The Best Book Club Books of September


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Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack.

Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.

As usual, this fall season is packed. I’ve already highlighted a few book club-friendly books by acclaimed writers that are bound to be big this fall, and since there are so many books coming out, I’ve left the ones mentioned in that list out of September’s best book club books. Just so you’re kept up to speed, though, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo is coming out on the 24th, as is Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium. And We Solve Murders by Richard Osman, whose mysteries have been mega-popular, is out on the 17th.

The books below feature a Black Texas Ranger in one of the best mystery series ever, the life story of an Indigenous climate, a tale of grieving sisters, dark academia at a mysterious college and foreboding college, and more.

cover image for Guide Me Home

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke

The award-winning Locke is back with the conclusion to her amazing Highway 59 series. It follows Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews as he contends with all manner of racism and effery while investigating murders. Here, his trifling mother has dropped a case in his lap that he’s hesitant to pick up, lest it ruin the life he’s reconstructing for himself. She tells him of a case in which a Black sorority member is missing while her sorority sisters insist she isn’t. As he follows leads, he finds out that her hometown—and even her family—have some rotten inner workings.

a graphic of the cover of We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Andersona graphic of the cover of We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson

We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson

Nemonte Nenquimo had a traditional Waorani tribe childhood in Ecuador—she foraged and was about taught about plant medicine and shamanism. After she goes to study with an evangelical missionary group, dreams of her ancestors send her back to the forest, and she becomes one of the foremost voices in climate change activism in the world. With We Will Be Jaguars, she tells the true story of her people.

cover of Lucy Undying by Kiersten Whitecover of Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

Lately, we’ve gotten plenty of great, feminist retellings of iconic women in literature and mythology, but Kiersten White’s (Hide, Mister Magic) Lucy Undying breathes fresh life into the tale of Lucy Westenra, Dracula’s first English victim. Since she was first bitten, she’s been trying to escape Dracula, but it’s in the 21st century that she finally meets a woman similarly trying to escape. Iris is charming, but her family—with their ill-begotten health empire—won’t let her out of their clutches. And Dracula, meanwhile, is back on his BS. Still, Lucy’s and Iris’s connection feels real and intense, and it might be a real chance at happiness.

And side, note, but the cover is amazing. I just got a copy and I noticed the wolves in Lucy’s hair. Ugh.

cover of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors; oil painting of four white women's heads: two blondes, two brunettescover of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors; oil painting of four white women's heads: two blondes, two brunettes

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

This is already doing numbers in the UK. It follows the Blue sisters, who are all so different—and who are all also messes in their own way. There’s Avery, the attorney who now lives in London with her wife after battling a heroin addiction; Bonnie, the former boxer who works as an L.A. bouncer; and Lucky, who parties hard as a model in Paris. There was a fourth sister, Nicky, who was the one thing holding them all together—but it’s been a year since she passed away suddenly. Now, they’re coming back together for the first time in a while to stop the sale of the New York City apartment they were raised in, even as the grief, addiction, and disappointment they’re dealing with still loom large over them.

cover of An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson; black with gold moth with its wings pinned downcover of An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson; black with gold moth with its wings pinned down

An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson

A new Alexis Henderson for fall always bodes well, and An Academy for Liars is an especially fall-friendly dark academia novel that has a synopsis that kind of reminds me of Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko. In it, Lennon Carter is invited to take the entrance exam for the mysterious Drayton College because of her innate gift of persuasion—which can be used on people and matter alike. Once she passes the test and gains entry to the school, she finds that she loves her studies and the moss-covered campus. Her alluring adviser, Dante, is kind of enjoyable, too, but she also becomes unnerved by the history of the college. And her mentor’s connection to it.

cover of Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour by Nora Nguyencover of Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour by Nora Nguyen

Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour by Nora Nguyen

When was the last time you read a romance novel set in Việt Nam? Right, me neither, which is partially why Adam & Evie’s Matchmaking Tour sounds like so much fun. But let’s rewind a bit and get into Evie, who has just been fired from a poetry professorship by her secret boyfriend—which makes me want to hold her hand gently while I tell her some things. In any case, for a second, it seems like things are kind of looking up when her Auntie Hảo leaves her a memory-filled row house in San Francisco. But there’s a catch: to actually inherit it, she’ll have to go on a matchmaking tour in her family’s native Việt Nam. That’s where Adam comes in. He’s busting his you-know-what in order to prove himself as the CMO of his sister’s matchmaking business and joins the inaugural tour. It’s there that he meets Evie, and his grumpy uptightness is countered by her chaotic whimsy. As they keep getting thrown together in places like the busy streets of Hồ Chí Minh City and against the backdrop of the beautiful waterfalls in Đà Lạt, animosity turns into something sweeter.

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