After a hiatus, we resume our monthly rundown of new fiction, with an exciting slate of September titles including new work from Anthony Doerr, Colson Whitehead, Sally Rooney, Ruth Ozeki, and many more.
9/7: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney – Two friends, one a famous novelist and the other an editorial assistant, exchange emails musing about romantic escapades, political upheaval, and cultural reflections. By the author of 2019 breakout Normal People. A Peak Pick!
9/7: The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter – Musician and songwriter Ritter returns with the story of 99-year-old Weldon Appelgate and his free-wheeling life, beginning with the last days of the lumberjacks in tiny Cordelia, Idaho, and encompassing tales of murder, disaster, bootlegging and more.
9/7: The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova – At her passing, matriarch Orquídea Divina leaves her family a complicated inheritance of magic and the unexplained. When family members begin to die, it launches a quest to understand her legacy and the curse that follows them. A Peak Pick!
9/7: The Magician by Colm Tóibín – A fictional portrait of the writer Thomas Mann, with the focus split equally among Mann’s work, his family life, and the tumultuous times he lived in, encompassing both World Wars.
9/7: Matrix by Lauren Groff – In the 12th century, French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine casts out 17-year-old Marie de France, sending her to an impoverished British abbey. There, beset by visions of the Virgin Mary, fierce Marie ascends to abbess with ambition. A Peak Pick!
9/7: No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull – As Laina grieves the police shooting of her brother and seeks the truth of what happened, she uncovers a different truth: that monsters live among us. Werewolves, witches, and more come into the light, as does the war between two magical societies.
9/14: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty – When 69-year-old Joy Delaney goes missing after sending her children a cryptic and undecipherable text message, her four adult children and husband Stan disagree on whether to be worried. Could her disappearance be related to a troubled stranger they accepted into their home?
9/14: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead – In this rollicking crime novel set in early 1960s Harlem, furniture salesman Ray Carney mostly walks the straight-and-narrow, occasionally fencing the odd piece of stolen jewelry for a cousin. His careful balance is upset when he’s pulled into a jewel heist that goes awry. A Peak Pick!
9/14: Harrow by Joy Williams – In the wake of an environmental apocalypse, teenage Khristen finds herself at an old lake resort, where elderly residents plot protests against those who drove the climate to ruin.
9/14: Palmares by Gayl Jones – The first book in 20 years from Jones weaves together magical realism and historical fiction in telling the story of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who escapes to a fugitive slave settlement from a Portuguese plantation in Brazil.
9/21: Bewilderment by Richard Powers – When astrobiologist Theo’s nine-year-old son Robin starts displaying volatile behavior, Theo eschews pharmacological solutions and enrolls Robin in an experimental therapy, which will match Robin’s brain-pattern activity to a model brain print from another – in this case, Robin’s deceased mother. By the author of The Overstory.
9/21: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki – A year after his father’s death, 13-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear the voices of inanimate objects, a curious development that becomes painful when his mother develops a hoarding problem. Finding refuge in the public library, Benny connects with a street artist and a poet-philosopher, and finds a way forward.
9/21: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune – Cutthroat lawyer Wallace Price is surprised to find himself dead and escorted by a reaper to Charon’s Crossing, a tea shop where he has a week to cross over. Over the course of seven days, teashop proprietor Hugo shows Wallace the things he missed in life. What will await him? A Peak Pick!
9/21: The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine – Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor and trans woman living in the United States, travels to the Greek island of Lesbos to help provide medical care in a refugee camp. There, she meets a Syrian refugee with liver cancer with whom Mina develops a deep connection.
9/28: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka – Nobel Prize laureate Soyinka returns with a long-awaited, richly satirical novel. In an imagined Nigeria full of greed and corruption, Dr. Kighare Menka discovers that amputated body parts are being taken from the hospital and used for ritualistic purposes, knowledge that changes the lives of three interconnected characters.
9/28: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr – Two 13-year-olds in 1453 Constantinople; a translator in present-day Idaho; teenage Konstance, on a spaceship in the 22nd century — all are connected by a novel from ancient Greece that tells the story of a shepherd named Aethon. From the author of All the Light We Cannot See.
9/28: The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer – Jewish author Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt has a secret career writing Christmas-themed romances, but now her editors are requesting a Hanukkah-focused romance. Rachel reluctantly reaches out to childhood friend Jacob Greenberg, whose company is hosting the biggest event of the season: The Matzah Ball. Will Rachel find more than just inspiration?
9/28: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard – An astrological event — the appearance of a new star — prompts unpredictable and sometimes horrifying behavior from both people and animals. Eight narrators react to the event and the aftermath. This is a return to the traditional novel after Knausgaard’s multi-volume semi-autobiographic series My Struggle.
~ posted by Andrea G.
Leave a Comment