9 books i can't wait to read this fall

I apologize in advance for the way Substack crops photos in a gallery. Overall, I love this platform, but we need more options on photo/text alignment. Sometimes you just want to write comments next to the photo of the (entire) book, you know?

Safe bets for my mainstream readers.

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews - Looking for something to fill the Yellowface-shaped hole in my heart. Could this be the ticket? The story follows “Florence Darrow, a Machiavellian aspiring writer who becomes entangled in her work for a best-selling fiction writer.”

The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi - A few weeks ago I was telling my editor I’ve always thought it’d be cool to write Clue (the game) as a short story collection with a different suspect narrating each chapter—with my own characters, of course. She brought up this book and sold me on it. “A professor of mathematics calculates all the orders and possibilities of a murder mystery and uses it to write 7 perfect detective stories. Years later an editor begins editing them and finds clues and inconsistencies that she notates along the way.” Mostly I’m curious to see how Pavesi—apparently a mathematician himself!—pulls it off because this is the kind of thing I am mentally incapable of writing.

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay - “A genre-defying book of essays that records the small joys occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday.” I haven’t read a ton of Gay’s poetry but have liked what I’ve seen so far. Who couldn’t use a dose of appreciation for the small things, particularly in times of grief or heaviness? One reviewer suggested reading one delight per day, and I think I might do just that.

Selections are going to get weirder and weirder now.

Maeve Fly by CJ Leede - I don’t know, when multiple reviewers say a book is the most graphic/deranged they’ve ever read, it just makes me want to read it more. A protagonist who works as a princess at Disneyland then turns into a Patrick Bateman-esque nightmare? Yeah, I’m in.

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi - “Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of ‘great works of literature’, but instead mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood films in her flat in London while living off her parents’ generous allowance and discussing the ‘underside of life’ with her best friend, Naima. Then she meets Adam, who has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. At first, this only adds to her sense of inadequacy, but when Adam learns to speak Urdu with native fluency practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret. Adam tells Anisa about the Centre, an elite, invite-only program that guarantees absolute fluency in any language in just ten days. Skeptical but intrigued, Anisa enrolls. Stripped of her belongings and all contact with the outside world, she undergoes the Centre's strange and rigorous processes. But as she enmeshes herself further within the organization, seduced by all that it’s made possible, she soon realizes the disturbing, hidden cost of its services.” 10/10 cover. 10/10 premise.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang - From Goodreads reviewer Melki: “For centuries women have endured weird, expensive, and occasionally painful treatments and procedures in their search for beauty. And, frequently we never even question what we put in our bodies or rub on our skin . . . as long as it results in a flawless complexion, and longer eyelashes.” From another reviewer Emma: “…perfect for anyone who thinks beauty culture is evil and goop is disturbing…”

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane - This is the kind of title I am always trying to give my books, and no one on my team ever goes for. 😂 Intrigued by this element: “In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crime—and a warning to those they encounter.”

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey - I have seen this mentioned in a fafillion places and kept resisting adding it to my TBR. (I try pretty hard not to add to the list because it’s already 175 books long.) But enough is enough. The message has been heard, Universe. I will read it. “When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.”

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck - Stay with me here…. this is about newlyweds Wren and Lewis. Over the course of nine months, Lewis transforms into… a great white shark. I KNOW. I rarely read magical realism, but this one caught my eye. It sounds like it might be a metaphor for cancer or other serious illnesses, though I could be wrong about that. The jacket copy says it’s about “finding joy amidst grief,” which is something I can use at the moment.

“For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams. At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this bold novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she is forced to make an impossible choice.”

What are you most looking forward to reading this autumn?

Thanks for being here,