It’s fun to look at October book releases, but I’m not happy to think about the year flying by. We all know I hate winter, and the year is going too fast. But, there are plenty of October book releases. Get them early, and add them to your TBR pile for the winter!

I’ll kick off the October list with Tasha Alexander’s latest Lady Emily mystery, The Adventuress. Lady Emily and her husband, Colin, travel to the French Riviera for an engagement party. But, the celebration is cut short with a shocking death, an apparent suicide. But, Lady Emily isn’t convinced by the coroner’s verdict, and she employs all her investigative skills to discover the truth. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

John Brady attempts to tell the full story of the romance between Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner in Frank & Ava: In Love and War. The insecure Ava Gardner fell in and out of love, marrying first Mickey Rooney and then Artie Shaw. Neither marriage lasted a year. She was courted by Howard Hughes and others, and then Sinatra, dealing with his own problems, thought no one wanted him, except Ava. The resulting affair broke all the rules, but their eventual marriage had problems as well. It’s called “a compelling drama of love and emotional war”. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks was one of the hot books at Book Expo America in June. The author of People of the Book and March now turns to the dramatic story of King David. Brooks tells David’s story through the eyes of a courtier who advised him, and gives voice to those who loved and feared David. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Laura Childs joins forces with Terrie Farley Moran for the latest Scrapbooking Mystery, Parchment and Old Lace. Carmela Bertrand has a wonderful dinner at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans with her boyfriend, Detective Edgar Babcock. The only disturbance is Isabelle Black who stops by to brag about her upcoming wedding. And, then the couple’s after dinner walk is interrupted by a scream coming from the legendary Lafayette Cemetery. The bride-to-be has been murdered. Carmella would rather let Edgar investigate, but Isabelle’s sister asks Carmela for help. It will take a little work to untangle the enemies of Isabelle’s past before someone else ends up in a cemetery. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

In A House of My Own: Stories from My Life, Sandra Cisneros, the author of The House on Mango Street, compiles true stories and nonfiction pieces to tell the story of her life. Cisneros takes readers from Chicago where she grew up to her abode in Mexico where her ancestors lived for centuries, the places that inspired her poetry and writings. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

If I start by saying, in Argentine Antarctica, humans and robots are agitating for independence, you’ll probably guess that Cassandra Rose Clarke’s Our Lady of the Ice is science fiction. But, it also features a female PI, Eliana Gomez, who is looking for a way out of Hope City. Unfortunately, when she accepts a job from an aristocrat with a secret, she comes into conflict with the gangster who controls the food supply in winter. And, then the electricity that keeps the city from freezing begins to fail. (Release date is Oct. 27.)

Lynn Cullen, author of the bestseller, Mrs. Poe, now brings us a novel about the personal life of an iconic American author, Mark Twain. Twain’s End tells of the marriage of Twain’s secretary, Isabel Y. Lyon, and his business manager. In March 1909, Mark Twain cheerfully blessed that wedding. One month later, he fired both, and he and his daughter, Clara Clemens proceeded to slander Isabel in the newspapers, erasing her seven years of service to the family. It’s a story of tangled relationships and love triangles, based on Isabel Lyon’s diary and Twain’s writings and letters. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

Zachary Thomas Dodson’s illuminated novel, Bats of the Republic, is a debut. It’s a story of adventure featuring hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations, subversive pamphlets, and a nineteenth century story inside another one. In 1843, naturalist Zadock Thomas must deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the republic hangs in the balance. When a cloud of bats leads him off the road, he happens upon something impossible. Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed. Zee Thomas has inherited a letter from his grandfather, but the disappearance of the letter could lead to the destruction of the republic. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Who was James Putnam? Allen Eskers asks that question in The Guise of Another. The answer may save Minnesota detective Alexander Rupert’s career. When he’s asked to look into the fake identity of a car accident victim, a man who in fact died fifteen years earlier, he hopes to regain his respectability. But, the investigation puts him in the path of a sociopath assassin, and his life is soon spinning out of control. Alexander’s brother, Max, a fellow police detective, may be his last hope. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor are the creators of the popular podcast, Welcome to Night Vale. Now, they turn that darkly funny series into a novel of the same name set somewhere in the American Southwest. Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens and government conspiracies are all part of everyday life. It’s here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge. (Release date is Oct. 20.)

John Fortunate’s Dark Reservations is the winner of the Tony Hillman Prize for best debut mystery set in the Southwest. Bureau of Indian Affairs Special Agent Joe Evers faces a forced early retirement after a bungled investigation. He needs a new career, not another case. But when Congressman Arlen Egerton’s bullet-riddled Lincoln turns upon the Navajo Reservation twenty years after he disappeared during a corruption probe, Joe has to team up with a Navajo Tribal Officer to solve the cold case. It’s an investigation that antagonizes potential suspects, while, at the same time, Joe faces personal problems. (Release date is Oct. 13.)

A Poet of the Invisible World is Michael Golding’s spiritual fable about a boy who embarks on a remarkable journey through pain and loss to transcendence. It follows a boy named Nouri, born in thirteenth-century Persia, with four ears instead of two. He’s taken into a Sufi order where he meets an assortment of dervishes and is placed upon a path toward spiritual awakening. But, it’s a path that means one painful experience after another on the way to manhood. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

Garth Risk Hallberg’s enormous (944 pages) novel, City on Fire, was another one of those blockbusters at Book Expo America. Author Stephanie Hochschild describes is as “both thrilling mystery and sweeping literary epic. Revealing every gritty corner of 1970s New York City, Hallberg brilliantly weaves together the lives of characters from every stratum of society and observes them as their fates collide in the blackout of 1977.” (Release date is Oct. 13.)

Carolyn Hart brings back her ghostly sleuth Bailey Ruth Raeburn in Ghost to the Rescue. When a little girl wishes for help, Chief Wiggins at Heaven’s Department of Good Intentions sends Bailey Ruth back to her old hometown of Adelaide, Oklahoma. Deirdre Davenport, a single mother and struggling writer is trying to support her two children, with hopes of getting a faculty job with the Goddard English Department. But, when a professor ends up dead, Bailey Ruth must find out who killed him before Deirdre ends up in prison, leaving that little girl without a happy ending. (Release date is Oct. 6.)

The last book for today launches a thrilling supernatural series that has been optioned by Warner Bros TV. Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard takes the story of H.P. Lovecraft into the twenty-first century. Daniel Carter is a private investigator trying to lead a quiet life until he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he’s never heard of. He also inherits a bookseller who doesn’t want a new boss, Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of author H.P. Lovecraft, who told tales of creatures and entities. When people start dying in impossible ways, Carter’s investigation leads to a discovery that Lovecraft’s tales were more than just fiction. (Release date is Oct. 20.)

The last two entries today are perfect for October. Come back tomorrow to learn what other books are October Treasures in My Closet.