10 New Books To Add To Your Autumn Reading List
The Land of Sweet Forever
Harper Lee
This new book sees the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author Harper Lee’s publisher bring together a posthumous collection of newly discovered writing. Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon, thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus and the other indelible characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as for the darker, late-50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in Go Set a Watchman, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s never-before-seen short stories and published non-fiction in a volume that offers an unprecedented look at the development of her voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of mid-century Manhattan, The Land of Sweet Forever invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life. This collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Lee’s appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee’s life and to her two novels.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
What We Can Know
Ian McEwan
One of the UK’s best authors is back with an immersive new novel. It’s 2014 and a great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message but no copy has been found. Now in 2119, the lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early 21st century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately. A quest, a literary thriller and a love story, What We Can Know imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Girl Dinner
Olivie Blake
From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller Olivie Blake, comes this powerful and darkly fun novel about ambition, lust and eating your fill – as wealthy ‘moms’ and sorority girls practice a sinister new wellness trend. The House is the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni are beautiful, high achieving and respected. After a freshman year she would rather forget, Nina Kaur knows being accepted into The House is the first step to the brightest possible future. Meanwhile, professor Dr Sloane Hartley is struggling. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane’s clothes don’t fit right, her husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is and even the few hours a day she’s apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in a level of collective perfection that Sloane desperately craves. But as Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Katabasis
R.F. Kuang
R.F. Kuang made waves with her last novel, Yellowface, a literary thriller exploring ambition, greed and white privilege. Now she’s written Katabasis, which leans more into the fantasy genre she was known for before. This is the story of a hero's descent to the underworld. Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of ‘analytic magick’. But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him. But Hell is not as the philosophers claim – its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together. That’s if they can agree on anything. Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Buckeye
Patrick Ryan
Buckeye is a brilliant, expansive novel that straddles two world wars and the decades-long fallout of three families caught up in the aftershocks of foreign warfare. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever. While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie – and nothing can remain hidden in a small town. The consequences of that encounter intertwines the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
One of Us
Elizabeth Day
This new novel from Elizabeth Day is one of her best. In this compulsive story of betrayal, old bonds and buried scandals, one British establishment family comes face to face with the consequences of privilege and the true cost of power. Martin and Ben were friends for decades before the terrible events at Ben’s 40th birthday party tore them apart. So, when Martin receives a surprise invitation back into the inner sanctum of the dazzling Fitzmaurice family after seven years of silence, he can’t resist the chance to get his revenge. Ben has risen through the ranks of power and is now touted as the next PM. But Martin can’t help but notice certain flies in the ointment, not least the sudden death of Fliss, Ben’s sister and the Fitzmaurice black sheep, whose funeral sparks more suspicion than closure. Through their intertwined stories, we see a family unravelling under the weight of its secrets. And with everyone watching, the stage is set for a reckoning.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself & China
Jung Chang
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation. An epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother – ‘three daughters of China’ – the book opens in 1909 with her grandmother’s birth when China was under the last emperor and finishes in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping officially ended the Mao era and started the ‘reforms’. Fly, Wild Swans brings the story of Jung’s family – along with that of China – up to date. China is now at another watershed moment with the era of Chairman Xi Jinping greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother. This is a book filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history – both personal and global.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Will There Ever Be Another You
Patricia Lockwood
This is the new novel from the author of No One Is Talking About This, winner of the Dylan Thomas prize and the only book shortlisted for both the 2021 Booker Prize and Women's Prize for Fiction. The world might be in disarray but for one young woman, the very weave of herself seems to have loosened. Time and memories pass straight through her body, she's afraid of her own floorboards, and the lyrics of 'What Is Love' play over and over in her ears. Tearing through the slippery terrains of fiction and reality, the possibility for human connection seems to beckon from the other side – and with it, the chance for a blinding re-emergence into the world. Will There Ever Be Another You is a wild and profound investigation into what keeps us alive in unprecedented times.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Cursed Daughters
Oyinkan Braithwaite
This is the twist-filled, spooky heartbreaker from the global-bestselling author of My Sister, The Serial Killer. ‘No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace’. So goes the family curse, handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts as it goes. And now it’s calm, rational Eniiyi’s turn – who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, and her family’s insistence that she must be a reincarnation, has long been used to some strange familial beliefs. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
Dead And Alive
Zadie Smith
In this long-awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects which have captured her attention in recent years. She takes a close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to Glastonbury to witness the ascendance of Stormzy. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road and invites us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic – and the meaning of ‘the commons’ in all our lives. Throughout this thrilling collection, Smith shows readers once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.
Available at AMAZON.CO.UK
DISCLAIMER: We endeavour to always credit the correct original source of every image we use. If you think a credit may be incorrect, please contact us at info@sheerluxe.com.
