Nonfiction

Upper Cut, Carrie White, Atria, 9/20

“If I could get my hair right …” White sighed as a teen. Well, Hollywood’s famed hairdresser got her hair right, but not her head. She filled it with booze and coke while styling stars from Cher to Liz. Tasty gossip.

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend, Susan Orlean, S&S, 9/27

An improbably fascinating tale of one of the first canine celebrities, the times that catapulted him to fame, and the legacy that endures.

Seriously…I’m Kidding, Ellen De Generes, Grand Central, 10/4

She doesn’t share deep, dark secrets (unless the colonoscopy story counts), but DeGeneres’s amiably oddball riffs on everything from kale to catwalks to Jesus will make fans smile.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, Candice Millard, Doubleday, 9/20

Think you’re not interested in James Garfield, our 20th President? Millard’s action-packed account of his life and truly strange death should change your mind.

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, Judy Collins, Crown, 10/18

The folksinger who inspired Crosby, Stills & Nash’s signature song looks back. Forthright and revealing.

Blue Nights, Joan Didion, Knopf, 11/1

After memorializing her grief for her husband in The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion makes another foray into sorrow and healing with a searing memoir about losing her only daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, who died at age 39 in 2005.

Fiction

We the Animals, Just Torres, HMH, 8/30

“We wanted more,” begins Torres’s slim debut. By the end of this tightly wound coming-of-age tale, narrated by the youngest of three Puerto Rican American brothers, readers will too.

Falling Together, Marisa de lost Santos, Morrow, 10/4

The author of Love Walked In and Belong to Me returns with a satisfying novel about friends rediscovering one another—and confronting unwelcome truths— at their college reunion.

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides, FSG, 10/11

A Jane Austen-loving Brown grad finds herself caught between two potential boyfriends, and neither is exactly Mr. Darcy. A light, engaging love story from the acclaimed author of Middlesex.

The Taste of Salt, Martha Southgate, Algonquin, 9/13

Marine biologist Josie’s dad is an alcoholic, her brother’s in rehab, and she’s ambivalent about having kids. Four voices tell this poignant story, making each page ache with a different shade of loneliness.

The Art of Fielding, Chad Harback, Little, Brown, 9/7

Yes, it’s a baseball story, but Harbach’s thoroughly engrossing first novel, about the ripple effects following a star college shortstop’s disastrous throw, will win you over even if you don’t know a catcher’s mitt from a curve ball