The 27 Best New Book Releases This Month: October 2024

Here are the 27 best new book releases this month: October, 2024. Don’t judge! I know it’s October mumble mumble (not October 1st)! Doesn’t life sometimes get away from you? Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re an hour, a day, a week behind and you can’t catch up ? Really, you don't? You are much better organized than I am. I haven’t even begun raking up the leaves in the front yard! (I never rake up the leaves in the back yard. (It’s compost, I say!) We could all use a little self-help sometime.

And what better self-help- than a great book? This month we’ve got brilliant fiction from the likes of Louise Erdrich, sterling poetry from the likes of Margaret Atwood, great true crime from the likes of John Grisham and not one, not two, but three unexpected and remarkable works of sci-fi and fantasy. So let’s get reading! At the head of the Parade are….

The 27 Best New Book Releases This Month: October 2024

1. The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
2. What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella
3. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

A wedding brings out the best and worst in people. Tensions run high, as do the comedic and dramatic possibilities during a wedding taking place in the shattered world of the 2008 Great Recession. The Pulitzer and National Book Award winning author Louise Erdrich captures it all in The Mighty Red, a novel set in a small prairie community in Argus, North Dakota that somehow also captures the world.

Sophie Kinsella faced a devastating illness…and turned it into art. Her new novel is fiction, but also her most autobiographical. “Eve’s story is my story,” says Kinsella. So fans of the Shopaholic novels and so many other bestsellers will be ready for a rom-com with a difference: our heroine wakes up in the hospital and is told by her husband she has a malignant tumor. So Eve faces her mortality and falls in love with life all at the same time. Bring tissues.

Writer Alan Hollinghurst is respected in the U.S. but revered in the UK. His newest novel was acclaimed as perhaps his best yet, quite the claim for the author of the Booker-winning novel The Line of Beauty. (Was that really 20 years ago? Yikes!) If you’ve never read him and enjoy literary fiction, compelling characters and a panorama of British history, Our Evenings is for you. It begins, as some of the best British fiction begins, at school. In this case, a working class lad of mixed race and gay leanings enters the privileged world of a top-level boarding school. Life ensues.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich ($32; Harper) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella ($22; The Dial Press; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst ($30; Random House; out October 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Exclusive: Goodreads Reveals The Nine Most Popular Self Help Books of 2024

4. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Do we still have public intellectuals, people known around the country who wore their learning lightly and illuminated the issues of the day for a wider audience? Of course we do, though that label is weirdly seen as somehow a negative. It applied to Clifton Fadiman and James Baldwin and Susan Sontag and it certainly applies to Ta-Nehisi Coates. With the game-changing success of his essay/memoir Between The World and Me, anything he writes will immediately command attention. Here he grapples with the power and danger of storytelling, the too easy way of shaping and softening reality. Coates travels to Africa, to South Carolina and in the longest piece Palestine to observe how rarely life as it is lived fits into the stories we want to tell ourselves.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates ($30; One World) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

5. Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey
6. Bandit Heaven by Tom Clavin
7. Ghosts of Crook County by Russell Cobb

Three works sure to thrill lovers of true crime and American history.

John Grisham teams up with Jim McCloskey, one of the prime movers in the “innocence movement.” Those are the volunteers who take on hopeless cases and prove person after person has been imprisoned and often sentenced to death for crimes they didn’t commit. Even when everyone knows a person is indeed innocent, getting them out can still be a monumental job. In a passionate work of muckraking in the best sense, Grisham and McCloskey tell numerous stories of injustice, highlighting the many ways our criminal justice system needs to be reformed.

You like the Old West? Tom Clavin is your man. He’s tackled the Texas Rangers, Dodge City, the Dalton Gang, Tombstone…you get the idea. Now Clavin zeroes in on Bandit Heaven. That’s the area in Utah and Wyoming where bank robbers and assorted baddies hid out from the law. At one point it was an impenetrable refuge. Then it became their Alamo as one “safe” haven after another fell to the law, from Robber’s Roost to Brown Hole to even the Hole In The Wall, which Butch and Sundance skedaddled from just in time…only to die in Mexico in the most bullet-riddled finale to Bonnie & Clyde gave the duo a run for their money. Clavin knows the territory well.

Clavin co-wrote a biography of the Sioux warrior Red Cloud with his long-time writing partner Bob Drury. Happily, we’ve seen a wealth of Native stories also told by Native peoples, both their personal stories and the histories of the Indigenous nations. But that shouldn’t stop others from also tackling these stories as well. Enter Russell Cobb, who describes himself as a fourth generation White Oklahoman. Like David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Cobb is here to highlight a tragedy. Ghosts of Crook County tells a story of the early 1900s, when the discovery of oil meant the lands of the Muscogee peoples once seen as worthless were now prime property. Clavin offers one particular farce: a white man creating a white boy out of whole cloth (probably) and insisting the lad had died years ago, giving this man the “right” to the boy’s land. The charade included three women claiming to be his mother and multiple men showing up claiming to be the boy all grown up and ready to claim the land for themselves, thank you very much. That might have been enough, but Cobb goes on to detail the reverberations of this theft in the Muscogee people for generations to come. Publisher Weekly’s starred review calls it a “riveting legal thriller,” “superb historical sleuthing” and “astonishing.”

Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey ($30; Doubleday; out Oct. 15) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Bandit Heaven by Tom Clavin ($30; St. Martin’s Press; out Oct. 22) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Ghosts of Crook County by Russell Cobb ($32.95; Beacon Press; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

8. Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood can do it all, apparently, and do it well, She can write crime novels, science fiction, short stories, essays, children’s books, the dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale and my personal favorite (so far) The Blind Assassin. But amidst all of that, Atwood has consistently written poetry. She’s published around 18 books of poetry and if you’re a fan and you haven’t read them, well you’re in for a treat.

Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems by Margaret Atwood ($40; Knopf; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

9. The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by Júlia Sardá
10. Lost in the Empire City by Avi
11. We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix

Three wonderfully varied books for kids (but don’t let them have all the fun). A fable, an historical adventure and a humorous sci-fi romp about a little sister who gets really full of herself.

Kate DiCamillo is one of our best storytellers. She’s written beloved classics set in the modern world, from the best-selling Because of Winn-Dixie and Raymie Nightingale right up to this year’s sweet Ferris. She also writes…well, fables? Stories that are not quite in the modern world of cars and cell phones but aren’t quite full-blown fantasies either. Books like The Tale Of Despereaux and The Magician’s Elephant. And now she’s sharing what DiCamillo calls “Tales of Norendy.” Norendy is an almost mythical, but quite real setting. It’s just tinged by magic and stories are better there. Last year brought an instant classic with The Puppets Of Spelhorst. Now DiCamillo has done it again with The Hotel Balzaar, a charming tale about a little girl in a big hotel, a talking parrot, a sad mother, a missing father (the war, you know, will do that at times, misplace people), a wealthy countess, a kind bellman and the stories they tell. It’s a delight.

You do know Avi, right? He’s one of the legends of children’s literature. I would immediately hand you The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle, one of those terrific books that wins over even kids who say they don’t like reading. But he’s got dozens of books of all sorts to his credit, so it’s really about his amazing body of work. I see Avi’s name? I want to read it. His latest is Lost in the Empire City, a rollicking tale of an Italian boy who travels with his family to America in the early 1900s. They’re immediately separated and Santo–alone on the strange island of Manhattan and not speaking a word of English–must survive on his own and fight to get back to the family he loves. Seriously, I’m going to pause this roundup so I can start it. I’ll be back in a minute.

Okay, Avi’s latest is instantly compelling and I’m only a few pages in. But before I get back to it, let me tell you about Garth Nix’s clever spin on sibling rivalry. Kim is always overshadowed by his little sister Eila. She’s a prodigy, super smart and everyone adores her. Then the two stumble across an alien artifact in the woods, Eila becomes some sort of unstoppable force who can control the minds of everyone around her…and now Kim really has his hands full trying to convince someone Eila isn’t all that and might just be ready to take over the world.

The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by Júlia Sardá ($17.99; Candlewick) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Lost in the Empire City by Avi ($19.99; Quill Tree Books; out October 29) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix ($18.99; Scholastic Press; out October 15) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

12. Q: A Voyage Around The Queen by Craig Brown
13. John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg
14. The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy

English author Craig Brown made his bones with political satire, deft parodies he published here, there and everywhere. But his sideline in books is a fascinating one. Brown specializes in choosing a subject like the Beatles or famous people who crossed paths with one another and then reading everything he can about them and pulling the best bits together. I call it a magpie history. His work on the Beatles and Princess Margaret enjoyed tremendous acclaim. And now he’s done it with the late Queen Elizabeth II. My only disappointment with it is that it came out too late for me to read it to my mother, who would have loved it.

The late, great Congressman John Lewis told his story in a wonderfully accessible format: graphic novels. Those acclaimed, best-selling works like Run and March are works of art. But Lewis also deserves a soup to nuts, old fashioned magisterial biography like that offered up by David Greenberg. MLK, the Freedom Riders, SNCC, the bloody march on Selma…and he was just getting started. Greenberg spoke at length with Lewis and many others, as well as accessing FBI files and other documents not seen till now in what is acclaimed as one of the best biographies of the year.

Playwright, poet and author, Deborah Levy offers a miscellany of musings. Written as an introduction for this book or as an essay in that journal or a note in a playbill, her thoughts on varied people and topics have no link other than the observant mind of Levy herself. But taken together, her comment on the beauty of lemons or the end of a marriage or the pleasures of a city park form a portrait of the author herself as surely as any biography.

Q: A Voyage Around The Queen by Craig Brown ($35; Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg ($35; Simon & Schuster; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy ($26; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; out Oct. 24) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

15. Heir by Sabaa Tahir
16. Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
17. Throne Of Secrets by Kerri Maniscalco

Sabaa Tahir is one of the blockbuster authors in the romantasy genre. So all you have to know is she’s got a new book out: Heir. Okay, here’s more. It’s a fantasy set in the same world as her An Ember in the Ashes series. You’ll find a new cast of characters, including an orphan, an outcast, a prince, and a killer. Oh and Good Morning, America named it the pick of their Young Adult book club for October.

Hot bodyguard? Yes. Romantasy? Yes. Swordplay as a naughty metaphor? Oh, yes. Author Freya Marske is a two time Hugo nominee, so she knows her way around fantasy. She’s also an award-winning author in the Romance genre. So fans of enemies-to-lovers storylines and fans of believable fantasy worlds that offer real emotions and not just real dragons (though dragons are cool too) should be pleased by her latest offering. Critics and fellow writers rave.

Kerri Maniscalo knows from dragons. In her new romantasy, rumours are spreading that the ice dragons in the north are becoming…antsy. Feisty. Not ready to play nice. The famously indulgent rake Gabriel Axton sees his demon court threatened like never before. But why must he team up with a journalist hell-bent on convincing the world Gabriel is far worse than his reputation? And why must said journalist Adriana Saint Lucent prove so formidable..and attractive?

Heir by Sabaa Tahir ($21.99; G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books For Young Readers) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske ($28.99; Bramble; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Throne Of Secrets by Kerri Maniscalco ($29; Little, Brown and Company; out Oct. 29) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

18. Low-Hanging Fruit by Randy Rainbow

Randy Rainbow shot to fame with a video joking that he was dating the famously homophobic actor Mel Gibson. Its success was no fluke. He’s hobnobbed and enjoyed compliments from Broadway’s greatest, produced a string of acclaimed and successful parodies ever since and published a best-selling memoir. Now Rainbow is out with a new collection of humorous essays to give David Sedaris a run for his money. With his self-described “Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues From My Gay Agenda,” Rainbow dishes the (loving) dirt on his famous friends, shares intimate and tough moments from his childhood and does some Olympic gold-medal quality complaining about well, everything! Read Parade’s exclusive excerpt, where Randy Rainbow says goodbye to the internet! (Not really.)

Low-Hanging Fruit by Randy Rainbow ($28; St. Martin’s Press; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Exclusive–Goodreads Reveals the Nine Most Popular Self-Help Books of 2024

19. The Great When by Alan Moore
20. The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison
21. Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

Alan Moore is a legend in the world of comic books and graphic novels. It’s surprisingly rare for writers in that world to venture into non-visual works–you know, books. It’s even rarer for them to succeed, Neil Gaiman being the notable exception. But here he is and The Great When is a corker, filled with the tug of the Other London, the London of our dreams, perhaps the real London while we’re stuck in the prosaic everyday world. The wonderfully named young man Dennis Knuckleyard (!) might prefer that. But in post World War II England he finds himself dealing with a frightening landlady, magicians, gangsters, an imaginary book that he’s got hold of and can’t get rid and a propensity for slipping into the surreal, phantasmagorical and very dangerous Other London when he least expects it. Moore is entirely in charge here, confident and witty and pulling us along. The Great When is the first book in The Long London Quintet. If you read it, that fact will make you very happy indeed.

The fact that the third and final Dangerous Visions anthology is out seems remarkable all on its own. The late writer and editor Harlan Ellison rocked the literary world with the first two books in 1967 and 1972. They revolutionized sci-fi and fantasy and while many, many others contributed to its “growing up” and tacking adult themes and generally being taken seriously, Dangerous Visions was a landmark, undeniable part of that. Ellison promised a third and final Dangerous Visions but it became as mythic as the Orson Welles original cut of the film The Magnificent Ambersons and other great lost or never-completed works of art. Ellison died six years ago…and now here it is? My mind is blown. It couldn’t possibly compare to the first two. And nothing could have their impact for the simple fact that their impact was so great. And yet the first story included is a corker. Maybe it will? Even if it does, the real prize here is TV creator and writer J. Michael Strczynski of Babylon 5 fame. He’s devoted himself to curating Ellison’s estate and life work, paused his own projects perhaps for good and birthed this impossible, never to be seen book. The introduction includes his detailed and remarkable story of their friendship, Ellison’s huge influence on him and a loving but no holds barred explanation of what the heck happened to both this book and Ellison’s career. It’s heartbreaking, absorbing, funny and does Ellison justice.

In one month, we have three landmark releases in fantasy and science-fiction. One of the most legendary figures in comic books turns to fiction and scores a triumph with The Great When. hello, Alan Moore. The never-to-be-seen lost classic, the final volume in the most important anthology series in sci-fi/fantasy history hits stores. Hello, Harlan Ellison and thank you, J. Michael Straczynski! And now out of the blue, Jeff VanderMeer rocks the world again. Ten years ago, he won every award in sight and broke into superstar status with his Southern Reach trilogy. All three novels published in 2014, and the first becoming an acclaimed sci-fi film from director Alex Garland. Now, VanderMeer gets all Douglas Adams on us and puts out the fourth volume in the Southern Reach trilogy, titled Absolution. Truly, an annus mirabilis for fans.

The Great When by Alan Moore ($29.99; Bloomsbury Publishing) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison ($27.99; Blackstone Publishing Inc.) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer ($30; MCD; out Oct. 22) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Exclusive: Randy Rainbow Says Goodbye To The Internet!

22. Beti and the Little Round House by Atinuke; illustrated by Emily Hughes
23. Museum In A Book by Hervé Tullet
24. Big Gorilla by Anthony Browne

Somewhere between a picture book and a chapter book; somewhere between timeless and delightful. Author Atinuke was born in Nigeria, spent her teenage years in England (and lived for a while in a round house in the woods!) and now ensconced in Wales. Aint’ it a wonderful world. Her winning, gentle stories about a little girl living in a round house in the woods offer a respite from the world and a glimpse at how to live in the world more harmoniously. The illustrations by Emily Hughes complement the stories wonderfully well. A keeper.

Hervé Tullet shot to fame with his ingenious picture book Press Here. Ever since he’s been encouraging creativity and imagination and art-making in a thousand ways, such as The Ideal Exhibition. Now he delivers an activity book second to none, a spur to anyone who’s feeling crafty. Using a four bold colors, a brush, scissors and paper, Tullet leads kids (and adults) into all sorts of fun-making projects.

The “opposites” genre is a biggie in picture books. I’d be hard pressed to detail exactly what makes one work so well compared to another. But when it does work, it works like a charm. The delightful Big Gorilla works perfectly, with illustrations shifting from “together” to “alone” and “happy” to “sad” and so on with engaging creatures bringing the concepts beautifully to life. Irresistible.

Beti and the Little Round House by Atinuke; illustrated by Emily Hughes ($18.99; Candlewick; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Museum In A Book by Hervé Tullet ($24.99; Chronicle Books; out Oct. 8) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Big Gorilla by Anthony Browne ($17.99; Candlewick) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

25. Into The Unknown by Kelsey Johnson
26. The Interpretation of Cats by Dr. Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
27. Pillars Of Creation by Richard Panek

Three new science books to keep our eyes open to the wonders around us.

Astronomer Kelsey Johnson explains what we know about the Big Bang and black holes and other dimensions. Then she wonders about what we don’t know and what it means if we never know the answers to all our questions.

French veterinary psychiatrist Dr. Claude Béata says, “Stars? The cosmos? We barely understand our pets!” Then he goes on to explain how we can better understand them, offers the latest science and some intriguing case studies of cats who have mental health issues far more complicated than I ever imagined…and others who are quite fine indeed (and how to tell the difference). The book cover is priceless. Among my many failings, I am not a pet person, but I am intrigued by this book, a bestseller in France.

Once you’ve stopped staring into the eyes of your Siamese cat, start looking again at the night sky. Amazing, no? Award winning science writer Richard Panek takes a close look at the James Webb Space Telescope, just as that famous instrument takes a look at the universe, one patch at a time. Panek gives the history of this ambitious project, how it succeeded and what the images the JWST is producing already reveal about the past, present and future of the universe we live in. (Or should I say multiverse?)

Into The Unknown by Kelsey Johnson ($32.50; Basic Books; out Oct. 15) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Interpretation of Cats by Dr. Claude Béata; translated by David Watson ($27; Scribner; out Oct 15) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Pillars Of Creation by Richard Panek ($29; Little, Brown and Company; out Oct. 22) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Actor Kate McKinnon’s Diabolical Plan To Take over Kids’ Imaginations