me, David Sedaris (Nov. 3)
David Sedaris has written for long enough that it came time to release a "best of" collection, selected by Sedaris himself and spanning the two decades of his career. Included are the stories that he finds most memorable—falling in love, losing a parent, shopping for taxidermy, and hand-feeding a carnivorous bird, to name a few. The stories, all cobbled together from different beats in the cultural pulse, form a picture of Sedaris that will strike longtime fans and new converts as worth the read.
The Preserve, Ariel S. Winter (Nov. 3)
The world that Ariel S. Winter creates in The Preserve is clever—in some ways a negative image of the world we live in now. Following a brutal and unforgiving plague, humans are left as the minority, while humanoid robots make up the larger ruling class. The book weaves in stories of interspecies kindness and conflict against the backdrop of a conventional murder mystery, with a tech-savvy hacker found dead in one of the world's remaining human preserves.
Dearly, Margaret Atwood (Nov. 10)
As it happens, Margaret Atwood was a poet before she was a novelist. Her first collection, Double Persephone, was published in 1961 with just over 200 copies handset by Atwood herself, and it tends to be overlooked in conversations about her legacy and literary stardom. Dearly may just throw Atwood back into the pecking order of the genre, with writing that flits from interest to interest—the nature of zombies, the nature of aging, the nature of nature. Each is written with an internal clarity that belies Atwood's decades in the spotlight.
The Office of Historical Corrections, Danielle Evans (Nov. 10)
In her second collection of short stories, released 10 years after Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans reminds readers why she is turned to for sharp, vivid analysis of the way we interact with one another and with the world. Each story points to greater issues of race and culture, and turns back again and again to the permanence of history and its stain on our lives. A favorite of Roxane Gay, it is a fast read that lives beyond its pages.
What Kind of Woman, Kate Baer (Nov. 10)
Kate Baer's debut collection of poetry, What Kind of Woman, reads like a personal valentine. It's a testament to Baer's ability to clear through the messiness and speak to the things that matter. The poems will be familiar to those who appreciate her candid—and popular—Instagram poetry, which fiercely defends femininity in all of the ways it might look. There is no barrier to entry for non-poetry readers, because Baer makes clear from the first
