Annie Proulx, Dustin Hoffman and Willie Nelson Lead This Week's 20 New Books

Twenty new books arrive this Tuesday, and the famous names are doing most of the lifting. Annie Proulx, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson and Rachel Maddow all publish today, in what the listing calls a month of "nonfiction galore" before the year closes out.

The headline act is Proulx. Scribner publishes New and Selected Stories, a collection gathering three new stories alongside, per the publisher, "the most iconic stories of Annie Proulx's stunning, decades-long career." That's a career benchmark, not just a roundup.

Hoffman's memoir lands the same day. Look at Me (Simon Six) draws a crisp verdict from Kirkus: "Shrewd, funny, often instructive—a cut way above the usual Hollywood memoir." Rare praise for a genre that rarely earns it.

What else is out in nonfiction?

Maddow goes institutional. Department of Fate: The Promise, the Power, and the Collapse of America's Most Consequential Institution (Crown) is, per its publisher, "a revelatory, rollicking trip through the history of the Justice Department, finding heroism and treachery in equal measure."

Nelson, meanwhile, reflects on working late in life. The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity—and My Longest Love Affair (Penguin Press) is "a treat for Willie Nelson fans, which is just about everyone in the known universe," Kirkus writes. Nobody's arguing.

The rest of the nonfiction slate:

• James Gleick, The Telephone: A New History (FSG). Stacy Schiff praises it: "Gleick charts our distance-compressing, time-shifting telephonic adventure with exceptional brio and subtlety."
• Eve Sneider, The Absent Woman: The Genius of Janet Malcolm (W. W. Norton). Francesca Wade calls it "a delicious examination of Janet Malcolm's formidable body of work."
• Nick Paumgarten, The Intangibles: Friendship, Fatherhood, and the Love of the Game (Penguin Press). Kirkus: "Touching … consistently fun reading."
• Lauren Elkin, Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power (FSG). Sophie Gilbert deems it "the best kind of cultural criticism."
• Ber Anena, The Lies We Tell For America: A Memoir (Flatiron). Booklist frames it as a story of "balancing American opulence and its scarcity."
• Matt O'Hara, The Flying Death (FSG), on poison, plunder and a miracle medicine in the Amazon. Publishers Weekly calls it "an equally adventurous and appalling saga."
• Patrick K. O'Donnell, Revolutionary Snipers (Atlantic Monthly Press), about Washington's frontier marksmen. Don N. Hagist calls it "a rousing account."
• Ted Scheinman, Jolt: My Electric Journey Out of Darkness (Scribner), a psychiatric memoir Kirkus calls "extremely likeable."
• Nancy Isenberg, Aristocracy, American Style (Viking), confronting "the myth of American meritocracy."
• Mark Danner, Crossing the Rubicon: The Betrayal of American Democracy, 2000-2026 (NYRB), "a searing indictment of American politics since 2000" (Kirkus).

And the fiction?

Chinelo Okparanta's This Impossible Life (Mariner) gets the strongest blurb of the batch. Karen Russell calls it "a thunderous, magnificent novel."

Gabriel Bump returns with Don't Stop Snowing (Algonquin). Library Journal writes that "Bump beautifully illustrates how the accumulation of small human interactions can comfort a troubled soul and clear a path for change."

Avni Doshi's The First House (Summit Books) draws praise from Katie Kitamura: "Doshi is among the finest prose stylists at work today; every page of The First House is exhilarating."

Siân Hughes offers No Such Thing as Monday (Henry Holt). Bonnie Garmus calls it "a stunningly frank and darkly funny novel of loneliness and resilience. I loved it."

Xita Rubert's The Key Biscayne Affair (Ecco), translated by Julia Sanches, is "a philosophical comedy … a fever dream of childhood" (Kirkus). And Niall Williams's O Now! (Bloomsbury) earns the most economical endorsement on the list, from Ann Patchett: "I am utterly obsessed with Niall Williams."

That's the full twenty. With Proulx's collected stories and three brand-new ones inside, the holiday reading season just got its opening marker — and the bestsellers list should brace for impact.