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The best books to read this September

As summer slides into autumn, here are ten books to curl up with

best books september
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September 3rd is one for the literary record books. On this day more than six hundred books are being published. Yes, you read that right! Six hundred!

September is traditionally a lively month in the book publishing calendar because it hits that sweet spot between beach reads and Christmas celebrity biographies. But, like everything else, the Coronavirus has had an impact on the book trade.

At the beginning of lockdown lots of books that should have come out in April and May were pushed back as bookshops closed, and so we come to September and a massive bookapalooza. While some authors are understandably worried that their books will be overlooked, this is great news for us readers who are now spoilt for choice. I don’t know about you but I’ll definitely be picking up a few extra titles when I’m browsing my local bookshop.

Here are my favourite new books for September...

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1 Charlotte (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£14.99

Whatever happened to Pride And Prejudice’s Charlotte Lucas after she married prototype mansplainer, Mr Collins? This stunning debut follows Charlotte as she settles into life as a clergyman’s wife but, as Jane Austen’s heroines so often do, chafes against the restraints placed on her as a woman. 

Charlotte respects the source text but breathes new and credible life into these beloved characters (even Mr Collins improves with age) and at last Charlotte is given a voice.

(Manilla Press, out September 3rd)

2 The Thursday Murder Club - The Thursday Murder Club (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£10.99

The Thursday Murder Club are four sprightly geriatric sleuths from Coopers Chase, a bucolic retirement village, who meet every Thursday to pore over old cold cases. 

But when a local builder with a colourful past is bludgeoned to death, Elizabeth (who I want to be when I grow up), Ron, Ibrahim and Joyce are soon on the hunt for his killer. Keenly observed, dryly funny and with a high body count, The Thursday Murder Club is delight after delight from first page to last.

(Viking, out September 3rd)

3 After the Silence (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£12.99

A clever, sleight of hand psychological thriller set on the small Irish island of Isisrun, where a beautiful young woman in murdered during a wild party at Henry and Keelin Kinsella’s house while a storm rages both inside and out. 

No one is ever charged for Nessa Crowley’s murder but the locals suspect Henry and shun the family. But when a documentary crew arrive on Isisrun ten years later hoping to solve the case, old wounds are opened and more secrets come to light. It’s so good to have Louise O’Neill back and on such stunning form.

(riverrun, out September 3rd)

4 More Than a Woman (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£14.99

Ten years after publishing her ground-breaking manifesto and memoir, How To Be A Woman, Caitlin Moran returns with a sequel. 

More Than A Woman is a giddy hour-by=hour guide to one day in the life of a middle-aged woman. Sex, friendship, housework, botox, smear tests and yoga are just some of the many topics Caitlin discusses with all her trademark humour and hyperbole. 

But there are also moments when the dial is turned down and Caitlin reveals harrowing and heart-breaking moments that can happen in every life and every home, which will resonate with so many other women.

(Ebury, out September 3rd)

5 Cow Girl (Paperback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£9.99

Billie is a biochemist PHD student without funding and a lesbian whose one true love continues to elude her when her father is taken ill and she has to leave London for her family’s Yorkshire dairy farm. 

Back home Billie finds herself the only gay in the village, responsible for a herd of very opinionated dairy cows and has to see vet Lorna – her arch nemesis as a teenager –on a daily basis but she slowly learns to relish her new life. 

As you’d expect from the winner of last year’s Comedy Winner In Print unpublished novel award, Cow Girl is very funny and a breath of (slightly manure-scented) fresh air. Also, now I really want a pet cow.

(Harper Collins, out September 3rd)

6 The Harpy (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£14.99

With lots of interesting things to say about marriage and motherhood, The Harpy centres on a woman who discovers her husband in having an affair with a colleague. 

To even the score, Jake agrees that Lucy can hurt him three times but her betrayal and pain have a transformative effect not just on her marriage but on her entire being. 

A contemporary fairy tale written in a spare but utterly haunting prose.

(Picador, out September 3rd)

7 Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Picador amazon.co.uk
£9.79

A gorgeous memoir about being an early and voracious reader, a bookseller, a writer and someone who can inadvertently burn down a house while their head is in a book. Red

fave Cathy Rentzenbrink traces her life through the books she’s read (there are also some fantastic book recommendations for readers to explore themselves,) and how her own passion for reading encouraged her father to learn to read as an adult and changed the course of her own life. Buy Dear Reader for your favourite bookworms.

(Picador, out September 17th)

8 The Lying Life of Adults (Hardback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£16.99

Elena Ferrante, iconic and reclusive author of My Brilliant Friend, returns with a standalone novel set in her beloved Naples. 

The Lying Life Of Adults is an immersive, complex, almost claustrophobic coming of age novel about family, belonging, class and sexuality. Giovanna’s parents are part of Naple’s upper class and she lives a protected, privileged life until she hears her father unfavourably compare her to his estranged sister, her aunt, the coarse and mercurial Vittoria and she becomes obsessed with finding out more about her other family. 

As Giovanna turns from a girl into a woman, so she also turns away from her parents in favour of Vittoria who believes herself to be the victim of her brother’s greed, but who is lying and who is telling the truth?

(Europe, out now)

9 The Heatwave: The tense psychological suspense that everyone is reading this summer (Paperback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£7.99

A departure for historical novelist Kate Riordan who has written a perfect page-turner of a thriller. 

Set in Provence during a sultry, sticky heatwave, Sylvie has been summoned back to La Reverie, her family home, with her daughter Emma. 

But the house is full of memories of her first daughter, Elodie, and Sylvie is forced to confront the secret she’s been hiding about the mysterious circumstances in which Elodie died.

(Michael Joseph, out September 3rd)

10 The High Moments (Paperback)
Waterstones
waterstone waterstones.com
£8.99

The High Moments is a beautiful, messed-up mash-up of The Devil Wears Prada and Fleabag. 

Set in the seedy underbelly where fashion, modelling and Instagram influencers all converge, trainee model scout Scarlett is the perfect heroine for our times. 

This is essential reading for anyone relieved to be done with their twenties and a cautionary tale for those who are still living them!

(Simon & Schuster, out September 17th)

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