Being a student in the fall can seem overwhelming as classes begin to increase in workload and other responsibilities leave us with limited free time. With this being said, I think fall is the perfect time to stock up on new books and prioritize self-care. The temperatures drop, the sweaters get pulled out of the closet, and all of a sudden you’re cozied up on the couch with an exciting title. While fall is the spookiest season of them all, sometimes a thriller book or horror movie simply isn’t what we’re looking for. These fiction authors are some of my recent favorites that I think will give you your fall fix and have you heating up a cup of your favorite tea, finding the comfiest spot in your home, and getting lost in one of their stories.
Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels including The Nightingale, Winter Garden, Night Road, and Firefly Lane. My personal favorite novel of hers is The Great Alone, a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival and the wildness that lives in both man and nature. Next on my list is The Four Winds, a novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras— the Great Depression. Kristin Hannah’s inspiration is rooted in her free-spirited childhood that her family provided. When Hannah was a young girl, her parents decided to flee crowded Southern California in a Volkswagen van and took off on a 16-week quest to find “home.” They unanimously agreed upon the Pacific Northwest, which is why the region factors into Hannah’s books, whether it is a brief stopping point or a central character. While she started out writing romance, Hannah’s novels are about best friends and betrayal, a family torn apart by war, a fragile child and mother-daughter bonds. Each of her books has me wishing the story never ended.
Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng is the author of three novels, Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Celeste grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, but she is now based in New England out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Within her work, Ng draws upon her own experiences of racism as well as her family and friends. The novelist is known for her literary page-turners that disassemble family dynamics and discuss attitudes about race in America. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014 and named the best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Little Fires Everywhere has been published abroad in more than 30 languages and has been adapted as a limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, was published in October and was an instant New York Times bestseller.
Lucy Foley
Lucy Foley is an English author of contemporary, historical fiction, mystery and fiction books. Foley, New York Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party, lives in London, but loves traveling both in real life and on the page. This passion of visiting new places comes as no surprise as the appearance of some far-flung locations in her writing brings the reader to destinations near and far. My favorite novel that I’ve read so far of Foley’s is The Guest List. This atmospheric thriller is set at a wedding celebration that turns dark and deadly. The alternating points of view keep you guessing, and guessing wrong. If you give this one a read, pay close attention to seemingly throwaway details about the characters’ pasts. They are all clues. Some of Foley’s other literature includes The Book of Lost and Found, The Invitation, Last Letter from Istanbul, and The Paris Apartment.
Elin Hilderbrand
Elin Hilderbrand is the author of twenty-eight novels, mostly based on romance. Her novels are typically set on and around Nantucket Island, where she resides, though she was born and raised in Pennsylvania. She published her first novel, The Beach Club, in the summer of 2000. Her 2019 novel, Summer of ‘69 was her first novel to debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Hilderbrand spent her summers on Cape Cod until her father died in a plane crash when she was sixteen. She moved to Nantucket in July 1993, took a job at a local newspaper company, and later started writing. It’s no surprise that in 2019, New York Magazine called Hilderbrand “the queen of beach reads.” My most recent book that I have read from her long list of publications was Golden Girl, and I had the pleasure of finishing it on one of the beaches mentioned in her descriptions.
Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and grew up in small towns in both Maine and New Hampshire. Within her novels, Strout has constructed a universe of flawed, crabby, vulnerable people — mostly Mainers and New Yorkers, plus a few Midwesterners — who pop up in each others’ stories. Her most recent publication, Lucy by the Sea, follows Lucy Barton — a writer who has appeared in previous novels — through the first year of the pandemic, when she flees New York City to quarantine with her ex-husband, William, in a rented house in Maine. This is her ninth novel, released less than a year after its semi-prequel, Oh William!, which has been nominated for the Booker Prize. In 2019, Oprah’s Book Club gave the nod to Olive, Again, Strout’s follow-up to her Olive Kitteridge, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize and was made into a miniseries. She is also known for her books Anything is Possible and My Name is Lucy Barton.
Colleen Hoover
It is no doubt that Colleen Hoover has taken over the young adult romance novel world as she has sold over 8.6 million print books just this year alone and holds six of the top 10 spots on the New York Times’ fiction best seller list. Part of Hoover’s allure is that she defies genres, publishing more than two dozen books, including numerous romances, a thriller and a ghost story. Several of her novels incorporate domestic abuse, poverty and people experiencing homelessness. My personal favorites are Verity, November 9, and It Ends With Us. If you have already read some of her publications and are eager to read more, look at Hoover’s new release It Starts With Us, the long-anticipated sequel to It Ends With Us.