Hello everyone! Excited to have this post up before the end of the month! Next year the goal is to get these out like midway through the prior month, but we're just eking through the rest of this year to be honest. I've been lucky to read two of the books on this list as advanced reader's copies, so be sure to look out for my reviews of those on my wrap-up posts! Let's dive in:
1. Starling House - Alix E. Harrow (Oct. 3)
Synopsis:
Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend
of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and
disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the
uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.
Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an
unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling
House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.
As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going
to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or
let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.
Why I'm Excited: Gothic haunted houses and fantasy and a sick ass cover? I'm all here for it. I'm also intrigued by books about books/authors even though I haven't read a lot of them. This is a Reese Book Club Pick, which seems kind of out of left field for her, but I'm excited regardless.
2. Knock Knock, Open Wide - Neil Sharpson (Oct. 3)
Synopsis:
Driving home late one night, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a pitch-black country road deep in the Irish
countryside. She takes the corpse to a remote farmhouse. So begins a night of unspeakable horror that will take
her to the very brink of sanity. She will never speak of it again.
Two decades later, Betty Fitzpatrick, newly arrived at college in Dublin, has
already fallen in love with the drama society, and the beautiful but troubled Ashling Mallen. As their
relationship blossoms, Ashling goes to great lengths to keep Betty away from her family, especially her
alcoholic mother, Etain.
As their relationship blossoms,
Betty learns her lover's terrifying family history, and Ashling's secret obsession. Ashling has become convinced
that the horrors inflicted on her family are connected to a seemingly innocent children's TV show. Everyone in
Ireland watched this show in their youth, but Ash soon discovers that no one remembers it quite the same way.
And only Ashling seems to remember its a small black goat puppet who lives in a box and only comes out if you
don’t behave. They say he’s never come out. Almost never. When the door between the known and unknown opens, it
can never close again.
Why I'm Excited: I'm lucky enough to have received an e-ARC of this book, so I've already read it! Check out my review later this month!
3. The MANIAC - Benjamín Labatut (Oct. 3)
Synopsis:
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann
transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and
pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends,
colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that
has unmoored the world in its wake.
The MANIAC
places von Neumann at the center of a literary
triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into
despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in
the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter
embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a
self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control. A word
of beauty and fabulous momentum,
The MANIAC'
s unique blend of fact and
fiction confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
Why I'm Excited: So I'm not going to lie, but I don't really know what this book is about even after reading the synopsis. But the cover is sick, it looks like it talks about AI and the dangers of technology from a historical fiction perspective, and the author is highly awarded and praised. So I want to give this one a try.
4. The Witch & The City - Jake Burnett (Oct. 24)
Synopsis:
The prison-city of Osylum floats in the midst of an endless abyss. The reclusive
Lady rules it; distant, inscrutable, and never seen. Her will is imposed by the Wardens, eldritch
creatures who tend to the convicts’ needs but also ruthlessly purge anyone who tries to
escape.
Osylum’s
newest inmate, the witch Oneirotheria, has no memory of who she is, where she came from, or why she is
imprisoned. Instead, her mind is a mess of spells and lore and other people’s voices. The city mirrors
her internal confusion; a jumble of broken buildings covered in hundreds of snippets of
graffiti.
As
Oneirotheria re-assembles her own shattered past (aided by a few inmates of dubious intent), she learns
she may hold not just the key to escape, but the intertwined secrets of the city’s origin and a lost
love that transcends countless lives.
Why I'm Excited: Fantasy Gotchic witches on a floating prison city? Yum yum. This is my Sleeper Pick of the Month, which is normally reserved for a niche horror read, but a key sign of a good sleeper pick is a straight-to-paperback release. This book has mediocre reviews so far but I don't care. I want it.
5. Nestlings - Nat Cassidy (Oct. 31)
Synopsis:
Ana and Reid needed a lucky break. The horrifically complicated birth of their
first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with
resentment for her baby. That's about to change with the words any New Yorker would love to
hear―affordable housing lottery.
They've won an
apartment in the Deptford, one of Manhattan's most revered buildings with beautiful vistas of Central
Park and stunning architecture.
Reid dismisses
disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia as the price of living in New York―people are
odd―but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on the baby.
Why I'm Excited: I'm lucky enough to have received an e-ARC of this book, and I'm reading it right now! Check back soon for my review.
6. The Reformatory - Tananarive Due (Oct. 31)
Synopsis:
Gracetown, Florida, June 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced
to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest
landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the
terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or
haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth
of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone
missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie
is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and
connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
Why I'm Excited: I read and really enjoyed Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and I believe that this is based on the same reformatory school in Florida. This one is marketed as horror more than historical fiction like Nickel Boys was, so I'm looking forward to the differences between the two.
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Hope you all had a wonderful September! Our book club read for October is Go As a River, so if you want to grab a copy to read with us this month, please join us!
Let me know if there are any books you're looking forward to in the comments!