Blog Archive

October's Hot Book Titles

Someone complained that the books for September weren't exciting.  They definitely can't say that about October's book releases.  There's a slew of enticing titles that month.  Place your holds at the library now, or order them from your favorite bookstore.

Kick off the list with a favorite author, Jim Butcher.  Side Jobs collects for the first time shorter works by Butcher about the adventures and cases of Harry Dresden and his allies.  I'm always ready for another story about the only wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages.

Have you discovered Kathryn Casey?  The Killing Storm brings back Texas Ranger Sarah Armstrong.  As a hurricane looms in the Gulf, Armstrong looks for a missing child whose mother's odd reaction leads some to wonder if she wasn't involved in his disappearance.  Realistically, Armstrong juggles two cases at the same time.

Everyone's favorite, Jack Reacher, returns in Lee Child's Worth Dying For.  He's on the wrong side of a local clan that has terrified an entire Nebraska county, but he's staying.  He's there to solve a decades-old missing child case.

In Michael Connelly's The Reversal, defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to serve as a prosecutor for a high-profile retrial of a child killer.  Haller agrees, providing he gets LAPD Detective Harry Bosch as his investigator.

Word on the street is that Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is hot.  It's the story of a white man, Larry, and his black childhood friend, Silas.  Torn apart as young men, when Larry was suspected in the disappearance of a young girl, twenty years later, when another girl disappears, Silas must investigate.

I know this is my own personal weakness. I can never remember which is which, Nicholas Evans and Richard Paul Evans, although the second one tends to write more Christmas stories.  It doesn't help that they both have novels out at the same time.  Nicholas Evans' is The Brave.  In Montana, Tom lives alone, estranged from his son Danny, now serving in Iraq.  But, when Danny is charged with murder his father will fight to save him.   Richard Paul Evans' brings another Christmas story of hope, love, and faith, Promise Me.

In American Assassin, Vince Flynn tells the story of a college student recruited into the CIA.  But, before becoming a CIA super-agent, Mitch Rapp trained for his first assassination mission - to kill the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the Pan Am flight 103 attack, a tragedy that's personal for Rapp.

Inspired by John Grisham's The Innocent Man, a nonfiction book about a man who spent eleven years on Death Row before DNA proved him innocent, Grisham's novel, The Confession imagines the real killer's thoughts as he watched an innocent person arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for a crime he committed.

Carolyn Hart's ghost, Bailey, faces her toughest case yet in Ghost in Trouble.  On behalf of Heaven's Department of Good Intentions, she has to manage a recalcitrant charge, a fraudulent medium, a mother's heartbreak, ,and old passions.

It's been a few years since Jan Karon had a book out.  In the Company of Others is a Father Tim novel.   He and Cynthia travel to Ireland to do genealogical research.  While staying at the Conor family's country lodge, they find themselves in the middle of a mystery involving family secrets.

In John Le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor, Russian money launderer, Dina, agrees to become an informant in exchange for a safe house in England, after one of his closest colleagues is assassinated.

Djibouti is Elmore Leonard's new book, the story of a documentary film maker who heads to Djibouti to cover a story on modern-day pirates.  Once they start filming, they find more than they bargained for.

Sharon McCone is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head in  Marcia Muller's Coming Back.   She's feeling especially useless when her friend from physical therapy goes missing, and she has to depend on her friends and co-workers to help her solve the disappearance.  The investigation soon proves to be the most dangerous case she's ever worked on.

It's sad to think of Painted Ladies as the last Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker.  Spenser is hired to act as a bodyguard during a ransom exchange, but the ransom money is taken as Spenser fails to protect his client.  The painting held for ransom is still gone, but now Spenser is personally motivated to investigate the true story.

Here's the October debut novel I want to read, Todd Ritter's Death Notice.  Here's the description.  "Perry Hollow, Pa., has never had a murder while Kat Campbell has been sheriff.  Everyone's shocked when the body of farmer Winnick is found in a homemade coffin.  Even more frightening is that the obit writer for the local newspaper got advance notice of the man's death, and they learn that Winnick isn't the killer's first victim."

In Greg Rucka's The Last Run, Tara Chace wants out of the Special Section. Then word is received that the nephew of the late Ayatollah wants to defect, and Chace is pulled back into service as part of the extraction team.

And, the nonfiction title I'm looking forward to reading is Lisa Scottoline's My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space, written with her daughter Francesca Scottoline Serritella.  It's another collection of true life stories in which the authors spill their family secrets.

Connie Willis' All Clear picks up where the previous book, Blackout, left off.  Three young historians from the year 2060 travel back in time to Great Britain during WWII.

Are you waiting for Christmas books?  Lisa Kleypas' is Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor.  Friends and family begin matchmaking when Halle

Anne Perry's annual Christmas book is A Christmas Odyssey.  As Christmas approaches, Henry Rathbone and his friends search pubs, brothels and opium dens to find a missing son.

Donna VanLiere tells the story of the 80-mile journey of a carpenter and a peasant girl to a barn where she gives birth to a child, in her book The Christmas Journey.

The Mischief of the Mistletoe is Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation Christmas book.  Her friend, Jane Austen, warned Arabella about becoming a teacher.  But, she doesn't anticipate trouble when she accepts a position at Miss Clemson's Select Seminary for Young Ladies.  But, it's exactly what she finds when she accepts a cryptic note in French.

(Oh, and I think October's book color is blue.)

So, between the Book Treasures in My Closet, and the hot titles for October, what did I miss?  What books are you anticipating for October?