Welcome October - the month of pumpkins, witches and all things spooky!
I've got some cracking books in my to read list for this month. Some new, some old and some that have been on my TBR for far too long.
What are you planning to read this month? Is there anything here that has caught your eye?
Frankie by J.M. Gutsch and Maxim Leo
Meet Frankie the cat. He’s a stray who belongs to no one, and that’s just how he likes it.
Until one day, everything changes. He crosses paths with Richard.
Richard isn’t doing so well. Grieving the loss of his partner, he’s turned his back on hope and is ready to end it all. But his plans are halted when Frankie the cat is injured on his doorstep.
Frankie needs help. But then, so does Richard. What Richard doesn’t know is that Frankie is no ordinary cat.
It’s an unlikely partnership. But it might be exactly what they both need . . .
Concrete Dreams by Ferdinand Dennis
Concrete Dreams tells the gripping story of Lucas Bostock, a Jamaican immigrant who arrives in 1950s London determined to succeed — and to impose his vision of success on his family. A harsh, domineering man, shaped and scarred by survival, Lucas is no one’s idea of a nice man. When his wife Rhoda finally leaves him, taking their only daughter, he’s left to raise their three sons with a mix of toughness, pride, and unrelenting ambition.
Lucas believes that hard work — on building sites, as a carpenter, and eventually as a landlord — is the only way to protect his family. But as his children grow up and take their own paths through boxing, journalism, politics, retail, and religion, they are forced to reckon with the cost of their father’s influence. Meanwhile, the tenants in his houses add further layers to this vivid portrait of Caribbean-British life, sharing their stories of resistance and renewal in a changing city.
Dennis crafts Lucas with remarkable honesty — flawed, often unlikeable, but deeply human. Concrete Dreams is both an intimate family saga and a bold exploration of race, masculinity, and generational legacy. It’s a Windrush story, but one that refuses easy narratives, capturing instead the full complexity of Caribbean London and the voices that shaped it—and a narrator determined to tell his own.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him too.
When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him to the front. Ellwood and Gaunt find love in the trenches – but just as war brought them together, it can tear them apart…
An epic, unforgettable love story between two soldiers in the First World War, In Memoriam is a breath-taking debut.
A Lot to Unpack by Portia MacIntosh
Liberty’s just landed her dream job. The catch? It’s at Matcher, the dating app that ruined her life. After catching her boyfriend sending intimate pictures to everyone in a twenty mile radius, Liberty is struggling to get back into the dating game. Every man gives her the ick sooner or later.
Still, she’s having a great time travelling the world for work, until she’s assigned a secret mission: Travel to New York with her handsome and charming boss Jordan and swap out a contract from under his nose. It should be easy, but the more time Liberty spends with Jordan, the more she realises he might not be the bad boy she thought he was. But it turns out they’ve both got a lot to unpack, and Liberty still needs to complete her mission if she wants to keep her job - which means not breaking the one golden rule: do not fall for the boss!
The Bordeaux Book Club by Gillian Harvey
When Leah and her husband moved to France, it was with the dream of becoming self-sufficient. But in truth, it’s not the ‘good life’ she’d imagined, as three hours of digging barely yield a single straggly carrot. Worse, her teenage daughter is acting up, and her husband seems to find every strange excuse under the hot French sun to disappear.
So when her friend entreats her to join the new bookclub she’s forming, Leah decides it’s something she will do for herself. The chance to make new friends, to drink a few glasses of wine, and to escape into stories that take her miles away from the life she’d thought would be her own happy-ever-after.
But the book club is a strange group of misfits. There’s prickly Grace, who lives alone and seems to know everybody and like no-one. Buttoned-up Monica, who says her husband is away and appears to be parenting her baby all alone. Handsome builder George, who has barely read a book before. And Alfie – who is a full two decades younger than everyone else, and is hiding a devastating secret…
As the stories they read begin to bring the new friends closer together, Leah is about to discover that happy-ever-afters don’t always look how you expect them to…
The Silent Sister by Jan Baynham
A woman searching for somewhere to belong.
A child rescued from the rubble of a ruined island.
A secret buried in the heart of Kefalonia.
Greece, 1953. When a catastrophic earthquake reduces the beautiful island of Kefalonia to ruins, Cassia Makris risks everything to save a young girl buried beneath the rubble that was once her home.
In that moment, Cassia makes a life-changing decision that will bind their fates forever but force her to carry a devastating secret . . .
Wales, 1973. Eléni Davies has always felt there was something unspoken in her past — a silence at the heart of her childhood. When she discovers a hidden journal among her mother’s belongings, it unravels an untold story of love and loss on a faraway island.
Drawn to the place where her story really began, Eléni travels to the now-rebuilt Kefalonia. Among the lemon groves and sun-bleached chapels, she begins retracing her mother’s footsteps to piece together a story that was never meant to be told.
But in doing so, Eléni must decide whether some secrets are better left buried — or whether confronting them is the only way to finally heal.
Ever After by Amanda Prowse
If you’re given another chance at love, shouldn’t you take it?
Enya’s life has become small. Her husband’s death has left her bereft, and though she’s only in her early fifties, she’s happiest looking after her son, Aiden, his childhood sweetheart, Holly, and her beloved cat, Pickle.
So the spark she feels for the stranger who bumps into her car in the airport car park is a complete shock. But Enya can’t stop thinking about him.
Then, when Aiden makes a life-changing decision, Enya suddenly finds her close-knit community thrown into chaos. Her best friend, Jenny, isn’t speaking to her, Aiden’s future hangs in the balance, Holly is devastated, and the stranger from the car park is suddenly in her life.
Torn between family, love and loyalty, Enya faces a dilemma: stay safely where she is, or take a leap into the unknown? Because maybe her happily-ever-after could have one more chapter yet…
Kindred Spirits at Harling Hall by Sharon Booth
Can Callie give some needy ghosts their happy-ever-afterlife, while making Rowan Vale her own forever home?
When cash-strapped single mum Callie visits the beautiful Cotswold village of Rowan Vale on a school trip with her daughter, she is enchanted. It's run as a living museum, with a steam railway, vintage teashop, Elizabethan manor house and old water mill allowing tourists to see history in action.
But there's more to Rowan Vale than meets the eye...
To Callie's surprise, the owner of the village, elderly Sir Lawrence Davenport, requests a meeting with her. It appears Callie has been observed talking to several villagers she shouldn’t be able to see - as they’re ghosts.
Sir Lawrence then makes an astonishing offer: to sell Callie the whole estate for a tiny sum, if she agrees to protect the village’s present tenants and make sure the headstrong ghosts are represented too.
With a spectral lord of the manor and his imperious wife, a naughty 1940s schoolgirl and the man who once taught William Shakespeare among them, it seems Callie’s role as owner wouldn’t be easy.
And that’s without the added complication of Lawrie’s disinherited grandson, the gorgeous Brodie.
Rowan Vale and Callie may need each other. But is this a match made in heaven or hell?
All Change at Harbour House by Fenella J. Miller
Wivenhoe May 1940
A moment that changes everything...
The war continues to rage, but for now, Harbour House continues to keep the Roby family safe from harm. Not so for new lodger Richard Stoneleigh. As one of the few men who can captain a ship, Richard is called to help with the dangerous evacuation of troops from Dunkirk – it’s a perilous voyage that almost costs Richard his life…
Housemaid, Annie Thomas, initially disliked Richard and his hoity toity ways, but after his heroic return she sees a changed man. Richard seems to know the value of life and is eager to grab every day and make it count. And Annie, recently widowed and feeling slightly adrift in life, finds him compelling.
As their friendship develops, so too do their feelings for one another. But Annie knows that she can never truly be with a man like Richard – he is far above her own lowly class.
But war changes everything and with the fear of imminent invasion hanging over everyone, Anne and Richard decide that perhaps it’s time that they change too…and take a chance together?
Will they overcome the social divides between them and find love in the darkest of times?
The Wonderful Discovery of Elizabeth Sawyer by Jonathan Vischer
The year is 1621: a time of paranoia following the English Reformation. In London’s Newgate prison, Elizabeth Sawyer, the mother of eleven children, lies shackled in her cell. Denounced as a witch by her woodland neighbours and condemned to death by the court, Elizabeth has one last chance to make her peace with this world. By way of confession, she tells the prison chaplain three stories about her life.
Chaplain Goodcole at first responds with revulsion. Like the court he condemns Elizabeth as wicked and depraved but as her execution draws near, his opinion shifts. Does this ‘ignorant’ countrywoman know something that he doesn’t? Has she indeed made a wonderful discovery, or has he, as his colleagues suspect, fallen under the spell of a wily and malign witch?
Based on a true story, this novel is rooted in the struggles of rural women 400 years ago. Exploring different types of power, it unravels the fear and superstitions surrounding any girl or woman who spoke her mind.
