Gilbert Cruz: I'm Gilbert Cruz and this is the book review. Okay, these are my seasons ranked in reverse order. These are specific to me. I live in the Northeast. Please do not write in. Please do not quibble. Please do not argue. Number four, summer the worst. I've said it before on this podcast, summer is the worst. I like vacations. I hate the heat. This is undeniable. Number three, spring. You get that magical feeling in the air. Oh, the season's going to turn. This is great. You know what else you get? Allergies. The worst. Number two. Now we're cooking. Winter. You have sweaters. You have the holidays. You have hot cocoa. It's cold. Yes, that is annoying, but sweaters. Refer to my previous statement. Number one, it's possible that you've guessed it. Given where we are in the calendar, fall is the absolute best season.

Gilbert Cruz: I will quote a book titled The Great Gatsby, which says, "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." And crisp air or not, there are fewer bugs. There are apple cider donuts and lots of books. Fall book season is here when many publishers just flood the zone with books. And I'm here with two of my favorite guests to talk about fall book season. Jumana, welcome back.

Jumana Khatib: Hi, Gilbert. For once, I don't disagree with anything you just said. for once, possibly the only time. MJ Franklin, you know him. He is the host of our monthly book club discussion. MJ, welcome back.

MJ Franklin: Thank you for having me. I do disagree. However, I did love the inclusion of a quote. I love a quote.

Gilbert Cruz: You do love a quote.

MJ Franklin: So, I'm back on board.

Gilbert Cruz: Thank you very much.

MJ Franklin: But that was a take.

Gilbert Cruz: All right. We're going to talk about books that are coming out in September, October, November. We're going to do a lightning round at the end because there are so many. We just cannot fit them all in. But first, I want to go big picture. MJ Jumana, as you both know, having worked at the book review for many years, fall book season is always busy, but it feels especially busy because of publishing calendar concerns around the election, wanting to publish before the election. There is just so much coming out at the beginning of the fall. What was it like to read these books over the summer?

Jumana Khatib: Oh yeah. I mean one of my fondest beach days was spent reading a book coming out in November that I will tell you about towards the end of this podcast.

MJ Franklin: I also feel just with this job like Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time. I'm like living in one season reading for another. like it's very confusing where we are.

Gilbert Cruz: The wonderful thing is it's not going to be confusing for our listeners. We're going to hold your hand. We're going to walk you through the next several months. We have literary heavyweights, blockbuster fiction, memoirs, history, some spooky stories. We're going to go in chronological order starting in September. Jumana, take it away with the first book.

Jumana Khatib: Okay, I have a weird slim totally worthwhile book.

Gilbert Cruz: Go for it.

Jumana Khatib: This is called The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar. If you're a reader, you probably know him for Homeland Elegies, which is one of the book reviews 10 best books of the year. He's also a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright for Disgraced. His latest is really interesting. It's a play and it's a novel. It's a novel disguised as a play, or a play disguised as a novel. It's about a scientist who worked on the atomic bomb during World War II, who years later is visited by a federal agent who accuses him of having leaked secrets to the Soviets for years, an act of treason that could be punishable by death. The scientist denies it, but then later confesses to his wife that he did. It plays out in long conversations. It's about marriage, morality, Cold War politics, nuclear proliferation, what patriotism really means. And he's such a brilliant playwright. If you are not someone who reads plays, this reads so well. It's so compelling. It's slim. If you're looking to knock out a book in an afternoon this fall, I would really recommend it.

Gilbert Cruz: Next up, another huge book in September, arguably one of the biggest novels of the fall, Sally Rooney's Intermezzo. MJ, talk to us about this one.

MJ Franklin: I'm so excited to talk about this. Sally Rooney, known for Normal People and Conversations with Friends, is known for capturing the fraught, complicated dynamics between young people. But with Intermezzo, she broadens her scope. It follows two brothers: Peter, a successful 30-something Dublin lawyer, and Ivan, a 22-year-old competitive chess player. Their father has recently died, and the book explores their grief, their alienated relationship, and their respective romantic entanglements. Peter is torn between his first love who suffers from chronic pain after an accident, and a younger college student. Ivan falls for Margaret, an older woman going through a separation. Rooney takes stylistic risks here; the voices of the two brothers are distinct, with Peter's chapters leaning into stream-of-consciousness. It feels like her most mature and emotionally expansive work to date.

Gilbert Cruz: Next, I want to talk about Playground by Richard Powers. Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for The Overstory. His novels have this incredible way of blending cutting-edge science, ecology, and deep human emotion. Playground is set largely on the island of Makatea in French Polynesia. It intertwines four lives: a pioneering marine biologist who has spent her life studying ocean depths; two college friends—one who becomes a Silicon Valley tech billionaire and the other an artist; and an island local. The billionaire wants to use the island for "seasteading"—building floating, autonomous communities in international waters—and there is also an advanced AI system woven into the narrative. Powers writes about underwater life and coral reefs with stunning beauty, while delivering a profound critique of tech-utopian hubris.

Jumana Khatib: Moving into October, we have a major new novel from Haruki Murakami, titled The City and Its Uncertain Walls. For devoted Murakami readers, this title might ring a bell. It's based on a novella he published in a literary magazine back in 1980, which he never released as a standalone book, but which later served as the foundation for Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Now, more than four decades later, he has returned to that foundational story and expanded it into a full-length novel. It follows a protagonist whose teenage love told him that her true self lives in a walled city where shadows are separated from people, unicorns roam, and the library holds dreams instead of books. Years later, he finds his way into this city. It's classic Murakami—full of magical realism, meditation on loss, solitude, and the blurred lines between reality and the subconscious.

MJ Franklin: In non-fiction and memoirs, October brings an absolute blockbuster: Cher: The Memoir, Part One by Cher. Her career has spanned over half a century, winning Grammys, an Oscar, and Emmys. Part One chronicles her difficult childhood, her complicated relationship with her mother, meeting Sonny Bono, their meteoric rise to fame as Sonny & Cher, and the unraveling of their relationship and marriage. It's packed with Hollywood lore, but what makes it sing is her unmistakable, candid voice. It truly feels like Cher is sitting across the table telling you her life story without holding back.

Gilbert Cruz: October also delivers exceptional historical non-fiction. Biographers like Stacy Schiff bring extraordinary rigor and narrative flair to their subjects. Whether examining pivotal moments in American history or deep biographical character studies, these works showcase narrative non-fiction at its absolute peak. Furthermore, for mystery and thriller lovers, authors like Tana French and Stephen King provide the ideal eerie atmosphere for crisp autumn nights.

Jumana Khatib: Now I can finally mention that book I was reading on the beach! Moving into November, we see reflective works, posthumous literary essays, and profound retrospectives on art and culture. As winter approaches, diving into meditations on the enduring power of reading and literature feels incredibly satisfying.

Gilbert Cruz: All right, it's time for our lightning round. Each of us will quickly highlight two or three additional titles that our listeners should keep on their radar. MJ, start us off.

MJ Franklin:

1. Banal Nightmare: A darkly funny, surreal, and sharp novel about modern relationships.
2. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst: A sweeping, beautifully written chronicle of post-war Britain, tracing race, class, and sexuality through one man's life.

Jumana Khatib:

1. The Maze: A tight, gripping psychological thriller touching on modern surveillance and tech ethics.
2. House of Memory: An evocative non-fiction family saga spanning three generations across continents, dealing with memory, exile, and home.

Gilbert Cruz:

1. The Last Beat: A vibrant oral history of rock's golden era, packed with never-before-seen interviews.
2. The Algorithmic Loom: An urgent, rigorous investigation into how generative AI is reshaping human creativity and labor.

Thank you both so much for joining me today. We hope all of our listeners find plenty of great reads to curl up with this fall!

MJ Franklin: Thank you, Gilbert!

Jumana Khatib: It was my pleasure, thank you!

Gilbert Cruz: The book review is produced by Sarah Diamond, Amy Pearl, and Patricia Sulbaran. It's edited by Tracy Mumford, and mixed by Pedro Rosado. Original music by Dan Powell and Alicia. Special thanks to Dalia Hadad. We want to hear what you think about the show, so send us an email at thebookreview@nytimes.com. I'm Gilbert Cruz. Thanks for listening.