15 fall books to cosy up with, including new titles from Barbara Kingsolver, Rebecca Yarros and Dame Judi Dench

1. Wickhills by Premee Mohammed* 

Fantasy; Tor, Sept. 8

If Ian Fleming, Ursula Le Guin and Sherlock Holmes ever put their heads together, the resulting creation might be something like this spycraft-infused fantasy thriller. Our hero is a secret agent tasked with protecting a defecting scientist — workday stuff until an unravelling of this magical world’s shaky order sends them underground. (Literally.) He can’t trust his own intelligence service, the scientist may or may not have the enchanted equivalent of a nuclear weapon and their unlikely allies include a thief and a vampire.

2. The Witches of Cambridge by Alice Hoffman 

Fiction; Scribner, Sept. 8

Supernatural alignment or just clever marketing? Whatever forces brought us a new Alice Hoffman in the same week that “Practical Magic 2” hits theatres, we thank them for this feast of content from our favourite writer of witchy stories of female friendship. This time, Hoffman takes us to 1950s Radcliffe College and a brand-new coven, a.k.a. the Lilith Society of witches fighting to retain their magic as McCarthyism — and the area’s historic link to the Salem Witch Trials — looms large.

3. Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel* 

Fiction; HarperAvenue, Sept. 15

Our generation’s foremost spinner of dystopian epics, the author of “Station Eleven” returns with yet another postapocalyptic tale…set in a terrifyingly-near 2031. We’re in Los Angeles just after a civil war collapses the American nation state.

4. Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson 

Fiction; Bond Street Books/Doubleday Canada, Sept. 15

One of the great joys of a Kate Atkinson novel — in addition to the dry wit and zippy prose — is her gift for taking the mundane and slanting it with an unsettling strangeness. Her new novel is no exception. It’s at once a story about the absurdity of bureaucracy — in this case, an obscure government department helping to organize the 1951 Festival of Britain, tasked with things like sourcing a cow for a farming exhibit and casting Nell Gwyns for a historic tableau — and a disorienting crime story, centred around a missing French woman and a sinister plot to frame a (maybe?) innocent man.

5. Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm*

Literary fiction; Tor, Sept. 22

This is a book about a haunting, both of a literal house and the spectral presence of trauma that follows violence and displacement. The actual building in question is Nuhad’s family home in Palestine, unseen since her grandmother fled the Nakba in 1948, and the kind of eerie place where even cats do not dare to tread. The less literal possession comes from the secrets unspoken between three generations of Palestinian women, and the reckoning that comes with a pilgrimage to the ancestral home.

6. Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros 

Romantasy; Entangled, Sept. 29

Start saving your spot in line for that midnight release party! Romantasy phenom Rebecca Yarros returns to the battlefield with the third book in her blockbuster Empyrean series. Last year, the second book sold 2.7 million copies on publication day, making it the fastest-selling fiction title in 20 years. Interestingly, the new book isn’t a straightforward novel but rather a collection of 13 stories about beloved characters and their dragons.

7. Partita by Barbara Kingsolver 

Literary fiction; Harper, Oct. 6

Three years after she won the Pulitzer Prize for “Demon Copperhead,” living literary legend Kingsolver brings us a meditation on art, love and beauty. It begins as all good stories do: a phone call out of nowhere, a lover from her past disrupting a middle-aged mother and wife’s dull-but-perfectly-fine existence. This blast from her past triggers a timeline-swapping tale of the ambitious girl she used to be — a country girl who got out via musical brilliance — and the life she has chosen today.

8. Designing in the Dark by George Sully 

Memoir; ECW, Oct. 6

Canadian fashion insiders will recognize George Sully’s name immediately. He’s the design genius behind Sully & Son Co. and House of Hayla. For those better-versed in space drama, he’s also the creator of the iconic Starfleet boot seen in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Sully’s memoir is an insider’s look at the resilience, creativity and perseverance it takes to build life in Canadian fashion and beyond.

9. Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li 

Literary fiction; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 13

When Ann Patchett says a book is “very likely the best contemporary novel I’ve ever read,” you pay attention. The book that earned such high praise is a historic epic about musical talents vying for professional success on the pianofort at the close of the eighteenth century. One is a Mozart-esque child prodigy who can’t quite achieve adult success, the other an outsider (and woman!) who sees music as her escape from the prison of marriage.

10. Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus 

Fiction; Scribner Canada, Oct. 13

Garmus’ debut novel was the bestselling sensation (turned TV hit) “Lessons In Chemistry.” Four years after riding that rocket ship, she’s back with her followup. On the surface, this story about a man who dreams of becoming a poetry editor doesn’t have much in common with her previous novel, which was about a female scientist frustrated by organizational misogyny. A few pages in, however, you’ll recognize some Garmus trademarks: warm humour, a protagonist you’ll cheer on, and a scene-stealing dog.

11. Miss Wolcott’s Ghost by Louise Penny* 

Crime; Minotaur, Oct. 20

Penny’s beloved, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns for his 21st outing. We’ve got another phone ringing out of the blue here, except this time it’s a midnight call that wakes him in his bed in Three Pines. The caller tells him that there’s a dead body in a place he’s never heard of…and then the line goes dead. Consider us hooked.

12. We Are Underlings by Doretta Lau* 

Literary fiction; Anansi, Oct. 20

Welcome to Nine Circles, the world’s only theme park celebrating the afterlife. Your guide? A marketing manager named Zita’s whose personal corporate hell involves selling the idea of death to our mortality-resistant world ahead of the park’s grand opening. Then, a spanner in the workback schedule: the big boss has died in mysterious circumstances, quickly followed by several colleagues. This one’s a sharp satire of modern workplaces.

13. A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas 

Romantasy; Bloomsbury, Oct. 27

We’re five books into Maas’ massively-successful ACOTAR series, making any kind of plot summary so steeped into complex lore that it’s almost impossible to do justice. (In brief, an evil being who’s been trapped in a lake for millenia stirs, threatening the fae still reeling from the last war.) It doesn’t feel like a long shot, given the 75 million copies romantasy queen Maas has previously sold, to predict this will be the year’s biggest book.

14. Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Dame Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea

Memoir; St. Martin’s Press, Nov. 3

Here’s an interesting twist on the celebrity memoir: Dench, grande dame of British stage and screen, tells her life story through a conversation with friend and writing partner, theatre director O’Hea. With a long and glittering career — an Oscar, a Tony, an Olivier — to mind for showbiz tales and personal reflections alike, this is Dench at her most charming and candid. A taster: There’s the one about the director who told “everything” was “wrong” with her face, and more than one onset prank to regale us with.

15. Solace In Winter by Mary Lawson* 

Literary fiction; Knopf Canada, Nov. 10

A still winter landscape has a lot in common with a Mary Lawson book. Both are quietly stunning and understated in their brilliance. At 80, this chronicler of small town Canada hasn’t lost her touch. Once again set in a town called Solace, this is the story of a fateful snowstorm that throws together a group of strangers — a widower, a draft dodger, a dog — and the unlikely bonds that form as flakes fall.