We recommend: The best new book releases

 

Editor’s note: Dive into this wide-ranging list of recent and upcoming book releases, both fiction and nonfiction. A new—and possibly the last—Pynchon; essays about cringe influencers; memoirs by Margaret Atwood and Malala Yousafzai; a collection of gruesome and demonic tales released by an exciting Indian publishing house; the best new speculative and crime fiction; the ongoing ‘enshittification’ of the internet and how we can turn things around. We have it all. 

 

PS: ICYMI, Contributing Editor Devarsi Ghosh put together a brilliant horror reading list for Halloween—with nary a ghoul or ghost in sight. 

 

****

 

FICTION

 

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
Release: October 7

 

Eighty-eight-year-old Thomas Pynchon, whose novel Vineland inspired the recent Leonardo DiCaprio outing at the movies, One Battle After Another, has emerged from the shadows with his ninth novel. Once again, in the Pynchonesque tradition, it is a bizarre investigation into American social and political history via a detective mystery, with oddball characters including killers disguised as elves, Nazi biker gangs called Vladboys, and an "Al Capone of Cheese".

 

Set in 1932, Shadow Ticket obliquely looks at the rise of Nazism in Europe and homegrown fascist impulses in the United States. Like a character in the book says, "Whatever it is that’s about to happen, once it’s over we’ll say, oh well, it’s history, should have seen it coming." Critic Ryan Ruby observed for New Left Review, "All of Pynchon’s novels are dark comedies, but Shadow Ticket is particularly pessimistic. In this novel, which may well be his last, there is no counterculture acting as a refuge from the hegemon, let alone a counterforce against fascism, only the 'counter-domain of exile'." 

Buy Shadow Ticket here.

 

 

Intemperance by Sonora Jha

Release: October 13

 

Following in the mythological Sita’s footsteps to find love and companionship after two marriages left behind, the protagonist of this novel decides to host a swayamwar to find her next match. Will it work or will it all go terribly wrong?

 

Intemperance is a witty, comedic take on the pursuit of love in the modern age. Drawing on the stories and mythologies we’ve grown up with, Jha takes readers on a thrilling journey to find out what love looks like, and how we may find it.

 

Buy Intemperance here.

 

 

206 Bones: An Inspector Saralkar Mystery by Salil Desai
Release: October 20

 

Salil Desai is one of India’s few crime novelists who can go toe to toe with the Jo Nesbøs, Tana Frenches, and Keigo Higashinos of the world. His Inspector Saralkar series, set in Pune, are gritty police procedurals that work as investigations into institutional rot on top of being crackling mysteries. The sixth book in the series, 206 Bones, has Saralkar and his partner Motkar solving two crimes: a disgraced cop’s attempt to die by suicide, and the discovery of a skeleton under a bungalow.

 

Buy 206 Bones: An Inspector Saralkar Mystery here.

 

 

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays by Harper Lee

Release: October 21

 

A posthumous collection of short stories and essays showcases a very different side to Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird), as we get to witness her in her early days as a short story writer and, later, an essayist, as she confronts her Southern roots, life in New York, ideas of love, among other subjects. 

 

Buy The Land of Sweet Forever here.

 

 

Bandigoat: A Collection of Strange & Horrible Tales, edited by Rakesh Sharma Release: October 24

 

Chennai-based Blaft has consistently remained one of India's most exciting publication houses ever since they put themselves on the map with their scintillating three-volume Tamil Pulp Fiction anthology. They have since rolled out an anthology on anti-caste speculative fiction; a dictionary of Indian ghosts, demons and monsters; an anthology of Gujarati pulp fiction; and graphic novels, including an original work from Bengaluru wunderkind Appupen (Halahala, Dream Machine).

 

Bandigoat is their latest horrifying collection, promising seven Indian stories of "the eerie, the gruesome, the demonic, and the melty"—including a story about a bogeyman riding a giant kohl-black rooster, and another featuring a softie machine that will melt down your best friend.

 

Buy Bandigoat here.

 

 

The Seekers by Gautamiputra Kamble, translated by Sirius J Libeiro
Release: October 27

 

Marathi writer Gautamiputra Kamble wrote in the fascinating sphere of anti-caste speculative fiction. His short stories crisscross through fable, fantasy, and allegory, and are rooted in the philosophy of Maharashtra-born anti-caste leaders Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, and BR Ambedkar. Thanks to Blaft and Mumbai-based translator Sirius J Libeiro, five of Kamble's stories have now crossed over to the Anglophone small-press world. 

 

Buy The Seekers here.

 

 

Tom’s Crossing by Mark Z Danielewski
Release: October 28

 

In 2000, Danielewski's debut novel House of Leaves shocked the literary world. It was a 709-page novel with strange word layouts, some pages containing fewer than 10 words placed wide apart, and some pages that would require the book to be rotated. Numerous notes to the editor, footnotes, and citations to non-existing works made the book a strange animal, a horror-fiction version of Infinite Jest. It was a bestseller.

 

His new novel is a 1232-page tome that is a weird take on the Western. What is the book really about? Critic Tom LeClair wrote in the LA Review of Books: "House of Leaves was, from the beginning, a horror novel with an invented horror, a house built over an endless abyss. The horror in Tom’s Crossing is, for many pages, as believable as religious atrocities or clan warfare or crazed revenge, but the presence of ghosts sets the horror at an emotional distance."

 

Buy Tom’s Crossing here.

 

 

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

Release: October 14

 

Megha Majumdar captures different forms of love through this novel: the love of a mother, a man’s love for his city, a love for children. Set in a Kolkata overcome by climate disaster, the protagonists, Ma and Boomba, navigate an increasingly difficult world. Over the course of a week, the two protagonists’ stories are interwoven through the novel, offering readers a lens into the perils of migration and the danger of hope in a world built to crush you. 

 

Buy A Guardian and a Thief here.

 

 

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie

Release: November 4

 

The master returns with a quintet of stories spanning multiple continents. The book follows Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2024), an account of the stabbing attack he faced in 2021 that left him blind in one eye. The spectre of death and loss looms large in The Eleventh Hour, with The Guardian calling it a “haunting coda to a groundbreaking career”. 

 

Buy The Eleventh Hour here.

 

 

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray
Release: November 18

 

Ayana Gray's 2021 young-adult fantasy novel Beasts of Prey was a bestseller. Her new novel reimagines the Greek mythological figure Medusa as a feisty heroine. Here, she is not a villain but a vigilante. Kirkus Reviews notes that Gray's retelling is "Afrocentric" and "feminist", and that the "story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing".

 

Buy I, Medusa here.

 

Haven’t Killed in Years by Amy K Green
Release: November 18

 

Gwen Tanner is the vanished daughter of serial killer Abel Haggerty. But no one knows that. Until someone starts sending body parts to her front door, carrying a message: I know who you are. Now, Gwen has to hunt down the killer and confront her past.

 

Buy Haven’t Killed in Years here.

 

*****

 

NONFICTION

 

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow

Release: October 7

 

Have you noticed how everything on the internet just sucks now? And nothing really seems to work the way it’s supposed to? Every single online platform has gotten progressively worse, as they try to exploit their user base and milk them for cash. Even Google, once at least a semi-reliable space for information, has gone to the dogs today. There’s a term for it, of course there is: enshittification. Cory Doctorow, Canadian blogger, author, and journalist, coined it a few years ago. And he has a new book out in which he details this infuriating phenomenon, including case studies, and reveals the ways it can be undone. 

 

Buy Enshittification here.

 

 

The Cost of a Promised Afterlife: My Escape from a Controversial Religious Cult in India by Priyamvada Mehra
Release: October 10

 

An eye-opening insider's account on how a godman's cult operates in India. Mehra became part of Indian godman Rampal's cult as part of her family's attempt to save her mother's life. By 13, Mehra was a devoted follower. What followed were deadly riots, bans on modern medicine, and violent sermons. It took Mehra two decades to snap out of this cultic control and share her story in this memoir.

Buy The Cost of a Promised Afterlife here.

 

 

Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments, edited by Shamya Dasgupta
Release: October 20

Satyajit Ray's contemporary, Ritwik Ghatak, was the dark star of Indian cinema. Nowhere near as successful as Ray, Ghatak's uncompromisingly political and formally unpredictable cinema has amassed ferociously committed admirers since his death at the age of 50 in 1976. Ghatak also left his mark on Indian cinema teaching at Pune’s Film Television Institute of India; his students include Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, and Subhash Ghai.

 

The new anthology, named after his 1958 film Ajantrik (often translated The Unmechanical), has film critics, filmmakers, and authors creating a polyphonic portrait of Ghatak's misunderstood genius. The variety of entries, from contributors including Jonathan Rosenbaum, Mahasweta Devi, and Gopalakrishnan, encounter Ghatak in flashes: as myth, frustrated modernist, and chronicler of urban alienation and political displacement.

 

Buy Unmechanical: Ritwik Ghatak in 50 Fragments here. 

 

 

Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai

Release: October 21 

 

Hot off the presses, Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai’s new memoir, Finding My Way, is a way for her to reintroduce herself to the world. Following the horrific attack on her at the tender age of 15—when she was shot in the face point blank in Pakistan by a Taliban operative—Yousafzai has had to build a new life for herself, and here, she presents a deeply personal and vulnerable account of that journey. 

 

The New York Times has called it a “remarkably intimate and insistently human chronicle of a moral authority’s coming of age. With a novel’s pacing and character development, it follows Yousafzai as she leaves a sheltered existence under her mother’s rule in Mingora and struggles to shape her identity as a college student, friend, wife and public figure.”

 

Buy Finding My Way here.

 

 

The Only City: Bombay in Eighteen Stories, edited by Anindita Ghose

Release: October 24

 

Mumbai—the Bombay we all recognise intuitively—just lends itself to a kind of literary interrogation. Its urban dystopia, the sprawling ocean, a smorgasbord of complex characters that gives the city its life. Its vim. The Only City, a new anthology of fiction edited by novelist and journalist Anindita Ghose, features 18 stories by voices in Indian fiction both established and emerging, with short stories that paint a lively portrait of this fascinating city of contradictions.

 

Buy The Only City here.

 

 

Scamlands: Inside the Asian empire of fraud that preys on the world by Snigdha Poonam

Release: October 31

 

Author and journalist Snigdha Poonam presents an account of the people running elaborate scams and ruining lives and families. It’s a timely read, with scammers becoming increasingly more sophisticated and creative, leading to a breakdown of trust and steady paranoia among us. It’s a scourge of our times that we must contend with. 

 

Buy Scamlands here.

 

 

The Outsider: A Memoir for Misfits by Vir Das

Release: November 4

 

Vir Das has remained freakishly prolific through his career, forever working on new projects across all manner of disciplines. The comedian, musician, actor, director, writer now turns author with The Outsider: A Memoir for Misfits. In it, Das gazes inward as he contends with his confused identity. From growing up and bouncing between India and Nigeria, to his journey as a comedian and actor, where he was—and remains—a “professional outsider” in both Bollywood and Hollywood, Das positions himself as the eternal misfit trying to carve a space for himself.  

 

Buy The Outsider here.

 

 

We Did OK, Kid: A Memoir by Anthony Hopkins
Release: November 4

 

Academy Award-winning Sir Anthony Hopkins lost his first marriage, his relationship with his only child, and nearly his life to addiction. He has since stayed sober for almost half a century. Forever iconic because of his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, and having maintained a solid career in film, television and stage well into his late 80s, the master looks back on his life, what it took to come this far, and the questions he still hasn’t found answers for.

 

Buy We Did OK, Kid here.

 

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood

Release: November 4

 

Travel through a storied career and a fascinating life as the great Margaret Atwood—poet, novelist, author, critic—walks us through her past. From her early days through an unconventional, almost nomadic childhood in Canada, to the failures and many successes of her writing career—via stopovers at major political touchstones—we get a peek into the inner workings of an important literary voice of our times.  

 

Buy Book of Lives here.

Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind by Michelle Carr
Release: November 18

 

Why do we have dreams? What about nightmares? How do they affect our physical health and vice versa? Michelle Carr, PhD, is a researcher of REM sleep, dreams, sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and suchlike. In this new book, Carr takes us into the science behind dreams, introducing us to the cutting-edge field of dream engineering.

 

Buy Nightmare Obscura here.

 

 

The Great Indian Brain Rot: Love, Lies & Algorithms in Digital India by Anurag Minus Verma

Release: November 18

 

The Indian digital space has become hotly contested and combative over the years, with influencers of all stripes jostling for space, fame, and the big payouts. Writer Anurag Minus Verma, in The Great Indian Brain Rot, examines this fascinating world of cringe and wobbly morality, through a series of sharp satirical essays. Caste and class politics, online hustle culture, fake followers, widespread propaganda—Verma tackles a range of themes contributing to this “brain rot” infecting the Internet Age of 2025. 

Buy The Great Indian Brain Rot here.