Top Ten Reads for September
From a literary titan's subtle dystopia to an unsettling, gothic journey through cemeteries across the world. A long awaited follow-up to one of the biggest memoirs of the last half century to a manic masterpiece, bunny. Find your must-read(s) for the month with our Top Ten Reads for September.
Designing Hope
Designing Hope
02/09/2025
As a design futurist and trend forecaster, Sarah Housley has come to the conclusion that the most dangerous symptom of the current polycrisis is a lack of hope and will to imagine a better future. With our visions of a good future stuck in the sci-fi boom of the nineteen fifties and replaced with doomer pessimism, Housley presents four emerging futures in a call to arms for a reset of hope and optimism.
The Two Roberts
The Two Roberts
04/09/2025
An utterly heart-breaking, beautifully rendered reclamation of queer history. Barr takes the love story of two little-known Glaswegian artists and gives it the spotlight it deserves. The story of Bobby MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun has been enlivened by Barr—clearly tirelessly researched, but brought to life with the flourish of a novelist at the height of their power.
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive
04/09/2025
Full of the irreverent satire that makes his photography so singular, Utterly Lazy and Inattentive (title gleaned from a school report when fourteen years old) is a gloriously wry and, at times, hilarious read. Parr reveals his own fascinating story in an autobiography that acts as much as a chronicle of England in the last half century as a guidebook to how to make it in the art world on your own terms. Includes over 150 of Martin’s photographs in a beautifully produced edition.
Indignity: A Life Reimagined
Indignity: A Life Reimagined
04/09/2025
The author of the brilliant Free returns with a prequel to that book which unravels the mysterious world of her grandmother, Leman. It is both a sweeping and gripping story about vanished worlds—from the Ottoman aristocracy to Communist Albania—and a philosophical investigation into how we can understand the people closest to us.
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
16/09/2025
Thirty-four years ago, readers were captivated by Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, the debut memoir of a young writer named Jung Chang. This is the enthralling sequel to that book, in which Chang returns to the story of her family and that of China, showing how the past continues to shape the future for both. It is above all a moving love letter to her heroic mother, now in her 90s, whom Chang is unlikely to be able to return to visit ever again.
What We Can Know
What We Can Know
18/09/2025
The latest masterwork from a titan of contemporary literature is a many layered novel. Set between the present day and a subtly dystopian 22nd century, McEwan explores language, love, poetry, academia, the climate crisis and—most importantly—time.
We Love You, Bunny
We Love You, Bunny
23/09/2025
Sam has just published her first novel, and the Bunnies are not happy. Awad revisits her hit Bunny with a follow-up that is just as weird and wonderful, disturbing and darkly funny. Fiercely original, and skirting just the right side of insanity, Mona Awad's writing is a thrillingly messed-up joy.
Will There Ever Be Another You
Will There Ever Be Another You
23/09/2025
A kaleidoscopic, hilarious second novel from the author of No One Is Talking About This. A woman amid a global pandemic tries to hold her family, stunned by loss, and her mind, misfiring from a mystifying disease, together. As her sense of self loosens, she wonders whether the illness has stolen her mind and given her a new one. An electrifying, experimental meditation on illness and madness that skims the boundary between fiction and non-fiction.
Cursed Daughters
Cursed Daughters
25/09/2025
The follow-up to My Sister, the Serial Killer follows Eniiyi, whose family insists she is a reincarnation due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt. When she falls in love with a boy she saves from drowning, she must confront her family’s dark history. Is Eniiyi destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys
25/09/2025
Award-winning Argentinian novelist and journalist Enríquez takes an “extraordinary, unsettling, Gothic” journey through cemeteries across the world from Montparnasse and Highgate to the Jewish cemetery in Prague and the hidden Aboriginal cemetery on Rottnest Island in Western Australia, musing along the way on colonial violence, the strange rituals surrounding death and more.
