September Picks for Higher Education

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST • How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story?"The most spectacular, hilarious, and generous autobiography of the last quarter century–or ever."—The Boston GlobeRaised by scientifically minded parents, Margaret Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points, and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars, and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our very greatest imaginations.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with a breathtakingly ambitious and unforgettable love story of what it is to live and love in time, and the extraordinary power of second chances. “We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday.”

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF FALL BY: The New York Times, Associated Press, Goodreads, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, and moreA mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest.“Piercing and suspenseful.”—The Wall Street Journal“Bold . . . arresting . . . stylistically adventurous.”—The Boston Globe“Profoundly moving.”—The Guardian A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting. A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.This is what David knows: Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades. His final destination is Zurich. David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes in: the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life. As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he's relied on, vanish.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust turns to the future with a novel that examines the place of technology in the American imagination

A wolf sets out on an epic journey of revenge in this one-of-a-kind dark fantasy—the long-awaited second novel from the author of The Library at Mount Char, hailed as a "major talent" (The Wall Street Journal)

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.

The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.