I’ve been saying it a lot lately, but it’s true: readers are really and truly eating well right now. The most anticipated books, by bestselling and award-winning authors, are continuing to pour out this month, as are some delightfully season-friendly reads. Among the spooky books are Trad Wife by Sarah Langan, The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler, and Nightjars by Michael Wehunt.

Shifting gears a bit, we also have some fantasy coming out by a couple of heavy hitters—Mestra: A Short Story by Madeline Miller and Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros—while we have Dodge City, new historical fiction from Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers). For a dose of reality, there are the nonfiction releases, All the Love You Can Use by Carson McCullers, The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell, and How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Marcia Chatelain.

And then there are the books below: get ready for the secret, scandalous life of a pastor’s wife, a Korean American family’s saga, an unusual haunting, and more, all by award-winning and mega-bestselling authors.

Mentioned in Our Monthly Round-Up

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw

Maybe you heard me screaming when I learned that we’re getting a Deesha Philyaw novel this year. I’ve talked at length about my love for Philyaw’s short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, and I am so excited to more deeply immerse myself in a Philyaw tale, especially a juicy one about the secret past of a powerful megachurch pastor’s wife. I have the galley and thank goodness because I can’t bear to wait out the fall release. —S. Zainab Williams

More of This Week’s New Releases

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee

The National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of Pachinko is back with a nearly 700-page tome that chronicles one family’s journey from Korea to the US after their lives are forever changed by the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Once the Kohs leave Seoul, they eventually wind up in Southern California, where they navigate churches, nail salons, law firms, and more in order to gain security in a new land. —Erica Ezeifedi

Ply by Hernan Diaz

Whereas Diaz’s last novel, the Pulitzer-winning Trust, looked back, Ply looks forward, hundreds of years from now, when humans are relearning how to be. We follow an orphaned girl, who starts stealing electricity to sell on the black market. Her dangerous lifestyle means she starts hobnobbing with the rich and creatives, but it also means that she invents something that could change reality. —Erica Ezeifedi

The Siren by Tomi Adeyemi

If you love dark academia, you’ll be thrilled to hear that’s where Adeyemi has gone next. This story follows Emery, who has just gotten into Dartmouth. She’s got a plan: keep her scholarship, remember to keep taking her meds, and keep her past as buried as she can.

Then Emery meets Roux. Roux is magnetic, just as much as her stepbrother Eli is. So, too, are the girls surrounding Roux dubbed “The Sirens.” The Sirens live a whole other life on campus, full of prestige and parties. It wasn’t always that way for them, though–it was Roux who took those outcast girls and made them into who they are now. So when Roux invited Emery to become a Siren, she could not say no.

But the work to earn that distinction may cost Emery every one of her plans, if not her whole life. —Kelly Jensen

The House of Gardenias by Isabel Cañas

Isabel Cañas has been on an impressive gothic run: first came The Hacienda, then The Vampires of El Norte, then The Possession of Alba Diaz. This is her YA debut about a young woman who flees her abusive father and poverty for a cushy gig as a maid to a wealthy widow. When political violence breaks out, she and the widow retreat to La Casa de Las Gardenias, a gothic mansion high above the capital city. And since this is a gothic story, unpleasant surprises surely await. —Vanessa Diaz

The Unhaunting by Micaiah Johnson

From the award-winning author of sci-fi bestseller The Space Between Worlds comes a fresh take on the haunted house. The house in question is not quite what you’d expect from something haunted. It stops Tobias from smoking, gets Avery more in touch with her emotions, and quells her best friend Shantell’s anxiety—even after having lost her father, mother, and brother. The sanctuary Avery hoped this inherited house to become seems more and more possible. But there is something to the calm. Something so disconcerting that it is a comfort when the trio discovers they’re not alone in the house. Something that goes all the way back to 170 years ago, when a daughter of the Confederacy thought to build a house where nothing bad ever happened. —Erica Ezeifedi

Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
  • All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about the books out this week we’re most excited about.
  • The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
  • Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by genre, age category, and even LGBTQ new releases!