30 Books We Can’t Wait to Read: September 2025
Fiction
Happiness and Love by Zoe Dubno — September 2 (Scribner)
“Zeitgeisty and timeless, cynical but not soulless, Dubno’s propulsive debut is for lovers of Thomas Bernhard, art over theory, and anyone who has ever wondered ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ Fabulous!” — Melissa Broder, author of Death Valley
Discontent by Beatriz Serrano (Translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem) — September 2 (Vintage)
“Our heroine compulsively watches YouTube, pops Ativan, quotes both Britney Spears and Proust, dreads work small talk, and, at one point, Googles ‘how to be creative.’ I adored her. Discontent is a razor-sharp debut with a riveting climax.” — Anna Dorn, author of Perfume and Pain
Trip by Amie Barrodale — September 2 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“Trip is an extraordinary novel. I’ve read nothing like it. It is crazy, wise, sensitive, funny, and terrifying—all those things put together so fluidly you can’t pick one apart from the other. Like all the best physical, chemical, emotional, and existential trips I’ve taken, this one blows the mind and shocks the heart.” — Christopher Bollen, author of Havoc
To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage — September 2 (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)
“A novel that has the generosity to be many things—bittersweet, thrillingly perceptive, enormously funny. To the Moon and Back is a wonderful reckoning with the true price of an at-any-cost ambition and a powerful story about the mixture of combativeness, compromise and love that forms the heart of a family.” — Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time
Zone Rouge by Michael Jerome Plunkett — September 2 (Unnamed Press)
“The long, dark tail of war fills the alluring world of Zone Rouge, blighting the earth and shaping lives more than a century after the murderous Battle of Verdun. In the way only the best anti-war literature does, Michael Jerome Plunkett immerses us in the lasting consequences of humanity’s old, ruinous lie, not by scolding or shouting, but by making us care for Ferrand Martin and his démineurs’ endless toil. What beautiful writing and one hell of a debut.” — Matt Gallagher, author of Daybreak
Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive! by Melissa Lozada-Oliva — September 2 (Astra House)
“The stories in Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive! are like ghost stories that ghosts would tell about the living to scare each other. Melissa Lozada-Oliva must secretly have two hearts or something! A single plane of reality is never big enough for her; in this emotionally iridescent collection, she pulls off charm and gloom with equal aplomb.” — Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela — September 9 (Viking)
“Winking and elliptical, Alejandro Varela’s Middle Spoon tells the story of a man trying desperately––and despairingly––to build a life whose conceits feel at once historically inevitable and on the brink of collapse. Like all scorned lovers, his narrator is a paranoid reader of reality: obsessive, dogged, zealous, terrified. Amid the romantic and familial restructuring, life begins, ends, and begins again. A gripping work of domestic fiction that freaks the emotional constraints of the genre.” — Maya Binyam, author of Hangman
Little Movements by Lauren Morrow — September 9 (Random House)
“Morrow writes about dance as only a dancer could—energy boundless, words pulsing on the page. In her capable hands, every movement—like a moment, or a friendship, or a city—becomes as expensive and perilous as young love, while capturing the pitfalls, and the explosive joy, of making art while Black.” — Rob Franklin, author of Great Black Hope
Muscle Man by Jordan Castro — September 9 (Catapult)
“Muscle Man is a brilliant disquisition on violence, resentment, victims, and Nietzschean bodybuilders in American academia, told with the obsessive crankiness of Thomas Bernhard, acute absurdity of Donald Antrim, and a vivid linguistic hilarity all Castro’s own. Made me want to feel the pump.” — Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn
Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman — September 9 (Coffee House Press)
“A furious energy runs through Helen of Nowhere, whose every sentence is a joy to read. This is a book about loneliness and bitterness written with a wicked humor, and its moments of grace are as striking as they are enigmatic. A unique and brilliant work.” — Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
Little Neck by Darcie Dennigan — September 9 (Fonograf Editions)
“In the tradition of Marie Redonnet and Ágota Kristóf, Darcie Dennigan offers a vertiginous novel buttressed by a discomfiting, paratactic voice. Little Neck is earthy, creepy, and sodden with a fragmentary consciousness. The narrator advertises it convincingly: “My blood does not want to be cooled.” If you had lent this book to Clarice Lispector, she would have read it and not returned it to you.” — Sebastian Castillo, author of Fresh, Green Life
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy — September 16 (Mariner Books)
“All the best novels about friendship are invitations to count yourself among them, and The Wilderness is no exception; the joys and the sorrows of this book are multiplied because they are shared. Flournoy has a long-lens talent, capable of spanning great distances while keeping her characters in crisp, but always compassionate, focus, as they face the changing pressures and realities of growing up. The result is both portrait and panorama of contemporary American life.” — Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries and Birnam Wood
Grace Period by Maria Judite de Carvalho (Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) — September 16 (Two Lines Press)
“A taut, uneasy book, haunted by green-haired women and childhood-glimpsed beauty, and filled with bittersweet melancholy. The sale of a home shouldn't be as tension-filled and catalyzing as it is in this brilliant blade-point of a novel by Maria Judite de Carvalho.” — Madeline Watts, author of Elegy, Southwest
Calls May Be Recorded by Katharina Volckmer — September 16 (Two Dollar Radio)
“This book reminds us of why we love Volckmer. She is a true iconoclast. Her work is a hand grenade thrown against the falsities of good taste.” — Carlos Fonseca, author of Austral
Underspin by EY Zhao — September 23 (Astra House)
“E. Y. Zhao writes with kinetic genius about the fast paced, ultracompetitive world of table tennis, and the bliss and heartbreak of chasing greatness. Underspin is as suspenseful as a championship game and as perfectly orchestrated as a winning shot.” — Laura van den Berg, author of State of Paradise
Beings by Ilana Masad — September 23 (Bloomsbury)
“Ilana Masad is one of the most exciting young writers working today. Beings shows off the best of Masad’s writing: intelligent, vivid prose; engaging mysteries; deep emotional truths; and the ability to remind readers that the unknown can be thrilling.” — Megan Giddings, author of Meet Me At The Crossroads
The Mires by Tina Makereti — September 23 (HarperVia)
“The Mires is a work of art. The impacts of colonisation, movement, and climate change cut to the bone in glittering prose and through characters kept close as neighbors. In The Mires, the environment speaks, culture transcends boundaries and the myriad ideas of home are bitterly defended. Only Tina Makereti could hold a reader in such tense tenderness.” — Laura Jean McKay, author of The Animals in That Country
The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam by Lana Lin — September 30 (Dorothy)
“In her brilliant revision of the queer archive, Lana Lin not only brings the understory of the Asian diaspora to the surface but into luminous frame. The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam is a testament to our different histories and to how, through shared stories and everyday habits, we merge and become each other over time. If you asked me to give you a gift through which you could discover yourself in others, I would offer you this book.” — Julietta Singh, author of The Breaks
Dust Settles North by Deena ElGenaidi — September 30 (Bindery Books)
“A beautiful meditation on grief, family, and the ties that bind. I was wholly absorbed by this atmospheric novel of transformation after mother loss, and the apt exploration of the way that loss reshapes the world. Dust Settles North will speak to anyone who has ever chased belonging, both with family and in the world, meaning this book is for everyone. Gorgeous.” — Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot
Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa — September 30 (Little, Brown)
“Pick a Color is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. In alchemical and captivating prose, this book orbits the steady flows of power and projection that exist between Ning, her employees and her clients. Love, death, joy, abandonment, deception and lust are all at stake in Susan’s Nail Salon. The world of Pick a Color is shockingly intimate. Reading this book left me with an intense desire to touch a stranger's hands.” — Rita Bullwinkle, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Headshot
What a Time to Be Alive by Jade Chang — September 30 (Ecco)
“A generous satire of the spiritual wellness space that delivers true magic in the character of Lola Treasure Gold, a heroine so dazzling and bold and psychologically healthy that you will wind up rooting for her with your whole heart. I loved it.” — Rufi Thorpe, author of Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The Endless Week by Laura Vasquez (Translated from French by Alex Niemi) — September 30 (Dorothy)
“They say a truly great author can write about anything and make it interesting, and with The Endless Week Laura Vazquez proves that true on every page. If you’re in search of an ultra-contemporary novel that shatters all the rules with inimitable humor and style to spare, look no further—she’s arrived.” — Blake Butler, author of Molly
Non-Fiction & Poetry
Night Watch: Poems by Kevin Young — September 2 (Knopf)
Kevin Young, New Yorker poetry editor, is back with a new collection, written over sixteen years. Night Watch explores a personal and American history of loss, resurgence, and renewal.
A Silent Treatment by Jeannie Vanasco — September 9 (Tin House Books)
“Articulating the pain of a removal, something that is not there, is massively challenging, and yet Jeannie Vanasco has done it—filled the scarcity of silence with an abundance of thrilling, exacting prose. A Silent Treatment is a gift for those of us who've been punished by the particular cruelty of silence and an opportunity for those who use this method of punishment to understand their frailty. A salve and a method of healing, this memoir will help countless people.” — Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Beautyland
Touch Me, I'm Sick: A Memoir in Essays by Margeaux Feldman — September 9 (Beacon Press)
“Tenderly written and courageously conceived, Margeaux Feldman’s Touch Me, I’m Sick is a collection of essays that speaks deeply to readers on the levels of heart, head, and soul. Feldman gracefully interweaves intimate storytelling with deep intellectual analysis, spinning together the threads of personal narrative, disability justice, psychology and trauma theory, and transformative justice to make a unique contribution to the lineage of queer and trans cultural work. Readers yearning for a vision of social justice that holds complexity and nuance are sure to find refuge in Feldman’s care-filled words. This book is medicine.” — Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World
Thank You, John by Michelle Gurule — September 23 (Unnamed Press)
“Thank You, John is a compelling, darkly funny memoir about class, power, and sex work, and how all these subjects intertwine. Gurule is a captivating, charming narrator who has a quirkily lovable family open to both her queerness and her sex work. Your teeth will ache as you read this book, both with pain and with pleasure.” — Celia Laskey, author of Under the Rainbow and So Happy for You
Marginalia by Naomi Washer — September 16 (Autofocus Books)
“With Marginalia, Naomi Washer puts into words the offhand impressions, half-thoughts, and sensations that constitute our inner lives, that give them depth. Together, these collected fragments reveal how the act of reading shapes writing, or more generally, creativity, but also how it shapes a self, rendering the world legible. How reading works its magic in ways both formative and generative—you just might find yourself writing your own notes around the edges of this searching, beautiful book.” — Deborah Shapiro, author of Consolation
The Light Room by Kate Zambreno — September 16 (Transit Books)
“A gorgeous document of the tender and precise place where art and mothering necessarily meet. Natural and urban spaces float and glow under Kate Zambreno’s observant eye. Each leaf, each book, is a love letter activated by bohemian saints: the artists and writers who pass through their small rooms and far-reaching mind.” — Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark and The Seas
Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why it Matters by Joanna Walsh — September 23 (Verso)
“Bubbling over with pithy and accessible aperçus, Amateurs! is a snappy guide to the new aesthetics of online culture and the end of professionalization. Walsh surveys the deskilling that results from the fusion of unpaid labour and self-branding: from dumb memes to Instagram influencers, from Wikicore aesthetics to the trash essay, culminating in the talent bypass that is AI. She offers catchy terms for thinking through the revision of authorship and creativity (decuperation and unrealism, anyone?) – delivered with a keen sense of history and a spiky feminist attitude and that never lapses into the curmudgeonly.” — Claire Bishop, author of Disordered Attention
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez (Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) — September 30 (Hogarth)
“A triumph of curiosity! Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is one of those marvels that shows how dark, joyful, and mesmerizing the world is when the brave go looking. I’m a longtime fan of Mariana Enriquez, and this book delivers everything (and more) that I love about her writing.” — Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio
