October Paperbacks: New Pynchon, Smith, Spufford and Lee

Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket — the 88-year-old's first novel in 12 years and his ninth overall — leads this October's paperback round-up, alongside new paperbacks from Zadie Smith, Francis Spufford, Iida Turpeinen, Harriet Lane, Issa Quincy, Harper Lee, Jung Chang and Paul McCartney.

Prices range from £8.99 to £10.79, with discounts offered at the Guardian bookshop on nearly every title.

What does the new Pynchon deliver?

Shadow Ticket is a fleet-footed noir about a lindy-hopping detective in prohibition-era Wisconsin. A homemade bomb connects to a runaway cheese heiress, the heiress to federal agents, and the feds to pro-Nazi leagues at bowling lanes outside town. Early-1930s Milwaukee links, in turn, to central Europe, where paramilitaries camp on the Hungaro-Croatian border and speakers praise "our immense fascist future".

The novel ties back to Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, built as a dime-store whodunnit with red herrings and hard-boiled dialogue. Reviewer Xan Brooks writes: "Pynchon inhabits the genre like a hermit crab inside a mollusc shell, periodically peeking out from the gloom to remind us that he's there." (£9.89, RRP £10.99)

Which debuts and returns stand out?

Finnish author Iida Turpeinen's debut Beasts of the Sea opens in November 1741, when naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller shipwrecked on an island between Alaska and Russia found the nine-foot Hydrodamalis gigas — Steller's sea cow. Within 30 years, the animal was hunted to extinction. The novel follows later figures touched by its bones, from governor Hampus Furuhjelm to illustrator Hilda Olson. Jessie Greengrass calls it "almost hypnotically readable" and notes it has been much garlanded in Finland. (£9.89)

Francis Spufford's fourth work of fiction, Nonesuch, is a second world war historical fantasy. It opens in London in August 1939 and follows office clerk Iris Hawkins into a plot by "magical fascist lunatics" to assassinate Winston Churchill, across blitz-stricken London rooftops. Reviewer AK Blakemore judges it hard to imagine the pasticcio holding together in other hands. (£8.99)

Harriet Lane's third novel, Other People's Fun, turns on Ruth, an overlooked middle-aged woman corroded by envy who takes total revenge on Sookie, a beautiful former classmate. Amanda Craig writes: "You will, I fear, howl with satisfaction." (£9.89)

Issa Quincy's Absence, published by Granta, follows a narrator haunted by a poem his mother read him as a child. Jason Okundaye suggests Quincy as a counterpart to Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole.

What do the big-name essay and archive titles reveal?

Zadie Smith's Dead and Alive collects nine years of speeches, criticism and eulogies for Philip Roth, Martin Amis and Hilary Mantel, plus three completely new essays. One recounts how her 1980s childhood's "dreamy, slo-mo world" gave way to social media's "anxious, permanent now". Reviewer Houman Barekat notes her reprinted New Yorker op-ed on the war in Gaza, from May 2024, now carries a new preamble hailing protesters as "heroic". (£10.79)

Harper Lee's The Land of Sweet Forever gathers unpublished stories and uncollected essays. Reviewer Sandra Newman is blunt: "If we regard this book as literature, it is an unqualified failure." Yet she finds it "obliquely fascinating" for the repression it radiates, quoting Lee's line: "if you don't agree with what you hear, place your tongue between your teeth and bite hard." (£8.99)

Jung Chang's Fly, Wild Swans returns to the story begun in Wild Swans (1991), which sold more than 13 million copies in 37 languages. The new memoir picks up after Chang left China in 1978. (£9.89)

Paul McCartney's Wings, an authorised illustrated oral history edited by cultural historian Ted Widmer, charts his post-Beatles band — formed after the Beatles stopped touring in 1966 — from interviews made for a new documentary, with many previously unseen photographs. Ian Leslie calls it "a story with elements of Spinal Tap and Wacky Races".

The October list spans noir, fantasy, extinction, revenge, essays, memoir and rock archive — a signal that publishers are front-loading marquee names into the autumn paperback season.