There are a number of heavyweight fiction titles coming out this week: Min Jin Lee, Hernan Diaz, and Ayad Akhtar all have long awaited novels emerging, each one its own piece of monumental fiction. To balance out those huge releases, there is indeed a plethora of nonfiction titles also coming out today. Evan Gershkowitz releases his memoir of his Russian imprisonment, Cheyenne Roundtree drops an explosive biography of Sean Combs, and Mahmoud Khalil also releases his detention memoir. There is so much more to find below, so keep reading, and have a great Tuesday.
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Min Jin Lee, American Hagwon
(Cardinal)
“An enthralling family saga rich with intrigue, secrets, and betrayal. It is a literary triumph written in the most exquisite prose.”
–Clint Smith

Hernan Diaz, Ply
(Riverhead)
“A page-turning, pleasurably disorienting, and deeply humane vision of a possible future.”
–Vogue

Ayad Akhtar, The Radiance
(Summit)
“A fantastic surprise, a novel made of oppositions: almost painfully intimate, culturally wide-angled, vulnerable, shrewd, compassionate and ruthless, tragic and well, radiant.”
–Mary Gaitskill

Evan Gershkowitz, This Cursed Beautiful Land
(Crown)
“A rousing tribute to the beauty and importance of old-fashioned journalism, a taut thriller of high stakes ‘hostage diplomacy,’ and a poignant meditation on the human struggle between hope and apathy under authoritarian rule.”
–Patrick Radden Keefe

Cheyenne Roundtree, Bad Boy for Life: The Rise and Fall of Sean Combs
(Holt)
“Roundtree’s explosive debut interrogates the shifting personas and crimes of hip-hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs … A masterful character study.”
–Publishers Weekly

John Grisham, The French Illusion
(Doubleday)
“A gripping, suspenseful page-turner about a Paris honeymoon gone horribly wrong—and the nightmare that follows.”
–From the publisher

Mahmoud Khalil, No Land to Stand On: Notes From Detention
(Metropolitan)
“Khalil’s clear-eyed analysis, the clarity of his prose, and the strength of his character turn his devastating story into an extraordinary book that everyone should read.”
–Kamila Shamsie

Deesha Philyaw, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman
(Mariner)
“It should be a crime to be so funny while simultaneously yanking your heart out of your chest. What a novel!”
–Kristen Arnett

Bobby Finger and Lindsay Weber, I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody is a Celebrity
(Crown)
“It’s sharp, funny, educational: a dissertation-length highbrow tabloid written by your coolest friends who have excellent taste in lowbrow culture.”
–Samantha Irby

Carla Vass, The Rally
(Union Square)
“It’s a hoot: the sort of scrumptious novel you’ll devour like Belgian chocolate, French bread, and Italian wine.”
–Chris Bohjalian

Robert Kolker, The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia
(Doubleday)
“An extraordinary investigation of the forms of silence and denial that come to structure a family redefined by dementia.”
–Rachel Aviv

Sarah Blakely-Cartwright, Heavy Cream
(Simon & Schuster)
“Smart, edgy, and emotionally astute.”
–Oprah Daily

Anand Giridharadas, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City
(Knopf)
“Giridharadas is a powerful and compassionate writer of extraordinary conviction. This is a tremendous achievement.”
–Min Jin Lee

Sarah Hepola, The Only Thing There is to Want: A Memoir of Three Loves
(Dial Press)
“Hepola’s profound insights and masterful storytelling reveal how our most complicated relationships often pave the path to self-understanding.”
–Lori Gottlieb

Rebecca Perry, May We Feed the King
(Transit)
“In Rebecca Perry’s novel, we witness two kinds of resurrection: that found in the art of fiction and that found in the art of curation, both bringing the dead vividly back to life.”
–Times Literary Supplement

Malcolm Gladwell, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic
(Little Brown)
“At every turn in this arresting, informative, and invaluable inquiry, Gladwell reveals hidden realities and contrasts honest versus dishonest discourse.”
–Booklist

Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East
(Knopf)
“Readers wanting an immensely informed, humane and highly readable political chronicle will be rewarded in spades.”
–Literary Review

Meg Mason, Sophie Standing There
(Harper)
“A piercing, achingly human novel about the enormous courage required to step out of the wings and into your own life.”
–Booklist

Tom Overton, John Berger: From Life
(Verso)
“An authoritative, nuanced biography.”
–Kirkus

Patrick deWitt, Dodge City
(Ecco)
“Keenly observed and wryly humorous … DeWitt draws each character as comically absurd, yet he makes each portrait feel strangely poignant.”
–Publishers Weekly

Douglas Smith, The City Without Jews: Life and Death in Nazi Vienna
(FSG)
“A magnificent history of Vienna’s antisemitic past, told through the voices of those who lived and died there.”
–Kirkus

Sarah Langan, Trad Wife
(Atria)
“A memorable entry in the recent slew of horror novels and thrillers sending up the trad wife phenomenon.”
–Publishers Weekly

By Literary Hub | Created at 2026-09-29 08:40:04 | Updated at 2026-09-29 09:49:35
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