What We’re Reading this September 2026
From missing children to haunted forests and perfect lives hiding monstrous secrets, these are just a handful of gripping titles coming out and expected to hit your bookshelves.
Coltrane Davis is at once a knight and a hustler. He has risen to wealth and success, graduating from San Diego’s back alleys to the halls of power through his partnership with Saul Sollman, a crooked kingmaker among the city’s elite. Running multimillion dollar scams with Saul, he has been Saul’s fixer, but now he wants out of the hustle so that he can focus on his teenage daughter’s burgeoning tennis career and finally be the dad he has always wanted to be.
But when the Los Angeles Chargers’ star running back vanishes one evening before a big game, Coltrane is drawn into an investigation of what happened by Saul and his protégé, the player’s agent; the stakes escalate with a gut-punch when the trail leads into San Diego’s underworld of drugs and prostitution and reveals clues to the disappearance of his daughter’s best friend, whose loss has haunted him.
Torn by the unreconcilable demands of the life he can’t seem to quit and the fierce desire he has to protect his own, Coltrane brings himself and his loved ones to the brink of destruction in his quest to free himself once and for all of Saul’s control—and focus on what really matters: family.
From a powerful new voice, a story that’s at once a haunting southern gothic and a satisfying page-turner, perfect for fans of Stephen King and Liz Moore alike.
Fifteen years ago, Audrey Figg’s little brother, Benny, vanished on a family vacation to Devil’s Den state park, a day that split her life in two. Now, Audrey is a park ranger in the very same woods with expertise in wilderness search and rescue. Audrey has found a rhythm to her days: training new rangers, tending to injured hikers, protecting the backcountry, and still, searching.
When a little girl, Ivy, suddenly goes missing on the trails, Audrey can’t help but notice the similarities to her own brother’s case. As Audrey widens the scope of her search, she begins to believe Ivy wasn’t merely lost; it looks like she was taken by something—and maybe Benny was too. Yet the closer Audrey comes to answers, the more old memories push to the surface. Audrey is haunted not only by her brother’s loss, but a terrible secret from that day. A secret she has never shared with anyone.
Utterly absorbing and disquieting, In the Woods They Wait is an enthralling page-turner, one that asks how far you would go for a sense of closure—and what would you be willing to face to get it.
A determined detective, Thomas Bauer, obsessively pursues Hitler—putting Bauer’s Jewish wife and children in grave danger.
A courageous journalist, Fritz Gerlich, writes story after story detailing the murder—making Gerlich a target for Hitler’s Gestapo.
An American professor, Eleanor Robbins, picks up the trail of evidence from present-day Neo-Nazis guarding the Führer’s long-held secrets to the death.
“Much more than a historical murder mystery, this lively and engaging story—from two masters at the top of their game—reminds us that ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ You need to read this one and never forget.” —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author
In a postapocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence named A.M. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI has become self-aware and has now turned against all humanity. The five survivors struggle for survival in a vast prison created by A.M. in a deeply personal war between hope and despair.
This edition of this defining story also features a new foreword; exclusive photos and essays by Harlan exploring the story’s history and international success; and a response to the story by an entity that—possibly—is most analogous to A.M. itself.
Every day, millions watch Mia Wright, the “trad wife” queen, on her idyllic three-hundred-acre farm. With her handsome husband, seven well-behaved children, and a life of from-scratch meals and pastoral bliss, she’s an icon of modern femininity. But behind every perfect image is a secret. And in this case, the secret is a horror.
Desperate to save her tarnished career, journalist Jenny Kaplan arrives at Black Swan Farm to profile Mia. Jenny is ready to write a scathing exposé, determined to expose the deception behind Mia’s curated life. But soon, Jenny has more to contend with than staged videos and camera-ready poses. There’s something wrong at the farmhouse. Something slithers through Jenny’s dreams, and at night, the children sing strange nursery rhymes.
She’s losing time. She’s losing her hair. She starts to worry that she’s losing her mind.
There is a horror at the heart of Black Swan, and it’s waiting just for Jenny. Trad Wife will make you question what’s real and what’s just a perfectly curated deception…
Will you see the lie?
Until now.
As winter descends and the Fanteur strike back against the logging camp, Dominic and Lex must fight for their lives, their love, and a way out of the woods’ tightening grasp. Because the forest doesn’t forgive, and it never forgets.
Detective Yoshitaro Katayama is afraid of many things: heights, dark spaces, blood and … women. When a young female student is found murdered, he’s given two choices—review the harrowing crime-scene photographs or head to Hagoromo Women’s College to investigate—and reluctantly opts for the latter.
But the threat escalates with additional murders, and soon Katayama has a different surprise on his hands: a calico cat named Holmes, orphaned when the dean himself falls victim.
Surely that’s the last thing Katayama needs. Until Holmes begins to display some uncanny investigative instincts of her own …
On the day Savannah Cody spots her first gray hair, she decides it’s time to murder the father of her only child. Edward “Nickel” Terhune is the getaway driver for the Brady Gang, one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals—with an enticing bounty set on his head. Dragging her son, Alford, and her father, Wendell, a retired railroad detective, along for the quest, Savannah embarks to find the man she once loved and the nation now fears, journeying across an America transformed by the Great Depression. But Alford—and soon, the FBI—notice that the closer the family gets to Nickel, the less clear Savannah’s motivations seem to be.
As the Brady Gang races to escape the law—or get rich trying—Nickel realizes he might not be able to outrun his mistakes. He dreams of a route that will lead him to peace, but no map shows one like that. Will Savannah find him before the police do? And if so, who will return home alive?
Cleverly layered and emotionally taut, perfect for readers of The Lincoln Highway, The Frozen River, and The Alice Network, Die Famous follows a remarkable family as they race toward an impossible reunion—and asks us to consider where our own loyalties lie when ambition, devotion, and truth mean something different to each person telling the story.
Nash is an intelligent man, tough but fair-minded. He has a wife and a daughter and a very high-level position at Sybaritic Investments, where his innate skills and dogged tenacity have carried him to the top of the pyramid in his business career. Despite never going on grand adventures, and always working too many hours, he has a happy and upscale life with his family.
However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night. They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money through Sybaritic. At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years.
Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands and try to bring Steers and her partners to justice. But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated. And that forces Nash to take the ultimate step both to survive and to take his revenge: He must become the exact opposite of who he has always been.
And even that may not be enough.
Freddie Burns just wants ten pints, a spot of football violence, and to take over his uncle’s fading South London crime business. But when a gangland execution goes wrong, Freddie discovers a new kind of organized crime—one where vampires are spine-breakingly real and monsters hide just out of sight.
Good thing Freddie has a supernatural gift for giving vampires a kicking—them and anyone else that looks at him funny.
Dragged into a world of shadowy organizations, secret sorcerous pacts, gruesome vampire initiations, and a plot to rule it all, Freddie realizes it’s up to him to save the world —or at least not wreck it entirely. He just needs a drink first.
Something lives under Willa’s bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them.
When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.
As her past pulls her back to the place where she swore she’d never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind–and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be.
On a rainy night, Luke Oshel gets stood up halfway through dinner. But before his date walks off to the bathroom and never returns, she leaves an old photograph under her napkin–Luke as a child, a dead body in the shadows of his bedroom, and a terrifying masked man. He has no recollection of this event.
Then more photos disrupt his life–Luke posing with murder victims, covered in blood–and he falls back into the deep paranoia and repressed memories he’s tried to leave behind. All the drugs and alcohol, therapy, and hypnosis sessions have never conquered his deepest fear–that he hasn’t escaped the hidden legacy of his late father, who killed his victims by blood loss. But now there is a new string of serial killings, and the evidence all points to Luke.
As his journey to uncover the truth unfolds in the North Georgia Appalachians, a threat arises that will risk everything he holds close, including his ex-wife and their young daughter. Now Luke must chase his father’s darkness through a centuries-old secret and learn what monsters truly are. And decide if he’s one of them.
1877, Pernambuco, Brazil: Raised in a deeply religious household, Madalena knows Dante’s Inferno by heart and fears her mother’s reaction as much as she fears God. When she falls pregnant with a child conceived in sin, her mother issues a threat: marry or surrender the baby. Madalena is confident that the father, the dashing Leandro Neves, will do right by her and propose. But just as she is about to tell him about the baby, a violent storm sends their carriage careening off the road.
Madalena awakens in Leandro’s sprawling, secluded home, under the care of the mysterious and larger-than-life Doctor Lobo. Leandro is there . . . but he is no longer the charming poet she knew. He’s silent. Obsessed. Always watching.
Strange perfume haunts a locked room. Pages vanish from books. Jewels lie untouched in a forgotten wardrobe. And mirrors begin disappearing after Madalena sees something–or someone–ghastly in the reflection.
Leandro is unraveling. Doctor Lobo may be hiding something even darker. Trapped in a decaying house of secrets, Madalena must uncover the truth before the men around her destroy her, and before the hell she fears becomes the one she’s living in.
This is once upon a time, like you’ve never read it before For twenty-five years, DI Lyla Rondell has lived with one unsolved case: her best friend’s disappearance. The only clue–a poisoned apple–earned it the nickname “Snow White.” It’s haunted her ever since.
Now, when a woman is taken in a crime that has striking similarities to the story of Cinderella, Lyla is charged with investigating. And as more murders take place, each one based on a different classic fairytale, Lyla is determined to finally uncover the truth. But these deaths are far from the stuff of bedtime stories. And worse, it becomes increasingly clear that these killings, and the messages left within them, are addressed directly to Lyla.
As the murders get more gruesome, Lyla becomes entangled in a web of crime and storytelling that goes far deeper than she ever could have imagined. Because someone out there is pulling her strings, and to turn the final page on the killings, Lyla will have to take a little creative license of her own.
