October has arrived, and with it comes Spooky Season—an era of disguises, merriment, magic, and, naturally, a rich slate of reading choices, spooky or otherwise. The year has brought about horrors that are nearly hard to describe, yet there is a certain solace in diverting from the world’s immediate fears toward horror in art. Delving into darkness in fiction, a historical account, or another person’s life can provide release, catharsis, and a productive shift of focus. The same holds true for works of art that aim to comfort as much as to frighten.
In the following pages, you’ll discover twenty titles worth considering for October, all newly issued in paperback this month. Expect poignant novels, eagerly awaited story collections, biographies and memoirs, fresh histories, cross-genre nonfiction, and more.
I hope you’ll add these to your reading lists, Dear Readers, and stay safe.
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Bryan Washington’s Palaver (FSG)
“[Palaver] radiates with a deep fondness for Tokyo—the food, the transit, the vibe, and the overall atmosphere… Washington’s unadorned way of writing about meals runs through his body of work, from Lot to Memorial to Family Meal. Somehow, his spare menu descriptions are enough to stir a hungry anticipation… Perfect for readers who value texture and delicacy, authentic queerness, and a perfectly crisped oyster.”
–The Boston Globe
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters (Vintage)
“A virtuosic tour de force….Enchanting, sparkling with wit and tactfully straddling reality and the supernatural….A haunting meditation on moral ambiguity, the bonds of cousinhood, and the constraints of gender….Once I became immersed in ‘Cursed Daughters,’ I hardly wanted to leave Lagos.”
–Hudson Warm
Katherine Dunn’s Near Flesh: Stories (Picador)
“[The stories] carry all the signatures of Dunn’s corpus: the body as a site of both fascination and repulsion; a natural sympathy for misfits and those on the margins; dark humor and shocking violence; an openness to genres such as sci-fi, horror, and magical realism; and a stance toward romance that prefigures what we’ve lately called heteropessimism….Near Flesh sheds welcome new light on Dunn’s craft and approach, but the collection’s greatest value may lie in reminding us that she wasn’t a one-book phenomenon—that a body of work truly exists.”
–Justin Taylor
Susan Cheever’s When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever (Picador)
““[Susan Cheever’s] first book about her father merged memoir with biography; this volume blends memoir and literary appreciation. She aims to guide readers through Cheever’s best stories, and while this ‘sequel of sorts’ may feel like squeezing one last drop, it provides welcome context and hints to her father’s distinctive genius. As a writer and a daughter of a writer, she explores the wellsprings of creativity with open-hearted elegance.”
–The Atlantic
Tracy K. Smith’s Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times (Norton)
“Employing a rare blend of lyrical precision, intellectual depth, and civic awareness, Smith examines how language can reshape, resist, and reform a nation. She avoids numbness, crosses borders, and offers a deeper articulation of what’s at stake: our shared humanity.”
–Mahogany L. Browne
Amanda Vaill’s Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution (Picador)
“The Schuyler sisters have found a superb biographer in Amanda Vaill, whose absorbing, lush narrative reveals how these women used their influence to shape and defend the histories later closed to them. This meticulously researched, beautifully written volume revives these remarkable women with the vitality and insight they deserve—the full story behind the women in Hamilton.”
–Carla Kaplan
Brandon Taylor’s Minor Black Figures (Riverhead)
“A major literary milestone….Taylor handles politics, love, religion, and the New York City art scene with a complexity that remains sharp and clear….[He] crafts perhaps the most compelling narrative about living under heavy scrutiny and perception I’ve read.”
–The Chicago Review of Books
Jaquira Díaz’s This Is the Only Kingdom (Algonquin)
“This Is the Only Kingdom is a work of beauty, a striking, haunting narrative that binds the past, present, and future through a family’s intricate web. Love arrives tenderly and sourly, pulsing through every page with a brave openness. No one writes like Jaquira; she’s in a league of her own.”
–Kristen Arnett
Brenda Lozano’s Mothers (Catapult)
“ Lozano has crafted a powerful and unsettling tale, full of twists and revelations, while offering sharp observations on what it means to be a woman and a mother — both in 1940s Mexico and in today’s world.”
–Miriam Toews
Hester Kaplan’s Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography (Catapult)
“A splendid fusion of memoir and biography, Twice Born is a work of reconciliation and a revival of the remarkable man who gave us Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and, at last, through his daughter’s enchantment, his own passionate heart.”
–Megan Marshall
Jennifer A. Delton’s Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (University of Minnesota Press)
“In this essential volume, Delton demonstrates that Minnesota’s political landscape changed profoundly in the 1940s, arguing that this shift helps illuminate the formation of a new Democratic political order. Delton illuminates how [Hubert] Humphrey engaged with racial justice as mayor with grace, making this a remarkably thorough and engaging account.”
–American Historical Review
David Nasaw’s The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II (Penguin Books)
“Nasaw invites us to rethink the domestic aftermath of World War II in The Wounded Generation. He gives a new name to the so-called greatest generation, tracing the repercussions for those who fought, those who awaited them, and a nation needing to adjust to peacetime. Nasaw thoughtfully humanizes the story of an entire generation.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Carson Faust’s If the Dead Belong Here (Penguin Books)
“Faust’s debut novel sweeps you into glorious prose, with memorable characters and a compassionate heart. It charts a path of horror and loss, with moments so vivid you’ll want extra light. Yet the book’s core refrain always returns to love. I willingly surrendered to this fierce, multigenerational tale, admiring Nadine’s courage as she learns to become a student to the dead.”
–Mona Susan Power
Jane Hamilton’s The Phoebe Variations (Zibby Publishing)
“ Few authors have a body of work as varied, successful, and beautifully written as Jane Hamilton. The latest in her repertoire, The Phoebe Variations, is a wildly original tale of intricate and unlikely family arrangements, shifting identities, and every form of love imaginable. Hamilton handles multiple plotlines and unforgettable characters with humor, warmth, and flawless prose. It’s exactly the life-affirming kind of novel the world needs right now.”
–Stephen McCauley
Falon Ballard’s Something Wicked (Putnam)
“Sizzling…. The publisher bills Something Wicked as Macbeth meets Moulin Rouge!, and the novel delivers a frankly spicy blend that weaves these themes together.”
–Booklist
Joe Jackson’s Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire (FSG)
“In this thoroughly researched history, Jackson argues that the Spanish-American War of 1898 helped transform the United States into an imperial power comparable to the European empires it once condemned.”
–The New Yorker
Scott Miller’s Let My Country Awake: Indian Revolutionaries and the Fight to Overthrow the British Raj (Picador)
“This propulsive account… brings to vivid life a relatively little-known WWI-era episode—the U.S. crackdown on an American-based movement to remove the British from India. The result is a thrilling excavation of a forgotten moment in American and world history.”
–Publishers Weekly
Andrew Bustamante, Jihi Bustamante’s Shadow Cell: An Insider Account of America’s New Spy War (Little Brown)
“Nail-biting… An unusual window into spies’ private lives…. Part autobiography, part true crime — or, rather, true espionage — their tale of hunting a high-level mole, and an exposé of the sometimes-questionable methods of CIA corporate culture, is a page-turner.”
–The Telegraph
Georgia Summers’s The Bookshop Below (Redhook)
“Summers fills this enchanting fantasy with sensory detail and inventive lore about London’s underground network of magical bookstores. Her vivid prose makes the dust, the must, and the magic of the old shop feel tangible.”
–Publishers Weekly
Christina Henry’s The Place Where They Buried Your Heart (Berkley)
“The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is a cosmic blast of haunting house horror that examines the complex ties of families—the ones we lose and the ones we hold onto—and how those bonds can surface in the most surprising places. It’s a tale about monsters, murder, and loss, but it’s also a testament to the ferocity of love and the surprising ways it can seize our hearts.”
–Philip Fracassi
