5 books to read this fall, from Marlon James to Joe Biden

NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� this fall can look forward to a wealth of fiction, biographies, memoirs, poetry collections and topical nonfiction. Here are five upcoming works you’ll likely be hearing about.

鈥淭he Disappearers,鈥� Marlon James

鈥淒ark Star鈥� was a showcase for his extraordinary and boundless imagination. In 鈥淭he Disappearers,鈥� he returns to his native Jamaica and to the murderous reality of his Booker Prize-winning 鈥淎 Brief History of Seven Killings.鈥� 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. James weaves together humor, popular culture, compassion and some very hard experience. 鈥淚 refuse to believe there is any lesson to be learned from suffering an atrocity,鈥� James writes, 鈥渙ther than always be on guard for the ways people turn on you.鈥� (Sept. 1)

鈥淎merican Scoundrel,鈥� Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark

Kai Bird is best known as the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of 鈥淎merican Prometheus,鈥� the biography of nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer that became the basis for Oscar winner 鈥淥ppenheimer.鈥� In 鈥淎merican Scoundrel,鈥� 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. 鈥淎merican Scoundrel鈥� draws upon government documents, archival material and dozens of interviews, including, to the authors鈥� surprise, Trump, who 鈥渁nswered our cold calls on his personal cell on several occasions,鈥� Bird writes in the acknowledgments section. Trump was 鈥済racious, if not exactly forthcoming about his memories鈥� and declined to meet in person, because, he told them, 鈥淚鈥檓 the president. I鈥檓 very busy. I have China calling. I have Russia calling. I cannot do it.鈥� (Sept. 1)

鈥淪witzy,鈥� 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, 鈥淭he Girls.鈥� In 鈥淪witzy,鈥� longlisted for the Booker Prize, Cline gives us a retired businessman with failing mental capacity, en route to an assisted dying facility in Zurich. Cline breaks up the story into brief, affectless passages as a once-鈥淰aluable Person鈥� reckons with his memories and concludes that 鈥淗e had always stayed on the surface. His whole life.鈥� (Sept. 8)

鈥淢usic Against the Night,鈥� Yiyun Li

鈥淢usic Against the Night鈥� is sixth novel, and first book since last year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 鈥淭hings in Nature Merely Grow,鈥� her unsparing memoir about the suicides of her two sons. Li this time appears to have written a very different narrative 鈥� 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. The novel is a story of music, but also a meditation on 鈥渢he night,鈥� death 鈥� parents, friends, children, everybody. 鈥淚t is despair that one must not submit to,鈥� Li writes late in the book, adding a dark, Shakespearean warning: 鈥淎 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.鈥� (Oct. 13)

鈥淧romise Me, America,鈥� former President Joe Biden

Memoirs are often presidents鈥� 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. will understandably want to focus on his defeat of in 2020, the passage of landmark legislation on green energy and the appointment of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, , among other achievements. But the public will likely be seeking answers to more unwanted questions, notably the state of Biden鈥檚 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. (Nov. 17)