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· collected 2026-08-21 · by Hillel Italie The Associated Press
The article reports on five upcoming book releases scheduled for this fall, written by authors such as Marlon James, Kai Bird, and Emma Cline. Two of the books, "The Disappearers" by James and "American Scoundrel" by Bird, are longlisted for the Booker Prize. The books cover a range of genres, including fantasy, biography, memoir, and historical fiction, and tackle topics such as suffering, politics, and mortality.
Written by the local model on 2026-08-21,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Story summary
This fall, book lovers can look forward to several notable releases. One of them is Marlon James's novel "The Disappearers", which is set in his native Jamaica and based on the 1988 beating of eight gay men. The story explores themes of violence, suffering, and resilience, with James writing that there's no lesson to be learned from atrocity except to always be vigilant for harm. Another notable release is "American Scoundrel" by Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark, which is a biography about someone whose identity isn't specified in the excerpt. The book will likely appeal to readers interested in history, but it's unclear what specific topic or period it covers.
Written for “Book Recommendations This Fall” on 2026-08-31,
grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.
Why this leaning score
This article does not take a side on a contested political
question, so it has no leaning score. That is an
answer rather than a gap: a match report or a rescue can be warmly
or critically written without being left or right, and scoring it
anyway is how approval of a subject gets recorded as a political
position.
No political leaning scored for article 1733 · logged 2026-08-31
Book lovers this fall can look forward to a wealth of fiction, biographies, memoirs, poetry collections and topical nonfiction.
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lovers → look → fiction
Here are five upcoming works you’ll likely be hearing about.
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you → hear → ?
In “The Disappearers,” he returns to his native Jamaica and to the murderous reality of his Booker Prize-winning “A Brief History of Seven Killings.”
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he → return → Killings
The new novel, longlisted for the Booker, is framed around the horrifying beating in 1988 of eight gay men who had been rehearsing for a play.
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who → longliste → play
James weaves together humor, popular culture, compassion and some very hard experience.
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James → weave → humor
“I refuse to believe there is any lesson to be learned from suffering an atrocity,” James writes, “other than always be on guard for the ways people turn on you.”
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people → refuse → you
(Sept. 1)
“American Scoundrel,” Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark
Kai Bird is best known as the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of “American Prometheus,” the biography of nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer that became the basis for Christopher Nolan’s Oscar winner “Oppenheimer.”
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that → know → winner
In “American Scoundrel,” he and Susan Goldmark (his wife) trace the influence of the late political operator Roy Cohn, from his early years as the top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy to his mentorship of a young Donald Trump.
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he → trace → Trump
“American Scoundrel” draws upon government documents, archival material and dozens of interviews, including, to the authors’ surprise, Trump, who “answered our cold calls on his personal cell on several occasions,” Bird writes in the acknowledgments section.
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Bird → draw → section
Trump was “gracious, if not exactly forthcoming about his memories” and declined to meet in person, because, he told them, “I’m the president.
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I → decline → them
I’m very busy.
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I → ’m → ?
I have China calling.
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China → have → ?
I have Russia calling.
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Russia → have → ?
I cannot do it.”
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I → do → it
“Switzy,” Emma Cline
Emma Cline has well established her mastery of inhabiting the alienated mind, of dramatizing youthful transience, aspiration and deception, most famously in her celebrated debut, “The Girls.”
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Cline → establish → debut
In “Switzy,” longlisted for the Booker Prize, Cline gives us a retired businessman with failing mental capacity, en route to an assisted dying facility in Zurich.
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Cline → longliste → Zurich
Cline breaks up the story into brief, affectless passages as a once-“Valuable Person” reckons with his memories and concludes that “He had always stayed on the surface.
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He → break → surface
“Music Against the Night,” Yiyun Li
“Music Against the Night” is Yiyun Li’s sixth novel, and first book since last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” her unsparing memoir about the suicides of her two sons.
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Things → win → sons
Li this time appears to have written a very different narrative — about a late 18th-century piano prodigy whose fame barely outlasted his lifetime and the orphaned wanderer-musician who makes the ill-fated decision to marry him.
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who → appear → him
“It is despair that one must not submit to,” Li writes late in the book, adding a dark, Shakespearean warning: “A child’s death can never feel neutral to a parent; a child’s death is a negation of time, which no longer has now and then, now and again, now and later, only now and now and now and now and now.”
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which → submit → time
“Promise Me, America,” former President Joe Biden
Memoirs are often presidents’ best chance to define their legacy, although readers and critics may have different priorities, whether Richard Nixon and Watergate or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
uncertain
readers → promise → priorities
Joe Biden will understandably want to focus on his defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, the passage of landmark legislation on green energy and the appointment of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, among other achievements.
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Biden → want → achievements
But the public will likely be seeking answers to more unwanted questions, notably the state of Biden’s health while he was in the White House, the backstory to his disastrous debate against Trump and his decision soon after to call off his reelection campaign.
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he → seek → campaign
