5 Hot New Titles for October

Check out these five popular adult titles that hit the shelves in October. To see more titles, including new titles in popular series, check out the booklist New October 2018 Books You'll Want to Read and our recent arrivals page.

Award-winning author Barbara Kingsolver returns with a timely novel that interweaves the past and present in Unsheltered.

Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it's so unnerving that she's arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland's past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood, a science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation. Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Brilliantly executed and compulsively readable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. (from the publisher)

Unsheltered


Written in a fast-paced style, Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History will educate and stun you.

As the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught but others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. Killing the SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled "Nazi hunters." Over the decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death. (from the publisher)

Killing the SS


A rich, spellbinding new novel from the author of The Lake House - The Clockmaker's Daughter is the story of a love affair and a mysterious murder that cast their shadows across generations.


In contemporary London, Elodie, a young archivist, encounters among her employer's collection a satchel, a photographic portrait, and a sketch of a country house. The sketch, in particular, arouses Elodie's professional curiosity and her memories, since it bears a close resemblance to a house figuring heavily in the magical stories her late mother once told her. The trail of Elodie's research - spurred by her discovery that the sketch depicts an actual place - is woven together with tales of the house's various denizens between 1862 and the present, as well as with the voice of a spirit who haunts its walls. This specter - who remains nameless for most of the novel - is the clock maker's daughter of the title, abandoned as a young girl, trained as a pickpocket, and eventually chosen as an artist's muse, but possessing an artist's eye of her own. The novel's central mystery focuses on the circumstances of her abrupt disappearance in the 19th century, entangled with the abduction of a priceless jewel, the murder of the artist's fiancée, and the artist's personal and professional collapse. (from the publisher)

The Clockmaker's Daughter



A Spark of Light is a story that will inspire debate, conversation, and hopefully, understanding.

The warm fall day starts like any other at a women's reproductive health services clinic, its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage. Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, this is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day. (from the publisher)

A Spark of Light


Filled with heart, passion, and unforgettable characters, The Library Book is a classic by Susan Orlean.

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, "Once that first stack got going, it was Goodbye, Charlie." The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but over thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library - and if so, who? Weaving her life-long love of books and reading with the fascinating history of libraries and the sometimes eccentric characters who run them, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean presents a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling story as only she can. (from the publisher)

The Library Book