Summer’s finally winding down, and most of us are about to have much less time to read. Luckily, bibliophiles still have time to pick up and read through all the outstanding novels, anthologies, and collections that landed on bookstore shelves this season.
More than a few cozy, thrilling, and thought-provoking books have come out recently, and most of them are well worth the price tagged onto them. So before Autumn truly settles in, here are the ten best books of September 2024.
10. Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX’s Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire – Andrew R. Chow
If Andrew R. Chow’s Cryptomania can’t convince you that cryptocurrency was one of the worst things ever created by human hands, I’m not sure anything will. Even if you’re one of the many who’ve already recognized and reconciled with this truth, I’d still recommend picking this up if you’re in the mood for a delightful shot of schadenfreude.
Following the meteoric rise and biblical fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, one of crypto’s most prominent pioneers, Cryptomania is a captivating exploration of its controversial subject. Thorough in its research and wry in its prose, this tell-all nonfiction inquisition leaves nothing unsaid about the financial fad that tried (and spectacularly failed) to change the world.
9. Hera – Jennifer Saint
From The Penelopiad to Lore Olympus, role-bending retellings of Greek mythology’s greatest sagas and tragedies have become a stable of the contemporary fiction scene. Jennifer Saint’s fledgling portfolio consists only of subversive reimagining of classic Greek heroines, and her latest book, Hera, shifts focus to one of Greece’s most iconic and controversial goddesses.
Told from the titular character’s perspective, Hera kicks off in the immediate aftermath of the gods’ apocalyptic war with the Titans. Forced into a less-than-storybook marriage with the power-hungry Zeus, Hera resolves to use the power her new role gives her to subvert her husband’s rule. Packed with acts of divine wrath and Game of Thrones-style power plays, Hera is an empowering epic guaranteed to appeal to Greek mythology fans.
8. There Are Rivers in the Sky – Elif Shafak
Writers have been playing with time and space for centuries. While sci-fi authors analyze our relationship with these omnipresent forces by unraveling and reshaping them, contemporary fiction writers like Elif Shafak dial the scale back a few notches and explore the subtle ways they influence our lives. There Are Rivers in the Sky does this by telling the tales of four people with one thing in common: they live along a river.
Told over millennia, There Are Rivers in the Sky follows a quartet of characters from radically different time periods and backgrounds whose lives revolve around the River Tigris. Woven together by Shafak’s poetic prose, this tale of four souls celebrates the incalculable ways water ties our history and lives together.
7. Hum – Helen Phillips
Many dystopian novels revolve around the chaos sown by unmoored artificial intelligence. Helen Phillips’ Hum isn’t as unapologetically bleak as I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or as grandiose as 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it’s still a terrifying and unflinching tale about technology’s ability to transform society and our personal lives for better and worse.
After losing her job to one of the artificially intelligent robots, or “Hums,” that inhabit her climate-change-wracked city, May Webb agrees to become the test subject for a radical experiment. Now invisible to the surveillance systems that watch over her world, May moves her family to the Botanical Garden, one of the few green spaces left. However, when a deadly threat targets her children, fate forces May to ally with a mysterious Hum with even more enigmatic motives.
6. The Seventh Veil of Salome – Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Hollywood is a fantastic setting for any story, but the City of Angels lends itself particularly well to suspense. Silvia Moreno Garcia’s The Seventh Veil of Salome spins a saga of intrigue, romance, and betrayal that will put a live wire in thriller fans’ spines.
Set in the 1950s, The Seventh Veil of Salome follows Vera Larios, a beautiful receptionist from Mexico City who miraculously lands the starring role in a sword-and-sandals epic recounting the biblical tale of Salome. Unfortunately, Vera’s sudden success puts her in the crosshairs of Nancy Hartley, a bitter ensemble player who makes it her mission to steal Vera’s role, fame, and newly kindled relationship with a dashing cameraman.
5. Group Living and Other Recipes – Lola Milholland
The word “home” often channels images of a close-knit (or dysfunctional) blood family living behind the same walls. But what if the place you called home was open to anyone and everyone? Lola Milholland lived in a home like this, and hers is the story behind Group Living and Other Recipes.
One part cookbook, one part memoir, Group Living and Other Recipes sheds light on the under-explored world of communal living. Through her recollections of the many colorful characters who lived in her childhood home (and the many incredible recipes those eccentric travelers taught her), Milholland opens your mind to a new, surreal, and delicious way of living.
4. This Is Why We Lied – Karen Slaughter
The intrigue at the heart of any good whodunit story lives and dies off the strength of its prime suspects. Murder on the Orient Express and Knives Out prove this. This Is Why We Lied by Karen Slaughter honors this tradition, bringing together a colorful cast of potential murderers under one roof and leaving it to the reader to deduce which did the deed.
Eager to escape their stressful careers for one weekend, GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton spirit themselves away to McAlpine Lodge, a scenic tourist trap in the heart of the mountains. Unfortunately, their dream vacation turns into a nightmare after someone murders the lodge’s owner, and they quickly realize that no one on the summit is being honest about where they were the night he died.
3. By Any Other Name – Jodi Picoult
The great William Shakespeare once said “all the world’s a stage,” and that we all have a part to play in the grand performance we call life. The truth beneath those words lays itself bare on every page of Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name, a rousing story about the risks two women born centuries away from each other take to ensure the world hears their voices.
Melina Green, a struggling playwright, has just finished her latest script, inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor, Emilia Bassano. Emilia, a talented writer smothered by the restrictions Elizabethan society forced upon women, conspires with a then-little-known actor named William Shakespeare to bring one of her plays onto the stage. As charming as it is insightful, By Any Other Name is a clever spin on the “Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays” story that’ll leave you in the mood to stand up and applaud.
2. The Pairing – Casey McQuiston
Summer is a time to relax and put your worries away, if only for a while. Cozy books are a fantastic way to spend a lazy summer day, and few things are more comfortable than a playful rom-com. Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing is yet another top-shelf romantic outing from one of the best contemporary romance writers out there.
Theo and Kit were inseparable during their younger days, childhood friends who transitioned into star-crossed lovers. But time pulled them apart, and both have barely thought about each other in the decades they’ve been apart. That is until they run into each other by chance after spontaneously and simultaneously deciding to embark on a food-and-wine tour passing through most of Europe’s most famous cities. Forced to spend a weekend together in some of the most romantic locales in the world, Theo and Kit’s long-dormant relationship begins to spark back to life.
1. A Sorceress Comes to All – T. Kingfisher
The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales are some of the darkest stories you’ll ever read. From old witches being baked alive inside of ovens to wicked step-sisters getting their eyes plucked out by birds, these “children’s stories” give horror movies a run for their money. T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to All retells one of Grimm’s lesser-known and uniquely terrifying fairy tales, “The Goose Girl.”
Cordelia lives alone with her mother, a wicked sorceress who keeps her daughter under heel with a healthy mix of emotional abuse and paralyzing magic. When her mother concocts a scheme to murder the kindly brother-sister duo that took them in off the streets, Cordelias’s forced to make an impossible choice: stand with the woman who raised her or risk it all to save the only people who have ever treated her like family.
Published: Sep 7, 2024 09:00 am