On My Radar | October 2026

 

Here's my monthly roundup of books releasing this month that I've got my eye on. Dive Bar at the End of the World, Peck & Peck, Sunderworld Vol II and Public Access Afterworld are top of my list.    

Partita by Barbara Kingsolver

Released → 6th October 

Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.

Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the traumas of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.

Do You See What I See? by Peter Swanson

Released → 6th October

When author Nicholas Child is dropped by his publisher, his agent sends him to spend the holidays at the Cape Cod mansion of her other client, Marco Tavares. Marco needs to finish the long-overdue follow-up to his bestselling novel, and Nicholas is going to help him.

But when Nicholas arrives at Marco’s sprawling seaside estate, which is decked out in twinkling lights and a towering Christmas tree, he finds himself in the middle of a gathering where holiday cheer is in short supply—and every visitor seems to have a motive to kill their host.

Along with Marco and his wife Nora—who are currently sleeping in separate rooms—also present is Marco’s oddball sister, near-silent grandmother, ex-girlfriend and her jealous husband, and long-suffering best friend, Billy Sousa. The most intriguing guest is named James Beers, another writer who believes that Marco’s bestselling novel was based on one of his ideas.

As Christmas Day approaches, a single boozy night culminates in two corpses, and Nicholas becomes convinced that the whole thing was a setup from the start.

Dive Bar at the End of the Road by Kelley Armstrong 

Released → 6th October 

A forested road at night, slick from the pounding rain and eerily illuminated by flashes of lightning. Just before midnight, a car swerves to avoid something—or someone—mysteriously standing in the road, only to slam into a fallen tree instead. In the pitch black, four more cars follow in a pileup no one can seem avoid.

Stumbling out of the wreckage, soaked from the rain and nursing various injuries, five strangers find themselves in a backwoods dive bar, waiting for daybreak and hoping for cell service. But as tensions rise and the storm rages on outside, the occupants of the dive bar start to notice that not everything is as it seems. Time is moving differently, and they quickly learn that going outside—whether to assist another accident victim or to hike for help—is a very bad idea.

There’s something in the woods, something that isn't natural. Could the figure in the road have been a warning? Or something more sinister? None of this is normal, and they'll need to work together to figure out what’s happening if they have any hope of surviving through the night.

A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz 

Released → 6th October 

Gardenpath is a graduate student in biology who desperately wants to pass their exams with the highest honor possible: a prize given to scholars who discover something truly novel in the universe. Gardenpath also happens to be an amoeba–a slime mold, to be exact–from an ancient civilization that dwells in a vast network of towers between the stars. Seeking their prize, Gardenpath heads to a remote, dangerous planet that other researchers have dismissed as dead and uninteresting. There, they are surprised to discover a complicated ecosystem unlike anything they've ever encountered–including some peculiar, multicellular animals who seem to have language and culture.

To learn more about these animals, Gardenpath changes their shape to resemble one of them. And that's how they meet a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known to locals as "the lupanar." Unfazed by a visitor who says she's from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.

Bad Words by Rioghnach Robinson

Released → 6th October 

Parker Navarro’s debut novel was meant to define his career - until critic Selina Chan’s blistering review made it the flop of the decade. Four years later, his new book is his shot at redemption; for Selina, reviewing him again is a professional risk she can’t refuse. When her second takedown ignites a viral feud, both their fortunes shift overnight. But as the literary world feeds on their public sparring, a quieter dialogue begins - one that challenges everything they thought they knew about success, sincerity, and each other.

Life Out of Order by Audrey Niffenegger

Released → 6th October 

Alba DeTamble has never lived a life in order. Born with the same rare Chrono-Displacement Disorder as her father Henry, she slips unpredictably through decades, haunted by the secrets of a future she can witness but cannot change. As Alba strives to maintain a normal life with Zach, her safe, supportive anchor, she forms a tight-knit community of artists and activists who fight to take care of each other in an increasingly unstable world. 

Please Enjoy Your Stay by Tara Goedjen

Released → 13th October 

When they were teenagers, Mia’s beloved cousin was murdered during their stay at an infamous castle in the Austrian Alps. As the only witness, Mia’s testimony put the killer behind bars, but it tore her life apart: the media accused her aunt, a controversial true crime author, of being involved. Now, a decade later, the murderer is appealing his conviction, and a popular true crime podcast starts covering the case, determined to exonerate him, and resurfacing lies about Mia’s family in the process.

Desperate to protect her aunt—and what she knows to be the truth—Mia returns to Austria. The castle is being revamped as a luxury hotel, and Mia gets a job as a nanny for the new owner, hiding in plain sight as she investigates, needing to set the story straight once and for all. But after someone mysteriously disappears on the property and sinister new evidence emerges regarding her cousin’s death, she realizes she might have accused the wrong man...and put her own life in danger.

The Museum of Modern Love by Mariko Turk

Released → 13th October 

Tonight, inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art—somewhere between the hours of 8 PM and 5 AM—Auden Peck will fall in love with Miki Kawamura.

That’s Miki’s plan, anyway. And the plan is destiny.

See, Miki’s grandparents fell in love after accidentally being locked in the Met overnight in 1965. And now, after too many almost-confessions, hopeless romantic Miki will finally tell her best friend Auden that she loves him by retracing the path through the museum that her grandparents took that fateful night.

But destiny has other plans. For it’s not Auden who joins Miki on her midnight tour, but Lou McSweeney—the world’s most jaded cynic, and Miki’s ex. How can she possibly confess her feelings for Auden when she’s stuck sparring with this arrogant jerk? And is it possible that her original plan was not destiny’s true course after all?

Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus 

Released → 13th October 

Batter Gray is worried about his future. Even when he was eleven, his classmates seemed to have settled on a goal: doctor, lawyer, broker, engineer. Good jobs that automatically command respect, security, 401Ks. Now Batter is in his early twenties, living in New York City, and he wants something different; something that alienates some readers and bores most. Poetry. And yet—to him and exactly thirty-nine editors at a company called Peck & Peck—poetry not only represents the power of humanity but holds the key to its survival.

Batter is named after his mother’s heroic dog. An identical twin who lost his brother at birth, he finds himself confronted by the everyday dualities that make up life: right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, rejection vs. acceptance. It’s almost as if his dead brother is a reminder: there are always two sides to every story.

No, wait. Make that three.

Sunderworld, Vol. 2: The Unfortunate Responsibilities of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs

Released → 13th October 

Sunderworld isn't finished with Leopold Berry—not by a long shot. In the aftermath of the incredible cliffhanger that ended Vol. 1, Leopold, Emmet, and Isabel will begin to unravel the mysteries of Sunder and the secret history of Leopold's family. Vol. 1 left readers breathless, and Vol. 2 promises even more magic and suspense.

Whale Harbor by Mary Beth Keane

Released → 20th October 

1960s, Ireland. In the wake of tragedy, a father makes choices for his eleven grieving sons. The older brothers will emigrate to England for work, while the younger ones will stay behind. The second eldest, Macdara, is offered a job on a Montana cattle ranch and sets off. His spirited younger brother Rian begs to come along and Mac promises to bring Rian to America as soon as he’s old enough. But then one day Mac gets a call that Rian has gone missing. His disappearance will haunt Mac and his family across decades.

Spanning lifetimes and continents, Whale Harbor is “tender, immersive, and exquisitely written” (Florence Knapp, author of The Names) with award-winning author Mary Beth Keane’s signature wit, eloquence, and attention to the emotional resonance of family, brotherhood, and the choices that echo across generations.

Queen of Lombard Street by Lisa Kleypas

Released → 20th October 

In Victorian England, no woman—not even a brilliant economist like Reina Martin—is allowed to open her own bank account. Men will take care of everything, women are told. But Reina knows better. As the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish immigrant mother, she’s haunted by the memory of living with unpaid grocer’s bills and no coal for the hearth.

So together with her mentor, the powerful banker William Farlow, Reina will build the first all-women’s bank, where women can manage their own financial security.

At home, Reina’s domestic staff of recently paroled prisoners are building new lives and becoming a found family. But soon Reina is shocked to discover that her enigmatic butler, John Pembroke, is an undercover police detective. He’s been assigned to investigate Farlow, who’s suspected of financial crime on a scale so massive, it could destabilize the British economy. Pembroke needs Reina’s expertise for a high-stakes nighttime heist to obtain incriminating evidence.

Now Reina faces the agonizing choice of betraying her mentor or turning her back on thousands of working-class families who stand to lose everything. Either way, her dream of the women’s bank may be over.

But courage and sacrifice aren’t limited to the battlefield—they also occur at the kitchen table, where women who believe in compassion and community are working to remake the future. And when the stakes are highest, Reina knows to trust her heart as well as her intellect.

The Brightness by Chad Harbach

Released → 27th October 

At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college graduate, engaged to Mike, her longtime boyfriend, and helping her friend Owen pull off his own destination wedding on Block Island. But over that wild wedding weekend, Pella’s past and present collide spectacularly, blowing up her plans and sending her spiralling toward an unplanned future in New York City.

There, in a city that’s equal parts glittering opportunity and cutthroat grit, Pella is forced to see herself in constantly changing lights as she wrestles with who she is and what she will become. As she cycles through possibilities and identities – is she an artist? A bartender? A scholar, a lover, a wife? – Pella navigates the heights and depths of passion and ambition, and the incalculable wages of love and loss.

Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun

Released → 27th October 

At 5:35pm on September 3rd, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray “Can You Say Sunshine” Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.

On June 12th, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin’s basement to watch TV’s analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld and their lives are changed forever.

Seventeen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill’s bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld.

But what is Public Access Afterworld?

Which books being released in October are you excited for? Let me know in the comments and Happy Reading!