Six Pack

Fall heralds a bumper crop from titans of literary fiction

SMALL RAIN

In Garth Greenwell's acutely observed and sensitively embodied newest, a poet lies in a hospital room, afflicted by the sudden onset of an excruciating pain. Amid IVs and paper cups of pills, a series of intimate relationships unfurl. (FSG)

MADWOMAN

Chelsea Bieker's suspenseful character study of a woman on the verge finds Clove, a young mother, clinging to wellness supplements and a new acquaintance as she attempts to keep a traumatic past from welling to the surface. (Little, Brown)

COLORED TELEVISION

When a novelist writing what her husband calls her "mulatto War and Peace" hits a dead end, she wiles her way into Hollywood in this gem from Danzy Senna—more perceptive and bitingly funny than ever. (Riverhead)

CREATION LAKE

Rachel Kushner delivers a seductive, modish spy thriller: In France, a 30-something undercover operative surveils her lover while piecing together a digital portrait of a mysterious activist thought leader. (Scribner)

THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY

One raindrop—falling and evaporating and falling again—unites a poor 19th-century Londoner, a little girl going deaf in Turkey, and a hydrologist who, in 2018, has just left her marriage, in Elif Shafak's sweeping saga. (Knopf)

ENTITLEMENT

From Rumaan Alam, doyen of NYC class tussles and thorny family dynamics: Brooke, a driven young Black woman, newly employed by a philanthropic white billionaire, begins to glimpse the seduction and limits of wealth. (Riverhead)

Keziah Weir