hey everyone and welcome to october’s edition of ‘9 new releases’!
october is my absolute favourite month (and my birthday month) and i’m so excited to highlight 9 books coming out this month that you’ll hopefully be as excited as me about!
m xx
🧡 1. LIFE SCIENCES by joy forman ~ october 12th: The eldest female member of Ninon’s family dating back to the middle ages is cursed. Each generation is marked by a uniquely obscure disease, illness, or ailment— one of her ancestors was patient zero in the 16th-century dancing plague, while Esther has a degenerative eye disease. Ninon grows up comforted and fascinated by the recitation of these bizarre medical mysteries, forewarned that something will happen to her. Her own entry into this litany of maladies appears one morning in the form of an excruciating burning sensation on her skin. Embarking on a dizzying and frustrating cycle of doctors, specialists, procedures, needles, scans, and therapists, 17-year-old Ninon becomes consumed by her need to receive a diagnosis and find a cure for her ailment, seeking to break the curse and reclaim her body by any means necessary.
⭐️ 2. TELL ME I’M WORTHLESS by alison rumfitt~ october 28th: a vital work of trans fiction that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors as it examines the devastating effects of trauma and the way fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other. Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends Ila and Hannah. Since then, the three have not spoken to eachother. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, she knows she must go. Together they must face the horrifying occurrences that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, who the House has chosen to make its own.
🧡 3. THE SISTER WHO ATE HER BROTHERS AND OTHER GRUESOME TALES by jen campbell ~ october 7th: this collection of gruesome tales lends a modern edge to fairy tale collections. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of fairy tale history, Campbell’s stories undo the censoring, gender stereotyping and twee endings of more modern children’s fairy tales, to return both classic and little-known stories to their grim versions, whilst celebrating a diverse range of characters.
⭐️ 4. DEADHEADING AND OTHER STORIES by beth gilstrap ~ october 5th: Irrevocably tied to the Carolinas, these stories tell tales of the woebegone, their obsessions with decay, and the haunting ache of the region itself. Predominantly working-class women challenge the status quo by rejecting expectations or romantic notions of Southern femininity. Small businesses are failing. Factories are closing. Money is tight. The threat of violence lingers for women and girls. Through their collective grief, heartache, and unsettling circumstances, many of these characters become feral and hell-bent on survival.
🧡 5. OLDLADYVOICE by elisa victoria, translated by charlotte whittle ~ october 5th: While her mother is in the hospital with a grave but unnamed illness, Marina spends the summer with her grandmother, waiting to hear whether she’ll get to go home or be bundled off, newly orphaned, to a convent school. There are no rules at Grandma’s, but that also means there are no easy ways to fend off the visions of sex and violence that torment and titillate the girl.
⭐️ 6. BODYSHOCKS edited by ellen datlow ~ october 19th: 29 tales of body horror selected by Ellen Datlow including a couture designer preparing for an exquisitely grotesque runway show; a vengeful son seeking the parent who bred him as plasma donor; a celebrity-kink brothel that inflicts plastic surgery on sex workers; and organ-harvesting doctors who dissect a living man without anesthetic. With stories by Carmen Maria Machado, Richard Kadrey, Seanan McGuire, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nathan Ballingrud, Tananarive Due, Cassandra Khaw, Christopher Fowler, and many more.
🧡 7. DEAD RELATIVES by lucie mcknight hardy~ october 21st: Iris has never left the big house in the country she shares with Mammy and the servants. When The Ladies arrive, she finds that she must appease her dead relatives. Other stories in this collection explore themes of motherhood and the fragile body, family dynamics and small town tensions, unusual traditions and metamorphosis.
⭐️ 8. PERSONAL ATTENTION ROLEPLAY by Helen Chau Bradley: These stories are propelled by queer loneliness, mixed-race confusion, late capitalist despondency, and the pitfalls of intimacy. Taking place in Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere, they feature young Asian misfits struggling with the desire to see themselves reflected in their surroundings, in others, and online. A young gymnast crushes on an older, more talented teammate while contending with her overworked mother. A newly queer twenty-something juggles two intimate relationships- with a slippery anarchist lover and an idiosyncratic meals-on-wheels recipient. A queer metal band’s summer tour unravels amid the sticky heat of the Northeastern US. A codependent listicle writer becomes obsessed with a Japanese ASMR channel.
🧡 9. MY MONTICELLO by jocelyn nicole johnson ~ october 5th: A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.
Mols by Moonlight 