Fall books: Fiction takes the spotlight in bookstores during the midterm season

NEW YORK (AP) — Midterm election news will fill the headlines this fall, but, among book buyers, fiction will likely have top billing.

Former President Joe Biden’s “Promise Me, America” stands out not just as a White House memoir — presidential memoirs are events unto themselves — but as a rare high-profile political book over the next few months. Nonfiction sales have slumped in recent years and political books haven’t approached the peaks of President Donald Trump’s first term.

“The energy in political books seems to be subdued. I think folks are just ranted out,” says Kristen McLean, an analyst and vice president for client insights at Circana, which tracks retail book sales.

“I think the (news) cycle is moving a bit too quickly for a lot of the very specific political books to catch on,” says Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble’s senior director of books.

Michael Lewis’ “Blockers,” a probe into Trump’s second term through the eyes of government workers, may be the only new release to rival the impact of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s summer bestseller, “Regime Change.” This fall’s notable political offerings otherwise revisit the Biden years, from “Promise Me, America,” to former Middle East envoy Brett McGurk’s “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the Oct. 7 Hostages” to Akbar Shahid Ahmed’s study of Biden’s Gaza war policies, “Crossing the Red Line.”

Even Bob Woodward, who for decades released timely exposés of sitting presidents, is passing on current politics. In “Secrets: A Reporter’s Memoir,” he reflects on presidents and White House sources dating back to the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal that made him famous..

“Because he’s going more into his own life, I expect he’ll have a different and broader audience than for his other books,” DeVito says.

A feast of fiction

Novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz, co-winners three years ago of the Pulitzer Prize, will share honors again as two of the featured authors in a busy season. Kingsolver’s “Partita,” about a onetime musical prodigy drawn again to her past, is the first since “Demon Copperhead,” her Pulitzer-winning retelling of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield.” Meanwhile, Diaz has followed his Pulitzer-winning “Trust” with the dystopian, Dickensian “Ply,” about a young thief in a chaotic future society.

Diaz says he met Kingsolver at the Pulitzer ceremony, where the two drank bourbon and bonded over literature and other common interests.

“I don’t think literature is a race or a tennis tournament,” Diaz says. “I think the more good books that are out there, the richer the conversation becomes and the more readers are engaged.”

Fiction sales have been solid in 2026 and will likely remain high if only because the two most prominent romantasy authors, Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas, have new books coming. Maas is releasing “A Court of Splintered Harmony,” the sixth volume of “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” with the seventh installment scheduled for early next year. Yarros’ “Threshing Day” compiles 13 stories featuring characters from her Empyrean series, and her stand-alone “Peculiar Stars” finds protagonist Callista Moran stranded on an island after a sailing accident and discovering unexpected sides to herself.

The new fiction list also features Nobel laureate Jon Fosse’s latest, “Vaim Hotel,” and three contenders for the Booker Prize — Marlon James’ “The Disappearers,” Emma Cline’s “Switzy” and Rebecca Perry’s “May We Feed the King.” The book most primed for gossip is Rachel Cusk’s “Life of M,” a meta-novel about a movie star who may or may not be based on Natalie Portman. The season’s longest-awaited novel is likely Chad Harbach’s “The Brightness”: The parallel and intertwining lives of two close friends in their 20s is his first novel since his acclaimed 2011 debut, “The Art of Fielding.”

Min Jin Lee’s “American Hagwon” is her first novel since 2017 and her celebrated “Pachinko.” Emily St. John Mandel’s “Exit Party” is a story of futuristic breakdown from the author of the futuristic classic “Station Eleven.” Yiyun Li, Edwidge Danticat, Kate Atkinson, Deesha Philyaw, Diane Williams, Laleh Khadivi, R.F. Kuang and Norah Labiner also have fiction coming out.

Fans of Stephen King (and the late Peter Straub) can look forward to “Other Worlds Than These,” the final “Talisman” novel. Alice Hoffman launches a new series with “The Witches of Cambridge” and Brandon Sanderson has begun “Blightfall,” written with Janci Patterson. “The French Illusion” is John Grisham’s latest thriller. S.A. Cosby’s “Truth to Power” is a Marvel Crime novel featuring superhero/sleuth Luke Cage.

Celebrities share their stories

A trio of Oscar-winning superstars will tell their stories this fall: Sylvester Stallone’s “The Steps,” its title a reference to the actor’s iconic upward run in “Rocky”; Michael Douglas’ “One Helluva Ride,” which the actor and producer has called a corrective to the blurry legends of fame; and Dustin Hoffman’s “Look at Me,” promoted by publisher Simon Six as “an intimate memoir about art, ambition, family, friendship, love, aging, and the mysteries of a creative life.”

Gloria Steinem looks back on her early years in “An Unexpected Life” and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick reflects on his activism in “The Perilous Fight.” Chuck Lorre’s “Sitcom” is a memoir from the creator behind “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Eric Dane’s “My Book of Days” comes out just months after the “Grey’s Anatomy” star died from ALS.

Poetry for all times

Ancient poetry seems new again thanks to Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey,” which has placed editions by Emily Wilson and the late Robert Fagles high on bestseller lists. Wilson has a new book out this fall, “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea,” essays that cover everything from Greek tragedy to “slut-shaming” Helen of Troy to the “sly laughter” of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP.”

In “Cloud Runner,” former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo tries to express what she acknowledges may be inexpressible, the death three years ago of her daughter, Rainy Ortiz: “I have lost my girl./Some things do not belong in words,” Harjo writes. Jennifer Franklin channels the mind of James Joyce’s gifted, ill-fated daughter Lucia in the collection “A Fire in Her Brain.”

New work is also expected from Layli Long Soldier, Tina Chang, Patricia Lockwood, Dalia Taha, Avis Blackbird and Hieu Minh Nguyen. The anthology “Other Legacies” features tributes from Rae Armantrout, Edward Hirsch and other prizewinners to such lesser-known poets as Rachel Loden, Julia de Burgos and Stephen Jonas.

Making history

Another writer enriched by a Nolan movie — Kai Bird, co-author of “American Prometheus,” the biography adapted into “Oppenheimer” — has co-written “American Scoundrel,” the story of lawyer/political fixer/Trump mentor Roy Cohn. In “The Rush,” award winner Nathaniel Philbrick revisits the 19th century quest for gold. The acclaimed science writer James Gleick examines the evolution of communication in “The Telephone: A New History.”

Two books, Timothy W. Ryback’s “53 Days” and Victor Sebestyen’s “Weimar Germany,” examine the fall of democracy in 1930s Germany, while other releases warning of contemporary threats include Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s “End Times Fascism” and Pulitzer winner Jill Lepore’s “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.”

Public radio host Celeste Headlee’s “Freedom’s Daughters” is one of many works this fall that center on race and racism. Grandmaster Flash has collaborated with Robert “Scoop” Jackson on a history of rap and hip-hop, “Birth of a Culture,” and Stephanie Phillips’ music history “We Were Here” highlights artists from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Living Colour.

Pulitzer winner Alan Taylor’s “Tower Hill” offers a fresh look at the 1831 rebellion led by the enslaved Nat Turner. In “Renaissance Men,” Harriet A. Washington honors three groundbreaking and overlooked Black physicians in a narrative spanning the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and resonating today.