Most anticipated books of the fall: Which books do you want to read?

At the end of July, Publisher weekly released a list of most anticipated books that will be released this fall. These were the books that made the fiction category (click on the hyperlink to pre-order them on Amazon):

Purity by Jonathan Franzen. Release date: September 1, 2015. Synopsis: Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters–Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers–and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende. Released November 3, 2015. Synopsis (from Amazon): An exquisitely crafted love story and multigenerational epic that sweeps from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during the Second World War. Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.

Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving. Release date: November 3, 2015. Synopsis (Amazon): In Avenue of Mysteries, Juan Diego—a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico—has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what’s coming—specifically, her own future and her brother’s. Lupe is a mind reader; she doesn’t know what everyone is thinking, but she knows what most people are thinking. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you.

Lupe doesn’t know the future as accurately. But consider what a terrible burden it is, if you believe you know the future—especially your own future, or, even worse, the future of someone you love. What might a thirteen-year-old girl be driven to do, if she thought she could change the future?

As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, but what travels with him are his dreams and memories; he is most alive in his childhood and early adolescence in Mexico. As we grow older—most of all, in what we remember and what we dream—we live in the past. Sometimes, we live more vividly in the past than in the present.

Avenue of Mysteries is the story of what happens to Juan Diego in the Philippines, where what happened to him in the past—in Mexico—collides with his future.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante. Release date: September 1, 2015. This is the fourth book and final book in the Neopolitan novel series. You can read the synopsis by clicking the title.

A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk. Release date: October 20, 2015. Synopsis (Amazon): Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karataş has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he’d hoped, at the age of twelve he comes to Istanbul—“the center of the world”—and is immediately enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father’s trade, selling boza (a traditional mildly alcoholic Turkish drink) on the street, and hoping to become rich, like other villagers who have settled the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But luck never seems to be on Mevlut’s side. As he watches his relations settle down and make their fortunes, he spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, he stumbles toward middle age in a series of jobs leading nowhere. His sense of missing something leads him sometimes to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the teachings of a charismatic religious guide. But every evening, without fail, Mevlut still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the “strangeness” in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for.

Told from different perspectives by a host of beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years. Here is a mesmerizing story of human longing, sure to take its place among Pamuk’s finest achievements.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A Lisbeth Salander novel, continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz. Release date: September 1, 2015. Synopsis (Amazon): She is the girl with the dragon tattoo—a genius hacker and uncompromising misfit. He is a crusading journalist whose championing of the truth often brings him to the brink of prosecution.

Late one night, Blomkvist receives a phone call from a source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female superhacker—a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium, turns to Salander for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda. The secret they are both chasing is at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals, and governments around the world, and someone is prepared to kill to protect it . . .

Of the books on the PW’s list, I’m most looking forward to Purity by Franzen. I will probably also try to read the new Lisbeth Salander book although I have mixed feelings about it since it is not the original author (for obvious reasons).

We think that list is missing some big ones. Here are some additional books coming out that should be on that list:

1. The Heart Goes Last by Atwood. Release date: September 29, 2015. I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy and have already read it.  I can say it’s worth the hype for Atwood fans. I’ll post the review mid-September.
2. The Blue Guitar by John Banville. I’ve read two of Banville’s books. I loved on (The Sea) and thought the other was okay. He is a brilliant writer.
3. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie. I really want to read this!
4. Slade House by David Mitchell: Random House has been kind to me because I also just got an advance copy of this book. I love David Mitchell and this one looks great!

Interested in more upcoming books? You can check out this list of most anticipated books by The Millions. Their list covers the second half of 2015 not just the fall. You can find it here.

What are you looking forward to for fall reading? Do you plan to read any of the books on this list?