By Anais Aguilera, Katie Norris, Olivia Paris and Sophie Poirier
The charts this month show an exciting breadth of genres. From books by celebrity names to incredible crime, there’s something to cater to everyone’s tastes. So, get cosy and get reading!
Amazon
Some of the bestsellers on Amazon this month include books by celebrity authors such as actress Gillian Anderson and comedian Bob Mortimer!
Gillian Anderson’s book Want is a Sunday Times instant bestseller, described as a confessional for anonymous women around the world, where they reveal how they truly feel about sex. The book is a collection of anonymous sexual fantasies, including one of Anderson’s anonymous confessions. Sex is a central theme in our lives, media and politics, but Anderson’s Want examines what we really want when it comes to sex, without shame.
Comedian Bob Mortimer is also seeing success in the charts with his book, The Hotel Avocado. With a mix of mystery and comedy, this follows on from the first Gary Thorn book, The Satsuma Complex. In The Hotel Avocado, Gary Thorn is faced with a big decision: does he stay in London in the safety of his legal job where he eats pies with his neighbour, or does he move to Brighton, where his girlfriend is about to open The Hotel Avocado? During this decision, a mysterious Mr Sequence arrives, threatening Gary’s life. Gary wants to be happy, but can he stay alive long enough to enjoy it?
WHSmith
Emma Törzs’s debut novel, Ink Blood Sister Scribe, was an instant bestseller when first released. And now, as we move headlong into the autumn months and it makes its way back into the charts, it’s clear this one is here to stay. Half-sisters Joanna and Esther live drastically different lives. But though their paths may be different, they’re bound together by a collection of magical books and a familial history threaded with secrets untold. When their collection and lives are threatened, their worlds collide. What comes next, they can’t possibly know.
Offering just as much atmospheric intrigue as Törzs’ work is a classic small-town crime novel by Ann Cleeves. A Lesson in Dying is the first in a series of mysteries following Inspector Ramsay, who finds himself chasing illusive leads through the landscapes of Northumberland. In this first case, he’s tasked with restoring the peace to a small village turned upside down by a sudden murder. But with competing interests and distractions blurring the investigation, Ramsay has his work cut out for him.
Waterstones
As it’s September’s Fiction Book of the Month, Waterstones has selected North Woods by Daniel Mason. In a remote New England cabin, generations of people face love, grief, triumph and defeat. As generations of inhabitants pass through this one simple house, it becomes clear how all their lives are intertwined, and that their stories will live on long after they are gone.
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel took the title of Nonfiction Book of the Month. Hessel explores the misconceptions about women artists across continents and throughout decades, highlighting their achievements and innovations often overlooked. Prepare to see a whole new side of women’s art and appreciate their work in ways you never had before.
Social Media
This month on social media, spooky tales of mothers and desolation such as Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing and Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men have taken hold as temperatures drop.
Motherthing is a domestic horror novel, where a woman and her husband are haunted by the ghost of her mother-in-law. Abby and her husband, Ralph, move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, with Abby desperate for a mother figure in her life. Instead, Laura becomes a hellish figure in Abby’s life, until she takes her own life. But Laura doesn’t leave. Instead, Abby’s mother-in-law’s ghost haunts the two, causing terror and chaos in the couple’s lives. Abby must come up with a plan to banish her mother-in-law's ghost forever, and it starts with a recipe for Chicken à la King.
Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men (translated by Ros Schwartz) was first published in 1995 but has been making a re-appearance on social media this month. The novel is set in a dystopian future, where a group of women are imprisoned in an underground bunker for reasons unknown, guarded by men. One day, the men disappear, and it is up to the youngest, a child with no knowledge of the world before, to save them.
Noteworthy Author
Rebecca F. Kuang is a multi-award-winning author of some of the best-known books including Yellowface, Babel, and The Poppy War series. Since writing her debut novel, The Poppy War, at only nineteen years old and seeing it published before her 22nd birthday, Kuang has established herself as a force to be reckoned with. Her debut novel even took the top spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. Since then, she has won the Blackwell’s Book of the Year for Fiction in 2022, the Compton Crook Award, the Crawford Award, and many more. Kuang is known for confronting difficult moral, ethical and socio-political questions and histories, and untangling them with a mastery of prose. She has also announced her new novel, Katabasis – where two academic rivals must travel to hell to rescue the soul of their advisor, which is expected in 2025.
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