New & Notable Books: Week of September 14

Tuesday’s fall pile — Mandel, Atkinson, Picoult, Osman — plus the Booker book that landed last week.

10 titles

1. Exit Party (2026), Emily St. John Mandel
   The United States has already collapsed, and a Silver Lake party in 2031 is the first night without a curfew, until the host vanishes into thin air. Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven) publishes it Tuesday, September 15. Science fiction that keeps its eye on the people in the room rather than…
2. Our Noble Selves (2026), Kate Atkinson
   A man in 1951 London cannot remember the night he is accused of, while the Festival of Britain turns a postwar city into a carnival that is also a crime scene. Kate Atkinson (Life After Life) publishes it Tuesday, September 15. Witty and tightly plotted, for readers who want history with a pulse.
3. Hollow Bones (2026), Jodi Picoult
   A Rhode Island emergency director whose mother died on September 11, 2001, is married to a man who reads liars for a living, and the marriage hits a crisis neither of them planned for. Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper) publishes it Tuesday, September 15. A family-and-disaster novel built to be…
4. We Chase Shadows (2026), Richard Osman
   A group of older people takes on a case, and the jokes land because the grief underneath them is real. Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club) publishes it Tuesday, September 15, and it works the same way that series does. A mystery for a couch and a weekend, written without talking down to anyone.
5. Switzy (2026), Emma Cline
   An aging executive makes a last trip toward Zurich, losing the plot of his own life while his assistant shepherds him through airports. Emma Cline (The Girls) published it Tuesday, September 8, and it is already on the 2026 Booker longlist. Funny in the grim way, and not a beach read.
6. Taipei Story (2026), R.F. Kuang
   A Chinese American student flies to Taipei for a summer of language school and discovers that fluency will not make her the person she thought she was. R.F. Kuang (Babel, Yellowface) published it Tuesday, September 8. Quieter than her last two books, and the one that shows who she is when she is…
7. Dead Beat (2026), Leigh Bardugo
   Alex Stern faces the last door in a New Haven whose secret societies have been feeding on students since the first book. Leigh Bardugo (Ninth House) publishes the series finale in mid-September, with Yale's secret societies still at the center. Readers new to the series should begin with Ninth…
8. Hollywood, Ending (2026), John Green
   Two young actors fall in love on the set of a Warhol biopic while the attention economy eats the production around them. John Green (The Fault in Our Stars) publishes it September 22, his first novel for adults in nearly a decade. Tender and funny, and more grown-up than the brand suggests; save…
9. Station Eleven (2014), Emily St. John Mandel
   A traveling Shakespeare company crosses the Great Lakes region twenty years after a flu wiped out most of the world. Emily St. John Mandel published it in 2014, and it is still the end-of-the-world novel people mean when they ask for one that feels human. Her new book, Exit Party, is out Tuesday…
10. The Girls (2016), Emma Cline
    A California teenager drifts to the edge of a Manson-shaped cult in the summer of 1969 and cannot look away. Emma Cline published it in 2016, ten years ago this year, and it is the book that made her name. Her new novel, Switzy, is out now and on the Booker longlist; this is the voice that got it…