Here are a few of the most notable adult fiction debuts for September. These titles have all received positive reviews in library journals. For a longer list, please visit our catalog.
“If I Survive You” by Jonathan Escoffery
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery’s “If I Survive You” center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper — himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica — Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn’t want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.
“Steeped To Death” by Gretchen Rue
Phoebe Winchester’s beloved aunt Eudora has a taste for adventure — and a knack for making magical tea. It’s even rumored that she just might be a witch. So when Eudora passes away and leaves everything to her niece-her Victorian mansion, her bookshop/tea store, The Earl’s Study, and one very chubby orange cat named Bob-Phoebe gets more than she bargained for. And she knows she’s in deep when a dead man is found on the shop’s back step, apparently killed while trying to break in.
Two suspects immediately emerge among the townspeople of Raven Creek, Washington. There’s village busybody Dierdre Miller, who seems desperate to buy Eudora’s house, and handsome PI Rich, one of Phoebe’s childhood friends-but how well does she really know him after all these years apart?
Phoebe knows she should leave it to the professionals, but as she starts to dig into the underbelly of Raven Creek, she begins to uncover the truth about Eudora. What’s more, her aunt might not have been the only witch in the family, as Phoebe soon discovers she has unique and unexpected gifts of her own.
Now, it’s just a matter of putting her newfound power to the test and casting a spell that could catch a killer.
“Ledge” by Stacey McEwan
In a place known as The Ledge, a civilization is trapped by a vast chasm and sheer mountain face. There is no way for anyone to escape the frozen wasteland without befalling a deathly drop. They know nothing of the outside world except that it is where The Glacians reside — mystical winged creatures who bring them meager rations to survive, in exchange for a periodic human sacrifice.
Dawsyn, axe wielder and the only remaining member of her family, has so far avoided the annual culling, but her luck has run out. She is chosen and ripped from her icy home, the only world she knows. No one knows what will happen to her on the other side, least of all Dawsyn. Murdered? Enslaved? Worse?
Thankfully, the fates align and Dawsyn manages to escape their clutches with the help of a half-Glacian called Ryon. But trust does not come easily, and she keeps a trained axe to his throat while they journey together down the slopes. But who’s to say that the life below will be any better than the one she has run from?
“The Witch and the Tsar” by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
As a half-goddess possessing magic, Yaga is used to living on her own, her prior entanglements with mortals having led to heartbreak. She mostly keeps to her hut in the woods, where those in need of healing seek her out, even as they spread rumors about her supposed cruelty and wicked spells. But when her old friend Anastasia — now the wife of the tsar, and suffering from a mysterious illness — arrives in her forest desperate for her protection, Yaga realizes the fate of all of Russia is tied to Anastasia’s. Yaga must step out of the shadows to protect the land she loves.
As she travels to Moscow, Yaga witnesses a sixteenth-century Russia on the brink of chaos. Tsar Ivan — soon to become Ivan the Terrible — grows more volatile and tyrannical by the day, and Yaga believes the tsaritsa is being poisoned by an unknown enemy. But what Yaga cannot know is that Ivan is being manipulated by powers far older and more fearsome than anyone can imagine.
