Another great month of new releases- so excited to see some great middle grade novels on the list.
October 1
A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.
Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, “All at the very same time!” Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago.
When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy’s family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single Thaddeus Malcor, Davy’s older brother, created the life of his dreams by writing a bestselling memoir about his family’s experience and is enjoying success and notoriety as a result, even if the memoir doesn’t quite reveal the whole story. Tabitha Malcor, his mother, is divorced and living alone, advocating for victims’ rights and faithfully cataloging her regrets each week, never including her biggest regret of all. Anissa Weaver was just a kid herself when Davy went missing, and her connection to him is one she cannot reveal as she serves as the Malcor family’s Public Information Officer. And, long suspected in Davy’s disappearance, Gordon Swift has kept his head down and scraped together a decent life. But the new attention to the case makes it impossible to hide from the public, and the past.
When Aviva Davis and Holly Martin meet at the holiday pageant tryouts for their local senior’s center, they think they must be seeing double. While they both knew they were adopted, they had no idea they had a biological sibling, let alone an identical twin! The similarities are only skin deep, though, because while Aviva has a big personality and even bigger Broadway plans, Holly is more the quiet dreamer type who longs to become a famous author like her grandfather.
One thing the girls do have in common is their curiosity about how the other celebrates the holidays. What better way to discover the magic of the holidays than to experience them firsthand? The girls secretly trade lives, planning to stage a dramatic reveal to their families at the pageant. Two virtual strangers swapping homes, holidays, and age-old traditions–what could possibly go wrong?
October 8
Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister Lizzie share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amidst one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi’s Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.
The Battle of Britain rages and Hitler’s invasion creeps closer. And at the same time, baffling messages and codes arrive on their doorstep while a menacing inspector lurks outside the gates of the Bletchley mansion. Are the messages truly for them, or are they a trap? Could the riddles of Enigma and their mother’s disappearance be somehow connected? Jakob and Lizzie must find a way to work together as they race to decipher clues which unravel a shocking puzzle that presents the ultimate challenge: How long must a secret be kept?
On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.
As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.
As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.
Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.
As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.
Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.
October 15
So begins Chapter Twelve of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and the heartwarming story of Harry Potter’s first Christmas at Hogwarts. From the Great Hall decked with magnificent fir trees to cozy evenings in the Gryffindor Common Room to the joy of presents on Christmas morning, it’s a holiday filled with warmth, friendship, good food, and magical surprises that Harry will never forget.
With text drawn directly from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and luminous illustrations by artist Ziyi Gao, this favorite moment from one of the most beloved books of all time is now fully illustrated for the whole family to enjoy. Sure to be treasured by Harry Potter fans of all ages, Christmas at Hogwarts is the perfect gift, destined to become an enchanting new holiday tradition.
Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew.In “The Quiet Limit of the World” Haddon imagines Tithonus’ life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In “The Mother’s Story,” Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king’s wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.” the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior.Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism—to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon’s tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds—all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon’s supple prose, he showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.
October 29
An isolated Scottish island, accessible to the mainland only twelve hours a day. A famous (some might say infamous) artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared after visiting her twenty years ago. A present-day discovery that intimately connects three people and unveils a web of secrets and lies.
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge….
Santo is a stranger in a strange land. He doesn’t know any English, and he gets separated from his mother and siblings at Ellis Island.
Santo’s father left for America a few years before, and he has finally sent word for the rest of his family to come join him in New York. Though Santo has always imagined America as a land of limitless opportunity, when he arrives at Ellis Island, he soon discovers that it’s not what he envisioned. Inspectors separate him from his mother and siblings, and he’s left to fend for himself in Manhattan.
While searching desperately for a clue as to where his family–and his father–have gone, Santo gets caught up with a group of boys who steal. After escaping the police by the skin of his teeth, Santo is taken in by a wealthy man and his wife—but somehow Santo again finds himself on the wrong side of the law. When an unexpected betrayal leaves Santo scrambling, it might just take all the street smarts he’s gained to find a way back to his family.
