Well…it happened. This weekend I saw someone putting up Halloween decorations!
While fall hasn’t officially arrived yet, surely the turning of the seasons is upon us. Here in Chicago, the weather has cooled in the past week, school is back in session, and the slow creep of earlier sunsets has started. September is a time to savor these changes, and what better way to do that than to look ahead to some new releases this month?
September brings us some of my favorite reads all year. From two memorable Chicago novels to some dreamlike (or nightmarish) short story collections, these books are sure to help ease your transition into Shoulder Season!
Great Disasters
By Grady Chambers
Tin House Books
While often tender and taut in its elegiac prose, Grady Chambers’s debut Great Disasters offers a message about love, loneliness, and the inescapable fervor of war that never ceases to resonate. The novel follows six long-time friends in Chicago who begin high school during the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and explores the ways in which their love for one another evolves and dissolves in the face of rampant patriotism, addiction, and depression. Chambers perfectly captures the surreal and frightening culture of the day, making Great Disasters a remarkable retrospective on the War on Terror era and the ways in which it ensnared and destroyed a generation.
The Intentions of Thunder
By Patricia Smith
Scribner
We’re delighted to see a new book from one of the finest poets working today! The Intentions of Thunder is a comprehensive collection that brings together the essential works from across Patricia Smith’s career, offering a window into her poetic evolution. Her poetry is consistently insightful and meditative, holding together worlds of pain, beauty, and transformation with her lyricism. For lovers of poetry and the great Patricia Smith, The Intentions of Thunder is a can’t-miss release.
Bind Me Tighter Still
By Lara Ehrlich
Red Hen Press
Bind Me Tighter Still follows mother and daughter mermaids who flee back to the ocean after the mother gives up her legs to be with her first love. Arriving at a seaside attraction known as Sireland, the mother makes a living by performing sensual siren performances that become famous across the country. But when the daughter comes of age and a shocking death rocks Sirenland, the two must reckon with the cost of performance on their already tenuous bond. Lara Ehrlich has crafted an inventive and wonderfully rageful look into motherhood, femininity, and sacrifice—a perfect reimagining of The Little Mermaid for the modern age.
Kaplan’s Plot
By Jason Diamond
Flatiron Books
Kaplan’s Plot is one of our most anticipated novels of the year, so we’re thrilled to see it arrive on shelves in September! Jason Diamond’s fiction debut tells the story of Elijah, who returns to Chicago to care for his dying mother and begins to uncover the history of his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan after finding his plot in a Jewish cemetery that his family owns. Part coming-to-America tale, part gangster story, and fully a Chicago classic, Kaplan’s Plot delivers at every level; the novel moves seamlessly from laugh-out-loud funny to heartbreaking with a pace that refuses to let you go, culminating in a layered portrait of the Jewish diaspora in Chicago and the community’s influence on what the city has become. This is a true gem of a novel.
A Different Kind of Tension
By Jonathan Lethem
Ecco
A Different Kind of Tension collects some of the greatest short stories from a master of the form. These ambitious stories vary widely in their scope and style: One story follows a down-at-heels bohemian superhero, while another a “porn critic” whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations. Jonathan Lethem has long established himself as one of our most exciting contemporary short story writers, and A Different Kind of Tension further highlights his blistering talent at threading the needle between realism and absurdity in the most delightful ways possible.
The Animal on the Rock
By Daniela Tarazona
Translated by Lizzie Davis and Kevin Gerry Dunn
Deep Vellum Publishing
When Irma boards a plane to the coast following the death of her mother, she is consumed by strange dreams in which her skin grows thick and scaly and her eyes take on a yellow gleam. But it’s not just her dreams that are falling into a surreal nightmare, as the weather turns volatile and strangers begin to offer cryptic warnings. Daniela Tarazona’s The Animal on the Rock is an unsettling look into the pressures of childhood, parenthood, and being no more or less than an animal in our world.
Zone Rouge
By Michael Jerome Plunkett
Unnamed Press
Ferrand Martin spends his days cleaning up artillery in Verdun following World War I, one bomb, bullet, and piece of shrapnel at a time. When he discovers a fully intact human skeleton among the devastation, his desire to learn the truth leads him to confronting the legacy of the war and all that we remember. Zone Rouge is a masterful reimagining of the Sisyphus myth that deftly explores the wreckage of war and the ghosts we create.
Good and Evil and Other Stories
By Samanta Schweblin
Translated by Megan McDowell
Knopf
Samanta Schweblin is among the top names in the flourishing world of South American horror, and the stories in Good and Evil again proves why her writing continues to haunt us. Nestled perfectly between realistic human tragedy and surrealism, her writing consistently lays bare the interior motivations and fears that threaten to lead us toward monstrosity. At its core, Good and Evil is a collection about aging and what we owe to ourselves and our youth; another triumph from Schweblin.
Bloodmercy
By I.S. Jones
American Poetry Review
This unflinching collection that reimagines the tale of Cain and Abel as sisters opens with a powerful warning: “Violence is a failure of communication.” From here, Bloodmercy charts the lives of these Cain and Abel sisters from their girlhood into young womanhood and the ways in which they navigate power and control, sex and faith. I.S. Jones’s work is both evocative and bursting with poetic prowess, making it a debut you don’t want to miss.
What We Can Know
By Ian McEwan
Knopf
From Booker prize-winning and bestselling author of Atonement Ian McEwan comes What We Can Know, a generation-spanning love story and literary detective epic. In 2014, poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading a new poem dedicated to her, not knowing that one day people in the future will speculate about its meaning. In 2119, with the western world submerged by rising seas following a nuclear accident, a lonely scholar chases the ghost of that same poem. McEwan’s latest release takes readers on an unforgettable journey to show us the true enduring legacy of great art and the love that inspires it.
The Weather of Our Names
By Cal Freeman
Cornerstone Press
In this dazzling poetry collection, Cal Freeman offers stunning looks into the mind and soul of the working-class experience in Detroit. Drawing upon his own upbringing in the area, Freeman honors the diversity and possibility that makes urban landscapes special. The Weather of Our Names is Midwestern philosophy at its best—existential, resolute, and meaning-making even in its isolation.
What a Time to Be Alive
By Jade Chang
Ecco
In What a Time to Be Alive, the broke, unemployed, and lonely Lola Treasure Gold finds new life when she stars in a viral video that propels her into a new career as a self-help guru. But with her own life falling apart at the seams, she struggles to decide whether she can truly be a sage or whether she’s destined to be another online scammer. Jade Chang’s writing is both hilarious and reflective as she explores the ways in which we commodify belief and desperately search for meaning in our online age.
