The Alibi Book Club #31 | A Few Books For Autumn

Taking a book to the beach is all well and good, but there's HONESTLY nothing better than when it gets colder and getting cosy on the sofa by the far with a good read.

Am I right?

And recently, I took a trip to Waterstones - my fave shop ever (aside from Lush obviously) - and stocked up on books to read for the coming season.

I usually tend to pick up books from authors I've not heard of before and whatever's new in. So, I'm pretty excited to delve right in to these... Though I have read one already and am halfway through another - but I'll let you know which ones soon. SO let's dive in shall we??

001: hanya yanagihara - the people in the trees:
I'm currently halfway through this and it's definitely miles away from Yanagihara's other novel A Little Life, and so far feels more magical and mystical rather than scientific. I'm not sure how I feel about Norton's character, but so far it's really good...

"It is 1950 when Norton Perina, a young doctor, embarks on an expedition to a remote Micronesian island in search of a rumoured lost tribe. There he encounters a strange group of forest dwellers who appear to have attained a form of immortality that preserves the body but not the mind.

Perina uncovers their secret and returns with it to America, where he soon finds great success. But his discovery has come at a terrible cost, not only for the islanders, but for Perina himself."

002: a.s. byatt - the children's book:
I picked this one up because it sounds like a cosy autumnal read - perfect for reading on the train for my work trip I think! And the cover looks really magical so it won me over straight away. I legit can't wait to pick this up soon.

"Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours, for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world - but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery.

Each family carries its own secrets. They grow up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, but as the sons rebel against their parents and the girls dream of independent futures, they are unaware that in the darkness ahead they will be betrayed unintentionally by the adults who love them. This is the children's book."

003: rachel kushner - the mars room:
This one gives me OITNB vibes and again, has a pretty cover haha. I'm a sucker for pink aesthetics. I never normally read hardback copies, but when a plot calls to you, you'll take it anyway...

"Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility.

Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy's estranged mother.

Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes.

Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line - until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity.


Through Romy - and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex."

004: jasper fforde - early riser:
If you liked The Hunger Games as a child (or still do!), loved the tv show Orphan Black and have a strange love for zombies - otherwise known as nightwalkers in this novel - then I think you’ll like Early Riser just like I did!

This futuristic novel set in Wales is about the whole population going into hibernation in the Winter (and rising in Spring), and Charlie Worthing joins the Winter Consuls to guard against the elements of Winter and keep those hibernating safe...

Scary dreams that kill people come into the picture, there’s a scientific organisation called HiberTech that’s seemingly hiding something and there’s a campaign called RealSleep with an agenda to save the nightwalkers and stop HiberTech from giving out more Morphenax - probably spelt that wrong (a drug people take to stop themselves dreaming in hibernation)

I’m crap at explaining but if that made sense to you, then definitely read it! It’s not just a pretty cover. It’s gripping and shocking in all the right places. And also has a bit of humour!