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It’s Love Your Bookshop Day on October 7 and a perfect time for book lovers, with masses of great stuff coming out and an excuse to browse to your heart’s content in your favourite bookshop. You can treat yourself and get in early for some Christmas presents. And remember, there are plenty more books due out between now and then. Here are 14 books due in October.
Let Us Descend
Jesmyn Ward, Bloomsbury, $32.99. October 24
The latest novel from the author of Salvage the Bones (about Hurricane Katrina) and Men We Have Reaped, a memoir of the deaths of five black men she knew (including her brother), is a strikingly written, and confronting portrayal of slavery.
Annis is sold by her owner (and “sire”) and forced to walk south, Dante-like, to the slave markets in New Orleans and a new hell. This is a book suffused with grief for slavery, but never devoid of hope and love.
Lola in the Mirror
Trent Dalton, Fourth Estate, $32.99. October 4
In his author’s note, Trent Dalton says his third novel was inspired by stories told him during his long career in social affairs journalism. At its heart is homelessness – his 17-year-old heroine is on the run from male violence with her scared and scarred mother.
In a mirror she finds on a Brisbane nature strip the girl seems to find an alternative self, a voice – Lola – living a life utterly different from hers.
But can she negotiate her precarious existence, survive and thrive?
Killing for Country: A Family Story
David Marr, Black Inc., $32.99. October 3
How would you feel if, while doing a bit of genealogical research, you discovered that you were descended from professional killers of Aboriginal people?
If you’re someone such as David Marr, who has “been writing about the politics of race all my life. I know what side I’m on”, it prompts this confronting investigation of the Native Police and his family connections through his great-great-grandfather.
He describes it as “an act of atonement, of penance by storytelling”. It’s a timely, vital story.
Unfinished Woman
Robyn Davidson, Bloomsbury, $34.99. October 3
You’ve read the book, you’ve seen the film – Tracks – but here is the story of Robyn Davidson’s life from childhood, largely avoiding that trip across the desert with her camels, and beyond to a life of more travel, houses, lovers and family.
Particularly family, and particularly her mother, who took her own life at 46 and about whom Davidson has been unable previously to write to her own satisfaction.
She is acutely aware that her version of the truth “can bury another’s”, but this one is hers.
Stone Yard Devotional
Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, $32.99. October 3
Another reckoning with a mother’s death, this time in a novel from the sure hands of Charlotte Wood. A woman arrives at some sort of religious community having turned her back on her husband, their life and the metropolis.
What is she fleeing and what are her demons? It’s not all peace and tranquillity in the community, which has collective crises to deal with, while her previous life won’t leave her alone. Written in a spare prose, the consistently brilliant Wood delivers yet again.
Will Murdoch help Trump again?Credit: The New York Times
The Fall: The End of the Murdoch Empire
Michael Wolff, The Bridge Street Press, $34.99. Out now
One thing you can be sure of in a Michael Wolff book is plenty of controversial detail and quotes that are not always fully substantiated and sourced.
The American writer has tackled the Donald Trump White House in three books, and now turns his attention back to Rupert Murdoch, about whom he has already written a couple.
In this latest volume, he turns his blowtorch on Fox News and the recently retired Murdoch, two players who had massive roles in getting Trump into power. Next year? Surely not.
My Life as a Jew
Michael Gawenda, Scribe, $35. October 3
The former Age editor-in-chief, a left-wing secular Jew, has written a powerful, moving and personal exploration of his roots and the meaning of his life in Australia today – “the Jew I was, the Jew I am, and the Jew I am becoming”.
It begins with a frank account of why he ended his long friendship with former publisher Louise Adler over an essay she commissioned about the so-called Israel Lobby, and a public letter about coverage of Israel. But there is much more – memoir, history and literature – in this brave book.
Laura Jean McKay has written a new book of short stories.Credit: Brendan Lodge
Gunflower: Stories
Laura Jean McKay, Scribe, $29.99. October 3
Laura Jean McKay won the richest writing prize in the country during the pandemic for her timely novel The Animals in that Country about a virulent virus that allowed infected people to understand what animals were saying. She was quickly called prescient, but whether that label sticks in her return to the short story remains to be seen. This collection, written over 20 years, again features plenty of animal life in stories ranging in length from one page to 20. If you haven’t read her, now’s the time to start.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Michael Lewis, Allen Lane, $55. October 3
This is the astonishing story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the young man who set up his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, in 2019 and three years later was rolling in money.
But when the crypto world went pear-shaped, Bankman-Fried’s business hit an irreversible tailspin, and now he’s facing multiple charges and due in court on October 3. If anyone can be relied on to tell this story of a financial Icarus with verve and narrative flair, it’s Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short. No doubt the updated edition will have the verdict on SBF.
The Woman in Me
Britney Spears, Simon & Schuster, $49.99. October 25
The huge-selling American singer has negotiated the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in her 41 years, but at the heart of this book – said to have earned her a $US15 million ($23.3 million) advance – is the controversial “conservatorship” by which her father and others were given almost complete control of her life, but still failed to stop it going off the rails many times.
Sure to be a bestseller, the book is described as a candid account of her life – exactly what her fans want.
Mr Einstein’s Secretary
Matthew Reilly, Macmillan, $44.99. October 17
Hannah Fischer lived her early life in Berlin, and her next door neighbour was Albert Einstein – he seems to be having a popular culture moment. She idolised him, and she loved physics. But events intervene and the studious Hannah is forced out of Germany to a new, secretarial life in the US.
But this is a Matthew Reilly novel – he’s a film director now as well – and Hannah becomes some sort of spy and action hero, getting involved with all the major events and players of the years between the end of World War I and II – prohibition, gangsters, Nazis, and more. It’s a lot of crash-bang-wallop fun and Reilly fans will love it.
The Seven
Chris Hammer, Allen & Unwin, $32.99. October 3
It’s hard to believe that Scrublands, Chris Hammer’s first crime novel, was published only five years ago.
Since then, the former journo has followed the crime writer’s timetable of a book a year.
His latest brings back Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucie, whom we met in Treasure & Dirt and Tilt, for a case of murder involving one of the seven families who rule the Yuwonderie district like a fiefdom. You can expect dark secrets to emerge and herrings to be red.
Life as We Knew it
Aisha Dow & Melissa Cunningham, Scribe, $35. October 3
This account of how the pandemic affected Australia is a timely publication coming only a few days after Daniel Andrews, the man who approved probably the world’s longest cumulative lockdown, left office.
While many people may not want to revisit those stressful years, Aisha Dow and Melissa Cunningham, journalists with Nine newspapers, manage to make this a riveting story of discovery, dismay, and recovery.
Ahead of the government’s impending inquiry, you might find some answers here.
Edenglassie
Melissa Lucashenko, UQP, $32.99. October 3
When Granny Eddie hits the Yagara dirt of her ancestors, it’s the start of Melissa Lucashenko’s first novel since winning the Miles Franklin with Too Much Lip. With that bump, Granny Eddie starts remembering her life as she lies in her hospital bed – when she’s not squabbling with Dr Johnny Newman – and the book dips back in time to the same bit of land in the 1840s, a time before the Indigenous population was outnumbered by the whites, but after convicts stopped arriving. Edenglassie – an early name for Brisbane – slides deftly between past and present and eyes a future for all.
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
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