Autumn is the biggest publishing time of the year, when nail-biting thrillers, scintillating dramas and revealing memoirs all jostle for position to reach the Christmas number one.

For autumn 2026, Super Thursday will take place on October 8, marking the single biggest release day of the year for autumn books, featuring thousands of titles timed ahead of the Christmas shopping season, but the flurry begins in September.

The obvious candidates are all there. Richard Osman’s We Chase Shadows, the second in his We Solve Murders series, will no doubt be vying for top spot in September, while the second novel from Bonnie Garmus, whose soaraway debut Lessons In Chemistry was made into a TV series with Brie Larson, brings us her second novel Peck & Peck, set in the world of poetry in the 1980s.

There is fiction from crime master Ian Rankin, plus new titles from science fiction and fantasy queen Rebecca Yarros and historical stories from Kate Atkinson, Victoria Hislop and Rose Tremain.

Other predicted big hitters include Gillian Anderson’s More, a follow-up to Want with more letters revealing women’s desires and fantasies, while there are memoirs from actors including Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas and Dame Judi Dench.

Here are just some of the books which you may be bagging from the bestseller stands this autumn:

1. Murder At The Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, out Sep 22)

The bestselling crime writer pays homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in this wintry murder mystery set in the Swiss Alps, marking 50 years since Miss Marple’s last outing. When one of an eclectic mix of guests enters a gondola alive, only to be found dead at the top of the mountain, it’s clear there’s a killer in their midst.

2. Redwood by Ben Macintyre (Viking, out Sep 10)

Ben Macintyre – author of hits like SAS: Rogue Heroes and Operation Mincemeat – is back with his latest historical work. This time, he transports readers to Tehran in 1981, in the midst of the Iranian Revolution, with the Americans and Russians locked in the Cold War. It traces the true story of a double agent, dubbed ‘Redwood’ by MI6, a Russian intelligence officer who promised the British some of the KGB’s deepest secrets, in return for being smuggled out of Iran. This is classic Macintyre: a gripping story you won’t believe is real life.

3. Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, out Sep 29)

This is a key release for romantasy fans, in which Yarros returns readers to the world of the Empyrean series, which began with Fourth Wing. This time it’s a set of short stories to tide fans over before the arrival of Book Four.

4. Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, out Sep 10)

This witty historical mystery, set in 1951 against the backdrop of the Festival of Britain, tells the tale of a war-scarred journalist caught in the lives of a country rebuilding itself after the war. Having failed to resume his journalistic career, he reluctantly joins an oddball team of misfits and chancers helping to ready the festival for launch. His attempts to resume a romantic life also flounder when one of his dates goes missing and he is deemed to be the last person to have seen her alive.

5. American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (Fourth Estate, out Sep 29)

Waterstones head of books Bea Carvalho describes the Korean-American author’s novel as “a hugely ambitious multigenerational epic spanning Korea, Australia and the US and examining the pressures of the Korean educational system”. It follows the huge success of 2017’s Pachinko, but sticks to one couple, their children and their life in Korea which is upended by a personal betrayal, followed by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. They move to Sydney and then California, in search of opportunities for the children, but adjusting to life in a new land is never going to be easy.

6. Mestra by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury, out Sep 29)

Buoyed by the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, the popularity of mythological stories isn’t waning. This new short story from the author of The Song Of Achilles and Circe now focuses on Mestra, daughter of the King of Thessaly, who is gifted the ability to shapeshift by Poseidon, and sets out to see if she can help her cursed father.

7. Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus (Manilla Press, out Oct 13)

After the huge success of her debut novel Lessons In Chemistry, about a female chemist in misogynistic and sexist 1950s America, which was made into a TV mini-series starring Brie Larson, Garmus fast forwards to the 1980s for her second original and witty book. It features good-natured dreamer Batter Gray who believes his future lies in poetry and joins a prestigious poetry journal called Peck & Peck, where he tries to navigate the two very different editors in chief and their associates.

8. Royal Witch by Philippa Gregory (HarperCollins, out Oct 20)

The internationally renowned historian and bestselling novelist who brought us The Other Boleyn Girl and Normal Women, now sets her sights on the Royal Court of Henry V at a time when England is rich with opportunity. Eleanor Cobham, young and pretty, arrives at the court hoping for little more than to marry well, but soon sees more opportunities when she is appointed lady-in-waiting to a countess, as ancient rivalries fester.

9. Vigilauntie: A Memoir – Innit? by Meera Syal (W&N, out Sep 3)

Multi-award winning writer, actor and comedian Meera Syal, star of Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42 with her husband Sanjeev Bhaskar, charts her life, from her grandfather’s attempts to arrange her marriage to her acting and writing career, her journey to motherhood and the changing attitudes towards women that she has experienced.

10. Gruffalo Granny by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler (Macmillan Children’s Books, out Sep 10)

Surely a must for the Christmas market, beloved children’s book author Julia Donaldson is back with the third instalment in the Gruffalo series, illustrated by her constant companion, Axel Scheffler. It’s Waterstones’ number one pre-order for all autumn books and is the first new Gruffalo story in more than 20 years, introducing Granny Gruffalo as she visits the family in the forest, full of all the original characters you know and love.