Looking Ahead: September Highlights

September! Seasonal changes! And also the beginning of the big fall publishing push. October is generally a bigger month for new releases, but that doesn't mean September is looking light. Below, a few September books I'm dying to share with you (some I can't wait to read, some I've already read and just can't wait to talk about with others):

The Bones of Paris, by Laurie R. King (Bantam, Sept 10th): King is known for her Sherlock Holmes novels, but The Bones of Paris is actually the second in a separate, non-Holmesian series featuring ex-FBI-agent-turned-PI Harris Stuyvesant. Set in 1929 Paris, Stuyvesant sets out to investigate the case of a missing girl (one he happens to have taken to bed) and finds himself drawn into the Surrealist art movement and what could be a series of unexplained deaths... King's experience writing novels based on the Holmes canon has clearly influenced her standalone mysteries, as she plants details and clues that lead Stuyvesant--and readers--on a path to find out whodunit.

Maddaddam, by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese, Sept 3rd): The much-anticipated conclusion to Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, which started with Oryx and Crake and followed with The Year of the Flood. The first two in this trilogy are concurrent stories, giving different perspectives of the same events; Maddaddam picks up where they left off and promises to fill in some holes in the story. I'm about halfway through and on the fence on this, as I'm finding it lagging at the moment, but it's impossible not to include an Atwood novel in a list of anticipated titles when there's a new one to be had.

Seven for a Secret, by Lyndsay Faye (Amy Einhorn, Sept 17th): I promise there are books in September that are not series continuations, but this isn't one of them. Faye picks up the story of Timothy Wilde, whose experiences in the newly-formed police force in 1840s Manhattan started in The Gods of Gotham. If the new one is anything like the first in the series, Faye will reconstruct an era of New York City history that I just adore, and give us a good story to boot. 

Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent (Little, Brown, Sept 10th): A debut novel (see? Not a series continuation!) set in Iceland, promising to recount the story of the last woman hanged for murder in that country. This was a much-buzzed about book at BEA this year, and I'm sorry not to have gotten to the galley of it earlier. But if it's half as good as everyone promises it is, I know we're all in for a treat.

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, by Debora Spar (Sarah Crichton, Sept 17th): I may be the last feminist in the world not to have read Lean In, but I'm definitely going to look for Wonder Women when it comes out. Spar sets out to explore how women's lives have--and have not--changed since the women's lib movement, and how that impacts a generation of young women who are told this is no longer something they need to worry about. I. Can't. Wait.