11 of the Best Books Out in October

Pulitzer Prize-winning Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead) is back with a story of love, loss, and art. Livia Cable is content with the life she’s living, with her marriage and country living, when an old lover reappears and shakes everything up. Suddenly, she’s remembering a past life, when she was music conservatory student, Livia Bohusz. And let’s just say that life was different back then—she was estranged from her family, still feeling the effects of childhood trauma, and just kind of directionless, save for her music passion. Then there was the man who broke her heart. She relives this time, remembering segments as musical dances, as she contends with undealt with ghosts.

Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li is another literary fiction novel coming out this month that also revolves around intimate partners and art. —Erica Ezeifedi

One of my favorite SF/F writers, especially when it comes to found family stories, is back with a new space romp, and it’s the first book in a duology. Following Cora, a botanist who treats those left behind with the medicines she makes, and Signy, a talented pilot of living ships, this is described as “a love story centered around survival.” I know this book is going to make me emotional and fill me with joy and I can’t wait. —S. Zainab Williams

This short memoir was born from a piece first published in The New Yorker in 2019. Murakami explores his relationship with his father, who might have been a priest like his own father, but became a soldier in WWII instead. He was then a successful writer of haiku, and later a teacher. You’d think these things would make him close to his son Haruki, but the two end up estranged for 20 years. They only reconnected, really, on his deathbed, hence this memoir, which examines what being a father and a son mean. —Erica Ezeifedi

In Bad Words, you’ll get to meet author Parker Navarro, who thought his debut novel would take him places—until critic Selina Chan reviewed it. As you can imagine, things didn’t go as planned for him.

Now, four years later, they’re at it again: Parker is about to release his second novel and believes this is his final chance, so he doesn’t want his book to be anywhere near Selina. When her new review comes out, though, their sparring goes viral. While they’re enemies in public, behind closed doors, their relationship becomes something much deeper. —Silvana Reyes Lopez

Nkondo’s involvement with Scavenger’s Reign was enough for me to recommend Wandering, a wordless comic that follows the paths of two men. One wanders the surface world, and its arid landscape, while the other lives below, in a society that has taken all of its technological advancements underground. Despite their very different environments—and the fact that they never meet—both men struggle with similar feelings of missed connections and alienation. —Erica Ezeifedi

A retired photographer begins to hear something strange and unsettling beneath her regular tinnitus: the murders of women she knew in her punk youth in 1980s New York. She sets out to solve the mystery of an unspeakable crime done to these women, forcing her to reckon with her own painful past. This isn’t the first book with a middle-aged woman protagonist Cardinal has given us, and I say, keep ’em comin’! —Vanessa Diaz

For fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife, October brings an unexpected story set in that book’s world. This speculative novel following Alba, who’s witness to a dystopian future she can’t change as a result of hereditary Chrono-Displacement Disorder, can be read as a standalone. Alba’s life is in chronological disarray, true to the story’s title, and she does what she must to cope with and navigate her lot. —S. Zainab Williams

This is the thickest book on my TBR so far. PEN/Faulkner Finalist T. Geronimo Johnson’s previous novel, Welcome to Braggsville, got a lot of love in addition to being longlisted for the National Book Award. I’m readying myself for a deep, potent read with this book about a Black cop shaken out of his life of assimilation after a confrontation with a white teen turns violent. —S. Zainab Williams

Strange things abound in a small town in Tamil Nadu, including a local secondary school bursting with supernatural creatures.

Thamarai is an outsider, and her peers consider her strange. Her life is anything but happy or comfortable, and she’s constantly frustrated with her neighbors and her teachers.

But then Thamarai finds a notebook at school which purports to explain all of the supernatural happenings. Suddenly, she thinks she’s found a way out of her misery. With comparisons to Mona Awad’s Bunny and Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing, this one sounds like a totally weird horror winner. —Kelly Jensen

Maisie, Joel, and Verona are three cousins who live in a trailer park that is surrounded by creatures, both safe and murderous. For Maisie, life’s never been the same since her best friend died and Owl, harbinger of ill tidings, made her a visit. Joel’s been forced in to a summer of kitten fostering, thanks in part to some bad decision making. Verona is so desperate to leave the trailer park that she’s willing to watch a haunted house. Then there’s Owl–despite who he is, he cares deeply about each of these kids.

Little Badger’s latest book weaves together four stories, illustrated by Rajunov, that play with good and evil, myth and reality. It looks SO good. —Kelly Jensen

This middle grade historical novel is set in 1946, during the Great Migration. It follows Abigail as her family moves from Birdsong, South Carolina to Detroit, Michigan. At first, she’s enamored by the new possibilities of this city, including an unsegregated library with a Black librarian, and it inspires her to write poetry. But over time, she recognises the ways racism is present up North as well, and when she’s robbed by a homeless boy, she learns about the reality of poverty. This is the stand-alone companion to The Unsung Hero of Birdsong, USA. —Danika Ellis