The Best Fall Books

In this trippy, hilarious debut, Duncan and Lily, a hapless Manhattan ad executive and his PhD-candidate wife, head upstate for the summer to mend their broken relationship. On the drive, a wild boar leaps in front of their Saab and dies. They soon discover that he is the beloved, venerated mascot of Osterhagen—the bizarre town where they’ll be living—and for this fatal encounter, they’ll have hell to pay. Adding to the madcap absurdity is Lily’s burgeoning friendship with the town pervert, Lloyd, a peeping Tom. When Duncan and Lily dig up the long-buried bones of a possibly murdered nanny in their garden, they embark on a grand excavation of their marriage as well. —Carmela Ciuraru

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The long-awaited third novel from Lorrie Moore is set in the months following September 11, 2001. A Gate at the Stairs (Alfred A. Knopf ) centers on Tassie Keltjin, a naïve college freshman. Raised in a Midwestern farm town, she is so perplexed by university life that she compares herself with the priest-child of a Colombian tribe “made mystical by being kept in the dark.” In the light at last, and in need of a job, Tassie is hired to babysit a mixed-race girl named Mary-Emma. Tassie grows attached to the baby and sensitive to the racism in the community. She also becomes close to a student who may not be who he says he is.

Although this is a grief-soaked book, Tassie is an oddly passive narrator. She doesn’t act when she learns her boyfriend may be a jihadist, nor when she finds out Mary-Emma’s parents harbor a secret. Finally, a loved one’s death undoes her.

Moore is by turns ironic and tragic in her portrait of a woman struggling to find herself in this troubled new century. —Jane Ciabattari

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The gritty, hypercompetitive theater scene in 1970s New York comes alive in Martin’s latest novel, which follows a devastating love triangle among struggling actors: Edward Day, who fancies himself an up-and coming Marlon Brando; Madeleine Delavergne, who is needy and beautiful; and Guy Margate, the aloof man Madeleine eventually marries. Guy once saved Edward from drowning, complicating Edward’s desire for Madeleine—and leaving him indebted to a man he despises. Martin keeps the story taut and impeccably captures an era of vibrant theater, when young actors were enchanted by legendary teachers such as Stella Adler and caught up by their own charm. —C.C.

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Huneven, 56, ruthlessly examines addiction and sobriety in her third novel. It’s the summer of 1981, and professor Patsy MacLemoore wakes up in jail following a drunken blackout. (“Her hair had woken her up. It stank.”) She has no memory of the night before and no idea that a mother and daughter were run over in her driveway. But is Patsy guilty? The truth is revealed as she endures prison, rebuilds her career and finds her way back to family and friends. This absorbing novel is brutally honest, beautifully written and, in the end, redemptive. —C.C.

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Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Sanders is keenly attuned to the social nuances of life in Paris with her glamorous mother, Astrid, her staid father, Frank, and her cynical sister, Lea. But when Astrid’s affair with a Polish activist draws her into danger, then divorce, Charlotte chooses to relocate with her mother to New York, where they do their best to subsist. In this moving story, Charlotte recognizes her mother’s flaws, yet still manages to maintain her daughterly devotion. —J.C.

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It’s 1945, and four young women, traumatized and orphaned by Holocaust horrors, help one another heal while confined in Atlit, an illegal British-run refugee internment camp near Haifa, Israel. Although emotionally scarred, the women find the courage to break for freedom when Jewish forces engineer a daring escape. Diamant’s searing novel, based on an event from Israel’s founding days, is ultimately uplifting. —J.C.

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