It’s another full day of books scheduled for release in October. Let’s get started.
I actually do have several nonfiction titles in all those treasures. Ben Macintyre’s Rogue Heroes is “The history of the SAS, Britain’s secret special forces unit that sabotaged the Nazis and changed the nature of war.” It was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young gadabout aristocrat who paired up with the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes. They put together a revolutionary fighting force that became the seeds of nearly all special forces. (Release date is Oct. 4.)
Sam Maggs’ Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History is a fun and feminist look at forgotten women in science, technology and history. (Release date is Oct. 18.)
Looking for a fun caper? The latest Jaya Jones adventure is Michelangelo’s Ghost. There’s a lost work of art linking India to the Italian Renaissance. A killer is hiding behind a centuries-old ghost story. When Jaya’s old professor dies under strange circumstances after discovering manuscripts that point to a treasure, Jaya and her brother pick up the trail. San Francisco to Italy, Jaya looks for a link between masterpieces and the deeds of a modern-day killer. (Release date is Oct. 4.)
Jodi Picoult writes of “the complexity of human relationships” according to The Boston Globe. Small Great Things is the story of Ruth Jefferson a labor and delivery nurse. She had just started a routine checkup on a newborn when the parents requested a different nurse. “The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies, but the next day the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone on the ward. Does she obey orders or does she intervene? Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime.” (Release date is Oct. 11.)
Steven Price’s By Gaslight looks fascinating, but it’s over 700 pages! That’s okay for some people, but I seldom read long books. Maybe I should just take one book to Ireland with me. William Pinkerton, the son of the most notorious detective of all time, descends into the underworld of Victorian London chasing the fabled con artist Edward Shade. William’s father failed to find him. Now, William joins forces with Adam Foole, a gentleman haunted by a love affair ten years earlier. And, Foole may hold the key to finding Shade. (Release date is Oct. 4.)
Here’s the book with the best cover of any of the selections, David Rosenfelt’s The Twelve Dogs of Christmas. Defense attorney Andy Carpenter is eager to take on a friend’s case. Martha “Pups” Boyer takes in stray puppies. And, then with Christmas right around the corner, one of Pups’ neighbors reports her to the city for having more than the legal number of pets. Andy feels confident in a positive outcome. “Who could punish someone for rescuing puppies, after all, especially at Christmastime? And, then the neighbor who reported Pups is found dead, and all the evidence points to her. (Release date is Oct. 18.)
Siblings Franklin and Jennifer Schneider are the authors of Black Hills. When Brooklyn private investigator Alice Riley travels to Whitehurst, South Dakota to investigate charges against her ex-boss’s husband, she finds more than a small-town scandal. She finds a town-wide addiction and a decades-old conspiracy. Out of her element, she teams up with the street-smart Kim, whose connections open doors in the town, doors that will lead the pair into the heart of the local drug trade. (Release date is Oct. 11.)
Here’s the book I should have read last week when I couldn’t get into anything. It’s Ali Smith’s Public Library and Other Stories. “What do the books we’ve read over the course of our lives – our own personal libraries – make of us?…The stories in Ali Smith’s new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser, and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.” (Release date is Oct. 4.)
Martin Cruz Smith’s The Girl from Venice “is a thriller, a mystery, and a retelling of Italian history that will take your breath away. Most of all it is a love story.” It’s a suspenseful World War II love story set against the beauty, mystery, and danger of occupied Venice. Venice, 1945, is still occupied, and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon, only to discover she’s alive and in trouble. Giulia was born to a wealthy Jewish family. She’s on the run from the Wehrmacht. Cent chooses to protect her rather than hand her over to the Nazis. That act of kindness leads them into a dangerous maze. (Release date is Oct. 18.)
Something Buried, Something Blue is the second in Wendy Corsi Staub’s series set in Lily Dale, a town full of psychics and mediums. Bella Jordan and her son, Max, stay through the winter as caretakers of the Valley View Guesthouse. Then the medium next door, Odelia, recruits Bella to host a destination wedding for “the world’s most petulant bride”. But, then the spirits give Odelia a heads-up that the bride might not make it to the wedding. When the prediction comes true, Bella finds herself trapped in a house full of murder suspects. (Release date is Oct. 11.)
Karen Lee Street’s debut novel is Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster. In the summer of 1840, Edgar Allan Poe sails from Philadelphia to London to meet his friend C. Auguste Dupin, hoping the great detective can help him solve a family mystery. He found letters allegedly written by his grandparents suggesting the couple were more than struggling actors on the London stage. The letters suggest they stalked well-to-do young women at night. Poe hopes to prove the letters are forgeries. Dupin suspects they may be fantasies. Soon Poe himself is being stalked on the streets of London. (Release date is Oct. 11.)
Sherry Thomas’ A Study in Scarlet Women asks, what if Sherlock Holmes was a woman? Charlotte Holmes is too inquisitive for upper class society. But, she never expected to become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself the mean streets of London. When the city is struck by trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on Charlotte sister and her father, she’s desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends, but in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name of Sherlock Holmes to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind. (Release date is Oct. 18.)
In Will Thomas’ Hell Bay, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker takes on his least favorite kind of assignment. He’s to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. When two people are murdered during the conference on a secluded island estate, Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, must uncover which among the group is a killer. (Release date is Oct. 25.)
In Murder at the Brightwell, Ashley Weaver introduced stylish couple Amory and Milo. Now, in A Most Novel Revenge, they’re all set to winter in Italy when Amory’s cousin Laurel summons them to England and Lyonsgate, a country house. There they discover an eccentric group of guests, led by a notorious socialite who has returned to England to write a sequel to her scandalous first book, the thinly fictionalized account of a high-society murder at Lyonsgate. (Release date is Oct. 11.)
This nonfiction account was one of hot books at BEA, and definitely the most tragic book on today’s list. Gary Younge’s Another Day in the Death of America is a chronicle of ten short lives. “On an average day in America, seven young people, aged nineteen or under, will be shot dead.” In this book, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost one modern day – November 23, 2013. Ten children died that day. This powerful book puts a human face, a child’s face, on the “collateral damage” of gun violence. (Release date is Oct. 4.)
Now, there’s nothing wrong with the following books. But, the ones I summarized are the ones I found most interesting, or thought would be of most interest to my readers. As requested, here are the other books I have that are to be released in October. Maybe there’s something here that will appeal to you.
The Abandoned Heart: A Bliss House novel by Laura Benedict
The Life She Wants by Robyn Carr
The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins
The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
The Motion of Puppets by Keith Donohue
The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei (Translated by Canaan Morse)
The Next by Stephanie Gangi
Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzweil
You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris
A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
Spaceman by Mike Massimino
The Tunnels by Greg Mitchell
Never Look an American in the Eye by Okey Ndibe
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
Among the Living by Jonathan Rabb
Making Work Work by Shola Richards
You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson
Snowfall on Haven Point by RaeAnne Thane
Whether you find something in the Treasures in My Closet, or the list, or something on your own, I hope you find good reading for October. Enjoy!
Nice list. I've read a number of David Rosenfelt's Andy Carpenter books and will probably get to the new one eventually. The one that caught my attention was the Ali Smith, as I'm always looking for a new (to me) short story writer, and the theme certainly interests me.
I know you're always looking for new short stories, Jeff. No surprise that I'm going to try this one, too.
I am interested in Small Great Things. I am a fan of hers just have to take a deep breath when I start one of her books because they are long!
Thanks for the list, Lesa!
And, that one is a long book, Carol. So, take that breath!
Thank you, Cindy, for the suggestion!
Out of the list, I'm most looking forward to Hell Bay by Will Thomas. I've enjoyed every book in that series.
Off-list, I'm looking forward to Max Allan Collins's next Quarry book, Quarry in the Black, out October 11, as well as the next one of Kyle Mills's continuations of Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series, Order to Kill.