15 blockbuster books in October

The reading year is really heating up, with a glut of heavy-hitting blockbusters hitting our shelves in October. There’s something for all tastes: entertaining non-fiction, fascinating memoir, thoughtful literary fiction, gripping thrillers and more.


The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

The insatiably curious Bill Bryson turns his attention to the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.


Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

The National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train continues with a profound and beautifully realized memoir of one transformative year. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery.


Dear Girls by Ali Wong

Comedian Ali Wong shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life offstage, including the brutal single life in New York, reconnecting with her roots in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.


Grand Union by Zadie Smith

Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a sharply alert and slyly prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Our reviewer loved this collection, describing Smith’s writing as ‘quite flawless.’


The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve. Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Though they cannot know it, Andrea’s advent to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives. Told with Ann Patchett’s inimitable blend of wit and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a story of family, betrayal, love, responsibility and sacrifice.


The Eighth Life (For Brilka) by Nino Haratischvili

At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste… The Eighth Life is the saga of a Georgian family – its intricate, interconnected lives, its losses, triumphs, sadnesses, and great loves, set against the sweep of Russian history across the twentieth century.


The Weekend by Charlotte Wood

Four older women with a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? The brilliant new novel from Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Natural Way of Things, explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we’re forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a celebration of tenderness and friendship that is nothing short of a masterpiece.


The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Hiram Walker is a man with a gift and a curse. He was born between worlds: his father a white plantation master, his mother a black slave. And he was born with a secret, special power. Sold to a new mistress as punishment for trying to escape, Hiram discovers her home is a secret hub of the underground railroad: a training ground for its agents. The Water Dancer is a magic-realist, high-stakes adventure tale that addresses the devastating legacy of America’s slave economy, and is underpinned by an excruciating understanding of the power of storytelling and memory.


Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré

Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his work years are over. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him, to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. Nat is also a passionate badminton player, and it is his regular Monday evening opponent, the introspective and solitary Ed, who will take Nat and his team down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all. Agent Running in the Field is a chilling portrait of our time, told with unflagging tension by le Carré, a master of intrigue.


The Death of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee

After The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee completes his trilogy with a new masterwork. David has grown to be a tall ten-year-old. He is a natural at soccer, and loves kicking a ball around with his friends. One day Julio Fabricante, the director of a nearby orphanage, invites David and his friends to form a proper soccer team. David decides he will leave his parents to live with Julio. Before long he succumbs to a mysterious illness. In The Death of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee continues to explore the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.


Face It by Debbie Harry

In Face It, Debbie Harry invites us into the complexity of who she is and how her life and career have played out over the last seven decades. Upending the standard music memoir, with a cutting-edge style keeping with the distinctive qualities of her multi-disciplined artistry, Face It includes a thoughtful introduction by Chris Stein, rare personal photos, original illustrations, fan artwork installations and more. Inspirational, entertaining, shocking, humorous and eye-opening, this is a memoir as dynamic as its subject.


Akin by Emma Donoghue

Noah Selvaggio, a retired chemistry professor and widower, is days away from his long-awaited first trip back to his hometown of Nice, when he receives a call from social services: he’s the closest available relative of his eleven-year-old great-nephew and he urgently needs someone to take him in. Noah agrees to foster Michael ‘just for couple of weeks’ and takes him on his trip. When sharp-eyed Michael identifies the historic Hotel Excelsior in one of Noah’s photographs, they uncover a shocking mystery involving the Nazi occupation, the resistance, and Noah’s mysterious mother.


Maybe the Horse Will Talk by Elliot Perlman

Stephen Maserov retrained as a lawyer to give his family financial security, but finds both his job and his marriage in jeopardy. To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. Warm, dramatic, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, with the narrative pull of a thriller, Maybe the Horse Will Talk is a love story, a reflection on contemporary marriage, an unflinching examination of sexual harassment in the workplace and an exposé of corporate corruption that taps directly into the pulse of our times.


Bruny by Heather Rose

When a bomb goes off in Bruny, a remote island in south-east Tasmania, United Nations worker Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her twin brother John, Premier of Tasmania, before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go. Bruny is a searing, subversive, brilliant novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order.


Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence.This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability and silence victims of abuse - and it’s the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.

Cover image for The Weekend

The Weekend

Charlotte Wood

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