This fall brings a strong lineup of new books.

Marlon James returns to Jamaica in “The Disappearers,” a novel longlisted for the Booker Prize.

It is framed around the 1988 beating of eight gay men who were rehearsing a play.

James mixes humor and compassion with hard experience.

He says he refuses to believe there is a lesson from suffering an atrocity, other than to be on guard.

Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark trace the influence of political operator Roy Cohn in “American Scoundrel.”

Cohn was a top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and later mentored a young Donald Trump.

The book draws on documents and interviews, including with Trump.

Trump answered their cold calls but declined to meet in person, saying he was busy with China and Russia.

Emma Cline’s “Switzy,” also longlisted for the Booker, follows a retired businessman with failing mental capacity.

He is traveling to an assisted dying facility in Zurich.

Cline breaks the story into brief passages as the man reckons with his memories.

He concludes that he had always stayed on the surface of his own life.

Yiyun Li’s “Music Against the Night” is her first book since her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir.

The novel is about an 18th-century piano prodigy and the orphaned musician who marries him.

It is a meditation on music and death.

Li writes that despair is something one must not submit to, and that a child’s death is a negation of time.

Joe Biden’s memoir, due in November, will likely focus on his 2020 defeat of Donald Trump and key achievements.

The public may seek answers on his health and his decision to end his reelection campaign.