THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT by Maggie O’Farrell

One of my favorite novels from the last few years is Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, and I was excited to see what she wrote next. On September 6, she’s back on the shelves with The Marriage Portrait, a time capsule of a novel traveling back to Renaissance Italy and centering on the young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici and her marriage to the Duke of Ferrara in 1558. O’Farrell has a way with words and is a master puppeteer when it comes to crafting a story. I trust wherever and whenever she decides to take me within the pages of her books. Available 9/6.

FAIRY TALE by Stephen King

Speaking of trusting an author, I have been a “Constant Reader” of the King since 1990, and I have read everything he has written, favorites being 11/22/63, It, Under the Dome, The Green Mile and Pet Sematary. This month he has penned his own “once upon a time” in Fairy Tale, about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war. Early in the pandemic King asked himself, “What could you write that would make you happy?” Fairy Tale is that happy! Available 9/6.

THE MEASURE by Nikki Erlick

I love high-concept fiction because it offers something broadly applicable to our current reality yet totally new and engaging to contemplate. Think The Midnight Library, Station Eleven or even King’s The Stand. The Measure by Nikki Erlick, July’s “Read With Jenna” pick, is perfect for book clubs. I could not stop thinking about its themes and how I would handle the characters’ plight. Imagine everyone in the world receives a small wooden box and inside the box is a string that holds your fate, the exact number of years you have left to live. This is an ambitious novel that will provoke so much discussion on family, love, hope and destiny. Read it and then track me down to talk about it.

LESS IS LOST by Andrew Sean Greer

This September, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less revisits his award-winning main character, Arthur, in Less Is Lost. To run away from a whole new set of problems, awkward and lovable Arthur, now an accomplished novelist, accepts a series of literary gigs that sends him on an adventure across the United States. This “road trip” book offers witty and poignant observations about what’s it like to live, laugh, love, lose and ultimately find ourselves in the world today. Available 9/20.

THE LAST HOUSEWIFE by Ashley Winstead

The author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is back with a novel that has taken #bookstagram by storm—The Last Housewife. Trigger warnings abound (truly check the content warnings), but this book is bingeable in the most thrilling way. It’s about a woman determined to destroy a powerful cult and avenge the deaths of the women taken in by it, no matter the cost. It’s chilling, extremely dark and intense, and one of those “just one more chapter” before bedtime books. @jordys.book.club, one of my favorite book influencers, put this one on my radar. #jordymademedoit

DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS by Isaac Fitzgerald

For my memoir lovers out there, look no further than Dirtbag, Massachusetts. It begins, “My parents were married when they had me, just to different people. I was born of sin: a mistake in human form, a bomb aimed perfectly to blow up my parents’ lives.” Since then, that bomb of a man has played many roles. He’s been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England, and we get to witness them all in this honest, gritty and irreverent collection of essays. It provides that wonderful moment when one person’s life story teaches you something about your own.

OTHER BIRDS by Sarah Addison Allen

For fans of Alice Hoffman’s tales of magical realism and enchanting characters, pick up Sarah Addison Allen’s Other Birds. I was a huge fan of Allen’s debut novel Garden Spells years ago and was over the moon to see a new book by her coming out this September 13. I flew through this one and absolutely adored the quirky people we meet in these pages, including a girl on the run, a lonely chef, a legendary writer and three ghosts. “There are birds and then there are other birds. Maybe they don’t sing. Maybe they don’t fly. Maybe they don’t fit in. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be an other bird than just the same old thing.” Available 9/13.