As autumn approaches, publishers are rolling out an ambitious lineup of new fiction, investigative nonfiction, and celebrity memoirs—with a notable slate of releases connected to Texas writers and settings.

Whether you are updating your personal reading list or selecting the next title for your book club, here are 10 major books hitting shelves this fall.

September Releases

• “I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie” by Jaclyn Smith (Gallery Books | Sept. 8)
  Houston native Jaclyn Smith, best known for portraying Kelly Garrett on the landmark ABC series Charlie’s Angels, reflects on her rise to fame in television, her enduring bond with fellow Texan Farrah Fawcett, and her transition into the fashion and lifestyle retail space.
• “Taipei Story” by R.F. Kuang (William Morrow | Sept. 8)
  Stepping away from bestselling speculative epics like Katabasis, Dallas-raised author R.F. Kuang delivers an intimate contemporary novel. The story tracks a Chinese-American student spending a summer in Taiwan, where her academic pursuits and efforts to connect with her ancestral heritage quickly unravel.
• “Exit Party” by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf | Sept. 15)
  The acclaimed author of Station Eleven returns with a speculative, multiverse-driven narrative. Set in the aftermath of a second American civil war, the novel charts two divergent, harrowing trajectories for the country’s future.
• “Terrestrial” by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth | Sept. 15)
  Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza, who directs the Spanish creative writing doctoral program at the University of Houston, presents a short fiction collection exploring the everyday realities, resilience, and struggles of young women along the U.S.–Mexico border.
• “The French Illusion”by John Grisham (Doubleday | Sept. 29)
  Moving beyond his signature courtroom dramas, John Grisham crafts an international espionage thriller inspired by the works of John le Carré and Robert Ludlum. The plot centers on an American couple abducted outside Paris while on their honeymoon.
• “Ply”by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead Books | Sept. 29)
  Following his Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street novel Trust, Diaz crafts a far-future narrative about human communities attempting to build a functional society from the fragments of a collapsed civilization.

October Releases

• “Petrified Dreams” by Joe R. Lansdale (Little, Brown and Co. | Oct. 6)
  East Texas author Joe R. Lansdale reportedly closes out his long-running Hap and Leonard mystery series. The duo’s final investigation plunges them into a high-stakes rescue mission involving a plane of abducted women and a sadistic antagonist known only as the Artist.
• “Off the Reservation” by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press | Oct. 13)
  Midland-raised horror writer Stephen Graham Jones follows up The Only Good Indians with a tense novel tracking a group of Blackfeet Nation members as they attempt to reclaim the remains of a boy who died at an infamous Indigenous boarding school.
• “Redemption” by Lawrence Wright (Knopf | Oct. 20)
  Austin-based Pulitzer winner Lawrence Wright turns his investigative focus inward to Texas. The book examines the Sisters of Mary Morning Star, a contemplative Catholic order based in Waco, and documents their spiritual ministry to women incarcerated on Texas death row.

December Release

• “Between You a River” by Kimberly Garza (Henry Holt and Co. | Dec. 1)
  Kimberly Garza, director of the creative writing program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, follows The Last Karankawas with an exploration of family history and inheritance. The narrative follows two estranged sisters, Mari and Hannah, who travel to their late mother’s ancestral home in the Philippines to confront long-buried secrets.