Happy Halloween season!
Fall is such a special time for readers. There’s nothing better than settling into a good book amid the changing leaves and falling temperatures. Whether you crave a comfort read or (like me) something unsettling and all-around spooky come the start of October, this year brings us plenty of new books to look forward to. Celebrate the changing of the season with this special list of can’t-miss books!
Thin Places
By Kay Chronister
Counterpoint Press
Thin Places is the ideal book to kick off your Halloween season. In this reissue from Shirley Jackson Award-finalist and bestselling author of The Bog Wife, this sinisterly serene collection will lure you in with its beautiful prose and trap you in a world of the supernatural. From a haunted hotel at the edge of a swamp to a coming apocalypse for an insular island community, Kay Chronister’s stories consistently strike at the heart of the emotional truths of love and death while also sending us into a world tilted into deep surrealness. This is a magical collection you don’t want to miss.
Shadow Ticket
By Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Press
From the moment this book was announced, the return of Thomas Pynchon became the literary news of the year. In a world that increasingly feels like a Pynchon novel, Shadow Ticket delivers much of what you expect from the literary master. Set in Prohibition-era Milwaukee and following a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, Shadow Ticket provides plenty of chaotic maximalist plot and laugh-out-loud wit. Whether you’re a Pynchon completist or someone who attempted Gravity’s Rainbow and said “never again,” Shadow Ticket is more than a worthy late edition to the author’s oeuvre.
The Devil is a Southpaw
By Brandon Hobson
Ecco
The Devil is a Southpaw is the enrapturing novel you’ve been waiting for to pour your full attention into. Following two gifted boys embroiled in both a friendship and rivalry following their time in a juvenile detention center in the late 1980s, Brandon Hobson’s latest peels back the layers of their traumatic past to explore the nightmarish experience of imprisonment. Hobson is a singular talent in contemporary literature, as he continues to expand the possibilities of prose.
If The Dead Belong Here
By Carson Faust
Viking
Following the disappearance of six-year-old Laurel Taylor, her older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family. In this thundering debut, Carson Faust conjures resonant hauntings and brings to life the aching of fractured and lost love.
The Natural Order of Things
By Donika Kelly
Graywolf Press
We always love to see a new collection from the Donika Kelly, whose poetic prowess never ceases to impress. The Natural Order of Things offers a deep exploration of inheritance, filtered through the prisms of myth and nature. A beautiful ode to the South and her family, these poems are sure to be a welcome companion on your upcoming fall trips.
Happy Bad
By Delaney Nolan
Astra House
With a little bit of Hernan Diaz and Ottessa Moshfegh, Delaney Nolan delivers a debut is packed with ideas and a plot that will keep you hooked from start to finish. Beatrice works at Twin Bridge, a chronically underfunded residential treatment center in near-future East Texas. When a heat wave triggers a massive, sustained blackout, she must evacuate with her staff and the residents in order to escape the blackout zone. Happy Bad highlights the violence of climate destruction, but offers the gasp-inducing turns of a modern thriller.
The Unveiling
By Quan Berry
Grove Press
In this wonderfully frightening literary horror trek across Antartica, a group of survivors from a kayaking accident must survive the harsh landscape and their own demons. Quan Berry delivers the wit and the weariness of the world in The Unveiling. Think Triangle of Sadness in the vast landscapes of the edges of the world.
Near Flesh
By Katherine Dunn
MCD
Our team is excited to see this previously unpublished collection from the late author of Geek Love, Katherine Dunn, finally come to print. Violent, sensual, and at times delightfully off-putting, Dunn’s stories span a series of strange worlds that include a woman who invests in a series of sex robots to a mother who decides to leave behind her former life by moving her family to a farm. Dunn’s provocative and unflinching commitment to black-humor in the face of the taboo is on full display in Near Flesh; this collection is unafraid to be nasty in ways that we don’t often get to see anymore.
This is the Only Kingdom
By Jaquira Díaz
Algonquin Books
When Maricarmen meets local musician on the rise Rey el Cantante, she envisions a life beyond the small life in her town of Caserío, Puerto Rico. But when a murder in their town makes her neighbors turn against Rey, Maricarmen and her daughter Nena must learn to fight to make a space for themselves in an unwelcoming world. This is the Only Kingdom is an epic and intimate story that offers searing emotion and a look into the long reach of history on individuals and communities.
The Wayfinder
By Adam Johnson
MCD
When I read my first Adam Johnson book (the National Book Award-winning Fortune Smiles), I was struck by the author’s seemingly depthless imagination and his ability to translate it into the short story form. His latest also highlights that impressive imagination, but this time in the shape of a 500+ page historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan Island who becomes her people’s queen. From talking corpses to poetic parrots, The Wayfinder is bursting at the seams with ideas and blistering prose.
A Guardian and a Thief
By Megha Majumdar
Knopf
In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father must find their stolen immigration documents in order to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Recently named as a nominee for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, A Guardian and a Thief is a propulsive thriller and heartwrenching family drama that never settles for simplicity. Megha Majumdar’s novel is a textured look into a murky world of desperation—no heroes or villains; simply survivors.
Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife
By Francesca Wade
Scribner
Gertrude Stein holds a special place in the literary history of Chicago, so we’re thrilled to welcome the release of this comprehensive biography. Drawing on never-before-seen interviews, this richly researched examination of this literary icon sheds new life on a life that has long been a fascination to readers. Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife is both a triumph and a gift.
Disaster Tourism
By Rena J. Mosteirin
BOA Editions Ltd.
Drawing upon the term coined for a ghoulish modern phenomenon of tourists making vacations out of disaster zones, Rena J. Mosteirin’s new poetry collection interrogates our interest in cataclysm and our search for collective survival. With plenty of wit and exacting lyricism, Mosteirin takes aim at modern brutalities and the horrors of spectatorship.
