A New Biography of King Charles Is Among the Season's Must-Read Books

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This season, you have no excuse for being without a good book. Offerings include explosive novels, revealing memoirs, brilliant biographies, and everything in between. No matter what you like to read, there's a title coming out this winter that's sure to be just what you're looking for.

The Palace

British historian Gareth Russell turns his attention to the history of Hampton Court Palace, tracing the events at the historic locale—including King Henry VIII's sixth wedding and Queen Elizabeth II's coronation ball. As Philippa Gregory blurbed, "If a house could gossip, this is the book that Hampton Court would whisper."

Loaded

Dylan Jones, editor-in-chief of the Weekly Standard and prolific biographer, has compiled an in-depth and eye-opening oral history of the Velvet Underground. The book is filled with first-person accounts from major players inside and out of the seminal band, which Jones weaves together into a compelling examination of individual musicians and the rise of a cultural movement.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

How much of what we like—from restaurants to hotels, stores, and clothes—do we really like, and how much are we being told we do? This new book from T&C contributor Kyle Chayka dives deep into how the algorithms that power social media inform and exploit our taste, and what we can do to unsubscribe from it.

So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed with It)

Two decades have passed since the release of Mean Girls and we’re still obsessed with it. Tina Fey’s whip-smart comedy skewering high school clique culture was turned into a Broadway musical in 2018 which, come January, will itself be turned into a movie. Anyone who has seen the film understands why it’s a cult classic, but So Fetch goes deeper behind the scenes, using interviews with the cast and crew to explore how Fey spun a self-help book for parents of teenagers into an iconic masterpiece whose memes, mores, and lexicons still dominate the culture. And we’re in good hands with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, a seasoned pro who has done similar deep dives into influential shows like Seinfeld and Sex and the City.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses

From Paris to Rome, Hamburg, and beyond, the places Karl Lagerfeld lived were as considered and compelling as the clothes he designed. Here, the late fashion impresarios homes are opened (some for the first time) to showcase the imaginative and incredible ways he lived. If you never scored an invitation to dinner, this might just be the next best thing.

Ilium

When a young woman's long-held dreams to escape the life she's always known finally, blissfully, come true, it seems at first like perhaps her days of longing are behind her. Not so fast. In this smart, compelling thriller from T&C contributing editor Lea Carpenter, a newlywed is thrown into a world of power, deceit, and international consequences among some of the world's least trustworthy characters—albeit in some of its most alluring destinations. The writer's sharp style elevates it from your average espionage epic, however her talent for plot twists assures your pulse will race just the same.

Come and Get It

Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age, returns with another incisive novel everyone will be talking about come January. In Come and Get It, set at the University of Arkansas in 2017, the wall between the room of Millie, a Black RA, and a suite of five undergraduates, is thin—such that Millie can hear their conversations. Enter Agatha, a visiting professor, who proposes Millie let her eavesdrop on the students. What results is a riveting and fascinating tale.

Burma Sahib

From the legendary novelist Paul Theroux, still as prolific as ever in his 80s, comes a sweeping work of historical fiction that blends his masterful storytelling with his well-traveled mastery of a sense of place. Here, the protagonist is the real-life Eric Blair, a young Eton grad assigned to serve the British crown as an officer overseeing local policemen in colonial Burma. Cue the culture shock, the racial divisions, and the class conflicts that propel the drama, all against the backdrop of 1920s Burma. And who did Eric Blair later become? George Orwell.

Kubrick: An Odyssey

The stories that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick told on screen—from Dr. Strangelove to The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut—were complicated and captivating, just like the man himself. In this wide-ranging new biography from Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, Kubrick's life and work are explored through private documents and interviews with his friends and family to help tell the largely unknown story of a man whose work helped define our culture.

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead

Jenny Hollander's debut novel is a twisty, thrilling story you won't be able to put down. Nine years ago, Charlie was a witness to the horrific events at her journalism school on Christmas Eve. She fled, and rebuilt her life, but when one of her former classmates starts working on a film about the events, Charlie must grapple with how far she'll go to protect her peace.

The Year of the Locust

It's been 10 years since Terry Hayes—who was a successful screenwriter before he became an author—released the hit I Am Pilgrim, often considered one of the greatest spy books of the modern era. That time away has been well spent. The Year of the Locust is another massive book (this one clocks in at 800 pages) chronicling the twists and turns of international intelligence agents out to save the world. Hayes is a master of plot, but also has an insight and style that makes his stories impossible to put down or forget.

Cocktails with George and Martha

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf might tell one of the great stories ever captured on film (or seen on stage), but the story of how Edward Albee's play came to be a monster hit, and how Mike Nichols brought it to the big screen, is equally captivating. In this well researched and deliciously dishy new book, Philip Gefter explores the world that shaped Albee and how he used it to develop his great work, and follows the ups and downs involved in creating the film—Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were just the beginning!—to paint an incredible picture of the creative process among some of the brightest minds of their time.

Private Equity

This debut memoir from Carrie Sun is bound to fascinate and terrify titans of finance in equal measure. That's because Sun writes of her own experience as the right hand to a billionaire banker, and shares incredible insights from the world that he inhabited, and in which she herself got lost. It's an observant, fascinating look at a rarefied space of power and privilege that's rarely on public view, and an unparalleled peek inside a system that shapes us all, whether we know it or not.

Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood

Ed Zwick has had a long, storied career on screen, directing and producing iconic projects including thirtysomething, Legends of the Fall, About Last Night, and Shakespeare in Love. Now, he's sharing one of the most remarkable stories of all, his own, on the page. This funny, insightful, and deliciously dishy memoircovers the highs and lows of life in Hollywood, recalls the superstars and psychopaths who've crossed Zwick's path, and shares the all-too-rare truth about what really happens behind the scenes of one of the world's most glamorous industries.

Purple Rising: Celebrating 40 Years of the Magic, Power, and Artistry of The Color Purple

In the forty years since it was published, Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Color Purple has inspired major motion pictures (a new one from Warner Brothers will be released on December 25), a theatrical musical and multiple revivals, a well-regarded BBC radio play, and so much more. Now out this month is the wonderfully researched and written Purple Rising, a book that examines how the novel has inspired the many artists and intellectuals who have worked on various adaptations and/or who have been inspired by Walker’s work.

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition

In 2021, Lucy Sante announced on Instagram that after 67 years of living as a man, she was transitioning to female. She recounts that journey in her memoir, which weaves the biographical details of her life—an upbringing in a conservative working-class Catholic household, living in New York in the early 70s and finding comfort in its bohemian circles, building her writing career—with her day-to-day experience of transitioning. The result is a moving work that explores what it means to reconcile our inner selves with the ones we present to the world.

Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year

She may now be remembered best for her iconic hits, but during her time, Billie Holiday was as famous for her contributions to jazz and pop music as she was for her personal demons, which would eventually claim her life, at age 44, from alcohol-related liver cirrhosis. In the first biography of the singer to be released in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—who has penned bios of J.D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, John McCain, and Karl Rove—zeroes in on the last year of her life, using interviews and new material found in private archives to change the final narrative of Lady Day—and reveal the extraordinary woman she was underneath all that pain.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story

This memoir from the author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams takes all of Jamison's talent for shrewd observation and illuminating prose and focuses on it a single subject: her own life. From the implosion of a marriage to the incomparable emotions around motherwood, Jamison's own experiences are explored with a rare insight and consideration. It's fascinating to see her dissect her own lived experience, and a fine way for readers to start thinking about their own.

You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel

In this gripping, mesmerizing novel, Álvaro Enrigue (translated by Natasha Wimmer) imagines the day conquistador Hernán Cortés arrives in the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City) in 1519. You Dreamed of Empires vividly brings history to life, bringing the reader through various perspectives, including Jazmín Caldera, Cortés's third in command, the Aztec princess Atotoxtli, and Moctezuma himself.

American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden

Entering the canon of First Lady books is American Woman, which traces the evolution of the modern first lady, beginning with Hillary Clinton, and detailing the tenure of Dr. Jill Biden. New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers draws on her time covering two presidential administrations for this deeply interesting, and thoroughly researched, look at the role of First Lady.

Gilded Youth: A History of Growing Up In the Royal Family: From the Plantagenets to the Cambridges

Ever wonder what it was really like growing up in the Royal Family? Tom Quinn has the answer. He looks at centuries of growing up aristocratic and royal, from the Tudors to the Windsors. It's as much about royal parents as is it about royal children, Quinn writes in the introduction, and it is an absolutely fascinating read on the private royal family life.

Stranger in the Desert: A Family Story

Writer Jordan Salama returns with another travelogue, this one documenting his Arab Jewish family's history in the Andes Mountains of Argentina. After his Syrian Jewish grandfather tells him stories about his great-grandfather, who may have fathered children when he worked as a traveling salesman, Salama goes in search of his lost relatives. "We are Arab Jews," he writes, "and Arab Jews everywhere have had to become experts at trying to remember all that the world wishes for us to forget."

Young Elizabeth: Elizabeth I and Her Perilous Path to the Crown

Her reign, her portraits, and her obsession with pearls are all a part of well-documented history but what about the Virgin Queen's early life? That's the question Nicola Tallis, a PhD-holding historian and royal expert, seeks to answer in the first new biography of the young Elizabeth in more than two decades. Elements of her tumultuous journey to the throne—from losing her mother, the incomparable Anne Boleyn, in spectacular fashion at the age of 2, to later being imprisoned for plotting to overthrow her half-sister Mary—are depicted in ways that humanize the monarch and give important context to a legendary figure.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

In A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, a romance, plays out against the backdrop of magical realism. The titular Ricki moves from Atlanta to Harlem to follow her dream of opening a flower shop. One night, she meets a mysterious jazz pianist named Ezra in her backyard—and a romance blossoms despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. It's both a love letter to the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance, and a fantastic, sweeping love story.

The Road from Belhaven: A novel

Raised by her grandparents on a farm late 19th century Scotland, Lizzie discovers she can see into the future. She soon realizes she shouldn't tell anyone about her gift, and when she's 16, she falls in love and follows a young tailor's apprentice to Glasgow. It's a lyrical and tender coming-of-age tale, set in Victorian Scotland that comes to life through Margot Livesey's prose.

Yours for the Taking: A Novel

In this climate dystopia set in 2050, billionaire Jacqueline Millender is the director of Inside Project, creating weather-resistant tunnels in New York City and around the world. When Ava lands a job as Jacqueline's personal assistant, she enters this world of corporate, girl-boss feminism—but soon uncovers darker secrets.

Naomi Osaka: Her Journey to Finding Her Power and Her Voice

Tennis reporter Ben Rothenberg—a contributor to Racquet, New York Times, the Washington Post, and more—dives into the rise and impact of Naomi Osaka, timed to her expected return to the tennis tour at the 2024 Australian Open after giving birth to her daughter. A must-read for any tennis fan.

Ours: A Novel

American poet Phillip B. Williams makes his fiction debut with Ours, a sweeping, epic novel set in the 1830s American South. The story follows Saint, a conjuror who rescues enslaved people from plantations in Arkansas and brings them to a magically concealed town named Ours. Ours, Williams writes in an author's note, "is my attempt at creating a contemporary mythology for Blackness in the United States of America." And what a remarkable result.

The Storm We Made: A Novel

Vanessa Chan's debut is a historical novel taking place in Malaya (present day Malaysia) during, in the lead-up, and the aftermath of the Japanese invasion of the country during World War II. A Malayan mother, Cecily, becomes an unlikely spy, putting her family in danger—and she sets out to do anything to save them. Told from Cecily's perspective and her three children, The Storm We Made is a searing look at the impacts of colonialism, the horrors of war, and the power of a mother's love.

The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy

King Charles ascended to the throne on September 8, 2023, upon the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth. Robert Hardman's new biography takes us inside the first year of Charles's reign—"from the death of Elizabeth II through to the ancient spectacle of the Coronation, from the rise of a new Prince and Princess of Wales to the latest 'truth bombs' from the Sussexes." A can't miss book for royal watchers.

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