WSS September Book Club: New Reads Worth Making Time For
September has delivered another strong release months, and half the trouble is knowing where to start. John Green’s back with his first adult novel in almost a decade, Lucy Foley’s bringing Miss Marple back exactly fifty years after Agatha Christie’s last, Myf Warhurst has written the funniest midlife survival guide going, and Zoe Foster Blake’s Group Chat is basically a love letter to your group chat. Add a Rebecca reimagining, and a revenge fantasy every woman will secretly enjoy. Whatever you are in the mood for this month, one of these should fit the bill.
Hollywood, Ending — John Green
Yes, that John Green, the one behind The Fault in Our Stars, is back with his first adult novel in almost a decade. Hollywood, Ending follows two rising actors, Kai and Juniper, cast in a buzzy biopic about Andy Warhol just as their own lives start spinning out of control, on screen and off. Green’s trademark tenderness is here, but so is a sharper, more adult edge as he picks apart what fame actually costs a person. Perfect for anyone who loved his earlier books but has been waiting for him to write for grown-ups.
The Extraordinary Florence Stoker — Karen Brooks
Karen Brooks turns her attention to a woman history has largely reduced to a footnote: Florence Balcombe, who married Bram Stoker and spent her life in the shadow of his most famous creation. Set in the theatre and literary circles of 1870s Dublin and London, this one gives Florence the complexity she deserves, a woman once engaged to Oscar Wilde, running dazzling salons, all while contending with a husband increasingly consumed by his own monster. Rich, gothic and overdue.
The World Beneath Her Feet — Holly Ringland
Ringland’s fans have been waiting for this since The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, and it doesn’t disappoint. Maggie Byrd has built a quiet, contained life in London, but when she inherits her uncle’s rewilded property in southeast Queensland, the past she left Australia to escape starts pushing its way back in. Expect Ringland’s usual lyrical prose and deep feeling for landscape, this time turned toward memory, belonging and what it means to finally go home.
Picoult’s thirtieth novel opens on a devastating premise: Molly’s mother never came home from a morning appointment on September 11, 2001. Now grown and running an emergency preparedness department, Molly has spent her life planning for disaster, right up until one strikes far closer to home than she ever imagined. It’s classic Picoult territory, moral complexity, family secrets, and a plot that will absolutely dominate your next book club discussion.
The follow-up to Anderson’s bestselling Want, this is another curated collection of anonymous letters from women around the world, this time going further into what women think, feel and fantasise about when nobody’s watching. It’s frank and unfiltered, and it’s clearly struck a chord internationally. Not one for every book club, but a genuinely fascinating read if your group likes to get into the honest, occasionally confronting stuff.
If you need a laugh this month, this is it. Warhurst, best known from Spicks and Specks and now fronting her own podcast, has written what she calls part confessional, part self-help, part manifesto for anyone navigating the chaos of midlife. It’s funny, it’s a little unhinged in the best way, and it will have you nodding along more than you might expect.
From the author of The Immortalists comes something entirely different: biologist Laurel Salter is hiding out at an isolated Antarctic research station, washing dishes and running from a marriage and career she’s left behind. What unfolds is a genre-bending, deeply emotional story about grief, time and how far we’d go for more of it. Early reviews are calling it one of the best books of the year, and the premise alone is enough to spark a big discussion.
The Paradise Resort — Tricia Stringer
A warmer, funnier read for anyone wanting something a little lighter. Nelda runs a luxury Kimberley resort and has more than enough on her plate already, difficult guests, inexperienced new staff, and a wealthy visitor recovering from cancer who needs careful handling. Then word gets out there’s a spy among them, one who could expose the secret Nelda’s been hiding all along. Community, humour and a touch of intrigue, all set against a stunning Australian backdrop.
Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel — Lucy Foley
Fifty years to the day since Agatha Christie’s last Miss Marple novel, Lucy Foley has been entrusted with bringing her back. Set in a snowbound 1950s Swiss hotel, the story rotates between four unreliable narrators, all concealing something, while Miss Marple quietly watches from the sidelines until a guest turns up dead at the top of the mountain. If your book club loves a classic whodunit, this is the literary event of the season.
Part Bridesmaids, part White Lotus, and part Mamma Mia, GROUP CHAT is a love letter to female friendship and a powerful reminder that life is short, and it goes real fast, so book the damn girls’ trip.
The Housekeeper — Rose Tremain
Tremain imagines the real story behind Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, told through Danni, the housekeeper at a grand Cornish estate who falls into a secret, consuming relationship with the young writer visiting to research her next novel. When that novel becomes Rebecca, Danni finds herself immortalised on the page in ways she never expected. Atmospheric, clever and already being adapted for film with an extraordinary cast attached.
The revenge fantasy novel that every woman secretly wishes for: that her closest, most loyal group of female friends would do anything to take down the man who hurt her.
That’s your September sorted. Ten books, ten completely different moods, and more than enough to keep any book club talking well into October.
