11 Books We’re Excited to Read in October 2024

We’re in the midst of an ever-present but light curtain of rain over my city of Washington, DC, which means it’s the perfect time to open up a window, get a cup of coffee, and start a new book to distract myself from how gloomy it’s been. With three essay collections, memoirs from a celebrity actress and chef, and translated fiction from Sweden and Mexico, there’s plenty to go around.

Season of the Swamp, Yuri Herrera (October 1)

In Yuri Herrera’s alternate imagining of New Orleans between 1853 and 1855, a young Benito Juárez arrives at the swamp after being exiled from Mexico. Set amongst the cruel horrors of slavery, fetid heat swelling in the crowd of markets, and an underground plan amongst the exiles to get back at the Mexican dictatorship, Herrera crafts a warm and funny look at the eighteen months of Juárez’ life before becoming the first Indigenous president of Mexico, lost to history. 

Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Ina Garten (October 1)

The brilliant and charismatic Ina Garten — first an employee of the Federal Power Commission, writing the nuclear energy budget, then a store owner and Food Network star of Barefoot Contessa — returns after several cookbooks to deliver her first and long-awaited memoir. An entertaining and inspiring account of her rise to fame along with the twists in her career, Garten is as lovely in writing as she is in her breakout role as one of the most well-known chefs in America.

The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies, Deborah Levy (October 1)

The sharp brilliant novelist Deborah Levy returns with her first essay collection since 2021, a haphazard yet tender amalgamation of thoughts regarding “intimacies” small and large. She’s able to relish minute details of the world in her signature style, with imagination and insight that makes her one of the best and most original writers of today. Anything Levy writes is immediately on my list.

If We Are Brave: Essays from Black Americana, Theodore Johnson (October 1)

The Washington Post contributing columnist’s first essay collection dives deep into Southern churches, diners, the back of police cars, and the birth of the American constitution to examine the ways we’ve understood and talked about race, gender, religion, or class through time. Part journalistic endeavor and part memoir, Dr. Theodore Johnson provides insights on how the ‘American Dream’ intersects and varies wildly with viewpoints and status. Both a sharp critique and heartfelt deep dive with necessary conversations. 

The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz (October 1)

Jean Hanff Korelitz’ captivating meta-novel The Plot caused a second breakthrough in 2021 for the author of You Should Have Known — and now she’s back to continue the story. Anna Williams Bonner has finished the dirty work of her husband, a novelist who rose to prominence after publishing a dead student’s work as his own, and is now considering her own literary stardom. But another unfinished work comes across her desk, threatening to reveal secrets about her life she’s tried desperately to suppress. Will she await the same fate as her disgraced husband?

Ixelles, Johannes Anyuru (October 8)

In Johannes Anyuru’s grim but tantalizing portrayal of Sweden, a single mother raises her child, Em, who tries to find out the truth of what happened to his father many years ago. Ruth, an employee who works to shape public opinion, even if it means destroying the very town she grew up in, realizes her efforts are thwarted one day when she finds a golden CD, on which lies a voice claiming to be Mio, her late husband. The discovery sends her on a tailspin, attempting to find the truth out for herself while shielding Em from it in this propulsive and tender novel.

Shock Induction, Chuck Palahnuik (October 8)

From the twisted, bizarre, and singularly dark imagination of Chuck Palahnuik (Fight Club) comes Shock Induction, a satire centering a string of disappearances at a local high school, where the smartest overachievers go missing or allegedly die by suicide. But they’re monitored by ‘Greener Pastures,’ a surveillance technology developed by billionaires in order to scope out the next generation of talent. The teens have a choice between intellectual freedom and selling themselves away to the billionaires, but do they, really?

An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays, Lucy Ives (October 15)

The off-kilter and brilliant fiction writer Lucy Ives returns with her first essay collection, a dazzling and deeply intelligent tour de force of wit and style. Ives turns her attention to unicorns, the birth of her child, immigration, genocide, calamities, the nature of writing, derealization, and, of course, the works of countless philosophers, filmmakers, and writers. Ives’ prose is twisting and multifaceted; you never know where one piece will end up. It’s a deft and enlightening collection fit for re-reads to come; Ives is truly an original.

Women’s Hotel, Daniel M. Lavery (October 15)

The debut novel from advice columnist Daniel M. Lavery centers The Beidermeier, a women’s hotel in New York City home to the 1960’s messiest characters around. They work odd shifts, abandon their children, avoid meals, go to parties, manage the hotel, all while trying to make the most of their lives in any way they can, as turbulent as it gets.

Lifeform, Jenny Slate (October 22)

Enigmatic actress Jenny Slate (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Parks and Recreation) burst onto the literary scene with Little Weirds, which proved her tender and, well, weird talent. Now with Lifeform, another genre-bending collection of essays, this time about the turbulence of becoming a mother to a child during a worldwide pandemic, she reserves her place as a poetic yet bizarre writer with a litany of things to say.

Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality, Lyta Gold (October 29)

Essayist Lyta Gold attacks the panic around conservative book bans, morally correct fiction, censorship and redaction with a historian’s gaze and an online thinker’s sharp wit. In these eight essays, she argues that people of all eras were cautious around fiction, worried about the harm it could do to young people instead of seeing them for what they were — made-up. These tales have caused real-world consequences for those unable to understand or consume them correctly, leading to cancellations of Black and LGBTQ+ authors, the rise of a new hypermasculinity based on misinterpreting male narrators, standardizing a new kind of fascist art, or, in the book’s most striking essay, the CIA funding American MFA programs in order to produce calm and undisturbing fiction. Reality has been severely altered in the past few years — with fiction as a balm or a cause — but Gold’s analysis might be a way through.