Autumn's literary harvest

Books to savor this season | COMPILED BY MOLLY HAINES RIDDLE

In Kirsty Greenwood's "The Love of My After Life," a recently deceased woman meets “the one” in the afterlife waiting room, scoring a second chance at life (and love!) if she can find him on earth before 10 days are up. 

If she wasn’t dead already, Delphie would be dying of embarrassment. Not only did she just die by choking on a microwavable burger, but now she’s standing in her “shine like a star” nightie in front of the hottest man she’s ever seen. And he’s smiling at her.

As they start to chat, everything else becomes background noise. That is until someone comes running out of a door, yelling about a huge mistake and sending the dreamy stranger back down to earth. And here Delphie thought her luck might be different in the afterlife.

When Delphie is offered a deal to return to earth and reconnect with the mysterious stranger, she jumps at the opportunity to find her possible soulmate and a fresh start in life. But in a city of millions, Delphie is going to have to listen to her heart, learn to ask for help, and perhaps even see the magic in the life she’s leaving behind.

First Published: July 2, 2024

Genres: Romance, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Chick Lit

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.21/5 

In "Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books," Beverly Underwood and her arch-enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on a mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “unsuitable” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter, Lindsay, sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome” dust jackets. “The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution” is wrapped in the cover of “The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette.” A jacket that belongs to “Our Confederate Heroes” ends up on “Beloved.” One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor. 

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town…and change it forever.

First Published: June 18, 2024 

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Books About Books 

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.21/5 

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. In Stephanie Marie Thornton’s “And They Called It Camelot,” Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.

But all reigns must come to an end. Once JFK travels to Dallas and the clock ticks down those 1,000 days of magic in Camelot, Jackie is forced to pick up the ruined fragments of her life and forge herself into a new identity that is all her own, that of an American legend. 

First Published: March 10, 2020

Genres: Historical Fiction, Politics, Romance

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.19/5

In John Williams' classic novel, "Stoner," William Stoner is born into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family at the end of the 19th century. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet, as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of marriage into a “proper” family that estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner recovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

First Published: Jan. 1, 1965

Genres: Literary Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction 

Average Goodreads Rating: 4.34/5