Hawking. Keating. And maybe Natalie Portman: New books this month

September marks the start of the bumper Christmas season, when publishers release a huge crop of books from big names and small. Here are 18 of the many new titles out this month, with loads more to look forward to in October.

The Phantom Surrealist Geoffrey Gates Transit Lounge, $34.99, September 1 Christopher Tiffen is recovering after delivering a disastrous paper at a conference on surrealism when he comes across a painting by an Australian surrealist by the name of Robert J. Wake in a Sydney gallery, and meets Agnes from Barcelona, becoming smitten with both. Reminiscent, perhaps, of William Boyd’s Nat Tate , this Zelig -like biography of a fictional artist asks the question: who outlives their own life, except in story?

A Suitable Man Jock Serong HarperCollins, $36.99, September 1 What a wonderful story novelist Jock Serong tells in his biography of David Fletcher Jones, founder and owner of the eponymous and iconic clothing business. As Serong says, he is trying to understand “the man and to set him in his context, a 20th-century Australian who excelled, who was genuinely eccentric and who seems to have left goodwill everywhere he went”. Jones was a real original whose approach to his staff, philanthropy and character endeared him widely.

Cul-de-Sac Eleanor Limprecht Ultimo Press, $34.99, September 1 Jacquie meets charming American Brandon in a Bondi cafe and is whisked off her feet. She moves to the US with him and they have two children, but Brandon, it turns out, is not the man she thought he was. Post-COVID, Jacquie returns to Australia for a holiday with the two children in tow − and doesn’t go back. Eleanor Limprecht is investigating what she calls “the complexities” of the legislation around international child abduction and does so in a novel that ratchets up the sense of emotional and physical risk.

Wild Hope Claire Scobie NewSouth, $36.99, September 1 Claire Scobie had a Road to Damascus moment on reading about the extinction of an Australian rodent. It affected her deeply and effected a shift in her life. She realised she had “to get out of my comfort zone and seek out people who were tackling the future with an expansive mindset”. Told in sections − Story, Place, Heart, Lead, Whole and Future − her book is an insight into what the world could be and asks readers to “walk with me, so you can get there faster than I did”.

God AI Toby Walsh La Trobe University Press, $36.99, September 1 Toby Walsh, professor of AI at UNSW, is a worried man. In this timely book, he asks a series of questions that lead to the big one: Could AI “perhaps become so intelligent that it is game over for humanity?” Walsh tells a cautionary tale, pointing out that “if artificial intelligence causes harm, it will always be due to our negligence”. Careful what you wish for.

The Second Child Malcolm Knox Allen & Unwin, $34.99, September 1 We’re back in the USSR and if you read Malcolm Knox’s brilliant The First Friend , you’ll know how lucky we are.