Daylight hours are shrinking, the temperature is plummeting, and social batteries are waning. It’s fall, and it’s time to crawl under a blanket with a good book for several hours.
Whether you’re after a little faerie smut, an epic multigenerational epic or something a bit more weird and wonderful, this month’s reading list has you covered.
From the long-awaited return of Sarah J. Maas to a surreal debut from one of cinema’s most exciting indie filmmakers, these are the five books worth making room for on your To Be Read pile.
An Epic Romantasy: A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas
When Sarah J. Maas released the latest installment in her bestselling romantasy series, A Court of Splintered Harmony, in late October, fans went wild. The book sold 1.7 million copies on its first day alone. It’s safe to say readers have been ravenous to find out what happens to the members of the Night Court.
For the uninitiated, the series follows Feyre Archeron and her sisters as they navigate love, loyalty and adventure in a magical, often warring faerie world. In this latest issue, Prythian is still reeling from the devastating Hybern War, while Koschei the Deathless threatens to return and reclaim the human lands.
Romance, danger and plenty of smut await – but be prepared: A Court of Splintered Harmony is just one part of longer story, with parts two and three arriving on January 12, 2027.
A Sprawling Dystopian Thriller: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
The bestselling author of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel, returns with Exit Party, a dystopian thriller set in 2031, five years after the second American Civil War. In a newly independent Republic of California, Ari, recently released from prison, arrives at a party in Los Angeles with her friend Gloria. But something is amiss: the guest list includes people who shouldn’t be there.
Years later, Ari has built a different life in Paris, but she remains haunted by that night, trying to make sense of what happened and the strange events that followed. Mandel weaves together surveillance, survival and fractured realities in a thrilling novel that’s a must-read for anyone who likes their fiction with a heaping of existential dread.
A Multigenerational Epic: American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee
From the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee returns with another sweeping family saga in American Hagwon. Like Pachinko, her latest novel spans decades and continents, exploring ambition, love, family and the search for a place to call home.
Lee introduces us to John and Helen Koh and their three children, Bo, DH and Mido, whose lives in Korea take a dramatic turn when the betrayal of a friend and the 1997 Asian financial crisis upend their world. From Seoul, they move to Sydney before settling in California.
As they navigate life in a new country, John and Helen remain determined to give their children the best possible education, placing their faith in academic achievement as the surest route to a secure future. In this ambitious epic, Lee explores the pressures of parental sacrifice, the pursuit of success and the tension between personal dreams and familial duty.
A Weird and Thrilling Saga: Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun
From the filmmaker behind the queer slasher Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma comes Public Access Afterworld – a surreal, genre-bending mix of speculative fiction and horror. Jane Schoenbrun originally planned the story as a TV series, and the novel retains that episodic structure, jumping between timelines and realities to explore the dark underbelly of media, technology and the human desire for connection.
The book’s focus is the titular Public Access Afterworld – a mysterious realm that people can access through TV static. A TV weatherman mentions it before taking his own life; two best friends stumble across it during the transition from analogue to digital television; and, in the present day, a vlogger attempts to find it. Bethany, a trans content moderator tasked with reviewing endless streams of digital violence, may hold the key to unlocking this mysterious world. Expect a strange, unsettling and original ride.
A Darkly Funny Crime Novel: The Occidental Book of the Dead by T. Geronimo JOhnson
From T. Geronimo Johnson, the author of the award-winning Welcome to Braggsville, comes The Occidental Book of the Dead, a darkly funny and dazzling crime novel. Johnson takes on racism, power and corruption in the United States through the story of George Washington Jonson, a Black police officer who has spent a decade working in the Atlanta police force with his partner, Tucker, a self-described ‘redneck’.
In 2005, Jonson takes on the task of training rookie recruits. But when a routine patrol with one of them, Utner, ends with a white teenager being shot dead, a storm of controversy threatens to expose a web of lies lurking beneath the city’s surface. Then the story splits: A shift in the structure allows the story to go further, exploring distorted narratives, bigotry and the repercussions of a divided nation.
