14 Books We Want to Read in September

We love helping readers find the best books each week in our e-newsletter, via our quarterly reading guides, and through our many book lists.  Despite all our best intentions, we can’t read all the books – even though we wish we could!  Plus, sometimes we miss out on early copies, and we have to wait until books are available in bookstores.  So this book list is filled with those books we can’t wait to get our hands on this month.

September is the first month of the Fall or Autumn season but it has always felt like the start of an unofficial new year!  Maybe it’s because of the new school year, but either way, I’m looking forward to adding some new books to my shelves.  Readers have much to look forward to.  So check out this list of new books that we can’t wait to read in September!

Combining the incisive intimacy of Sally Rooney with the sharp wit of Helen Fielding, a compulsively readable and astonishingly relatable debut novel about marriage, motherhood, love, self and the vibrant, surprising city that is modern Tokyo.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young–but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Iconic actress Hayley Mills shares personal memories from her storied childhood, growing up in a famous acting family and becoming a Disney child star, trying to grow up in a world that wanted her to stay forever young.

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

Remember when we hit it off so well that we decided We’re Going to Need More Wine? Well, this time you and I are going to turn to our friend the bartender and ask, You Got Anything Stronger? I promise to continue to make you laugh, but with this round, the stakes get higher as the conversation goes deeper.

The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Kiran needs to fall in line. Instead, she falls in love. A sweet NYC romance of finding love where you least expected to.

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.

In this landmark book, a former prosecutor, legal expert, and leading authority on sexual violence examines why we are primed to disbelieve allegations of sexual abuse–and how we can transform a culture and a legal system structured to dismiss accusers.

The first novel in a captivating three-book series about modern womanhood, in which a young Black woman must rely on courage, laughter, and love–and the support of her two longtime friends–to overcome an unexpected setback that threatens the most precious thing she’s ever wanted.

Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope–and a book.

In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans.

As a youth, Richard was infatuated with Celia. He still seems intrigued, but Celia has acquired a shocking secret along with her hard-won humility. Will it put an end to the love blossoming between them? Does she have the courage to find out?

Are any of these books on your TBR?  What books are you looking forward to reading in September?  What books would you add to the list?