Stephen King to Margaret Atwood, 10 new books out September you can’t miss

Brace yourself, readers, for we are in the autumn publishing season, and this year’s releases could keep you busy until next year.

The biggest titles – a new Stephen King, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – will be on everyone’s radar.

Read them, but do not ignore the other promising books, which include fiction, memoir, biography and more.

Here are the ones to look out for.

1. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, by Malcolm Gladwell (September 10)

We humans, Gladwell posits, are terrible at recognising liars and lies. Is there a way to be trusting without being naive? Gladwell considers the possibilities with historical examples, from Neville Chamberlain’s misguided trust in Adolf Hitler to chief of CIA counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, whose distrust of everyone threw the agency into turmoil.

2. The Institute, by Stephen King (September 10)

The horror master is still enjoying a creatively fertile period late in his remarkable career, with no less than eight novels since his return of sorts with Doctor Sleep in 2013.

He says The Institute is “as psychically terrifying as Firestarter” and promises a story of good versus evil in a world “where the good guys do not always win”.

3. The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood (September 10)

Interest in Atwood was rekindled by the popular TV series based on her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale and, almost 35 years later, she’s back with a sequel. In The Testaments, Atwood picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with explosive testaments by three female narrators from Gilead.

4. The Divers’ Game, by Jesse Ball (September 10)

Jesse Ball (Census) levels a steely gaze at the very concept of humanity in this three-part novel that introduces the lower-class “quads” and the rich “pats”, who treat those below them with impunity.

When a group of pats conceal the grisly fate of a young quad girl behind an elaborate festival, you may start to wonder just how different this dystopian world is from our own.

5. Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser (September 17)

It may be a curious choice for a man to write the definitive biography of a gay woman, but so be it.

Sontag reads like an epic quest, offering a deep and thorough portrait of the intellectual giant that is both dishy and enlightening.

6. Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson (September 17)

Woodson’s fiction for adults, like her 2016 Another Brooklyn, often focuses on young adults (for whom she also writes). Red at the Bone jumps back and forth in time to tell the story of 16-year-old Melody, the product of a teen pregnancy that tore her family apart.

7. Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir), by Jackson Bird (September 24)

Bird lives as a man today, but his journey began with the assignment of “girl” at birth.

His memoir details coming to terms with his gender confusion while growing up in 1990s Texas, from figuring out how to get a binder delivered to his college dorm to undergoing surgery before eventually becoming an advocate.

8. The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (September 24)

Coates has a gift for describing the crushing legacy of slavery, as he has done in powerful essays for The Atlantic and his National Book Award-winning Between the World and Me.

Now he does it in novel form, with the tale of Hiram Walker, a boy with a magical gift who is born into slavery but hatches a plan to escape.

9. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett (September 24)

If you’ve never read a Patchett novel, get ready for something wonderful. If you have read a Patchett novel, get ready for something wonderful – and completely different.

The Dutch House, like 2016’s Commonwealth, is a family saga, though this one has an unusual mansion at its heart – a rich man’s folly that nevertheless cannot destroy his progeny.

10. Year of the Monkey: A Memoir, by Patti Smith (September 24)

Unlike Just Kids and M Train, poet and performer Smith’s latest memoir zooms in tight, detailing the 12 months between the ages of 69 and 70 in which she lost two close friends: manager Sandy Pearlman and playwright Sam Shepard.

“I noticed I looked young and old simultaneously,” Smith writes. Her willingness to look closely at life’s closing chapters makes for a magical book.