A crisp new bounty of reads to choose from

The season's literary offerings are as varied and complex as a cast of Thomas Pynchon characters... and include Thomas Pynchon's return. Susan Orlean and Arundhati Roy turn the pen on themselves, while Jonathan Lethem and Ada Limón release collections of their work. Chief Inspector Gamache and the Lincoln Lawyer are on to new cases. Biographies of the Mitford sisters and Scottish writer Muriel Spark are sharp and illuminating. And death follows in books about talking corpses, cemetery folklore and the darkest days of World War II. Here's a sampling of this fall's bounty.

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OUT NOW

MOTHER MARY COMES TO ΜΕ

By Arundhati Roy

Scribner: 352 pages, $30

In her first memoir, acclaimed novelist Roy ("The God of Small Things") chronicles her complicated relationship with her maverick mother, who divorced Roy's father when she was 2, then founded an important school. Roy manages to set their lives within the whirlwind of India's postcolonial cultural and political change. "I have been writing this book all my life," Roy says, which conveys how the writing feels — like the waves rocking the Kerala coastline where her mother’s school still stands.

OUT NOW

MERCY

By Joan Silber

Counterpoint: 256 pages, $27

Those we encounter and befriend shape us as much as our family does, an idea perfectly suited to linked stories like award-winning author Silber's “Mercy.” Ivan and Eddie head to a Manhattan ER on the same night in 1974 as the much younger Cara and Nina. Over the decades their lives unspool, some disastrously, some glamorously, but the delicate sleight of hand carrying everything concerns whether or not Ivan — who abandoned Eddie in the middle of an overdose will reconnect with his closest friend.

TUESDAY

LITTLE MOVEMENTS

By Lauren Morrow

Random House: 256 pages, $28

Layla Smart has a chance to fulfill a big dream so when she's hired as choreographer-in-residence in Vermont, she leaves New York to grab her chance. As secrets are exposed and her marriage is threatened, Layla questions whether prestige is worth the cost. With comic verve, Morrow's novel dances on the page as she explores the dilemma of being a Black artist who is expected by traditionally white arts organizations to represent their notions of Blackness.

SEPT. 16

THE WILDERNESS

By Angela Flournoy

Mariner: 304 pages, $30