9 Books Out This September
September always seems like a fresh chapter — the month where we swap iced coffees for flat whites, sharpen our pencils (or open a fresh Notes app), and lean into stories that stay with us long after the last page. And this month’s new releases do not disappoint. From a heart-stopping thriller about an AI running for president to a tender love story set against India’s fight for LGBTQ+ rights, from Japanese bookish mysteries to a groundbreaking exploration of the trauma response nobody talks about, these nine books span the globe and every corner of the human experience.
Whether you’re in the mood for literary fiction that cuts to the bone, a heartwarming reminder of why books matter, or a story that makes you rethink the way you love, here are 9 books on our radar this September — and the ones you’ll want on your nightstand next.
A Splintering
Out Now
In a village in rural Pakistan, Tara is waiting and watching. The smell of dung and dust hangs over her world. She is desperate to leave the petty life of the village and escape the iron grip of her violent, unpredictable brother. Marrying a middle-class accountant allows her to escape to the capital, but she soon finds that life as a respectable housewife is not sufficient either. She wants what the rich mothers at her children’s school have. She wants what their husbands have. But can she truly shake her past? And what of the menacing spectre of her brother, a reminder of the threads that tie her to the life she left behind?
Set against a hypnotic, oppressive backdrop of political violence and natural disaster, A Splintering traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition. Disquieting and utterly gripping, it is an extraordinary achievement by Dur e Aziz Amna, an exploration of a complex and unforgettable character who will risk everything to carve out a life of her own.
Artificial Wisdom
Out Now
The most surprising thriller of the year.
Who would you trust with the future?
The year is 2050. In the teeth of a climate catastrophe, the world is left with a drastic solution: one global leader to steer it through the coming apocalypse.
The final two candidates are ex-US President Lockwood, and Solomon, the world’s first political artificial intelligence.
As whispers of a global conspiracy emerge, investigative journalist Marcus Tully find himself at the centre of it – when Solomon’s creator turns up murdered.
Overnight, one investigation becomes two, and it’s not just the result of the election that’s at stake but the future of the species. Suddenly humanity must make an impossible choice – between salvation, or freedom.
Bookstore Girls
Out Now
Riko Nishioka is deputy manager of the Pegasus Shobo Kichijoji bookstore. After five years working part-time, she's finally secured a full-time position at the age of forty. But now she has a nemesis.
Aki Kobata, twenty-seven, has waltzed in as a full-time employee thanks to her family connections. A free spirit with a rebellious streak and a silver spoon in her mouth, she's anything but a team player.
The two are always clashing - both at work and over their personal lives. But when Riko is given notice that the store will be closing in six months' time, they face a stark choice.
Can they put their petty enmities aside to boost sales and save their livelihoods or will they go down fighting . . . each other?
Dinner at the Night Library
Out Now
The Night Library is no ordinary library.
Within it are found the rarest and most unusual collections – the books of deceased famous writers:
the books they wrote
the books that inspired them
the books they loved
All Otaha Higuchi wants to do is work with books. However, the exhausting nature of her work at a chain bookstore, combined with her paltry salary and irritating manager quickly bring reality crashing down around her.
She is on the verge of quitting when she receives a message from somebody calling themselves ‘Seven Rainbows’, inviting her to apply for a job at a library with no name, a place referred to simply as ‘The Night Library’.
After successfully passing the interview, Otaha arrives at The Night Library and her sunny personality immediately earns her comparisons with Anne of Green Gables. For the very first time she feels she has found her place in the world. As well as a treasure trove of books, the library houses a group of likeminded literary misfits, including a legendary chef who prepares incredible meals for the library’s employees at the end of each day.
Together they embark on a series of bookish adventures. But when the library’s mysterious owner decides to temporarily close the library, Otaha and her friends fear that it may not reopen and that the peace they have found there will be lost to them forever.
Is their friendship and their faith in the value of books strong enough to save it? And what will remain if it isn’t?
Dinner at the Night Library is a heartwarming literary mystery, filled with quirky characters, Japanese culture and the mouthwatering meals. It asks why books matter and offers a cheer of encouragement to everybody who believes they do. Ultimately, it is a paean to reading and the relevance of books through the ages—past, present, and future.
Fawning
Out Now
Fawning is the vital, newly-discovered topic in psychology. You've heard of fight, flight and freeze - but fawning might be the most common trauma response of all. Learn how to work through it and find freedom with the leading expert, Dr. Ingrid Clayton.
Do you avoid conflict?
Do you tend to take the blame?
Do you take care of others at the expense of yourself?
Do you live in a state of hypervigilance?
Fawning can present as being more of who someone is: smart, generous, successful, funny, or beautiful, while for others it's about being less: vocal, ethnic, creative, self-assured or boundaried. Fawning can be visible or invisible; it can manifest in our relationships to sex or money, or in the tendency to 'people-please'; but one thing remains constant: it is about finding safety in an unsafe world, often at our own expense.
Fawning expert and clinical psychologist Dr. Ingrid Clayton is here to bring clarity and support. The first book by a practitioner with years of experience, Fawning will shine a light on this under-represented but crucial piece of the trauma puzzle. Drawing on twenty years of clinical psychology work, as well as a lifetime of insight as a recovering fawner herself, this groundbreaking book brings this emerging concept into the mainstream conversation. Readers will learn WHY we fawn, HOW to recognize the signs of fawning and WHAT we can do to successfully 'unfawn', using Clayton's invaluable tools and resources to find meaningful, reciprocal connections - and finally be ourselves.
Half Light
Out Now
High in the mountains of Darjeeling, a landslide traps the guests and staff of a crumbling hotel. Cooped up inside, two men exchange lingering glances. For Neville, this is one of many thrilling encounters – urgent kisses in stairwells and parked cars. But for hotel employee Pavan, their connection threatens to unravel everything he has kept hidden.
Years later, their paths collide once more, surrounded by the towering skyscrapers and ghostly smog of Mumbai. Neville is now a restless graduate, adrift in the city, while Pavan has started a new life, away from the hills. When Neville strides into his workplace demanding a meeting, their flirtation turns fraught, and long-buried secrets threaten to tumble into the light.
Set on the cusp of India’s landmark ruling to decriminalise homosexuality, this is a tender, richly atmospheric and elegantly wry story of outlawed desire – and the fragile hope for a life beyond concealment.
How to Hold Someone in Your Heart
Out Now
The much-anticipated follow-up novel to Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (our October Book of the Month) picks up seven years later with go-between Ayumi, a young man caught between the demands of everyday life and his extraordinary gift: reuniting the living with the dead.
Ayumi has a rare and mysterious ability, inherited from his grandmother. During a full moon and guided by strict rules, he arranges meetings between souls who have passed and those they left behind. However, after years in this role, Ayumi begins to question its meaning and the impact it has had on his life. As he juggles his supernatural calling with his full-time job as a toy designer in Tokyo, Ayumi quietly wonders if he will ever find the peace he so often helps others attain. Meanwhile, he assists five individuals, including: a rising film star who seeks closure with the father who abandoned him; a passionate amateur historian longing to meet a forgotten 16th-century warlord; and a former cook whose repeated requests to visit an upper-class woman in the afterlife have been denied—but who refuses to give up on love.
Luminous, magical, and deeply heartwarming, How to Hold Someone in Your Heart is an unforgettable novel from bestselling storyteller Mizuki Tsujimura and a profound meditation on living without regret, embracing the unexpected, and cherishing the fleeting moments we’re given.
Love’s Labour
Out Now
Luminous and necessary stories from the psychoanalyst's consulting room; on desire, heartbreak and learning how to love.
When it comes to love why do we find things so difficult? Drawing on over forty years of candid and surprising conversations with his patients, Stephen Grosz asks, what gets in the way of our falling in love? And what must we do to stay there?
In the intimate space of the consulting room, we meet the woman who can’t post her wedding invitations but then, decades later, can’t decide whether to get divorced; the friendship group that explodes when an adulterous affair begins; and the man whose partner’s death is almost too much to bear.
As an analyst, Grosz’s unerring ability is to locate what ails the heartsick. As a writer, he elegantly shows how we can deploy the agonies of love as tools for understanding.
The labour of love is the work of a lifetime but in finally learning to see ourselves and our world clearly, we find we are truly ready to love one another.
The Devil Book
Out Now
A bold, lyrical and surprising novel about violence and money, love and desire, and a stand-off with the Devil himself
A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and agrees to visit him in London. While she sits out a two-week Covid quarantine in his apartment, she begins to tell her story. Years ago and desperate for money, she sold herself to a stranger called T. He offered her a suitcase full of money and lavish gifts in exchange for total control of her body. In the bed between them lay a large kitchen knife and the promise of an iconic death.
But at the last moment, she aborted the treacherous game and fled. Now in London, she reflects on the forces - financial and social - that led her to the brink of destruction, and wonders what it would take to believe in love again.
Frank, intimate and dazzling entertaining, The Devil Book is a classic girl-meets-boy-meets-devil story. This unmissable stand-alone novel is the follow up to the critically-acclaimed Money to Burn.
