Twenty stories to enjoy a literary autumn

Summer is ending, and that can only mean one thing: the arrival of the literary return . This fall is packed with new releases that will take readers on a journey through Havana, Borneo, California, and even imaginary towns, not to mention Catalonia and ancient Rome. Some trilogies are coming to an end, some protagonists who haven't been heard from for over a decade are recounting their adventures, and others are even signing books under pseudonyms.

IN SPANISH

• Elvira Navarro. Blood is Falling into the Courtyard (Random House)

If there's one thing the protagonists of the author's nine stories have in common, it's that they all surrender to events. They live in a world of precarious jobs, with towns in the middle of nowhere, empty housing estates, and cities dominated by concrete blocks. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental, considering that in this bizarre dimension, washing machines wash with blood. October 2

• Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Mission to Paris (Alfaguara)

Fourteen years have passed before we hear from Captain Alatriste again. In May, the 73-year-old author announced the eighth installment starring this hired swordsman and veteran soldier of the Spanish Tercios, who will find himself embroiled in a secret mission masterminded by the Count-Duke of Olivares that promises to change the course of events forever. September 3

• Leonardo Padura. Dying in the Arena (Tusquets)

To talk about Leonardo Padura is to talk about Havana, his city. That's where he sets his new novel, inspired by a true story and following Rodolfo, a man whose life has been marked by the trauma of the Angolan war, but above all, by the hammer-wielding murder of his father at the hands of his brother. Now, recently retired, Rodolfo learns that his brother, suffering from an incurable illness, is about to be released from prison and wants to move into the family home. The future looks grim. August 27

• Juan Tallón. A Thousand Things (Anagrama)

Tallón aims to narrate the everyday and the invisible, and she does so through the lens of Travis and Anne, a middle-class couple caught between the responsibilities of work and raising a young child. Many readers will identify with this duo, who, despite their best efforts, feel as if everything is shattering into a thousand pieces on the eve of their vacation. October 1

• Luz Gabás. Heart of Gold (Planeta)

The winner of the 2022 Planeta Prize returns with a novel of love and adventure set in California in 1849, when the gold rush drove explorers from around the world crazy. Among them is Lorién, a young Spaniard whom chance grants an immense love and an unbreakable friendship in an inhospitable land in the throes of turmoil. September 17

• Santiago Posteguillo. The Three Worlds (Ediciones B / Rosa dels Vents)

After the success of Roma Soy Yo and Maldita Roma , Posteguillo continues with his great literary project. This time, he focuses on Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul, a territory that is always hostile and very difficult to conquer, destined to be his tomb, in the eyes of many. October 21

• Juarma. Poetics of Self-Destruction (Blackie Books)

The long-awaited return to the Villa de la Fuente Universe arrives, a town with no future, but where there is still room for friendship. It's the summer of 2002, and Miguel is twenty-one years old and hoping to find someone to talk to about poetry and help him leave that place. So when his friend Rober offers him a job on a construction site, he jumps at the chance. September 10

• Lucía Solla Sobral. You Will Eat Flowers (Libros del Asteroide)

Solla Sobral promises to create a buzz with this debut starring Marina, a young woman who, months after her father's death, meets Jaime, twenty years her senior. Dazzled by his sophisticated adult life, she finds herself completely immersed in his world, beginning to forget what defined her. September 1

• Sara Jaramillo Klinkert. The Sky Is Empty (Lumen)

The Colombian journalist returns with the story of a woman who receives an email from her former lover. This unexpected message will relive her past, when she left her family home for London, where she met an Englishman twice her age and with whom she begins a relationship. Love and desire soon turn into mutual dependence. September 4

• Isaac Rosa. Good Night (Seix Barral)

What can one be capable of in order to sleep?, asks the Sevillian author in his new novel. One day, in the early hours of the morning, two strangers with insomnia meet in a hotel bar. They soon discover that the only remedy for their bad nights is sleeping together. After that first encounter, in which they finally manage to rest, they begin a secret relationship that will change their lives. September 3

IN CATALAN

• Carmen Riera. Gràcies / Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora (Edicions 62)

The Mallorcan writer celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of her first book, Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora (I give you, love, the sea with a penyora ), with a literary memoir—which is in addition to the reissue of her original work— Gràcies (Thanks ), in which she recalls her literary beginnings and everything that these five decades of dedication to literature have entailed as a writer and university professor. September 10

• Toni Sala. Escenaris (L'Altra Editorial)

Sala's return to fiction six years later concludes his so-called trilogy of evil—although it is made up of three separate books—with a novel that begins with a famous actor's car accident while he was reviewing the script for his upcoming film. This leads to characters who cross paths, ultimately addressing loneliness, vocation, and the relationships that chance establishes between people and their evolution. It will be published in Spanish by Trotalibros. September 3.

• Gemma Ruiz Palà. A donut from the teva edat (Proa)

After three ensemble novels, Gemma Ruiz focuses her new book on a single protagonist, a woman who, after half a lifetime of conforming to expectations, decides to rebel, swim against the tide, and make her own decisions. "She's the Hollywood leading lady I always missed in movies," says the writer. October 8

• Joan-Lluís Lluís. A pluja song (Club Editor)

What might orangutan mythology be like? Lluís plays the role of a Bornean orangutan who escapes from the boat where she was captured by poachers and begins the journey home. Accompanied by the memories of her fellow species, along the way she encounters the evil of humans, leaving readers to wonder who is more savage. September 8

• Flavia Company / Haru. Els nous llibres (Navona)

Originally published in 2016, the novel Haru has become a phenomenon that has already reached more than 50,000 readers. Her universe has been developed in several works, some signed by her characters, such as this one, a narrative of narratives—also published in Spanish by the same publisher—that explores the history of humanity from the small things of everyday life to address the big themes in a book made up of nine parts with exemplary stories with a proverbial tone and a great fascination with orality and the elements of wisdom from the first novel. “I had to create Haru so she could write this book,” says Flavia Company. November 11

• Melcior Comes. The home that goes will come the món (Proa)

In a Barcelona lined with canals, a communications expert promotes the campaign of a populist candidate for city council while trying to maintain dignity and a sense of reality to distinguish it from his own obsessions, delusions, and misleading advertising, when, in the midst of a career crisis, he sees a corpse in one of the campaign vehicles. September 3

• Elisabet Riera. Els alats (Males Herbes)

Fascinated by birds since childhood, which she associates with magic and mystery, Riera delves into an inner conversation about our relationship with winged beings from all eras and mythologies, as they have embodied gods and inspired shamans to become a link to the afterlife. Angels, dragons, birds, mermaids, and fairies populate a book that is halfway between autobiography, ornithology, and poetic prose, in a project supported by a Finestres grant. It will be published in Spanish by Siruela Publishing. September 17

• Miquel de Palol. Abans that faces (Navona)

The story of a family line marked by power struggles, broken pacts, and the awareness of failure, told in six key moments spread between the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with the central figure of Aureli Salabreda, an heir caught between his legacy and his own limits. Palol's new work promises a literary breakthrough, transforming the decline of a family into a reflection of the collapse of a country and a culture while reflecting on the passage of time, guilt, fidelity, and the forms of power that still govern our lives today. November 11 .

• Xavier Theros. La Verge de la Punyalada (La Campana)

Theros recovers its captain Llampades – who already appeared in The Black Fairy and Tothom Must Die – to now shed light on the death of the son of the owner of a match factory in the industrial Sants of 1849, a case with many alleged culprits, as the deceased financed shady businesses, was a card player loaded with debts and had impregnated many workers in his father's company, at a time, in the mid-19th century, on the border between a world that is ending and the industrial one that is about to arrive. October 16

• Manuel de Pedrolo. Combat prose (Blackcoma)

In addition to bringing together the best articles by the author of Mecanoscrit del segon origen and the novel cycle Temps obert , it also contains the author's first political essay, written in 1966 and previously unpublished due to its censorship. With a prologue by Júlia Ojeda and an epilogue by Teresa Ibars, the book touches on still-concerned topics such as "the other Catalans," bilingualism, and democrats of convenience, as well as the author's relationship with the culture and politics of his time. September 3