What To Read

With school back in session, vacations wrapped up, and a to-do list that seems never-ending, fall is the perfect time to dive into a quick, satisfying read that shakes off any lingering reading slump. From a Danish speculative-fiction hit to a surrealist lost classic, here are ten books you can finish in a weekend—and think about for much longer.

Get hooked on a Danish series turning one autumn day into a global sensation

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle, trans. by Barbara J. Haveland

What better way to break out of a reading rut than by diving into a series? This Danish speculative fiction septology, set entirely on a crisp and unending November 18, is fast becoming a literary phenomenon.

Book one, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), is a slim and gripping read told through diary entries that pull you in from the very first page. It follows antiquarian bookseller Tara Selter as she wakes to find the same autumn day repeating again and again, its quiet beauty gradually turning surreal.

The book was praised as “a masterpiece of its time” by the Nordic Council Literature Prize jury and earned nominations for both the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

In Book II, Tara’s looping day continues as she leaves her home in search of meaning, drifting across Europe through landscapes where time stands still and seasons no longer change. New York Magazine called it “miraculous” and readers have compared the series to the philosophical fiction of Rachel Cusk and the mysticism of Olga Tokarczuk.

By Book III, recently longlisted again for the National Book Award, Tara is no longer alone. She meets someone else who remembers. As the world remains fixed in endless fall, a new sense of companionship begins to take shape. The National Book Award judges praised the book as “a profound meditation on loneliness, the power of connection, and the subtle and often untraceable ways in which we move through time and space.”

Each volume is short enough to finish in a sitting but deep enough to linger. Start now and let it unfold through the season.

A surrealist classic newly back in print from New York Review Books

The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

Written after World War II but not published until 1977, Carrington’s second novel fuses myth, mysticism, and dream logic into a gender-defiant adventure through Mesopotamia, Transylvania, and the land of the dead. “[Carrington’s] work… remains a marvel,” writes Joy Williams in Book Post. “She was, and remains, forever rad.”

A soulful family saga from a master satirist of American absurdity

Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

In a fractured America, a remarkable ten-year-old girl watches her eccentric, mixed-heritage family unravel amid a polarized nation. “The abiding miracle of Shteyngart’s work is that it feels as timely as a Shouts & Murmurs gag in this week’s New Yorker while capturing the timeless absurdity of human life,” writes The Washington Post. “Tastes at first like a cherry-flavored gumdrop, but it’ll burn a hole in your tongue.”

A powerful story of family and identity from a three-time Booker Prize finalist

Rosarita by Anita Desai

A woman travels to Mexico and is drawn into the enigmatic orbit of an elderly stranger who claims to know secrets about her mother’s past, setting off a journey of discovery and self-reckoning that the Financial Times found “Evocative... subtle and enigmatic… In Rosarita, the known rubs up against the unknown, and a kaleidoscopic network of possible lives are lost and found in barely 100 pages.” President Obama included it on his summer reading list, calling it “a short, beautiful novella about a woman’s discovery of her mother’s secret past.”

President Obama included it on his summer reading list, calling it “a short, beautiful novella about a woman’s discovery of her mother’s secret past.”

The hypnotic new novel from National Book Award nominee Katie Kitamura

Audition by Katie Kitamura

Longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, Audition begins with a woman—an acclaimed stage actress—meeting a younger man named Xavier for lunch at a Manhattan restaurant. He believes she may be his mother. She insists she has never given birth.

From that quiet, unsettling premise, the novel unfolds in two parts, each one reframing the story in subtle, destabilizing ways. With spare, elegant prose and her signature psychological precision, Kitamura explores identity, intimacy, and the elusive boundary between role and self.

A 1958 novella from the cult Austrian author of The Wall

Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer

When a teenage guest disrupts a bourgeois household, a woman’s quiet confession unfolds with devastating clarity. “Haushofer’s sentences are simple and concise, and full of careful thought,” praised The Nation. “The ideas she expresses are so important that you wonder how you have managed to get by without them.”

A page-turner campus novel where a grad student’s thesis exposes a marriage’s hidden betrayal

Seduction Theory by Emily Adrian

In a prestigious writing program, a student’s thesis draws on real events that match a professor couple’s private history, igniting gossip, suspicion, and the quiet dismantling of professional and personal alliances. The New York Times Book Review calls it a “sexy, engrossing book about the nature of attraction, ambition and loyalty.”

A dark office satire set deep in the Spanish countryside

Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

Trapped at a company retreat in the remote forests outside Madrid, a woman in crisis faces deranged bosses, a crumbling façade, and a reckoning with her past. This “tremendously entertaining” debut, as described by The Guardian, skewers workplace hypocrisy and millennial burnout with sharp wit and a hallucinatory edge.

A biting satire of class, power, and control over truth, longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize

Universality by Natasha Brown

In this sophomore novel from the author of Assembly, a young journalist uncovers the truth behind a violent attack on a Yorkshire farm, connecting a banker, a columnist, and a radical anarchist group. Her viral exposé raises more questions than answers: Who wrote it, why, and how much of it is true? “Brown seems to see deeply into the heart of the strangeness and hypocrisy of modern life,” says The Guardian.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning author delivers a heartwarming dramedy set during a wedding weekend

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

“Three Days in June might take only an afternoon to read, but it lingers in your mind long afterward,” declared cook and food critic Nigella Lawson. In her latest work, the author of Breathing Lessons follows a divorced mother through the emotional and chaotic days surrounding her daughter’s wedding. “Tyler’s particular genius is for capturing the fullness of character and feeling in so few words... Just relishable.”