These are the books that I want to read this autumn (September to November). Bring your blankets and hot chocolate because it's about to get real cosy.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #1) by Holly Jackson
Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #2) by Holly Jackson
As Good As Dead (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #3) by Holly Jackson
Kill Joy (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #0.5) by Holly Jackson
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus #1) by Art Spiegelman
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus #2) by Art Spiegelman
A Thinking Person's Guide To Islam by H. R. H. Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad
A Good Girl's Guide To Murder series by Holly Jackson
1. A Good Girl's Guide To Murder
The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it. But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn't so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
2. Good Girl, Bad Blood
Pip is not a detective anymore. With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a podcast about the murder case they solved together. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her. But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the same night the town hosted a memorial for the sixth-year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh. The police won't do anything about it. And if they won't look for Jamie then Pip will. But will she find him before it's too late?
3. As Good As Dead
Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars.
4. Kill Joy
Pippa Fitz-Amobi is not in the mood for her friend’s murder mystery party. Especially one that involves 1920’s fancy dress and pretending that their town, Little Kilton, is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder. But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn’t the only case on her mind.
Finding Inner Peace by Imam Abu Layth al-Samarqandi
Amongst the foremost traits of our post-modern society are speed and access. Today, there are fewer barriers than ever between us and that from which our Lord has forbidden us. Yet this "sin-on-demand" culture has left us weary and broken; distanced from God's mercy but often in a manner so subtle and absolute that we are not even aware of it.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Midwesterner Nick Carraway rents a property on Long Island, where his rich and mysterious neighbour is Jay Gatsby, an elusive figure who remains in the shadows while others speculate about his past.
Nick helps reconnect Gatsby with his lost love Daisy Buchanan, now married and living tantalisingly close by. The rekindling of their passion has explosive ramifications, while the secrets of Gatsby's murky past are finally revealed.
Jay Gatsby seems to embody the American Dream, having risen from impoverished obscurity to enjoy the trappings of success. Fitzgerald reveals the hollowness at the heart of an unachievable fantasy, where disillusionment and tragedy lie close beneath the surface sheen of wealth and glamour.
Maus by Art Spiegelman
1. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies.
2. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
And Here My Troubles Began moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale—and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.
A Thinking Person's Guide To Islam by H. R. H. Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad
The world is at a crossroads today. Much anxiety comes from not properly understanding what others think or believe. A tiny minority of Muslims seems to be bent on hijacking the religion of Islam and bringing it into perpetual conflict with the rest of the world. Because of their actions, very few non-Muslims recognise the real difference between Islam as it has always been, and the distorted perversions of Islam today. This book is an attempt to positively say what Islam actually is and always was as well as what it is not.
Marvelous Things Overheard by Ange Mlinko
Marvelous Things Overheard takes its title from a collection of ancient rumors about the lands of the Mediterranean. Mlinko, who lived at the American University of Beirut and traveled to Greece and Cyprus, has penned poems that seesaw between the life lived in those ancient and strife-torn places, and the life imagined through its literature: from The Greek Anthology to the Mu’allaqat. Throughout, Mlinko grapples with the passage of time on two levels: her own aging (alongside the growing up of her children) and the incontrovertible evidence of millennia of human habitation.
Patrick Melrose series by Edward St. Aubyn
1. Never Mind
The Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, five-year-old Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruelty of his father and the resignation of his embattled mother. But on this day, he must endure an unprecedented horror—one that splits his world into two.
2. Bad News
Twenty two years old and in the grip of a massive addiction, Patrick Melrose is forced to fly to New York to collect his father’s ashes. Over the course of a weekend, Patrick’s remorseless search for drugs on the avenues of Manhattan, haunted by old acquaintances and insistent inner voices, sends him into a nightmarish spiral. Alone in his room at the Pierre Hotel, he pushes his body and mind to the very edge—desperate always to stay one step ahead of his rapidly encroaching past.
3. Some Hope
Patrick Melrose, cleaned-up and world-weary, is a reluctant guest at a glittering party deep in the English countryside. Amid a crowd of flitting social dragonflies, he finds his search for redemption and capacity for forgiveness challenged by his observation of the cruelties around him. Armed with his biting wit and a newly fashioned openness, can Patrick, who has been to the furthest limits of experience and back again, find release from the savageries of his childhood?
4. Mother's Milk
Robert provides an exceptionally droll and convincing account of being born. On the other hand, Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband, has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favour of his sons, and Mary is consumed by her children and overwhelming desire not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother.
Mother's Milk examines the web of false promises that entangle this one illustrious family—whose last vestige of wealth, an old house in the south of France—is about to be donated by Patrick's mother to a New Age Foundation.
5. At Last
As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother Eleanor, Patrick Melrose finds himself questioning whether a life without parents will be the liberation he has so long imagined. Yet as the memorial service ends and the family gathers one last time, amidst the social niceties and the social horrors, the calms and the rapids, Patrick begins to sense a new current: the chance of some form of safety—at last.
To Die In Spring by Ralf Rothmann
Distant, silent and a heavy drinker, Walter Urban isn't an ideal father. Even so, his only son—the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel—is curious about Walter's experiences as a German soldier during World War II: Did he fight? Did he kill? He makes his father a present of a blank notebook in which to record his memories, but Walter dies before finishing more than a few sentences. With only his barest skeleton of a story, the son decides to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly.
This, then, is the story of Walter and his dangerously outspoken friend Friedrich "Fiete" Caroli. Both are still teenagers, working as trainee milkers on a dairy farm in northern Germany, when they are forced to "volunteer" for the army during the last and most desperate months of fighting. Walter is put to work as a driver for a supply unit of the Waffen-SS, while Fiete is sent to the front; Walter quickly becomes numb to the madness around him, while Fiete becomes reckless and tries to desert. When Fiete is recaptured and sentenced to death, he and Walter are finally reunited under catastrophic circumstances.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A black man is charged with the rape of a white girl. Deep South in the 1930s, Scout and Jem Finch have to tolerate the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy, along with the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class. The weight of history will only tolerate so much when pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice.
Okay, maybe also grab your phone in case you need to call 999 because there seem to be a lot of books about murder and death in here. It was definitely not intentional.
I've learned from my last reading list that I should not be so ambitious, so I'm taking it down a notch from 26 to 17 books. Hopefully, I'd be able to tackle most of them this time round and read more than I did during the summer.
Let me know what books you are reading this autumn in the comments!
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