New Book Releases: October 5, 2021

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

I LOVE YOU BUT I’VE CHOSEN DARKNESS, Claire Vaye Watkins. A new mother takes a work trip to the desert where she grew up, and confronts the relentless ghosts of her past. “Funny, deeply searching, and innovative,” writes the Boston Globe. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.

A SPINDLE SPLINTERED, Alix E. Harrow. In this fantasy novella from the acclaimed author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, a young woman with an illness destined to kill her at 21 pricks her finger and finds herself on a strange journey with another woman desperate to escape her fate. Bookshop.

CACKLE, Rachel Harrison. Following a breakup, a woman takes a job as a teacher in a small town and befriends the alluring, beautiful woman who lives in a mansion on the town outskirts — and seems to transfix the population. “A friendship story that showcases Harrison’s strength at writing powerful and empowered women with razor-sharp wit and a touch of darkness,” writes Library…