I realize that calling August “fall” is a bit of a stretch, but yes I am the type of person that starts decorating for fall around mid-August (and for that matter, yes I am the type of person that decorates for fall, period).
Regardless, the next three months have tons of exciting new book releases in store. I rounded up 26 books coming out August through October that I can’t wait to get my hands on. This is a long list, so without further ado…
August
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
The Hounding follows the story of five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs. It sounds like The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides meets Nightbitch, and I cannot wait to devour it.
Release Date: August 5th
Loved One by Aisha Muharrar
Julia goes on an inter-continental quest to recover her friend Gabe’s possessions following his untimely death, only to clash with his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth over the ownership of his beloved guitar. Muharrar was a writer for both Parks & Rec and The Good Place, so I’m anticipating this to be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.
Release Date: August 12th
Greyhound by Joanna Pocock
This memoir follows the author on a cross-country pilgrimage aboard a Greyhound bus, retracing the same journey she’d made 17 years prior following a series of miscarriages. Along the way, she explores various cities, motels, and destinations that other female writers of the 20th century (namely, Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Mannin, and Irma Kurtz) had chronicled in their own writing.
Release Date: August 12th
Ruth by Kate Riley
I will ALWAYS pick up a story about women in a cult or otherwise extreme religious sect (cough, cult). The titular character, Ruth, lives on a compound in an extremist sect of Christianity that practices communism – everything is shared, there is no such thing as private property, or tolerance for questioning the belief system. The book is told in snippets throughout her life from childhood, marriage and motherhood, as she grapples with questions of faith and whether or not this existence has room for personal happiness.
Release Date: August 19th
Dominion by Addie E. Citchens
Keeping in that same vein, this novel is about a small town evangelical preacher’s family who is rocked by scandal – and more interestingly, told from the POV of two women in the family who bear witness and suffer for the sins of the father and son.
Release Date: August 19th
If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You by Leigh Stein
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited for this book based on the synopsis: a tarot influencer disappears from a crumbling hype house in Hollywood, and the resulting viral search for her upends the lives of everyone involved.
Sold. Immediately sold.
Release Date: August 26th
The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride
An Irish novel set in 1995 about a strained relationship? Sign me up. I’ve been fully converted to the church of Sally Rooney and I’m here for more heartbreak. McBride’s writing comes highly recommended, and I’m excited to read some of her other work too.
Release Date: August 26th
September
Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno*
This book is being described as “scathing” and “perfect for haters” so, yeah, I’m excited. It follows our narrator throughout the course of one dinner party with some estranged yuppie New York art society friends as she comes to realize, in the wake of the death of her best friend, how much her old social set has come to represent everything she utterly despises. Delicious.
Release Date: September 2nd
Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! by Melissa Lozado-Oliva*
This is a collection of supernatural-tinged short stories centered around women trying to find something to believe in, no matter the cost. To quote another favorite author of mine, Rax King, “In Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s hands, girlhood is the eerie, seething, unsurvivable thing that women all know it to be.” I cannot wait.
Release Date: September 2nd
Nowhere Girl by Carla Ciccone*
I am SO excited to read this one. It’s all about the “lost” generation of girls in the 80s, 90s and 2000s who are only just learning that they have had ADHD all their lives (MYSELF INCLUDED) because back then ADHD was narrowly defined by hyperactive white boys, not dreamy, spacey, over-achieving girls.
Release Date: September 9th
Wolf Bells by Leni Zumas
This book centers on an ensemble cast of characters, residents and caretakers of The Home, a sort of nursing home/halfway house/community care center whose ethos is taking in anyone, no questions ask… except when a couple of kids who are wanted by the cops show up looking for a place to stay and it throws the whole experiment into question.
Release Date: September 16th
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
The Wilderness follows five friends over the course of two decades, from fresh twenty-somethings in the big city to established, grown women, and everything in between. It tackles the topics of friendship, marriage, motherhood, and contemporary adulthood through the lens of a close-knit group of five black women trying to make it work amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
Release Date: September 16th
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Bunny by Mona Awad was probably one of the first real “weird girl lit” books I read back in 2020, and I’m so excited that it’s getting a sequel (er, prequel? It takes place after the events of Bunny, but mainly features the Bunnies recounting the story of how it all started to Sam, so kinda both). I can’t wait to hear the bunnies’ side of the story.
Release Date: September 23rd
Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung
This book by acclaimed Korean horror author Bora Chung (and translated by Anton Hur) follows a new employee on the night shift at The Institute – a center for what seems to be cosmic horror, hauntings, and various supernatural and unexplained occurrences. This book sounds like The X-Files meets Five Nights at Freddy’s meets the SCP Institute in all the best possible and least cheesy ways.
Release Date: September 30th
Scream With Me by Eleanor Johnson
An essay collection centered around the intersection of classic horror films – like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining – and the societal issues women grapple with everyday – such as reproductive control, domestic violence, and patriarchal oppression. It’s billed as a celebration of classic horror as much as it is an indictment of our current society and the woeful status of women’s rights in America. Basically – extremely up my alley.
Release Date: September 30th
Somebody is Walking on Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez
In this book of essays, Enriquez travels the globe, searching out and masterfully telling the stories she finds in cemeteries – the history, architecture, caretakers, visitors, and of course, the souls interred in everlasting rest there.
Release Date: September 30th
The Captive by Kit Burgoyne
This book was billed as Rosemary’s Baby meets Good Omens, which is an extremely delightful concept. Adeline, the heavily pregnant daughter of an obscenely wealthy (and extremely evil) family, whose corporation oversees private prisons, mental institutions, military bases, and more, is kidnapped right as she’s going into labor. The revolutionaries who kidnapped her – not for ransom, but to expose her family’s dark secrets once and for all – are shocked to learn that she’s quite happy to be away from her parents, and also that her newborn baby may or may not be the antichrist, a result of a dark bargain with supernatural forces on Adeline’s parents’ part. Chaos ensues.
Release Date: September 30th
Heart, The Lover by Lily King
This book follows our narrator, nicknamed Jordan, as she becomes enmeshed into the lives of two wealthy academics during her final year of college. She is quickly drawn into their posh, eccentric and unwieldy lifestyle, and a complicated love triangle. Decades later, with that chapter of her life seemingly behind her, an unexpected visitor bringing shocking news threatens to upend the stable life she’s built for herself. It’s giving the Life and Death Brigade meets Sally Rooney. Here for it.
Release Date: September 30th
October
The Mind Reels by Fredrik DeBoer
I’m excited about this book, though not entirely sure what to expect – it’s a debut that tells the story of a young, college-aged woman going mad. Not in the sexy, unhinged way that mental illness is often portrayed in literature and media, but in a realistic, no-holds-barred depiction of the complexities of mental illness and the ways society tiptoes around it. I’m very intrigued to see if it holds up to that promise.
Release Date: October 7th
Mothers by Brenda Lozano
This book follows the story of two mothers – a comfortable middle woman with five children (Gloria) and a working-class woman who has tried everything to get pregnant, and has been denied the ability to adopt a baby (Nuria). Nuria is presented a too-good-to-be-true opportunity to adopt a little girl, just as news breaks that Gloria’s youngest daughter has been kidnapped.
Release Date: October 7th
Thin Places by Kay Chronister
One thing about me, I’m gonna devour a collection of ghost stories. It was originally published in 2020, and is now being reissued with four additional stories. Everything I’m seeing about it is comparing the prose to that of Shirley Jackson, Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, and Carmen Maria Machado, so I can already tell I’ll love it.
Release Date: October 7th
Herculine by Grace Byron
This gothic debut follows our narrator (a trans woman) as she flees some unnamed, ancient evil in New York for the cornfields of Indiana, where an ex-girlfriend has started an all-trans-girl commune in the middle of the woods. At first, it seems like a paradise, but soon strange occurrences start to plague the narrator, as she realizes that the (literal and figurative) demons she’s fleeing have no intention of letting her get away that easily.
Release Date: October 7th
Paper Girl by Beth Macy
I’m really excited to read this one as well. The author, Beth Macy, grew up poor but relatively happy in a rural Rust Belt town in Ohio. She left for college and then a career in journalism, but decades later, her mother’s failing health brought her back to her hometown – a place she barely recognized, overtaken by the mean-spiritedness, hatred, bigotry, conspiracy, and isolationism that has seemingly gripped much of the nation’s rural areas in the wake of Trump’s first term. As someone from a rural midwestern town, this premise speaks to me a lot (unfortunately).
Release Date: October 7th
Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks*
I had the pleasure of reading this early, and I absolutely adored it. I gave it a five-star designation in my Mid-Year Reading Recap post. It follows a mother and daughter who move into a very haunted, dilapidated apartment building that used to be a sanatorium. The daughter, Fern, can see the ghosts and is convinced she found a dead body by the dumpster, but her mother is much more concerned with the possibility of her long-gone past catching up with her. Can’t recommend this debut novel enough!
*I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
Release Date: October 14th
Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett
The premise of this sounds quiet cerebral, but very interesting. A woman, currently stuck in a sense of limbo in her life, displaced from her home in the city, receives an unexpected letter from an old acquaintance that causes her to reckon with all the people she has loved and been loved by in the past.
Release Date: October 21st
The Devil is a Southpaw by Brandon Hobson
This book has it all: a novel-in-a-novel, and unreliable narrator, decades-spanning jealousy and resentment. The narrator and author of the diegetic novel, Milton, has been jealous of Matthew since they found themselves incarcerated in the same juvenile detention center in the 80s. Through his novel, Milton tells the story of their childhood together, their imprisonment, and secrets about their friends and families. But how much of his account is to be believed?
Release Date: October 28th
Which new releases are you most looking forward to?
Fall releases are always my favourite. Many of these sound like books I would love. Great round-up!
Wow all of these sound amazing! I’m so glad I stumbled upon your Substack. 💓 Thanks for compiling!