We’ve had a break from the blazing-hot weather here in Denver. Today it’s gray skies, chilling air, and rain-soaked patios. I love it! And there’s nothing like a change in weather to spark the beginning of cozy Autumn-inspired posts.
Aside from binging your favorite scary movies (*cough, cough* 26 Flicks for Your Halloween Fix) what’s more fall than curling up in a comfy chair with your favorite fluffy blanket to read a really good book. Nothing, obviously! Accept for maybe accompanying that book with a fresh homemade Rice Krispie treat, and hot tea. Just saying…
I have curated a collection of books you can start reading now, from the more mellow and heartfelt, building to creepy-crawling collections for Halloween, and easing you back into a sweet-treat November.
The Traveling Cat Chronicles
Author Hiro Arikawa
“Nana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he’s going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru’s old friends.”
“But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won’t say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break…” – Goodreads
“The time comes when you’ve just had enough: enough bad news, enough hateful words, enough human suffering, enough gloom and doom. The perfect antidote for those times is The Travelling Cat Chronicles. This exquisitely sized book not only feels good in your hand, but its essence feels good in your brain. Satoru and his cat, Nana, travel miles and miles all over Japan looking for the perfect place for both of them. Both laughter and tears come with this book. It’ll make a cat lover out of even the most ardent resister! Treat yourself to a short reprieve from the world: read this book!”
— Nancy Simpson-Brice, Book Vault, Oskaloosa, IA
Where the Crawdads Sing
Author Delia Owens
A book worth the hype. I recently finished Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and was blown away by the narrative voice within this novel – with detailing that allows the reader to get lost in the diverse and dazzling swamplands of North Carolina. The balance of natural-beauty, mystery, and romance will keep the pages turning.
“For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life’s lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.”
– Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
Author Mary Roach
“What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.”
– Fuzz, Mary Roach
The Woman in the Library
Author Sulari Gentill
In every person’s story, there is something to hide…
“The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.”
– The Woman in the Library, Sulari Gentill
What Moves the Dead
Author T. Kingfisher
“When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruritania.
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.”
– What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher
“Rarely do I come across horror novels with such witty and delightful characters. The dialogue made me want to sit down to tea with each person, but the creepy gothic atmosphere made me want to forgo the tea and run away screaming instead.”
— Anna Hersh, Wild Rumpus, Minneapolis, MN
The Halloween Tree
Author Ray Bradbury
“If you want to know what Halloween is, or if you simply want an eerie adventure, take this mystery history trip. You couldn’t ask for better than master fantasizer Ray Bradbury.”
– The Boston Globe
House of Hunger
Author Alexis Henderson
Release Date: September 27, 2022
WANTED – Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life’s finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply.
“A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power, in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching.”
– Goodreads
Fairy Tale
Author Stephen King
Release Date: September 6, 2022
“Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours.”
– Goodreads
The House Across the Lake
Author Riley Sager
“Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake.
One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears.
With his trademark blend of sharp characters, psychological suspense, and gasp-worthy surprises, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake unveils more than one twist that will shock readers until the very last page”
– Goodreads
Taste: My Life Through Food
Author Stanley Tucci
Named a Notable Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post.
“Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.”
“Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.”
– Taste: My Life Through Food, Stanley Tucci
His Dark Materials | 3 book series
Author Philip Pullman
“His Dark Materials follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. These thrilling adventures of two ordinary children on a perilous journey through shimmering haunted other-worlds. They will meet witches and armored bears, fallen angels and soul-eating specters. And in the end, the fate of both the living—and the dead—will rely on them.”
– Goodreads
The Light We Carry
Author Michelle Obama
Release Date: November 15, 2022
“In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world.”
– Boulder Bookstore
Heart Berries
Author Terese Marie Mailhot
“Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma.”
– Goodreads
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2 responses to “15 Books to Cozy Up To This Autumn”
Hi honey, love your blogs! You know I can’t do scary so I chose Tucci’s book. I’ve been wanting to read/listen to it. Just got the audio from the library, so I’ll be listening during my exercise time. LOVE YOU ❤️
[…] my booklist picks for the season. I’ll be enjoying them alongside you. Like last year’s 15 Books to Cozy Up to This Autumn, I curated a collection of books you can start now, ones that give a harvest mood and fantasy-world […]