5 Thought-Provoking Novels to Discuss and Debate This Fall

Liane Moriarty returns to the world of her blockbuster Big Little Lies in its highly anticipated sequel. Ten years have passed, and Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie are now parenting teenagers with secrets of their own. Jane’s marriage is in trouble, Celeste is still living with the repercussions of Perry’s death, and Bonnie is struggling to cope. Then a stranger starts asking questions, and a package containing a severed finger is sent to the school principal. Suddenly, what the women have—and have not—told their children about what happened a decade ago carries much higher stakes.

Moriarty is especially good at making behavior that’s easy to judge from the outside look murkier up close. In Big Little Truths she revisits domestic violence, secrecy, and the stories families tell to protect one another. How much should children know about the darkest parts of their parents’ pasts? And when does protecting them become deceiving them? Moriarty’s sequel may not quite recapture the original’s irresistible momentum, but the generational shift adds a compelling new dimension. It also leaves readers considering how the stories we tell our children shape what they eventually come to believe about us.

Laurie Frankel, author of the bestselling This Is How It Always Is, starts her latest novel with a premise that’s almost impossible not to talk about. At 77, Pepper Mills is moved by her three grown children into a retirement community in Austin, Texas. Pepper expects to hate it but instead makes friends and falls in love with fellow resident Moth Holden. Then she starts feeling sick and receives a diagnosis no one expects: She's pregnant. Soon her private predicament becomes very public, attracting doctors, researchers, activists, reporters, and plenty of people certain they know what she should do.

The pregnancy is an outrageous premise, but Frankel uses its impossibility to ignite a very real debate: Who gets to decide what's best for another person? Pepper's children believe they're protecting her; doctors weigh in on what her body can withstand; strangers turn her into a symbol; and Texas abortion laws limit her options. Funny, tender, and pointed, the novel invites arguments about aging, reproductive freedom, family responsibility, and the way women can lose authority over their own bodies. You may know exactly what Pepper should do and another reader may be equally certain you're wrong.

Jodi Picoult has made a career out of novels built around thorny moral questions, and her much-anticipated new one is no exception. Molly Fitzgerald was two months old on September 11, 2001, when her mother left for an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home. Molly grows up acutely aware that disaster can arrive without warning and eventually runs Rhode Island’s Department for Emergency Preparedness. Then an unexpected event destabilizes her new marriage and forces Molly to reconsider what she believes about her family and her past.

Picoult is at her best when she makes us reconsider what we think we know about the people closest to us. Hollow Bones pushes that idea into particularly fraught territory. Can we ever really make the people we love safe? When does a lie told out of love become a betrayal? And how well can we ever really know the people closest to us? Moving between past and present and between mothers and daughters, the novel keeps challenging what Molly—and the reader—believes. By the end, you may find yourself rethinking where protection ends and control begins.

Chris Bohjalian, whose The Flight Attendant became the hit HBO series, returns with a literary thriller built around an accident that becomes a question of culpability. In the summer of 1978, 18-year-old Mira Winston is an elite amateur golfer headed to Yale when she hits a practice ball through a net at an affluent Westchester country club, killing 17-year-old caddy Kenny Foster. Investigators examine the torn net, and Kenny's father discovers that Mira has been involved since she was 15 with Theo Catton, a much older married man. As sympathy shifts, Mira abandons golf and Yale and eventually finds herself in court.

Told by an older Mira looking back, The Amateur continually unsettles our judgments about its teenage protagonist. What first appears to be a freak accident becomes more complicated as Mira’s relationship with Theo comes to light. Bohjalian explores how much agency a teenager can have with a much older adult and whether what we learn about one part of someone’s life should change how we judge another. He layers in privilege, guilt, addiction, and grief without handing readers an easy verdict. It’s hard to imagine two people finishing The Amateur without comparing notes on where, exactly, they place the blame.

Kelly Yang, bestselling author of the Front Desk series, makes her adult debut with a novel about aging, ambition, and Hollywood. Twenty-three-year-old Maggie Wang is a broke, aspiring novelist looking for a way into publishing. Ingrid Parker is a powerful Hollywood producer watching an industry obsessed with youth begin to push her aside. Ingrid makes Maggie an extraordinary offer: Three-million-dollars, plus mentorship and access, in exchange for participating in experimental transfusions designed to reverse Ingrid’s aging. For Maggie, the money could transform her family’s life and career; for Ingrid, the procedure could buy her more time at the top.

It’s a deliciously provocative setup, starting with the obvious: Would you sell your youth for money, and if so, for what amount? From there, Yang complicates the transaction. Maggie enters it willingly, but the vast differences in the women’s age, race, wealth, and power make consent less straightforward than it first appears. Yang folds ambition, mentorship, and Hollywood’s fixation on youth into the mix, turning a wild premise into a sharp exploration of what women are willing—or expected—to trade to get ahead. You may start out certain who is exploiting whom, but don’t count on staying that way.