The Best New Book Releases Out September 5, 2023

Bestselling and award-winning novelist Zadie Smith’s latest is a Victorian fiction based around a real mystery. Eliza Touchet is the housekeeper and cousin to washed up novelist, William Ainsworth, who she knows can’t write worth a lick. The Tichborne Trial — in which a poor Butcher from Australia claimed he was the long lost heir to the Tichborne fortune — sweeps up Touchet and the rest of England, and the entire case may hinge upon the testimony of formerly enslaved Andrew Bogle.

Award-winning Li writes stories of grief, loneliness, and alienation in this collection. A grieving mother creates a spreadsheet of those she’s lost. A postpartum nanny considers running away with her client’s child. A woman — the sole survivor of a teenage suicide pact — feels the presence of other pact members even more now that they’re gone. No matter their situation, Li’s characters are wholly realized, and their everyday lives feel real.

Starting off September with a little dark academia just seems like the right thing to do, and Omotoni’s new novel has a juicy mystery at its center. In a UK boarding school, two Nigerian cousins are having very different experiences. While Iyanu is comfortable living life behind a camera as an aspiring photographer, Kitan is an It Girl who sacrifices her dignity for popularity and protection. When pictures from Iyanu’s camera are stolen and placed throughout the school — each with a messy secret written on it — people think Iyanu is behind the whole thing. As Iyanu sets out to clear her name by figuring out who is behind the sabotage, the two girls will contend with all the racism, microaggressions, and classism that comes with being the few Black people at a majority white boarding school.

These classic remixes have been amazing so far. Before this retelling, there was My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore, and others. Here, Dimaline writes a queer and Métis take on The Secret Garden. Mary Lennox is orphaned at 15 and sent to live with an estranged uncle in the Georgian Bay. Where she expects to find a cold, aloof household, she instead finds one with welcoming people, many of whom are Indigenous. She also finds her cousin, Olive, who has been kept away in an attic for years because of her “condition.” Once the two girls become besties, Mary will go up against Olive’s ill-tempered stepmother as she tries to free her cousin from something that seems sinister. She realizes that to do so, she may need to explore the locked away and overgrown garden that she found.

A young lesbian poet considers her life as she travels from Moscow to Siberia to bury her mother’s ashes. As she prepares for the journey, the narrative visits the moments leading up to the death of Oksana’s mother, Angella — how there was an empty look in her eyes and even how her breath smelled. This leads to revisiting Angella’s emotional distance throughout Oksana’s childhood, which then leads to Oksana contemplating how this distance factored into her romantic relationships as an adult.

Liz and her husband recently moved to New York City and her husband is eager to get into elite circles. That’s why when lifestyle guru Britta Harris-Che invites them to dinner, Liz accepts, even though she’d rather do anything but. After the dinner starts, the title of the book comes into play as a red alert comes through on everyone’s phones warning of these “glimmering clouds” that have appeared and are killing anyone who comes into contact with them. Desperation starts to spread through the guests once they realize they can’t leave.