October is the busiest month in publishing, and this year the big names have all arrived at once. Here are five new books, all published this month, picked for readers who like their fiction with a strong sense of place and their nonfiction a little sideways.
Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, 6 October). Kingsolver's first novel since Demon Copperhead, which won the Pulitzer Prize. A partita is a piece of music made of separate movements, and the book follows Livia Cable, a farm wife whose quietly arranged life is broken open. Read it if you loved the earlier book's voice.
Music Against the Night, by Yiyun Li (13 October). Li follows Things in Nature Merely Grow, the memoir that won this year's Pulitzer Prize, with a historical novel set in the Romantic era. It traces the love story of two piano prodigies, Adelaide Percheron and John Field, the Irish composer who invented the nocturne, and the ambition that pulls them apart.
Sleeping Beauties, by David Byrne (6 October). Nonfiction from the former Talking Heads frontman about good ideas that went dormant and were later revived: Caravaggio's paintings, Moby-Dick, the submarine, hand-washing. The title borrows a term from the researcher Anthony van Raan. It is the kind of book you end up quoting at dinner.
Life Out of Order, by Audrey Niffenegger (6 October). A return to the world of The Time Traveler's Wife, told through Alba, the daughter of Henry and Clare, who has inherited her father's habit of slipping through time. A good one to share with a teenager who has already read the first.
The Brightness, by Chad Harbach (27 October). Harbach's first novel since The Art of Fielding, published fifteen years ago. Kirkus calls it brilliant and poignant. It is out at the end of the month, so pre-order it now and save it for a long weekend.
