Fingers itching to pick up a new book? October is crammed with fresh releases. From Australian writer Madeleine Gray's debut to Julia Fox's "masterpiece" memoir to musical biographies written about Lou Reed and by Thurston Moore, these are the new books to know in October 2023.

 

Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes

Release date: October 3

Longtime Rolling Stone music critic and NPR contributor, Will Hermes, has written a definitive biography on the wayward life of Lou Reed. The book is the first of its kind to draw on the New York Public Library’s Lou Reed archive, and traces the musician's influence on music, culture, art, New York City, as well as his relationships with Laurie Anderson, Rachel Humphreys, David Bowie, Andy Warhol and more. Hermes has created a nuanced portrait of a complicated man; touching on his artistic ambition but unwilling to hold back on Reed's shortcomings too.

 

Green Dot, Madeleine Gray

Release date: October 3

"What are the kind of normative pulls that still try and get us even though we know that they're a bad idea?" It's this question that Madeleine Gray grapples with in her debut novel, Green Dot. It follows 20-something Hera, a bisexual woman living in Sydney with her dad. While her friends are building careers, the protagonist is languishing in a job as a comment moderator, after deciding that this time around she's going to try the conventional path. Along this well-trodden walk, Hera enters into an affair with an older married colleague. Although, it's not what you expect. Read our interview with Madeleine Gray.

 

Edenglassie, Melissa Lucashenko

Release date: October 3

Melissa Lucashenko, author of Too Much Lip, has written a novel set in Meanjin at a time when First Nations people outnumber the colonists. Edenglassie opens with a romance between Mulanyin and Nita, but as colonial unrest spikes, Mulanyin's plans to take his new bride to Yugambeh Country are thwarted. Two centuries and five generations later, passionate activist Winona meets Dr. Johnny as the pair cares for 90-year-old Granny Eddie. What becomes clear to all except the characters within, is how much weight the legacies of the past have on their world today.

 

Rouge, Mona Awad

Release date: October 4

A novel overlaid with a gothic fairy tale feel, Mona Awad returns with Rouge. Inspired by an unsettling trip to a hotel spa, Awad fashions a horror out of our obsession with beauty and wellness. It follows Belle, a woman who finds herself in Southern California dealing with the admin following her estranged mother's death. The two shared a deep, almost devout, interest in beauty – Belle is always watching YouTube bloggers, Noelle, her mother, was a member of a cultish beauty spa. When a strange woman appears at the funeral, Belle begins wondering if there was something behind her mother's death and is sucked into the La Maison de Méduse, the same strange spa her mother attended.

 

A Therapeutic Journey, Alain de Botton

Release date: October 10

Everyone's favourite English philosopher, Alain de Botton, has returned with a guide to mental health. A Therapeutic Journey, which follows the arc from mental crisis to recovery, is the latest addition to de Botton's manuals on how to live. Written with kindness and the author's signature brand of empathy, it's intended as a companion for trying times and a resource on how to build resilience when redemption seems intangible.

 

Down the Drain, Julia Fox

Release date: October 10

Remember Julia Fox's self-proclaimed "masterpiece" memoir? Well, it arrives this October. In Down the Drain, Fox sheds light on her past; from her tumultuous childhood split between Italy and New York, her mercurial relationships with men – and the meaningful one with her young son, her pivot to acting, that time she spent as a dominatrix, marriage, fame, overdoses and the friends she lost along the way – all of it is in there, signed off with Fox's charismatic honesty and openness.

 

Family Meal, Bryan Washington

Release date: October 10

Bryan Washington, the Dylan Thomas Prize-winning author of Memorial and Lot, gifts us with Family Meal. The book revolves around Cam and TJ, two young men that grew up together as neighbours, family, lovers, before being ripped apart by betrayal and circumstance. Now, Cam has returned to his hometown, running in the same circles as TJ, and the two strike up a fizzing dynamic. But like TJ's family bakery and the shifting cityscape surrounding them, neither man is quite the same as they once were. If you like novels which with food-heavy scenes, this is for you.

 

Opinions, Roxane Gay

Release date: October 10

Since her 2014 book of essays, Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay has become a steady source of clarity in an increasingly confusing world. People respect her opinions because they are thoughtful, unrushed, honest and unafraid to embrace life's gray areas. Opinions carries a decade's worth of the writer's social commentary, with essays on celebrity culture, masculinity, civil rights, and more that are just as relevant today as when they were first published.

 

Death Valley, Melissa Broder

Release date: October 24

Melissa Broder is back with another novel, which is music to the ears of anyone who loved The Pisces and Milk Fed. Inspired in part by her own life, the protagonist is navigating a looming book deadline, a sick husband and a father in ICU. Seeking reprieve from these troubles, she pulls into a Best Western where the receptionist recommends a walk in the Californian desert landscape. She follows her advice, and during a hike discovers a cactus, extraordinary in height and completely out of place. She notices a door in its flesh and steps through where the cactus takes her on a transformative psychedelic journey.

 

Sonic Life, Thurston Moore

Release date: October 31

If you devoured Kim Gordon's Girl In A Band, the memoir from her ex-husband and Sonic Youth bandmate serves as a companion read. It tracks the formation of Sonic Youth and New York's No Wave scene from the very beginning, detailing Moore's lifelong obsession with music and his move to the East Village in 1978. There's cameos from Pavement, Hole and Nirvana, and Moore discusses performing with Neil Young and Iggy Pop.

 

I Don't, Clementine Ford

Release date: October 31

Readers of Ford will be familiar with the feminist writer's searing passion and assertive voice. In I Don't Ford breaks builds a convincing case against marriage, something all women, regardless of sexual orientation, will have considered throughout their lives.

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