Autumn has arrived, and with it a bevy of great books you’ll fall for (sorry/not sorry), including highly anticipated releases from the likes of Jesmyn Ward, Bryan Washington, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Adam Grant, and more.
Learn about these and all of the Amazon Editors’ Picks for the Best Books of the Month here.
Let Us Descend
by Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward (two-time winner of the National Book Award) returns with another slamming gut-punch of a story, this time following a young enslaved woman, separated from her mother, who is marched—shackled and bound with others—from one plantation in the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and sold to another plantation. All the while, Annis is guided by Aza, a spirit that has visited the women in her family for generations, simultaneously instilling the distraction of hope that Annis needs to survive while also infuriating her, for what mystical power could possibly allow for a mother to be taken from her daughter and for the relentless horror inflicted on her family—on anyone? Ward’s prose shivers with the weight of heartbreak, finding breath—and, survival—in the quiet, insistent conversations around memory, generations, and the surrounding water and land. Deeply affecting, this visceral novel will steal your breath and make your heart thud…unforgettable. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Midnight is the Darkest Hour
by Ashley Winstead
Midnight is the Darkest Hour is The Handmaid’s Tale crossed with True Blood, with a little dash of Wuthering Heights. When a skull is found in the swamp in Trufayette Parish, Ruth, the daughter of the Louisiana bayou town’s fire and brimstone pastor, is terrified; she thinks the skull may be connected to a “sin” from her Twilight-obsessed youth. But that sin also marks the day she met her best friend, Everett, a brooding, hot guy who happens to be the outcast in their small town, perpetually in the crosshairs of both the law and Ruth’s fundamentalist father. This novel has it all: obsessive love and oppressive religion, tender hearts and dark arts, high emotions and low reputations. It’s both a Southern Gothic potboiler and a coming-of-age story, as a young woman whose town is in the throes of Satanic panic comes to realize that sometimes, as with fire, the only way to fight evil is with evil. Outstanding. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
The Hank Show: How a House-Painting, Drug-Running DEA Informant Built the Machine That Rules Our Lives
by McKenzie Funk
Most of us have never heard of Hank Asher, but he has our number. All of them, in fact. A genius, a maverick, a volatile man with a savior complex, Asher’s world-changing approach to collecting our personal data has had a profound and lasting impact on our lives and privacy in ways that are hard to imagine. A former drug smuggler, Asher learned to code at the age of 35 in the Wild West of our digital lives—gathering information about millions of us that we never agreed to give away. While his intentions were mostly good (he helped law enforcement find missing children and terrorists), what he built, making millions in the process, is a Pandora’s Box that outlasted his life and surely will my own. Fascinating, a little frightening, and incredibly informative, this is the book to read if you want to know how every step you take is tracked, and used, and by whom. —Seira Wilson, Amazon Editor
Family Meal
by Bryan Washington
Cam is back in his hometown of Houston after the loss of his partner, self-medicating with sex, drugs, and alcohol. The devastating circumstances behind Kai’s death are slowly meted out, but that mystery isn’t the beating heart of another moving novel by Bryan Washington (Memorial). After a stint bartending at a beloved, but imperiled, gay haunt, and later, rehab, Cam finds himself back in the kitchen, working at a bakery run by the family who raised him, including his childhood friend TJ. It’s clear that Washington’s love language is food, because his evocative descriptions will whet your appetite and squeeze your heart, as the characters use cooking to smooth the rough edges of their fraught relationships. Family Meal is a meditation on grief, but also a celebration of found family—the people we often treat the worst, but love the most. Dig in. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough
by Michael Easter
We first meet Michael Easter fast-talking his way into a fortified police compound in Baghdad, surrounded by photos of terrorists holding AK-47s, pills, and homemade bombs. How did this science professor and journalist end up here? He’s looking for street drug Captagon, which is sweeping the region. And this is our first clue that Scarcity Brain isn’t your mother’s self-help book. Easter researches how to resolve the behaviors that hurt us most, namely the unquenchable drive for more, more, more: money, things, drugs, food, gambling, love. This rollicking journey for answers also takes us deep into the Bolivian jungle to meet the tribe of people with the world’s lowest heart disease rate, monks, survivalists who have been hired by billionaires, an astronaut, and the inventor of the modern-day slot machine. Easter delves into how cravings saved humanity at the dawn of civilization, but are wreaking havoc today. You’ll finish this book with an understanding of the larger forces driving our desires (and feel a lot less guilty about them), and the tools and words to be at peace with having enough. —Lindsay Powers, Amazon Edit
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer, which explores the contradictions of one man during the Vietnam War and its aftermath, begins with the line (arguably one of the best openers in the past decade): “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” In his memoir, A Man of Two Faces, Nguyen trains the spotlight on his own life and his family’s experience moving from Vietnam to California, violence and racism, and the burning question that so many face: who am I? Teeming with broader stories of immigration and cultural clashes, Nguyen once again offers a thrillingly nuanced portrait of the allegiances, complexities, and aims that guide a single life. Told in paragraphs with interstitial interruptions, Nguyen mimics the intimate, interrupting puzzle of racial identity—”because AMERICA TM itself is and will always be a contradiction”—in real time. Nguyen notes that he will “excel in silence”, and yet, these books and his work, offers the award-winning opposite…a thrillingly engaging and conversational read. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor