So today is the (now infamous in the book world) 3rd September and there are hundreds of books being released! I’m not going to list all of them because that post would be very very long and I’m sure others have collated a comprehensive list in a much better way than I would anyway! However, I did want to do a little post about some of the books being published today that I have already loved or that I am looking forward to reading!

A Girl Made of Air by Nydia Hetherington

Publisher: Quercus

Summary:

A lyrical and atmospheric homage to the strange and extraordinary, perfect for fans of Angela Carter and Erin Morgenstern.

This is the story of The Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived…

Born into a post-war circus family, our nameless star was unwanted and forgotten, abandoned in the shadows of the big top. Until the bright light of Serendipity Wilson threw her into focus.

Now an adult, haunted by an incident in which a child was lost from the circus, our narrator, a tightrope artiste, weaves together her spellbinding tales of circus legends, earthy magic and folklore, all in the hope of finding the child… But will her story be enough to bring the pair together again?

My Thoughts:

So, I’m actually reading this one at the moment – I’m about a third of the way in and loving it! Beautiful writing and a magical cast of characters are making it a gorgeous read thus far. My review will be up at some point this weekend or early next week!

The Night of the Flood by Zoë Somerville

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Summary:

Her heart beat hard. There was a crazed beauty to the storm. It was almost miraculous, the way it took away the mess of life, sweeping all in its path… 

No-one could have foreseen the changes the summer of 1952 would bring. Cramming for her final exams on her family’s farm on the Norfolk coast, Verity Frost feels trapped between past and present: the devotion of her childhood friend Arthur, just returned from National Service, and her strange new desire to escape.

When Verity meets Jack, a charismatic American pilot, he seems to offer the glamour and adventure she so craves, and Arthur becomes determined to uncover the dirt beneath his rival’s glossy sheen.

As summer turns to winter, a devastating storm hits the coast, flooding the land and altering everything in its path. In this new, watery landscape, Verity’s tangled web of secrets, lies and passion will bring about a crime that will change all their lives forever.

My Thoughts:

I’m actually on the blog tour for The Night of the Flood which I’m really looking forward to as this book really caught my eye when I first heard about it. I’ve started it today and I can confirm it’s great so far! My review as part of the tour will be live on the 8th!

The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue (Paperback)

Publisher: Corvus

Summary:

Power. Jealousy. Desire.

Twenty-five years ago, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her charismatic teacher disappeared without trace…

When Louisa arrives at Temple House, an elite catholic boarding school, she quickly finds herself drawn to sophisticated fellow pupil Victoria and their young bohemian art teacher, Mr Lavelle. The three of them form a bond that seems to offer an escape from the repressive regime of the nuns who run the cloistered school. Until Louisa and Mr Lavelle suddenly vanish.

Years later, a journalist with a childhood connection to Louisa determines to resolve the mystery. Her search for the truth will uncover a tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets. It will shatter lives and lay a lost soul to rest.

My Thoughts:

This one is being released in paperback today and since I very much enjoyed reading it last year I wanted to give it a shout out! It is beautifully written and atmospheric. I will definitely be reading Donohue’s next book. You can read my review of The Temple House Vanishing here.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Publisher: Viking

Summary:

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

My Thoughts:

I’m on the bookstagram tour for this one on the 13th September and it’s a book I’ve been highly anticipating for a while now! I’m going to start it in a few days and I cannot wait – it sounds like such good fun and I’ve seen a lot of praise for it already!

Truth be Told by Kia Abdullah

Publisher: HQ

Summary:

ARE YOU READY TO START THIS CONVERSATION?

Kamran Hadid feels invincible. He attends Hampton school, an elite all-boys boarding school in London, he comes from a wealthy family, and he has a place at Oxford next year. The world is at his feet. And then a night of revelry leads to a drunken encounter and he must ask himself a horrific question.

With the help of assault counsellor, Zara Kaleel, Kamran reports the incident in the hopes that will be the end of it. But it’s only the beginning…

My Thoughts:

I haven’t read this one yet although I have it on netgalley and I’m planning on picking it up very soon! I did, however, read Take it Back by Kia Abdullah last year and it was incredibly compelling (you can read my review of it here). I wasn’t totally sold on Zara as a character I liked in Take it Back but I was 100% sold on Kia Abdullah’s writing so I’m looking forward to reading Truth be Told very much!

The Harpy by Megan Hunter

Publisher: Picador

Summary:

Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, he wants her to know.

The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.

As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return.

My Thoughts:

I have this one on Netgalley and I’m kicking myself a little bit for not getting to it yet but I will be remedying that soon because I cannot wait to see what this book is like. It’s one I am super curious about and the reviews of it I’ve read so far have been glowing. I’m so looking forward to diving in.

After the Silence by Louise O’Neill

Publisher: Riverrun, Quercus

Summary:

Nessa Crowley’s murderer has been protected by silence for ten years.
Until a team of documentary makers decide to find out the truth.

On the day of Henry and Keelin Kinsella’s wild party at their big house a violent storm engulfed the island of Inisrun, cutting it off from the mainland. When morning broke Nessa Crowley’s lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder.

The killer couldn’t have escaped Inisrun, but on-one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever.

Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsella’s carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry’s guilt and Keelin’s complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.

My Thoughts:

I have been reading After the Silence as part of the Tandem Collective readalong and just finished it on Tuesday! I loved it, and it confirmed that Louise O’Neill is definitely an auto-buy author for me. My review of After the Silence will be up tomorrow!

Orfeia by Joanne M. Harris

Publisher: Gollancz

Summary:

When you can find me an acre of land,
Every sage grows merry in time,
Between the ocean and the sand
Then will you be united again.
(Inspired by The Child Ballads 2 & 19)

So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream, and even into the underworld itself.

But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or her freedom itself . . .

Beautifully illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, this is a stunning and original modern fairytale.

My Thoughts:

This one only came to my attention last week but it sounds so brilliant I added it to my TBR straight away. It’s a novella and since I adore the darkness in fairytales and illustration in all it’s forms I just know I’m going to love Orfeia.

To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Summary:

It is 1852, and in Sweden’s far north, deep in the Arctic Circle, charismatic preacher and Revivalist Lars Levi Læstadius impassions a poverty-stricken congregation with visions of salvation. But local leaders have reason to resist a shift to temperance over alcohol.

Jussi, the young Sami boy Læstadius has rescued from destitution and abuse, becomes the preacher’s faithful disciple on long botanical treks to explore the flora and fauna. Læstadius also teaches him to read and write – and to love and fear God.

When a milkmaid goes missing deep in the forest, the locals suspect a predatory bear is at large. A second girl is attacked, and the sheriff is quick to offer a reward for the bear’s capture. Using early forensics and daguerreotype, Læstadius and Jussi find clues that point to a far worse killer on the loose, even as they are unaware of the evil closing in around them.

To Cook a Bear explores how communities turn inwards, how superstition can turn to violence, and how the power of language can be transformative in a richly fascinating mystery.

My Thoughts:

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this book! I’m part of the blog tour for To Cook a Bear in a couple of weeks which I am thrilled about. I think it might be one of my favourite book covers of all time and the plot involves pretty much everything I love! I can’t wait!

Love Orange by Natasha Randall

Publisher: Riverrun

Summary:

An extraordinary debut novel by Natasha Randall, exposing the seam of secrets within an American family, from beneath the plastic surfaces of their new ‘smart’ home. Love Orange charts the gentle absurdities of their lives, and the devastating consequences of casual choices.

While Hank struggles with his lack of professional success, his wife Jenny, feeling stuck and beset by an urge to do good, becomes ensnared in a dangerous correspondence with a prison inmate called John. Letter by letter, John pinches Jenny awake from the “marshmallow numbness” of her life. The children, meanwhile, unwittingly disturb the foundations of their home life with forays into the dark net and strange geological experiments.

Jenny’s bid for freedom takes a sour turn when she becomes the go-between for John and his wife, and develops an unnatural obsession for the orange glue that seals his letters…

My Thoughts:

I don’t know much about this one yet but it really caught my eye and I’m intrigued! It sounds extremely original and I’m looking forward to picking it up when I can.

The Wolves of Venice by Alex Connor

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Summary:

Venice, 16th century.

The staggering wealth of Venice contrasts the brutal lives of those in the ghetto. Opportunistic merchants arrive to make their fortune. Deception, malice and perversion thrive, leading to the emergence of a dark society: The Wolves of Venice.

Drawn into the Wolves’ plots are the innocents – including Marco Gianetti, assistant to Tintoretto; Ira Tabat, a Jewish merchant; Giorgio Gabal, an artist’s apprentice; and Giovanni Spoletto, the doomed castrato – all manipulated by the likes of Pietro Aretino, the courtesan Tita Boldini and the spy Adamo Baptista.

The lives of these characters criss-cross one another. Their destinies intermingle in a Venice corrupted by spies lingering in the shadows, working for paymasters that change allegiance with the wind. As the betrayals, murders and tragedies continue, will anyone be able to bring the Wolves of Venice to justice?

My Thoughts:

I love good historical fiction and once you add in Venice and the 16th century I am totally sold. This looks mysterious and chilling and I’ve already bought it to read as soon as I can fit it in.

The Good Germans by Catrine Clay

Publisher: W&N

Summary:

After 1933, as the brutal terror regime took hold, most of the two-thirds of Germans who had never voted for the Nazis – some 20 million people – tried to keep their heads down and protect their families. They moved to the country, or pretended to support the regime to avoid being denounced by neighbours, and tried to work out what was really happening in the Reich, surrounded as they were by Nazi propaganda and fake news. They lived in fear. Might they lose their jobs? Their homes? Their freedom? What would we have done in their place?

Many ordinary Germans found the courage to resist, in the full knowledge that they could be sentenced to indefinite incarceration, torture or outright execution. Catrine Clay argues that it was a much greater number than was ever formally recorded: teachers, lawyers, factory and dock workers, housewives, shopkeepers, church members, trade unionists, army officers, aristocrats, Social Democrats, Socialists and Communists.

Catrine Clay’s ground-breaking book focuses on six very different characters: Irma, the young daughter of Ernst Thalmann, leader of the German Communists; Fritzi von der Schulenburg, a Prussian aristocrat; Rudolf Ditzen, the already famous author Hans Fallada, best known for his novel Alone in Berlin; Bernt Engelmann, a schoolboy living in the suburbs of Dusseldorf; Julius Leber, a charismatic leader of the Social Democrats in the Reichstag; and Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a law student in Berlin. The six are not seen in isolation but as part of their families: a brother and sister; a wife; a father with three children; an only son; the parents of a Communist pioneer daughter. Each experiences the momentous events of Nazi history as they unfold in their own small lives – Good Germans all.

My Thoughts:

This book sounds so incredibly fascinating that I added it to my TBR as soon as I heard about it. I’ve been reading quite a bit of World War Two nonfiction and fiction lately and The Good Germans sounds like an interesting and unusual perspective. I’m really looking forward to reading it.

The Power of Rude by Rebecca Reid

Publisher: Trapeze

Summary:

“Of all the things in the world to worry about, why would anyone put the right for women to be rude at the top of the list? It’s a fair question. Happily, there is a very simple answer: I believe that an inability to be rude is one of the biggest issues which still inhibits the equality of women today.”

The Power of Rude will discuss the way women are constantly worrying about being polite, even finding themselves in uncomfortable situations they’d rather avoid due to a fear of saying the wrong thing. For example, we’ll learn about the woman who paid for an entire hen do that she wasn’t even invited on (because she didn’t want to be rude!), the woman who let her cousin practice kissing on her (because she didn’t want to be rude!) and the vegan woman who ate an entire pork chop (because she didn’t want to be rude!).

This empowering call-to-arms will journey through dating, family relationships, sex, the workplace, money, customer service, and more and show women how we can reclaim the word ‘rude’ and use it to advantage.

For decades, women have been called ‘bossy’, ‘hysterical’ and ‘neurotic’ in situations where men might simply be dubbed ‘assertive’. We need to change the narrative around women and we need to use our voices to take control. Rebecca Reid isn’t afraid to show us how.

My Thoughts:

This one sounds right up my alley and it’s one I can’t wait to read. It seems like it’s going to examine important aspects of the way women are perceived and why. It went straight on my TBR and hopefully I can read it soon!

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So there you are! This is just a small taste of the books being published today but I hope you’ve seen a few on here you like the look of! I really wish all the authors and publishers with books out today the best of luck. I’d love to hear what books you are excited about being released today or which ones you have already read and loved? Let’s chat in the comments!

xxx