25 Fall Books Goodreads Users Are Most Excited About

Margaret Atwood takes The Tempest and places it in the center of her latest novel. When theater director Felix is tossed aside as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Festival, he takes a job teaching theater to prisoners — and decides to use a production of Shakespeare's classic play of sorcery and illusion as part of his revenge.

Release date: October 11

Labor and delivery nurse Ruth Jefferson has found herself on trial for hesitating to perform CPR on a baby in cardiac arrest — a baby whose white supremacist parents requested Ruth (who is black) stay away from their child. Now, she must work with Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender who insists she doesn't bring up race in court. But as the case becomes a national media sensation, both Ruth and Kennedy find themselves reexamining everything they've come to understand about justice, compassion, race, and privilege.

Release date: October 11

Reading is unheard of in Sefia's world. She lives her life on the road, surviving in the wilderness all alone after her father's murder and her aunt's kidnapping. When she realizes the key to her survival — and the only clue to her father's murder and her aunt's whereabouts — is a mysterious object she discovers to be a book, she slowly learns how to understand its secrets. What follows is a dangerous and exciting journey of rescue and revenge.

Release date: September 13

Seventeen-year-old Natasha Kingsley doesn't have time for miracles, though she could use one — she's doing her best to convince the U.S. Immigration Office not to deport her family to Jamaica. Daniel Jae Ho Bae, the aspiring poet whose parents want nothing more than for him to get into Yale and make them proud, meets Natasha and decides fate has something extraordinary in store for them. Neither of them can anticipate what their chance encounter turns into, but their story is one that delves into themes of family, race, loneliness, loyalty, and faith.

Release date: November 1

Sungju Lee's intense memoir gives a firsthand account of modern North Korea, from the perspective of a young man who was forced to survive on its streets. He did this, from the age of 12, by stealing, fighting, begging, and aligning with gangs — until, at 16, when he was able to make his escape. It's a harrowing look at a life without basic freedoms, and an examination of the families we create and cling to in our darkest moments.

Release date: September 13

Zoe Whittaker has a perfect life: She's married to a rich and handsome Wall Street tycoon, they're card-carrying members of Manhattan's social elite, and she splits her time between their Tribeca penthouse and sprawling lake house. But she also has a secret, and it's threatening the security of a life she's worked so hard to build. Five years ago she had a different life; she was a different person entirely — and now her past is coming back to haunt her.

Release date: September 27

When best-selling author Julie Prentice moves her family across the county to an idyllic neighborhood of complete strangers, she's hoping to leave her stalker behind. She's thrilled when she makes an immediate connection with a neighbor — until a series of misunderstandings brings harassment back into her life. Has her stalker found her, or are her new neighbors after her too? And how much danger are she and her family in?

Release date: October 4

Nutshell is a classic story of marriage, deceit, and murder told in an utterly unconventional way — from the perspective of the unborn child overhearing all of his mother's scheming. Trudy is nine months pregnant and cheating on her husband John with his brother Claude, and both have come to the conclusion that murdering John would solve their problems. It's a novel take on Hamlet, only this time the son is trapped by circumstance and not by his own inaction.

Release date: September 13

Jerusalem — the epic, 1266-page novel from the man behind Watchmen and V for Vendetta — is being described as "the tale of everything, told from a vanished gutter." It's a big claim, and Moore really goes for it: The story spans the past, present, and future of one corner of Northampton, England, introducing the living to the dead, flirting with genre (he taps into fantasy, drama, social realism, science fiction), and creating an overwhelming mythology for all of human existence.

Release date: September 13

Nisi Shawl presents an alternate Neo-Victorian history of the Belgian Congo, asking the question: What would have come of Belgium's colonization if the native population had mastered steam technology earlier? The answer is Everfair, a piece of land purchased by British socialists and African-American missionaries, and set aside as a safe haven for not just natives of the Congo, but also escaped slaves from the U.S. and refugees from anywhere African natives are being oppressed.

Release date: September 6

In fifth grade, Misha (a boy) and Ryen (a girl) are paired as pen pals, their respective teachers mistakingly assuming the students are the same gender. Misha and Ryen quickly figure out the misunderstanding, hit it off, and keep writing. After seven years of adhering to their ground rules — keeping the interaction limited to letters, no phone numbers, no social media — Misha comes across a photo of a girl named Ryen online and decides he has to meet her.

Release date: October 21

He's a disgraced ex-sniper who's taken a job protecting a rich man's daughter; she's that rich man's daughter, desperate to live her own life and make her own mistakes — until her dad's bad business puts her life at risk. They meet with their own demons, and without any expectations of getting along, but find they probably need each other more than they realize.

Release date: September 6

In this immersive and evocative novel, Amor Towles takes us to 1920s Moscow through the lens of Count Alexander Rostov. After being sentenced to house arrest for his inciting and rebellious poetry, the count must watch — from the distance of an attic room across from the Kremlin — as his country goes through some of its most chaotic decades.

Release date: September 6

In late 19th-century Ireland, 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell is said to be a miracle girl, her parents claiming she's survived without any food other than "manna from heaven" for months. Among a flock of tourists and journalists coming to witness her, an english nurse and nun work shifts to watch over and care for her — and try to solve the mystery of her survival.

Release date: September 20