New Book Releases: October 19, 2021

Each week, I’ll catalog the biggest and most exciting adult and YA fiction — and the occasional nonfiction — coming out that Tuesday.

OH WILLIAM!, Elizabeth Strout. A woman goes on a trip to discover more about a family secret with her ex-husband, with whom she’s still close. “This brilliant, compelling, tender novel is — quite simply — a joy,” writes the Boston Globe. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.

FEMLANDIA, Christina Dalcher. In an alternate future, a woman takes her daughter to live in an off-the-grid, women’s-only community founded by her own mother, and quickly discovers that something isn’t right — babies are somehow being born, and they’re all girls. “A delightfully dark dystopian twist on Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 feminist utopian novel,” writes Publisher’s Weekly. Bookshop.

WITHIN THESE WICKED WALLS, Lauren Blackwood. In this Ethiopian-inspired retelling of Jane Eyre, a young exorcist finds complicated new employment with the handsome, secretive Magnus Rochester. Kirkus calls it “a promising debut.” Bookshop.