November brings historical fiction, romance, tear-jerkers and books to make you laugh. Best-selling authors Michael Connelly and Anthony Horowitz both have something new to keep pulses racing this month – just the thing to fight off that tryptophan surge after Thanksgiving turkey.

“Seeing all the flooding that had occurred with Hurricane Ian (last month in Florida) definitely made me think about the flood of 2016 in Louisiana,” author Sarah Guillory said. “Homes were submerged, cars swept away.”

Beyond the WandThe Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a WizardBy Tom FeltonGrand Central Publishing. 304 pp. $28.- - -"Beyond the Wand," Tom Felton's self-portrait of child stardom and adulthood aimlessness, follows beats not unlike the arc of his Harry Potter performances. As Slytherin bully Draco Malfoy, Felton delivered a requisite amount of sneering during the eight-movie series' early installments, then cast a more nuanced spell in the last few films. Such is the rhythm of the 35-year-old actor's memoir, subtitled "The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard": After offering many a rote recollection from the saga, he summons his demons and delves deeper in the final pages.That introspection, about Felton's more recent struggles with drugs and alcohol, elevates what otherwise would be a diverting but disposable tome of Harry Potter trivia. Still, if you don't know a horcrux from a hippogriff, feel free to move along - "Beyond the Wand" should only be assigned reading for Hogwarts completists.That's partially because Felton liberally pulls from the wizarding lexicon, referring to his parents and three older brothers as his "Muggle family" and recalling how Harry Potter props "miraculously apparated" inside one mischievous sibling's bag. But it's mostly because Felton's on-set observations feel painstakingly curated. Although he has little to say about the Harry Potter filmmakers (aside from original director Chris Columbus) and dances around touchier matters (such as co-star Jamie Waylett's arrest and franchise exit), Felton does drop endearing tidbits about the movies' parade of British acting royalty.Michael Gambon is the subject of a charming story from the filming of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," when he and Felton shared a smoke between takes of Dumbledore's death scene. Felton also recounts Hagrid actor Robbie Coltrane's playful streak, and marvels at Jason Isaacs for being able to flip a switch from the heinous Lucius Malfoy to his gentler real-life persona. An anecdote in which Felton draws Alan Rickman's ire by trampling on his flowing robes amuses, as does the disarming thought of the Snape actor lining up for lunch on set. "I was rather intimidated by Alan from day one," Felton writes. "But seeing him wait patiently, in full Snape mode, for his sausage sandwich took the edge off just a little."When it comes to being cast as Draco and rocketing to global fame, Felton is self-aware about his good fortune and cautions that he was "born enthusiastic rather than talented." He's more generous toward his youthful cohorts, lauding Daniel Radcliffe for playing Harry with dedication to his craft and portraying Rupert Grint as an easygoing goof with a big heart - not unlike Ron Weasley. But he has the most to say about Hermione Granger actress Emma Watson, whom he acknowledges had to navigate altogether different terrain in a world that unfairly sexualizes female stars. Dutifully, if vaguely, he addresses their long-standing dating rumors: "I've always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear."For a book so dominated by Harry Potter - down to the chapter titles, which are chock full of Easter eggs - it's Felton's experiences outside the Wizarding World that make "Beyond the Wand" worth reading. His brothers come across as colorful characters whose ribbing went a long way toward keeping Felton grounded. (The story of one brother overindulging on champagne at the premiere of "The Borrowers," Felton's first film, is a riot.) And Felton's disastrous audition alongside Anthony Hopkins for the 2012 film "Hitchcock" is deliciously cringeworthy.When Felton finally opens up on his personal struggles, the change in tone isn't entirely unexpected. Earlier, he alludes to the uneasy burdens of being a teen star - including receiving a death threat when he was 15 - while also citing his problems with tutoring and a few brushes with the law. As Felton details his post-Harry Potter life in Southern California, grinding through the audition circuit, he paints a striking picture of a well-adjusted actor beaten down by Hollywood's superficiality."Beyond the Wand" finds greater purpose when Felton explains how he fell into his drinking habits, and chronicles the intervention that shook his world. His experience sneaking out of rehab and wandering the Pacific Coast Highway, trying to find his way back to his neighborhood bar on foot, is especially distressing. "Just as we all experience physical ill-health at some stage in our lives, so we all experience mental ill-health too," he writes. "There's no shame in that. It's not a sign of weakness. And part of the reason that I took the decision to write these pages is the hope that by sharing my experiences, I might be able to help someone else who is struggling."Ultimately, the hook of Felton's memoir is his perspective on living a one-in-a-billion experience. Yet "Beyond the Wand" is most insightful when Felton translates his tale into something more universal. Sure, the "boy who lived" was never Draco's moniker - but considering his eventful existence, it suits Felton just fine.

Shortly after 21-year-old Columbia University student Reed returns home to Los Angeles for a visit, his mother – exasperated by Reed’s seemingly endless supply of opinions about racism, capitalism, the patriarchy, single-use plastics, etc. – asks, “Gah, can we go for fifteen minutes without an ideological critique?” The short answer, which applies to much of the book, is no.

Children’s author and illustrator David Shannon is back with his first foray into Greek mythology and rhyming narrative, “GOLD!”

If Dickens had lived to write about the Jazz Age, he would have produced a novel much like Kate Atkinson’s “Shrines of Gaiety.” A sprawling and sparkling tale set in London in 1926, Atkinson’s latest is overrun with flappers, gangsters, shilling-a-dance girls, disillusioned veterans of the Great War, crooked coppers, a serial killer, absinthe cocktails, teenage runaways, snazzy roadsters and a bevy of Bright Young Things.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil SandsBy Kate BeatonDrawn & Quarterly. 436 pp. $39.95- - -For the women who migrated to work in the bitumen-rich tar sands of northern Alberta in the early 21st century, there were many ways for the gritty environment to turn toxic. Kate Beaton depicts the experience of being far outnumbered by men in her powerful new graphic memoir, "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," which finds her younger self, Katie, dealing with the leering attentions of some male co-workers.Beaton, a gifted Canadian cartoonist, first burst onto the scene about 15 years ago with her popular history-and-literature-laced webcomic, "Hark! A Vagrant." Since then, she has published collections of her "Hark!" humor, which deftly blends jabs at famous men of patriarchal privilege (see, for instance, her Andrew Jackson takedowns) with plaudits for heroic but undersung women (among them Ida B. Wells). She also has created such picture books as "The Princess and the Pony," which has spawned an Apple TV Plus animated series.Beaton's soulful masterwork, "Ducks," her first graphic memoir, documents a period of her life - from 2005 to 2008 - before her comics brought her to public attention. Eschewing the distancing irony that characterized many of her "Vagrant" comics, it is the most gripping graphic memoir of 2022, offering an unblinking tale of personal trial set against a nation in economic flux.Beaton is from Cape Breton Island, on Canada's eastern shore, where coal was once king; the industry's sinking fortunes are also stripping the financial hopes of Nova Scotians ("We're fiddles and lobster," she says of her home province) and nearby Newfoundlanders ("accordions and codfish"). Lives are calibrated to regional boom-and-bust trends."I learn, by twenty-one, that any job is a good job," Beaton writes. "Even a bad job is a good job; you're lucky to have it." As oil prices soar and employment opportunities open up in Alberta, she sees a way to "sever that weighted anchor" of about $40,000 in student debt.Yet just where has she landed?When she reports to a tool crib for the company Syncrude, Katie must deal with the dehumanizing reality of laboring in an environment where the male-to-female ratio is about 50-to-1. And as the resilient Katie moves from one work site to another in the oil sands - adapting to the social dynamics of different locations - Beaton expertly depicts the complexities of operating in misogynistic spaces, where sexual harassment is common. "All you need here is to be a woman," Katie realizes. "You stick out, and that's all it takes . . . and someone thinks they like you. But that doesn't make me feel good. That makes me feel like I'm not even a person."Beaton also underscores the effects of the energy industry upon animals, sometimes treating them as metaphors for the human toll of the businesses that employed her. Reflecting on the eastern shore, Katie sings a song about the coal industry, in which ponies are forced to "pull till they nearly break their backs." And in Alberta, she reports, the oil industry makes headlines when hundreds of ducks die after landing in Syncrude's "toxic sludge" of a tailing pond. These waterfowl, she implies, have become as mired in the muck as the employees are in the tar-sand culture.In this oily setting that imperils so many birds, the reader worries for Katie all the more when a co-worker casually refers to her as "ducky."Beyond her own difficulties, Beaton provides a wider lens on a brutal makeshift culture that leaves some workers stressed, depressed and lonely. In the afterword to "Ducks" - which she began creating in 2016 - Beaton considers camp life with profound empathy, weighing how the individual can get ground down by the methods and machinery of Big Energy. In Beaton's experience, the Alberta work camps were a "capsuled-off society" that fostered challenges of all kinds. Some workers turned to alcohol and cocaine to cope; others were fired if they sought employee assistance, she shows - while real discussion about mental health "barely existed.""The industry prized itself on having millions of hours without lost time incidents," she writes, "while hiding the human wreckage."Mining ever deeper into her own experiences, Beaton poignantly captures how she and her colleagues shouldered the burdens of work in the oil sands. It is not until Katie flees Syncrude that she realizes how much - and for how long - she had swallowed self-dignity in the service of survival. Beaton also leads us through her other realizations over time, including how Alberta's oil business operates on stolen lands - just one aspect of how Indigenous people in the area have been exploited.Throughout "Ducks," Beaton's pen conveys a sense of moody displacement. Camp life can feel as bleak as the book's monochromatic grays, and we encounter so many stoic faces that we begin to question what lurks behind the sudden smile of a co-worker. She also occasionally pulls back, drawing sweeping panoramas of the landscape that remind us of the natural beauty (ah, the northern lights) amid the towering cranes and smokestacks - an aesthetic tug of war over what will survive.Beaton respects that many people - many families - have mostly positive associations with Canada's oil industry. "Ducks" provides a complex picture from a specific era, not a simple critique."Everyone's oil sands are different," she writes, "and these were mine."- - -Michael Cavna is creator of The Post's Comic Riffs column and graphic-novel reviewer for Book World.

“Scenes From My Life,” by Michael K. Williams: Best known for playing Omar Little in “The Wire” and Chalky White in “Boardwalk Empire,” Williams grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, raised by a not terribly loving mother. He became a backup dancer and model with high aspirations, but his hopes seemed to have been foiled by a bar fight that left his face permanently scarred. It was, however, this emblem of street cred that led to his casting as Omar – and in life, too, as he devoted himself outside acting to setting up programs for young people in trouble. “I want to tell my story not because it’s unique, but because it is not,” he tells us – not knowing that it would also end as so many similar stories have. Williams died of an accidental drug overdose on Sept. 6, 2021, and his co-author, Jon Sternfeld, completed the book posthumously. “Scenes from My Life” is an altogether superior memoir. Refreshingly straightforward, its impact is amplified by the mesmerizing low voice of narrator Dion Graham. (Random House Audio, Unabridged, 7 hours)

For many readers, the portal into Hilary Mantel’s work was “Wolf Hall” (2009), the first volume of an astonishing trilogy about 16th century fixer and enforcer Thomas Cromwell, who rose to power and then fell from grace in the court of King Henry VIII.

In an untitled, three-page short story, Ernest Hemingway casts F. Scott Fitzgerald as a scrappy boxer who leaves the ring battered and disfigured but ultimately victorious.

Readers drawn to Ian McEwan’s gorgeous novel “Atonement” 20 years ago may have drifted away from the writer’s bizarre recent work.

Steve Brodner sat in his Upper West Side art studio in the spring of 2020, absorbing the obituaries as the whir and cry of dead-of-night ambulances broke the city’s disquieting silence. It was all moving too fast.