Elsewhere, if you’re a fan of domestic thrillers featuring expensive furnishings, then two shows should be for you: Netflix’s The Beast in Me (November), in which Claire Danes becomes suspicious of her new neighbour, and Peacock’s All Her Fault (November), in which Succession’s Sarah Snook plays a woman going through every mother’s worst nightmare. The ever-prolific super-producer Ryan Murphy has two shows coming up: the latest in his Monster franchise (October), focusing on serial killer Ed Gein, and legal drama All’s Fair (November), starring Kim Kardashian. And to top things off, the final season of Stranger Things is set to be the TV event of not just the season, but the year; its first four episodes drop in November, before it wraps up with three episodes on Christmas Day and a feature-length finale on New Year’s Eve. Now that’s a way to end 2025 with a bang. (HM)
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There’s a veritable glut of legendary names with new releases this autumn. Atonement author Ian McEwan‘s What Can We Know (September) is a speculative novel set in the Britain of 2119. Out in October, Shadow Ticket, about a private eye in Prohibition-era Milwaukee, looks set to be another wild escapade from the mysterious American master Thomas Pynchon. In the same month, The Rose Field by Philip Pullman is the final chapter in his Book of Dust trilogy, and the last book to feature his famous heroine Lyra Silvertongue. In November, The Eleventh Hour sees Salman Rushdie grapple with mortality in a collection of short stories set in England, India and the US.
Rising stars also make a return this season: No One is Talking About This author Patricia Lockwood’s Will There Be Another You (September) is a novel about a young woman disorientated by a mysterious illness. Twisted dark academia comes in the form of We Love You Bunny, Mona Awad‘s follow-up to her 2019 hit, Bunny. Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite, also due in September, follows her 2018 bestseller, My Sister, the Serial Killer. Acclaimed British writer Olivia Laing‘s second novel is The Silver Book (November), a queer love story set in post-war Italy, amid the thrilling cinematic worlds of Fellini and Pasolini.
In non-fiction, Dead and Alive (October) is a new collection of essays from Zadie Smith, covering cultural subjects including Stormzy and the 2022 film Tár. Notable among the expected crop of celebrity memoirs – including Lionel Richie’s Truly (September), Anthony Hopkins’s We Did Ok, Kid (October) and Dolly Parton’s Star of the Show (November) – is Bread of Angels (November) from Patti Smith, rock legend and already the author of one award-winning autobiography, Just Kids. Also in November comes Book of Lives, the long-awaited memoir from The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood. (RL)
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We are about to be treated to a bumper harvest of new music. New York rapper (and Wapper) Cardi B returns with more not-safe-for-work bangers on the presumably rhetorically titled Am I The Drama? (September), featuring a guest turn from Janet Jackson among others. Lipstick-eating pop princess Doja Cat is also back with her fifth album, Vie (September), and given the presence of Jack Antonoff on production, it is certain to be a cornucopia of catchy, retro-flavoured bops. For anyone wanting some real drama, baroque singer-songwriter Florence Welch is releasing a new Florence and the Machine album, Everybody Scream (October); only the witchy title track has been released so far, but the rest arrives, fittingly, on Halloween. And the internet is frothing with excitement over Taylor Swift‘s twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl (October) – out in a matter of weeks, but still shrouded in secrecy.
