When the cooler temperatures hit, it might be a little too frosty to take a dive in your pool – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy some quality time in your backyard. Grab your favorite sweater, pour a hot drink, and cozy up next to your pool with one of these good reads.
Fiction
Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon by Henry March
Release Date: October 3
Why you should read: Delve into the near-perfect memory of a neurosurgeon as he contemplates his work cutting into living people’s brains while they’re still awake. Marsh blends his expertise and gift with words that bring new meaning to the phrase “explore what it means to be human.”
Worlds From the Word’s End by Joanna Walsh
Release Date: In bookstores
Why you should read: Fans of Lydia Davis will love the brevity, wit, and simple curiosity Walsh infuses into each story in this collection of inventive, endearing, and thought-provoking tales.
Dinner at the Center of the Earth by Nathan Englander
Release date: In bookstores
Why you should read: A Pulitzer Prize finalist and best-selling author, Englander crafts a political thriller in the most controversial of places: Palestine. The interchange between a secret prisoner and his guard serves as the setting for contemplation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Nonfiction
Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig
Release Date: October 3
Why you should read: Muhammad Ali embodied everything this nation espouses, while also being an international figure. He rose above the racial divide and the unending conflicts of his time to tower as a giant in sports. Eig introduces us to this man again, giving him the full context his life deserves.
The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
Release date: In bookstores
Why you should read: Morrison delves into her own Charles Eliot Norton lectures, given at Harvard University, as well as the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Conner to explore the interchange of literature with American history and politics.
Reset by Ellen Pao
Release date: In bookstores
Why you should read: Pao tells of her life, a story that drives home the gender discrimination in Silicon Valley, touching on her headline-making lawsuit against a former employer that ended in failure and discussing her ongoing fight for equality.