In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

The Best New Books Publishing in October 2024

October

2024

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A Song to Drown Rivers: Deluxe Edition
by Ann Liang
St. Martin's Press, 10/01/2024
 
Her beauty hides a deadly purpose.

Xishi's beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue―convinced that the best fate for a girl is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win
by Jessica Valenti
Crown, 10/01/2024
 
In her most urgent book yet, New York Times bestselling author Jessica Valenti shines a light on the conservative assault on women's freedom, cutting ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Coup de Grâce
by Sofia Ajram
Titan Books, 10/01/2024
 
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after ...more
Heir
by Sabaa Tahir
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
 
An orphan.
An outcast.
A prince.
And a killer who will bring an empire to its knees.

Growing up in the Kegari slums, AIZ has seen ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King
by Dan Jones
Viking, 10/01/2024
 
Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music
by Inc National Public Radio
HarperOne, 10/01/2024
 
Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
I Will Do Better: A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love
by Charles Bock
Abrams Press, 10/01/2024
 
The novelist Charles Bock was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of a writing career. But...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Killer House Party
by Lily Anderson
Henry Holt and Company, 10/01/2024
 
Red Solo cups? Check. Snacks? Check. Abandoned mansion full of countless horrors that won't let you leave? Check.

The Deinhart Manor has been a ...more
Load in Nine Times: Poems
by Frank X. Walker
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/01/2024
 
For decades, Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry: from Medgar Evers in Turn Me Loose, ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Model Home: A Novel
by Rivers Solomon
MCD, 10/01/2024
 
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Mojave Ghost
by Forrest Gander
New Directions Publishing, 10/01/2024
 
Mojave Ghost initiates an unusually tender bond with the reader as it chronicles an intimate relationship with arresting honesty and vividness.&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Night Side of the River
by Jeanette Winterson
Grove Press, 10/01/2024
 
In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Nothing Like the Movies
by Lynn Painter
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
 
For a few beautiful months, Wes had his dream girl: strong-willed girl-next-door Liz. But right as the two were about to set off to UCLA to start ...more
Romance
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
by Wim Carton, Andreas Malm
Verso, 10/01/2024
 
It might soon be far too hot on this planet. What do we do then? In the era of "overshoot," schemes abound for turning down the heat–not now, ...more
Science, Health and the Environment
Ros Demir Is Not the One
by Leyla Brittan
Holiday House, 10/01/2024
 
Sixteen-year-old Ros is a go-getter. When she wants something, she makes sure she gets it.

But a lingering rumor (and maybe some ambivalence ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation
by Paul Peart-Smith
Beacon Press, 10/01/2024
 
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's influential New York Times bestseller exposed the brutality of this nation's founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Salvage: Readings from the Wreck
by Dionne Brand
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
 
In Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, Dionne Brand's first major book of nonfiction since her classic A Map to the Door of No Return, the acclaimed ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Season of the Swamp: A Novel
by Yuri Herrera
Graywolf Press, 10/01/2024
 
New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Shred Sisters
by Betsy Lerner
Grove Press, 10/01/2024
 
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Suggested in the Stars
by Yoko Tawada
New Directions Publishing, 10/01/2024
 
It's hard to believe there could be a more enjoyable novel than Scattered All Over the Earth―Yoko Tawada's rollicking, touching, cheerfully ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Take a Sad Song
by Ona Gritz
West 44 Books, 10/01/2024
 
Jane awaits her hearing with hope, but instead she is sentenced to a yearlong stay at the New York State Training School for Girls. She faces bullying...more
Romance
Tasmania: A Novel
by Paolo Giordano
Other Press, 10/01/2024
 
In late 2015, Paolo feels his life coming apart: While his wife, Lorenza, has decided to give up on pregnancy after years of trying, he clings to the ...more
Literary Fiction
The Ballerina of Auschwitz: Young Adult Edition of The Choice
by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
Atheneum, 10/01/2024
 
Edie is a talented dancer and a skilled gymnast with hopes of making the Olympic team. Between her rigorous training and her struggle to find her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
by Aaron Robertson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
 
How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Bog Wife
by Kay Chronister
Counterpoint Press, 10/01/2024
 
Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Boyfriend
by Freida McFadden
Poisoned Pen Press, 10/01/2024
 
Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She's seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick...more
Thrillers
The City in Glass
by Nghi Vo
Tordotcom, 10/01/2024
 
The demon Vitrine―immortal, powerful, and capricious―loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Crescent Moon Tearoom: A Novel
by Stacy Sivinski
Atria Books, 10/01/2024
 
Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Dark Becomes Her
by Judy I. Lin
Rick Riodan Presents, 10/01/2024
 
Ruby Chen has always played the part of the dutiful eldest daughter: excelling in school; excelling in piano lessons; excelling at keeping her younger...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Drowned: Strafford and Quirke #4
by John Banville
Hanover Square Press, 10/01/2024
 
"He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten."

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. ...more
The Glass Girl
by Kathleen Glasgow
Delacorte Press, 10/01/2024
 
Everyone in fifteen-year-old Bella's life needs something from her. Her mom needs her to help around the house, her dad needs her to not make waves, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Great When: A Long London Novel
by Alan Moore
Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/01/2024
 
Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Kiss of the Nightingale
by Adi Denner
Tundra Books, 10/01/2024
 
1890, Lutèce: In this city, Talents are everything: precious gems that gift unrivalled skills to their owners. The most coveted, Elite Talents, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Last Dangerous Visions
by Harlan Ellison
Blackstone Publishing, 10/01/2024
 
In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Life and Death of Rose Doucette
by Harry Hunsicker
Oceanview Publishing, Inc, 10/01/2024
 
Dallas private investigator Dylan Fisher hasn't seen his ex-wife, Rose, in three years—which is why he's surprised when she asks him to meet her...more
Thrillers
The Magic You Make
by Jason June
Melissa de la Cruz Studio, 10/01/2024
 
Still reeling from their deadly encounter with the Knife and the revelation that the Culling was unnecessary, soulmates Nigel and Ori have been thrust...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One World, 10/01/2024
 
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic "Politics and the English Language," but ...more
The Mighty Red: A Novel
by Louise Erdrich
Harper, 10/01/2024
 
History is a flood. The mighty red ...

In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. 

Gary Geist, a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories
by Pascha Sotolongo
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/01/2024
 
In the tradition of narrativa de lo inusual (narrative of the unusual), The Only Sound Is the Wind combines the fantastic with the everyday, weaving ...more
Short Stories
 Debut Author
The Plot Against Native America: The Fateful Story of Native American Boarding Schools and the Theft of Tribal Lands
by Bill Vaughn
Pegasus Books, 10/01/2024
 
When Europeans came to the Americas centuries ago, too many of them brought racism along with them. Even presidents such as George Washington, Thomas ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies
by Deborah Levy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
 
Deborah Levy's vital literary voice speaks about many things.

On footwear: "It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes ...more
The Sequel: The Book Series #2
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Celadon, 10/01/2024
 
Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she's taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to...more
The Third Realm: A Novel
by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Penguin Press, 10/01/2024
 
Shapeshifting visitors, unsolved murders in the forest, black metal bands and an online bank of thousands of people's dreams—the star is back. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Wild Huntress
by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
 
Every five years, two kingdoms take part in a Wild Hunt. Joining is a bloody risk, and even the most qualified hunters can suffer the deadliest fates....more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Ukraine: Remember Also Me: Testimonies from the War
by George Butler
Candlewick Studio, 10/01/2024
 
While reporting on the war in Ukraine, George Butler has created striking and intimate illustrations to introduce us to the people behind the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Beggar's Bedlam
by Nabarun Bhattacharya
Seagull Books, 10/04/2024
 
Beggar's Bedlam is a surreal novel that unleashes the chaos of the carnival on the familiar. Part literary descendent of Bulgakov's The Master and ...more
Literary Fiction
A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World's First National Park
by Randall K. Wilson
Counterpoint Press, 10/08/2024
 
It has been called Wonderland, America's Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America's best idea. But how did this faraway ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
Childish Literature
by Alejandro Zambra
Penguin Books, 10/08/2024
 
Childish Literature is a charming and wide-ranging collection of short stories, essays, and even a couple of poems produced under the influence of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Crisis Averted: The Hidden Science of Fighting Outbreaks
by Caitlin Rivers PhD
Viking, 10/08/2024
 
An outbreak does not grow into an epidemic. A child does not go hungry. A would-be smoker never lights up. In this fascinating window into the secret ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Diet Soda Club
by Chaz Hayden
Candlewick Press, 10/08/2024
 
Have you ever made all the wrong choices for all the right reasons?

Reed Beckett's little sister, Beatrice, has never been awakened by the smell ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Divine Mortals
by Amanda Helander
Disney-Hyperion, 10/08/2024
 
Blessed by the gods, Mona Arnett has the unique ability to divine soulmates, but she refuses to seek out her own—until she learns the king is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Echoes of Us: A Novel
by Joy Jordan-Lake
Lake Union Publishing, 10/08/2024
 
In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and a German POW forge a connection that endures―against all ...more
Historical Fiction
Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves
by Andrea Currie
Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited, 10/08/2024
 
Otipemisiwak is a Plains Cree word describing the Métis, meaning "the people who own themselves."

Andrea Currie was born into a Métis ...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Fledgling: The Keeper's Records of Revolution
by S. K. Ali
Kokila, 10/08/2024
 
Would you trade love for peace?

Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence. Ever dutiful, she accepts her father's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir
by Lisa Marie Presley
Random House, 10/08/2024
 
In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the ...more
Biography/Memoir
Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land
by Russell Cobb
Beacon Press, 10/08/2024
 
In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the "American Century," few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Giddy Barber Explodes in 11
by Dina Havranek
Peachtree Teen, 10/08/2024
 
Giddy Barber knows with certainty she's going to become a mechanical engineer. What she doesn't know is the last time she smiled.

With her ...more
Literary Fiction
Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals
by Maurice Casey
Footnote Press, 10/08/2024
 
Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O'Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
John Lewis: A Life
by David Greenberg
Simon & Schuster, 10/08/2024
 
Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Love Can't Feed You: A Novel
by Cherry Lou Sy
Dutton, 10/08/2024
 
Love Can't Feed You is a stunning, heartbreaking, and compressed look at coming of age, shifting notions of home, and the disintegration of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Melvill
by Rodrigo Fresan
Open Letter, 10/08/2024
 
His son, still a child, sits at the foot of the bed, attentively collecting these final, hallucinated words.

...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Mindless: The Human Condition in the Machine Age
by Robert Skidelsky
Other Press, 10/08/2024
 
Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning. Automation, which promised relief from toil, has reactivated the long-standing fear of job ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East
by Robert Fisk
Harper360, 10/08/2024
 
From the Arab uprisings and the Syrian civil war to Israel's conflicts with Palestine and Lebanon, Fisk condemns the West's ongoing hypocrisy and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer
by Richard Bernstein
Knopf, 10/08/2024
 
Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in ...more
Biography/Memoir
Our Evenings: A Novel
by Alan Hollinghurst
Random House, 10/08/2024
 
Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023
by Margaret Atwood
Knopf, 10/08/2024
 
Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Shock Induction
by Chuck Palahniuk
Simon & Schuster, 10/08/2024
 
In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Slaveroad
by John Edgar Wideman
Scribner, 10/08/2024
 
John Edgar Wideman's "slaveroad" is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Book of George: A Novel
by Kate Greathead
Henry Holt and Company, 10/08/2024
 
If you haven't had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He's a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Dividing Sky
by Jill Tew
Joy Revolution, 10/08/2024
 
In 2460, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Door in Lake Mallion: The Brindlewatch Quintet #2
by S.M. Beiko
ECW Press, 10/08/2024
 
Dunstan has had big ambitions his entire life — bigger than the small lakeside town of Knockum — imagining himself heading a chorus line ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car
by Witold Rybczynski
Doubleday, 10/08/2024
 
In this lively and entertaining work, Witold Rybczynski―hailed as "one of the best writers on design working today" by Publishers Weekly―...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
by Dava Sobel
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/08/2024
 
"Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name," writes Dava Sobel at the opening of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Riverhead Books, 10/08/2024
 
A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens' rights. Beneath, above, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Last One at the Wedding: A Novel
by Jason Rekulak
Flatiron Books, 10/08/2024
 
Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would ...more
Thrillers
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern: A Novel
by Lynda Cohen Loigman
St. Martin's Press, 10/08/2024
 
On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs―an active senior ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Murderess: A Novel
by Laurie Notaro
Little A, 10/08/2024
 
It's October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a ...more
The Paris Maid
by Ella Carey
Grand Central Publishing, 10/08/2024
 
 Louise Basset works as a housemaid at The Ritz Hotel, home to the most powerful Nazis in France. As she changes silk sheets and scrubs sumptuous...more
Historical Fiction
The Puzzle Box: A Novel
by Danielle Trussoni
Random House, 10/08/2024
 
It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box.

The box was ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Rest of You
by Maame Blue
Amistad, 10/08/2024
 
On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients' ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The River Knows My Name
by Mortada Gzar
Amazon Crossing, 10/08/2024
 
Fifteen-year-old Charlotte is restlessly coming of age in early twentieth-century Basra, Iraq. The daughter of a Seattle doctor and missionary, ...more
Historical Fiction
The Schubert Treatment: A Story of Music and Healing
by Claire Oppert
Greystone Books, 10/08/2024
 
When Claire Oppert plays the cello, miracles happen. Children with profound autism, patients in extreme pain and distress, even people on the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Terrifying Tales of Vivian Vance
by Josh Ulrich
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/08/2024
 
It's just a bedtime story….right?

Parents in Pensmouth tell their children a devious bedtime tale—their beloved town is riddled with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
The Trade Off: A Novel
by Samantha Greene Woodruff
Lake Union Publishing, 10/08/2024
 
Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market's stocks and patterns in the financial ...more
Historical Fiction
The Witches of El Paso: A Novel
by Luis Jaramillo
Primero Sueno Press, 10/08/2024
 
If you call to the witches, they will come.

1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
This Cursed House
by Del Sandeen
Berkley Books, 10/08/2024
 
In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Twenty-Four Seconds from Now ...: A LOVE Story
by Jason Reynolds
Atheneum, 10/08/2024
 
Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?: Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times
by Dana Frank
Beacon Press, 10/08/2024
 
Drawing on little-known stories of working people, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? amplifies voices that have been long omitted from ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul
by Rowan Jacobsen
Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/08/2024
 
When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
Wolfpack
by Amelia Brunskill
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/08/2024
 
Nine girls bound together
in beautiful, virtuous Havenwood,
a refuge from an unsafe world.

Then there are eight
one of them gone&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
All the Hearts You Eat
by Hailey Piper
Titan Books, 10/15/2024
 
What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

Ivory's life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning...more
American Rapture
by CJ Leede
Tor Nightfire, 10/15/2024
 
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.

Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Blame My Virgo Moon
by Freja Nicole Woolf
Walker Books US, 10/15/2024
 
Life should be Gucci gooseberry gorgeous for Cat Phillips now that she's got the girl: swoon-worthy, green-haired Morgan Delaney. Except Cat's friends...more
Literary Fiction
Blood Test: A Comedy
by Charles Baxter
Pantheon Books, 10/15/2024
 
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Blue Light Hours
by Bruna Dantas Lobato
Grove Press, 10/15/2024
 
In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Catherine the Ghost
by Kathe Koja
CLASH, 10/15/2024
 
Cathy Earnshaw. Catherine Linton. Mother. Daughter. They never saw each other alive. In Catherine the Ghost these two young women confront loss, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Clean: A Novel
by Alia Trabucco Zerán
Riverhead Books, 10/15/2024
 
A young girl has died and the family's maid is being interrogated. She must tell the whole story before arriving at the girl's death.

Estela came...more
Dogs and Monsters: Stories
by Mark Haddon
Doubleday, 10/15/2024
 
Greek myths have fascinated people for millenia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Don't Be a Stranger: A Novel
by Susan Minot
Knopf, 10/15/2024
 
Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Forest of Noise: Poems
by Mosab Abu Toha
Knopf, 10/15/2024
 
Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
by John Grisham, Jim McCloskey
Doubleday, 10/15/2024
 
John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it's his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Girlmode
by Magdalene Visaggio
HarperCollins Publishers, 10/15/2024
 
The last thing Phoebe Zito wants is to be noticed. The newest kid at Sally Ride High School, newly arrived in Los Angeles, and newly transitioned, she...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self-Discovery
by Christine Mari
Little, Brown Ink, 10/15/2024
 
Christine has always felt she is just half: Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
I Was Told There Would Be Romance
by Marie Arnold
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/15/2024
 
Fifteen-year-old Fancy Augustine is a Haitian American girl with simple desires. She'd like to trade in her floppy, oversize boobs for cute, perky ...more
In the Distance
by Hernan Diaz
Riverhead Books, 10/15/2024
 
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos
by Dr. Kelsey Johnson
Basic Books, 10/15/2024
 
Humans have learned a lot about the world around us and the universe beyond. We have made powerful insights and created profound theories about the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Januaries: Stories of Love, Magic & Betrayal
by Olivie Blake
Tor Books, 10/15/2024
 
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a wish-granting spirit rapidly approaches burnout. Meanwhile, a banished fairy answers a Craigslist ad, a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Libby Lost and Found: A Novel
by Stephanie Booth
Sourcebooks Landmark, 10/15/2024
 
Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-best-selling fantasy series, The Falling Children―written as "F.T. Goldhero" to maintain her privacy. ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
by Julie Sedivy
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/15/2024
 
If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is language: written, spoken, signed, understood, and misunderstood, in all its infinite ...more
Mad Wife: A Memoir
by Kate Hamilton
Beacon Press, 10/15/2024
 
In this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslit victim to furious feminist with ...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Mama: A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found
by Nikkya Hargrove
Algonquin Books, 10/15/2024
 
Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother—addicted to cocaine and just out of prison—...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Midnight and Blue: An Inspector Rebus Novel
by Ian Rankin
Mulholland, 10/15/2024
 
A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell deep in the heart of Scotland's most infamous prison. Sleeping in a cell across the floor lies John ...more
Mysteries
Tangleroot
by Kalela Williams
Feiwel & Friends, 10/15/2024
 
When Dr. Castine takes a job as the president of the prestigious Stonepost College in rural Virginia, Noni is forced to leave her New England home and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Ancients: A Novel
by John Larison
Viking, 10/15/2024
 
A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Dreaming Path: Indigenous Wisdom, Meditations, and Exercises to Live Our Best Stories
by Paul Callaghan
HarperOne, 10/15/2024
 
Dr. Paul Callaghan belongs to the land of the Worimi people who live north of Sydney along the east coast of Australia. Raised to live the western way...more
Advice
The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America
by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz
Flatiron Books, 10/15/2024
 
Who is Indian enough?

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
by Noam Chomsky
Penguin Press, 10/15/2024
 
The Myth of American Idealism offers a timely and comprehensive introduction to the incisive critiques of U.S. power that have made Noam Chomsky a "...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Treasure Hunters Club: A Mystery
by Tom Ryan
Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/15/2024
 
Welcome to Maple Bay, Nova Scotia.

For nearly a century, people have ventured to the idyllic seaside town of Maple Bay in search of a legendary ...more
The Waiting: Ballard and Bosch #6
by Michael Connelly
Little Brown & Company, 10/15/2024
 
Renée Ballard and the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer ...more
Under the Heron's Light
by Randi Pink
Feiwel & Friends, 10/15/2024
 
"Four thousand six hundred forty-two steps in," Grannylou interrupted. "You remember that now, Baby. Four-thousand six hundred forty-two steps to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Valley So Low: One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe
by Jared Sullivan
Knopf, 10/15/2024
 
For more than 50 years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee, burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually creating ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Wild: Poems
by Ben Okri
Other Press, 10/15/2024
 
Freedom is the most precious commodity in the world. In this powerful collection, the celebrated novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet Ben Okri ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Women's Hotel: A Novel
by Daniel M. Lavery
HarperVia, 10/15/2024
 
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Deathly Compendium of Poisonous Plants: Wicked Weeds and Sinister Seeds
by Rebecca E. Hirsch
Zest Books, 10/22/2024
 
"Should you encounter any of the plants in this book, do not treat them lightly. They can kill you. Or cause you unbearable agony. Or land you in jail...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Absolution: The Southern Reach Series #4
by Jeff VanderMeer
MCD, 10/22/2024
 
When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art
by Rabih Alameddine
University of Virginia Press, 10/22/2024
 
In this concisely argued and illuminating book, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Rabih Alameddine takes the subject of politics and art ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)
by Bethany Joy Lenz
Simon & Schuster, 10/22/2024
 
In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on ...more
Biography/Memoir
Dis//Integration: 2 Novelas & 3 Stories & a Little Play
by William Melvin Kelley
Vintage, 10/22/2024
 
The linked "2 novelas, 3 stories, and a little play" that make up Dis//Integration follow the life journeys of Charles "Chig" Dunford from his Nanny ...more
Literary Fiction
Disturbing the Bones
by Andrew Davis, Jeff Biggers
Melville House, 10/22/2024
 
Chicago detective Randall Jenkins has not been back home to the historic Civil Rights hotspot of Cairo, Illinois since the disappearance of his mother...more
Thrillers
 Debut Author
Eurotrash: A Novel
by Christian Kracht
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/22/2024
 
From "the great German-language writer of his generation" (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Kracht's career narrated by an eponymous "Christian...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Find Me as the Creature I Am: Poems
by Emily Jungmin Yoon
Knopf, 10/22/2024
 
Find Me as the Creature I Am is a book full of tenderness and violence, longing and love. Ranging from inherited family tales to meditations on the ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Greta: A Novel
by Manon Steffan Ros
Amazon Crossing, 10/22/2024
 
Greta Pugh is dead.

The small village of Bethesda, Wales, is no stranger to tragedy. Once a thriving, prosperous community, the town has been ...more
Thrillers
Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People
by Emily Herring
Basic Books, 10/22/2024
 
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?: A Novel
by Anna Montague
Ecco, 10/22/2024
 
Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster: A Novel
by Muriel Leung
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/22/2024
 
Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Karla's Choice: A John le Carré Novel
by Nick Harkaway
Viking, 10/22/2024
 
It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has ...more
Lightborne: A Novel
by Hesse Phillips
Pegasus Books, 10/22/2024
 
Christopher Marlowe: playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of ...more
Historical Fiction
Memorials
by Richard Chizmar
Gallery Books, 10/22/2024
 
1983: Three students from a small college embark on a week-long road trip to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies class...more
Metal from Heaven
by August Clarke
Erewhon Books, 10/22/2024
 
He who controls ichorite controls the world.

A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute
by Nicholas Fox Weber
Knopf, 10/22/2024
 
In the early 1920s, surrounded by the roaring streets of avant-garde Paris, Piet Mondrian began creating what would become some of the most ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Monstrous Nights: The Witch's Compendium of Monsters #2
by Genoveva Dimova
Tor Books, 10/22/2024
 
With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara's life should finally be back to normal―but, of course, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir
by Sarah Moss
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/22/2024
 
My Good Bright Wolf is a memoir about thinking and reading, eating and not eating, privilege and scarcity, the relationships that form us and the long...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant's Search for Home Across Four Continents
by Jennifer Neal
Catapult, 10/22/2024
 
I've never seen home as a permanent concept; it is an image crafted from untempered glass that threatens to shatter with lack of care.

Jennifer ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir
by Sarah LaBrie
Harper, 10/22/2024
 
On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie's mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Patriot: A Memoir
by Alexei Navalny
Knopf, 10/22/2024
 
Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism...more
Biography/Memoir
Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos
by Richard Panek
Little Brown & Company, 10/22/2024
 
Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Roman Year: A Memoir
by André Aciman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/22/2024
 
In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank
by Justene Hill Edwards
W.W. Norton & Company, 10/22/2024
 
In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Spatriati: A Novel
by Mario Desiati
Other Press, 10/22/2024
 
I never understood, of the two of us, which one was warm and which cold, but I consider myself lucky to have met my opposite front in Claudia Fanelli,...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Children of Jocasta: A Novel
by Natalie Haynes
Harper, 10/22/2024
 
When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced ... Because ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Heartbeat Library: A Novel
by Laura Imai Messina
The Overlook Press, 10/22/2024
 
On the peaceful Japanese island of Teshima there is a library of heartbeats, a place where the heartbeats of visitors from all around the world are ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Sweetness Between Us
by Sarah Winifred Searle
First Second, 10/22/2024
 
After health problems wiped out their first few weeks of school, Perley and Amandine are both starting their Junior year behind their classmates, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
The Wood at Midwinter
by Susanna Clarke
Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/22/2024
 
'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Thief of the Heights
by Son M.
HarperAlley, 10/22/2024
 
Lifelong friends Basem, Mustafa, and Aarfah have carved out a place for themselves in their corner of Muqadas, where they dream of climbing from their...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
 Debut Author
We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me
by Elliot Mintz
Dutton, 10/22/2024
 
In 1972, Elliot Mintz installed a red light in his bedroom in Laurel Canyon. When it started flashing, it meant that either John Lennon or Yoko Ono&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
When We Chased the Light: A Novel
by Emily Bleeker
Lake Union Publishing, 10/22/2024
 
Christie's auction house, Beverly Hills. The effects of Hollywood icon Vivian Snow are up for bid. In the collection is a set of hand-drawn postcards ...more
Historical Fiction
Where the Dead Brides Gather
by Nuzo Onoh
Titan Books, 10/22/2024
 
Bata, a young girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin's door. Her cousin is to get ...more
Canoes
by Maylis De Kerangal
Archipelago Books, 10/29/2024
 
Ricocheting off of the book's exhilarating central novella and 7 short stories, the women we meet in Canoes are by turns indelibly witty, insightful, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah
by Charles King
Doubleday, 10/29/2024
 
George Frideric Handel's Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop
by Serene Khader
Beacon Press, 10/29/2024
 
After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism, political ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
For She Is Wrath
by Emily Varga
Wednesday Books, 10/29/2024
 
Three hundred and sixty-four days.
Framed for a crime she didn't commit, Dania counts down her days in prison until she can exact revenge on ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions
by Nalo Hopkinson
Tachyon Publications, 10/29/2024
 
In Nalo Hopkinson's first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke out a living in a future waterworld; two scientists ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Just Until
by Joseph Moldover
Margaret Ferguson Books, 10/29/2024
 
17-year-old Hannah Lynn has just one goal: to get out of Evans Beach, Maine. It's where she lost her mother to cancer. Where her estranged sister, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Like Mother, Like Mother: A Novel
by Susan Rieger
Dial Books, 10/29/2024
 
Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. ...more
Literary Fiction
Masquerade
by Mike Fu
Tin House Books, 10/29/2024
 
Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Miss Kim Knows: And Other Stories
by Cho Nam-joo
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/29/2024
 
A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Blue Hour: A Novel
by Paula Hawkins
Mariner Books, 10/29/2024
 
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.

...more
The Paris Escape: A Novel
by James Tucker
Lake Union Publishing, 10/29/2024
 
When Laura Powell and Henry Salter travel to Paris in 1938, neither considers the other very good company. Laura is a shallow, spoiled heir to a ...more
Historical Fiction
This Motherless Land: A Novel
by Nikki May
Mariner Books, 10/29/2024
 
Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
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