Irish fictionSebastian Barry’s The Newer World (September 10th) completes a loose American trilogy begun with Days Without End, winner of the 2016 Costa Book of the Year and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017, followed by A Thousand Moons (2020). Against the rapidly shifting landscape of post civil war America, Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – journeys to find meaning and belonging, first in Nashville, then in Victorian England. Louise Kennedy follows up her debut novel Trespasses, made into a hit Channel 4 TV series, with Stations (September 24th). If the Troubles was the backdrop to the doomed love affair in her debut, emigration, addiction and a broken family frame the central relationship in Stations. Róisín and the troubled Red meet as teenagers in their small hometown in 1982. She follows him to London but their lives move in different directions.The Weight of Angels by John Boyne (October 1st) is an alternative history in which Oscar Wilde avoids jail and disgrace and goes on to grace the first half of the 20th century with his wit.O Now! (October 8th) by Niall Williams returns to Faha, Co Clare, the setting of his previous novels, This Is Happiness and Time of the Child. Bat Considine and his neighbour Mossie Crowe sit by the fire and wait to see which will die first. But Bat makes a discovery that changes this routine forever.The Comets by Eoin McNamee (October 1st) is a complete collection of the Co Down writer’s shorter fiction, published in one volume for the first time. McNamee, widely regarded as the finest stylist of his generation, is best known for Resurrection Man, The Bureau and The Blue Trilogy.X&Y=K (September 17th) is the final work by the late Ciaran Carson – a fusion of memoir, ghost story and speculative fiction that pushes his lifelong preoccupations with memory, time and perception into audacious new territory. Glorious Monsters by Martina Devlin (October 1st) is set in Rome, 1819. Irish artist Amelia Curran encounters the dazzling, volatile Shelleys – Mary, her mercurial husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and her stepsister Claire Clairmont – and is drawn into a world shimmering with genius. But shadows lie behind the glamour.In Snow Birds by Roisin Maguire (October 8th), when corporate interests threaten a nearby island colony of rare birds, all-weather swimmer Grace is alarmed to find that her allies in the fight are the Duckie Divers Swimming Club, city women with expensive gear and good intentions.Irish nonfictionCharles Haughey: Glory, Greed and Guns by Vincent Browne (October 22nd) is the long-awaited biography of one of the most controversial and influential figures in modern Irish politics by one of Ireland’s leading journalists. Browne is also the subject of another book, Fearless: Magill, Vincent Browne and Ireland in the 80s by Kevin Rafter (September 18th), which profiles the influential current affairs magazine he founded.Charles Haughey: Glory, Greed and Guns by Vincent Browne is out on October 22nd. Photograph: Alan Betson In About Life (October 29th), Maureen Gaffney brings together research, a lifetime of observation and her own personal experience to explore how to stay resilient, purposeful and fully engaged with life when the world feels increasingly unstable. Now You Are Wonderful: A Celebration of Age, Freedom and Wisdom by Mary Kennedy (October 1st) invites us to rethink what it is to age – personally, socially and spiritually. As ever, there is a host of memoirs and biographies coming out with an eye on the Christmas market. The Walls by Derry international footballer James McClean (October 22nd) promises to pull no punches, about politics, sport and his personal life.All In by Peter O’Mahony (September 24th) promises to be everything the Munster and Ireland rugby player was on the pitch: frank, combative, self-critical, wholehearted and first rate.Part memoir, part manifesto, A Bigger Life by novelist Louise O’Neill (September 24th) is a candid, courageous exploration of modern womanhood, sexual freedom and the myths we’re sold about what makes a life worthwhile.Not the Perfect Victim by Nikita Hand (September 22nd) is the story of a woman reclaiming her power – a first-hand account of survival, defiance and her successful civil case against one of the world’s most powerful sportsmen, Conor McGregor, over a brutal, life-changing assault.[ Nikita Hand’s case against Conor McGregor challenges the myth of the ‘perfect victim’Opens in new window ]Out There by William Keohane (November 10th) explains how gender transition doesn’t happen in a clinic, nor does it unfold in a straight line. For the author, it is a journey mapped across words, names, and the Irish landscape.John McGahern: A Writing Life by Frank Shovlin (October 6th) is the definitive biography of Ireland’s greatest postwar writer, rich in dramatic revelations bringing to life the world that inspired his work.John McGahern: Frank Shovlin's biography of Ireland’s greatest postwar writer is out on October 6th. Photograph: Frank Miller This Boy’s Voice by John Creedon (October 22nd) picks up where This Boy’s Heart left off, recalling formative scenes from the popular radio presenter’s adolescence and early adulthood in a rapidly changing Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s.Mary and Padraic Colum: Lives and the Dream by Margaret Kelleher (September 1st) is a chronicle of quiet friendship, romantic bonds, a long-standing marriage, and a fruitful intellectual partnership.For the Dead Remember: The Life of MR James by Trinity College Dublin professor Darryl Jones (September 10th) is a biography of the greatest of all ghost story writers.Edged in Blue: A Rock & Roll Odyssey with Rory Gallagher by Dónal Gallagher (September 25th) is a biography of Ireland’s greatest blues guitarist by his devoted brother.Resetting The Republic: How to Build a Better Ireland (November 5th) by former Irish Times editor Conor Brady offers a critical analysis of the state of the nation and argues that there is a need for radical reform of the State’s political and administrative structures. A case in point might be Billion Dollar Baby: The Inside Story of the Hospital that Broke the Budget by Paul Cullen (October 15th), the definitive account of Ireland’s most expensive and controversial public project, the national children’s hospital. Or Lorcan Sirr’s Housing a Nation (September 29th), a sweeping history of Irish housing – not just as architecture or policy, but as a battleground for identity, power and belonging.Paul Cullen, author of Billion Dollar Baby: The Inside Story of the Hospital that Broke the Budget. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw For nearly three decades, Joe Duffy sat behind the mic as host of RTÉ’s Liveline, the radio show that became the Republic’s ’s national sounding board. Talk to Joe: Life, Liveline and Me (October 29th) takes readers inside the studio and beyond, sharing the stories, voices and moments that defined a generation. Sounding Ireland: Radio and the Making of Us by Clíodhna Ní Anluain (October 30th) tells the story of how Ireland’s national broadcaster grew from its first transmission in 1926 into a powerful cultural force that has shaped the country’s identity, voice and shared experiences across generations.Based on RTÉ Culture’s 100 Buildings, an illustrated tour of modern Ireland in architecture, This Modern Love by Emma Gilleece (October 23) travels across Ireland’s early- to mid-20th‑century modernist landmarks.Ireland: Why it matters to be an Island by Michael Cronin (September 24th) invites readers to reconsider Ireland as an island shaped – culturally, politically and ecologically – by the seas that surround it.Seeing What’s Hidden by the late Manchán Magan (September 17th) explores how ancient Irish culture retains deep resonances with other indigenous world views – a way of perceiving land, language, nature and spirit as inseparable.A Letter Home: Irish Correspondence from America 1818–1972 by Kerby A Miller and Breandán Mac Suibhne (September 24th) is an illustrated book featuring more than 60 letters – short and long – written by Irish emigrants to North America from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s, giving heart-rending insight into the Irish emigrant experience.No One Tells You: The Last Years of Edna O’Brien by Carlo Gébler (September 11th) is a document of artistic obsession and a confrontation with mortality, a humane memoir of a writer’s decline and death by her son and fellow writer.[ Carlo Gébler on his mother Edna O’Brien: Coming to the endOpens in new window ]Long defined by message control and secrecy, Sinn Féin has rarely allowed outsiders a glimpse behind the curtain, Ourselves Alone: Sinn Féin Behind Closed Doors by Siobhán Fenton (September 10th), its former communications adviser and party spokesperson, is therefore a unique insight into its inner workings.Drawing on his unique experience as the founder of two internet start-ups, Storyful and Kinzen, and working with Twitter and Spotify, The Last Good Day on the Internet by Mark Little (September 17th) charts the rise of the attention economy and the relentless pursuit of scale that fuelled the toxic algorithms, hate, misinformation and division of today’s online world.Rooted in his recollections of growing up in 1980s Belfast, Sensation by Colin Graham (September 10th) traces connections across his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and tells the story of his fractured relationship with his father. International fictionFrom Patrick deWitt, the Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers comes Dodge City (September 29th), a thrilling, moving novel about a young man on an amphetamine-fuelled cross-country road trip fleeing the Vietnam draft.American Hagwon (September 29th) is Min Jin Lee’s follow-up epic to the hugely successful Pachinko. John and Helen Koh and their three children are building new lives in Korea when their world is upended, first by a terrible betrayal and then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, forcing them to emigrate. The Winter Guest by Sarah Moss (October 1st). On Christmas Eve, in a hotel on Ireland’s west coast, a man and a woman meet for the first time. As a snowstorm gathers, they share a meal, pour wine, swap confessions.Sarah Moss, author of The Winter Guest. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Taipei Story by Rebecca F Kuang (September 8th) is a coming-of-age literary novel of first love and loss by the bestselling author of Yellowface.The Booker longlisted Switzy by Emma Cline (September 10th) is a portrait of an ageing man’s last pilgrimage, from the bestselling author of The Girls and The Guest.Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry, returns with Peck & Peck (October 13th), the story of a young man whose life is turned upside down when he is hired by the most prestigious, secretive and dysfunctional poetry journal in the world.Primeval and Other Times (September 10th) by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, follows the citizens of mythical Primeval, its fields and forests bounded by two rivers, the world beyond nothing more than a dream. Yet their stories – or Times – are a microcosm of the world’s tumultuous recent history.From the bestselling author of Station Eleven, Exit Party (September 17th) is Emily St John Mandel’s story of crimes committed and loves lost. It is 2031. America is at war with itself, but there is hope: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone is going to a party.Booker longlisted, The Disappearers (September 3rd) is Marlon James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal.[ Booker Prize 2026: Irish debutant features on longlist alongside Marlon James, Douglas Stuart and moreOpens in new window ]In The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain (September 17th), glamorous young writer Daphne du Maurier visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, where she begins a clandestine and intoxicating affair with the housekeeper.From the Women’s Prize-winning author of the The Power, The Strangers by Naomi Alderman (September 17th) is an original and moving novel that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, inviting us to reconsider what it means to be human.The Rouse by China Miéville (September 17th) is a sprawling saga of the bloody 20th century, and the intimate story of two lives, their loves, regrets and secrets – and a terrifying journey into infinite mystery.Our Noble Selves (September 10th) by Kate Atkinson, bestselling author of Life After Life, is a witty historical novel about the Festival of Britain.In Hollywood, Ending (September 22nd), John Green artfully blends a behind-the-scenes love story with an examination of the private cost of a public life, in this tale of two young people figuring out who they are, both together and alone.Mestra by Madeline Miller (September 29th) is the story of the daughter of the King of Thessaly, who is able to metamorphose into any being she can imagine. Her father, on the other hand, is cursed with an unnatural, insatiable hunger.Madeline Miller, whose noel Mestra is out on September 29th. Photograph: Christopher Leaman/The New York Times Partita (October 6th), Barbara Kingsolver’s follow-up to Demon Copperhead, is a coming-of-age narrative and an examination of midlife hopes and regrets. Unmoored by her brother Cyrus’s death, Livia’s only solace is music. A scholarship offers escaper from the farm, then along comes a man.Elif Shafak’s In One Brief Moment All Eternity (October 15th) is a luminous reinvention of Gustave Flaubert, told through the eyes of the women – real and fictional – who shaped him: a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer and a passionate, jealous lover who refuses to be forgotten.Audrey Niffenegger’s Life Out of Order (October 13th) is her long-awaited sequel to the bestseller The Time Traveller’s Wife, a kaleidoscopic story of love, resilience and hope when time is running out.From Susanna Clarke, the bestselling, prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting and haunting illustrated short story full of medieval magic, The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City (October 22nd).Pulitzer Prize winner Yiyun Li returns with Music Against the Night (October 22nd), a historical epic, following two extraordinary musicians on the rise, Irish pianist John Field and Adelaide Percheron from Pondicherry, French India. Lessons in Harmony by Jonathan Coe (November 12th) is the story of the unlikely cross-channel friendship of French composer Maurice Ravel and British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.Arendal by Karl Ove Knausgaard (November 5th) is a novel about impossible love and impossible life, about ships of the dead, fire and ice, dizzying starry skies and a man trying to find his foothold in the world.International nonfictionLovers of literature will look forward to a biography of Booker Prize winner Anita Brookner: Art and Life by Hermione Lee (September 10th) and James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages (September 3rd), whose subtitle The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society sums up the Times columnist’s apocalyptic message.Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State (October 6th) by Michael Lewis, bestselling author of The Big Short, is described as a wild ride through the destruction of the American government and the unsung heroes who tried to stop it. Former BBC Moscow Correspondent Martin Sixsmith analyses the increasing parallels between Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia in Despots: How Trump is Turning America into Putin’s Russia (September 10th). All the Wrong Moves by Anthony Scaramucci (September 17th), Trump White House insider turned host of the hit podcast The Rest Is Politics: US, sets out the desperate state of the nation and suggests a way out. War Is Interested in You by Gideon Rachman (October 22nd) considers what its subtitle sums up as The Breakdown of International Order and the Threat of World War Three. End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor (September 15th) identifies a new, apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists and shows us how to resist it. Naomi Klein: End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor is out on September 15th. Photograph: Eric Luke In The Fall of the West (October 1st), Owen Jones takes us on a journey to show how the West went from scoring what it believed was its final victory, to being engulfed in an existential crisis of its own making, from Afghanistan and Iraq to the economic crash of 2008 and Gaza today. The Real Nigel Farage by John Sweeney (September 10th) levels grave charges that the man behind Brexit is not a fit and proper candidate to become prime minister or anywhere near power. Delving into her own experience over two decades of reporting on politicians up close – from the financial crash to Brexit and the revolution of social media – BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg explores today’s stark political truths in Pay Attention (November 5th)The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell (September 29th) is an incisive investigation into gun violence, America’s deadliest and most polarising crisis. The Perilous Fight (October 8th) is an uncompromising memoir from the Super Bowl quarterback and renowned civil rights activist Colin KaepernickKilling the Pope by Chernobyl author Serhii Plokhy (November 19th) draws on new archival research, following the threads of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in May 1981 into the corridors of the Kremlin and the Vatican, and through the inner circles of Turkish ultranationalists, KGB functionaries and Sicilian mafiosi. Redwood by Ben Macintyre (September 10th) is the remarkable, unknown cold war story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.Napoleon’s Orangutan by Katherine Rundell (October 8th) is a pocket-sized celebration of animals that we should all treasure, from the author of The Golden Mole and Impossible Creatures.More by Gillian Anderson (September 10th), sequel to her bestseller Want, invites us to leave shame and fear at the door as she dials up the heat on women’s sexual fantasies and dares us to want more.[ Gillian Anderson: I want women to tell me what they think about when they think about sexOpens in new window ]Fathers from around the world and from all walks of life come together in Letters to Our Sons by Adolescence actor Stephen Graham and psychologist Orly Klein (September 24th), an honest and moving collection of letters.Memoirs and biographies to look out for include Fictional Selves by Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan (September 29th); Hawking: His Life and Work by Graham Farmelo (September 24th), about the brilliant theoretical physicist; An Unexpected Life by feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem (September 22nd); Things I Took From the Dark: The Museum of Me (October 8th) by actor and writer Reece Shearsmith; The Queerest of Folk by Britain’s foremost television writer Russell T Davies (October 8th); Is it Too Late to Make a Run for it? by actor Judi Dench (October 22nd); First Born Daughter by comedian Katherine Ryan (October 22nd); Sir Michael Gambon: the Authorised Biography by Jasper Rees (October 29th); and The Steps by Sly Stallone (September 29th).Talking Heads singer David Byrne’s Sleeping Beauties (October 8th) considers what its subtitle sums up as Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake.Award-winning Australian author Helen Garner sums up The Season (November 5th) thus: “I’m trying to write about footy and my grandson and me. About boys at dusk. A little life-hymn. A poem. A record of a season we spend together before he turns into a man and I die.”How to Begin (November 5th) by Edmund de Waal, bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, is about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a startling rediscovery in his family archives of letters between his grandmother and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.