11 new books out this month: Fiction, nonfiction and more

Recently, I picked up a publication to distract myself from my phone, which was blowing up with societal media alerts, predetermination prognostications and sweaty-palmed predictions astir who the Dodgers mightiness motion for adjacent season.

That book, “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel,” lands successful stores connected Nov. 19, and it instantly pulled maine successful with its sobering, concise summation of the period: “That period brought satellite wars, revolutions, automobiles, women’s suffrage, decease camps and the internet.”

With each that profound change, the overgarment transcript asked a question arsenic pertinent present arsenic for the erstwhile century: “And for novelists, it posed an urgent question: How to constitute books arsenic startling and unforeseen arsenic the satellite we unrecorded in?”

Indeed.

In this enactment of nonfiction, which was 15 years successful the making, writer Edwin Frank, the editorial manager of New York Review Books and laminitis of its NYRB Classics series, explores 20th-century novels done a personally chosen and idiosyncratic database of 32 titles (that makes allowances for Dostoevsky’s 1864 communicative “Notes From the Underground,” which presages the fabrication of the coming century). Frank examines novels by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel García Márquez, Ralph Ellison and W.G. Sebald among them. (And database lovers alert: He includes adjacent much novels to see successful an appendix.)

In 1 transition successful the instauration to “Stranger Than Fiction,” Frank addresses books astir World War II, Hans Erich Nossack’s “The End,” which details the firebombing of Hamburg, and Vasily Grossman’s 2 tomes astir the brutal Battle of Stalingrad, “Life and Fate” and “Stalingrad.” Referring to the situation of penning astir these cataclysmic events, helium writes “…the imaginative resources of fabrication conflict some to prosecute with and combat wide of unbearable fact.”

Unbearable facts whitethorn ever beryllium with us. Novels tin beryllium invited distractions, searing indictments oregon innumerable different things, but the conflict to face alteration remains ongoing. Frank’s searching survey of the novel, what helium calls the “story of an exploding signifier successful an exploding world,” bursts with thought-provoking material, and I look guardant to diving deeper into its chapters.

And possibly it’s utile to see everything we’ve gone done frankincense acold and deliberation – adjacent if it’s hard to contemplate astatine times – that possibly we person what it takes to support connected going whether done the acheronian oregon the light.

“How does it each extremity up?” asks Frank successful his introduction.

Then, arsenic now, it remains a bully question.

What different books are coming retired successful November? Let’s instrumentality a look astatine 10 more.

Nov. 5

“Before We Forget Kindness” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Hanover Square)

Need thing cozy and comforting close now? In the latest publication of the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot from the archetypal Japanese, a caller batch of characters question healing oregon closure astatine Café Funiculi Funicula by sampling its time-traveling amenities.

“Bel Canto (Annotated Edition)” by Ann Patchett (Harper).

Patchett annotates her award-winning bestseller astir a South American hostage concern that ensnares an opera singer, a Japanese businessman, terrorists and more. The author’s notes — criticizing an adverb here, revealing a quality who “bores” her determination – connection a invited moving commentary connected the beloved novel.

Nov. 12

“Didion & Babitz” by Lili Anolik (Scribner)

My colleague Emily St. Martin, who has a communicative coming astir this publication and its

author, told maine she’s obsessed with this lively enactment of nonfiction astir 2 iconic Southern California writers and the Franklin Avenue country of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Didion and Babitz’s opposites-attract relationship would yet repel them from each other; spot that the writer shares each those details and more. As Anolik warns: “Reader, don’t beryllium a baby.”

“Lazarus Man” by Richard Price (FSG)

Price, the writer of specified richly textured novels arsenic “Lush Life,” “Clockers” and “The Whites” as good arsenic indelible enactment successful TV and movie that includes “The Wire,” “The Color of Money,” and “The Night Of,” is backmost with a caller astir a collapsing tenement successful Harlem and the intertwining lives reacting successful its wake.

Sheffield is 1 of the champion writers astir euphony and popular culture, and present helium takes a analyzable look – conscionable look astatine that subhead – astatine the enactment of Taylor Swift. (Handout/Dey Street Books/TNS)

“Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: A Celebration of Taylor Swift’s Musical Journey, Cultural Impact, and Reinvention of Pop Music for Swifties by a Swiftie” by Rob Sheffield (Dey Street)

Sheffield is 1 of the champion writers astir euphony and popular culture, and present helium takes a analyzable look – conscionable look astatine that subhead – astatine the enactment of Taylor Swift. As helium proved with his terrific effort postulation “Dreaming the Beatles,” Sheffield tin beryllium endlessly absorbing arsenic explores the enactment of the artists helium admires.

“Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures” by Katherine Rundell (Doubleday)

Rundell just published her YA phantasy “Impossible Creatures” here successful the States, and she’s already backmost with a caller publication of fantastical beasts – but these are real. Whether drafting connections betwixt wombats and Italian creator Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Shakespeare and Greenland sharks, she fascinates.

“Shy Creatures” by Clare Chambers (Mariner)

Set successful a 1960s-era psychiatric hospital, the caller features Helen, an unmarried creation therapist carrying connected a dreary matter with a joined antheral workfellow (who – red-flag – presses bleak novellas connected her erstwhile she’d alternatively be reading Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries). Her beingness gets upended with the quality of a wild-haired recluse who’s spent decades surviving hidden distant with his aged aunt and turns retired to beryllium a talented artist.

Nov. 19

“Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America” by Rita Omokha (St. Martin’s)

Following the execution of George Floyd, which was captured connected video by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, award-winning writer Rita Omokha traveled to 30 states to conscionable and talk with young Black activists and research the past 1 100 years of enactment done by younger radical successful the combat for societal justice.

“The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America” by Stephanie Gorton (Ecco)

In the aboriginal portion of the past century, 2 women were astatine the forefront of the run for reproductive rights and commencement power access. Gorton’s publication details however these leaders – Sanger, the laminitis of Planned Parenthood, and Dennett, present mostly forgotten – were often astatine likelihood and however that affected the movement.

“Gangster Hunters: How Hoover’s G-Men Vanquished America’s Deadliest Public Enemies” by John Oller (Dutton)

Oller’s publication follows the action-packed exploits of 1930s-era FBI agents – who often lacked the experience, skills and instrumentality of their high-flying transgression counterparts – arsenic the G-men chased down gangsters specified arsenic Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.