Top 10 Autumn Reads

Amazon.com Editorial Director Sara Nelson sifted through hundreds of books to bring you the best reads this fall.

Autumn Reads

Weekly Newsletter

The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox!

SUPPORT THE POST

Every month, Editorial Director Sara Nelson and the editors at Amazon.com sift through hundreds of books to discover their favorite titles. Here’s what they chose for the best of the season:

Fiction

We Are Water by Wally Lamb Help for the Haunted by John Searles Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith
 

We Are Water

(HarperCollins)

 

Help for the Haunted

(William Morrow)

 

Tatiana

(Simon & Schuster)

Wally Lamb John Searles Martin Cruz Smith
Another unputdownable doorstop of a novel—this one about marriages, gay and otherwise—from the beloved author of She’s Come Undone. Help for the Haunted is John Searles’ masterful thriller about a family that helps haunted souls. Remember Arkady Renko, the hero of Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park? He’s back … in Tatiana, an espionage extravaganza set in a Kremlinized Soviet state.
My Notorious Life by Kate Manning Night Film by Marisha Pessl
 

My Notorious Life

(Scribner)

 

Night Film

(Random House)

Kate Manning Marisha Pessl
My Notorious Life investigates in a Dickensian way, the life and times of one of New York’s most infamous 19th century midwives. Night Film is Marisha Pessl’s lurid and wonderfully relentless novel about a down-and-out reporter who investigates a woman’s disappearance.

Nonfiction

Camelot's Court by Robert Dallek Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink Warrior Princess by Mindy Budgor
 

Camelot’s Court

(Harper)

 

Five Days at Memorial

(Crown)

 

Warrior Princess

(Skirt)

Robert Dallek Sheri Fink Mindy Budgor
Another Kennedy book—but this one is erudite and intelligent, published on the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Five Days at Memorial is Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink’s shocking look inside a hospital that barely weathered Hurricane Katrina. Mindy Budgor’s account of training to become the first female Massai warrior will stun you with its bravery.
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson
 

David and Goliath

(Little, Brown and Company)

 

Lawrence in Arabia

(Doubleday)

Malcolm Gladwell Scott Anderson
About why it’s sometimes better to be the underdog than the big shot. Enough said. Historian Scott Anderson explains how the folly of the past has created the present anguish of the Middle East.

Become a Saturday Evening Post member and enjoy unlimited access. Subscribe now