Publishing News Roundup - September

The Sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale'

The most anticipated new book of Fall, Margaret Atwood's ''The Testaments'' (Penguin Random House) - the sequel to her 1985 bestseller The Handmaid's Tale, released on Tuesday catapulting to the number one spot on the Amazon lists for most categories. Twitter: @MargaretAtwood

Other Fall releases of note:

The Institute by Stephen King (Scribner, Sept.) - This lean and toothy horror novel pits psychic kids against exploitative adults. This variation on one of King's favorite themes displays his talent for writing intimate, personal narratives without a wasted word.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World, Sept.) - Coates’s first novel, set in mid-19th-century Virginia, is about a man born into bondage who develops a mysterious power after nearly drowning, joins an underground resistance, and plans his escape.


Find Me by Andre Aciman (FSG, Oct.) - Aciman revisits the characters of Call Me by Your Name two decades after their first meeting. Elio moves to Paris and has a life-changing affair, while Oliver, now a New England professor with a family, contemplates a trip back across the Atlantic.


The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott (Liveright, Aug.) - In this collection—starred by PW—intelligent robots fail to behave as programmed and the last (and least exalted) son of God tries to redeem himself by leading a gospel band at his elder brother’s church.


Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai (New Directions, Sept.) - At the end of his life, Baron Bela Wenckheim returns from exile in Buenos Aires to his birthplace, a provincial Hungarian town, hoping to reunite with his high school sweetheart. The town—a morass of gossip, con men, and politicians—heads inexorably toward its contemporary doom.


Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child (Delacorte, Oct.) – Peripatetic vigilante Jack Reacher lands in the middle of a turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs in an unnamed American city in his efforts to help an elderly couple who have fallen prey to vicious loan sharks.


Quantum by Patricia Cornwell (Thomas & Mercer, Oct.) – On the eve of a top secret space mission, NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator Calli Chase detects something amiss in the tunnels below a NASA research center. Clues suggest that Calli’s missing twin sister, Carme, may somehow be involved.