Perhaps the only people wishing 2020 wasn’t over are the authors who have forthcoming books. I hate to see what this year has done to hard-working authors. Here are just some of them with books scheduled for release in October. You never know. Release dates seem very flexible. this year.

Ireland! A book at least catches my attention when Ireland is the setting. In John Banville’s Snow, Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. It’s 1957, and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford is a Protestant, and determined to identify the murderer, but he faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in this tight-knit community. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And then his own deputy goes missing. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Kate Belli debuts a new series with Deception by Gaslight. Set in New York City during the Gilded Age, it features a journalist as one of the two main characters who delve into the political, economic and social reasons for crime. Genevieve Stewart, a journalist despite her family’s prominence and old money, teams up with the mysterious man who inherited a fortune as a teenager. They’re tracking Robin Hood, a man who supposedly robs jewelry from wealthy women, and distributes the money to the impoverished. Genevieve doesn’t completely trust her new assistant, but she doesn’t believe he’s a killer. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Some of you may have already read Leslie Budewitz’ The Solace of Bay Leaves. The fifth Spice Shop mystery is already out as an e-book, but the paperback isn’t released until October. Pepper Reece, owner of Pike Place Market’s Spice Shop, is shocked to learn a childhood friend has been shot, and is in critical condition in the hospital. And, the shooting might be related to an unsolved murder that left another friend a widow. Pepper’s people skills may help in finding the link between both crimes. (Release date is Oct. 20.)

Stuart Evers’ The Blind Light is a multigenerational story about two families living in the shadow of nuclear apocalypse. In 1959, two young soldiers, Drummond and Carter, form an intense friendship at Doom Town, a training center that simulates the aftermath of an atomic strike. Years later, the men watch in horror as the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold. Carter, now a high-ranking British government official, offers Drummond a way to safe himself and his family in the event of a nuclear strike. The pact between the two men, and the consequences, span decades, from the 1950s to the present. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

In Eva Gates’ latest Lighthouse Library Murder, A Death Long Overdue, librarian Lucy Richardson helps her Director, Bertie James, host her classmates’ 40th anniversary reunion from library school. It’s too bad Bertie ran into her former boss, and invited her along. So many librarians disliked the woman. When she ends up dead, there are a number of women who are suspects. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

A Bend in the River is a departure for Libby Fischer Hellmann. In 1968, two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither sister knows if the other is alive in this story of survival, family, and the consequences of war. (Release date is Oct. 7.)

For many readers, I only have to say Magic Lessons is the prequel to Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic. It’s the story of Maria Owens, an accused witch in the Salem trials and matriach of the beloved Owens family featured in Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic. This is where the story of the Owens bloodline, and the curse that will haunts the family, begins, in the 1600s. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

I seldom pay any attention to blurbs. I’ve seen many of my own reviews quoted, which is nice, but they’re only excerpts from the entire review. However, William Kent Krueger is quoted on the front, and Beth Hoffman on the back cover of Lesley Kagen’s Every Now and Then. It’s the story of three young girls searching for adventure during the summer of 1960, the hottest ever for Summit, Wisconsin. For Frankie, Viv, and Biz, eleven-year-old friends, it would forever be remembered as the summer that evil paid a visit to their small town – and took their young lives as they’d known them as a souvenir. The girls plan to make their mark on the summer, but when three patients escape from Broadhurst Mental Institution, their idyllic lives take a sinister turn. Determined to uncover long-held secrets, the girls have no idea that what they discover could cost them their lives and the people they hold dear. Six decades later, Biz, now a bestselling novelist, remembers that long-ago summer, and how it still haunts her and her lifelong friends. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Police officer Megan Luz and her K-9 partner, Brigit, respond to an unusual crime in Diane Kelly’s Bending the Paw. They’re called to track a missing man, when the man’s wife calls police to report her kitchen covered in blood, and her husband is missing. It’s too bad Brigit knows the truth, but is unable to reveal it to her human companion. (Release date is Oct. 27.)

James Lovegrove’s Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons picks up where The Hound of the Baskervilles left off. Five years after the previous events, another beast, a vampire-type creature, stalks the moors. This time, Sir Henry Baskerville’s wife is the victim. Sir Henry has hunkered down to protect his son, but one of Baskerville’s friends begs Holmes to investigate. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

I requested a copy of RV Raman’s A Will to Kill, so I’m Looking forward to this one. The author said there was no Agatha Christie-type mystery in modern-day India, so he wrote one. Aging and wheelchair-bound patriarch Bhaskar Fernandez has finally reclaimed his family property after a bitter legal battle, and now wants to reunite his family. He invites them to remote Greybrooke Manoar in the misty Nilgiris, a mansion that has played host to sudden deaths in a valley said to be haunted. Bhaskar knows his family is waiting for him to die, so to safeguard himself during the house party, he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force depends on how he dies. He also brings in Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator. When a landslide occurs, temporarily isolating them all at the mansion, and resulting in a murder, Athreya finds that murder is not the only thing the mist conceals. (Release date is Oct. 20.)

I’m going to at least try V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. In France in 1714, in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain – she will be able to live forever, but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. It will be three hundred years before she stumbles into a hidden bookstore and discovers someone who can remember her name. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Here’s another one I want to try, Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead. It introduces Pentecost and Parker, two unconventional female detectives in the 1940s who couldn’t care less about playing by the rules, in their cases and in their lives. In 1942, Willowjean “Will” Parker is a scrappy circus runaway whose knife-throwing skills have just saved the life of New York’s best, and most unorthodox, private investigator, Lillian Pentecost. Then Lillian offers Will a life-changing proposition. Lillian’s multiple sclerosis means she can’t keep up with her caseload alone, and she wants to hire Will as her right-hand woman. She’s provide a salary, room and board, and training. Three years later, an investigation takes Will into a dangerous territory, and she may become a murderer’s next target. (Release date is Oct. 27.)

Confessions on the 7:45 is Lisa Unger’s latest thriller. Selena Murphy is commuting home from her job in the city when the train stalls on the tracks. She strikes up a conversation with a stranger in the next seat who introduces herself as Martha. The woman confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss, and Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again. But days later, Selena’s nanny disappears. Soon Selena’s once-perfect life is upended. Selena begins to wonder, who was Martha really? (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Welcome to Cecily Von Ziegesar’s Cobble Hill. Over the course of a year, four families in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood seek purpose, community, and meaningful relationships – until one unforgettable night at a raucous block party knocks them to their senses. (Release date is Oct. 20.)

Rescue You is Elysia Whisler’s novel about two needy people. The only thing keeping Constance afloat is the dog rescue she works at with her sister, Sunny. Desperate for a change, she impulsively joins a new gym, even though it seems impossibly hard, and despite the gym’s prickly owner. Rhett Santos keeps his gym as a refuge for his former-military brothers and to sweat out his own issues. He’s ready to let the funny redhead join, but unprepared for the way she wiggles past his hard-won defenses. Then, the sisters’ dog rescue is threatened, and they’ll need all the help they can get to protect it. (Release date is Oct. 27.)

Here are the other October treasures in my closet.

Beatty, Pete – Cuyahoga (10/6)
Crow, Sarah McCraw – The Wrong Kind of Woman (10/6)
Farren, T. C. – The Book of Malachi (10/13)
Gabler, Neal – Catching the Wind (10/27)
Hausmann, Romy – Dear Child (10/6)
Swann, Christopher – Never Turn Back (10/6)
Tate, Christie – Group (10/27)