The start of a new month means that there's a new issue of Readings Monthly available online and in our shops. Below you can read Alison Huber's column from the latest issue – and keep an eye on the blog for more updates and recommended new releases throughout the month!

Dear Reader, as another September rolls around, complete with more school holidays (what, again already?), and some high-profile sporting final that curiously involves a ceremonial day off, it’s also the time that booksellers panic a little bit when all the stock they started buying for the festive season way back in June starts arriving IRL. Back rooms across the land are getting cleared as we speak because cookbooks are well and truly back for Xmas 2024, and on Tuesday 3 September we will again celebrate Ottolenghi Day. 2023 was the first time in many years that we haven’t celebrated this date, and for the two years before that we took a detour to the OTK (Ottolenghi Test Kitchen). But with the release of this new book, Ottolenghi COMFORT, we return to the visual design of classics like Ottolenghi SIMPLE and Ottolenghi FLAVOUR and all the brilliant food writing and veg-forward recipes that have made Yotam and his team so beloved. I can’t wait!

I am, once more, quite enthused (see my column from last month for more context) about a book by an emerging Melbourne author: this time it’s Katerina Gibson’s The Temperature. This book is ambitious in all the best ways, and its author is not afraid to show us how, where and who we are right now in time: it’s a cultural temperature check that we really need. It truly is an exciting time to be in the business of selling Australian fiction (and if you need any more evidence of this fact, check out this year’s shortlist for The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction here: what an amazing group of books!). Our reviewers introduce you to yet more of this month’s local offerings, including books from Jumaana Abdu, Gail Holmes, Jock Serong, Kylie Mirmohamadi, Liane Moriarty, and the first book for not-young-adult readers by our award-winning former colleague and current friend, Nina Kenwood: The Wedding Forecast. This year’s Kill Your Darlings anthology is out in September too, with a brilliant list of contributors including two previous winners of The Readings Prize, Ceridwen Dovey and Tracey Lien! Our Crime Book of the Month is called The Death of Dora Black, by debut author Lainie Anderson, and the story is based on a trailblazing historical figure from early 20th-century Adelaide, policewoman Kate Cocks.

So many people I know will be over the moon to get back together again with Elizabeth Strout’s literary creations Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess in her new instalment, Tell Me Everything. Anton Hur’s name has been popping up all over the place in my field of vision: I know him as a well-regarded translator of Korean literature, and this month he publishes his own debut novel, Toward Eternity, which our reviewer calls, ‘an intelligent, thought-provoking, and philosophical book for our times’. Our reviewers also talk to you passionately and thoughtfully about the new books by Natsuko Imamura, Pat Barker, Matt Haig, Rachel Kushner, Syou Ishida, Clare Chambers, William Boyd, Kate Atkinson, Rumaan Alam, and Akwaeke Emezi.

My dear colleague Danielle recounts an envy-inducing dinner she attended with the author of our Nonfiction Book of the Month, Annie Smithers, in her review of Annie’s new book Kitchen Sentimental. The best food writing is always about more than the food, and that’s exactly what this book shows. As Danielle puts it, ‘Why cook? Kitchen Sentimental reminds us all why’ (which is a sentiment I’ll take to heart next time I stare blankly into the deep recesses of my pantry on a Tuesday evening). Our reviewers also recommend Yves Rees’ Travelling to Tomorrow, Markus Zusak’s Three Wild Dogs and the Truth, and Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins. There’s plenty more nonfiction on the way, including a load more cookbooks, the new release from Yuval Noah Harari (of Sapiens fame), and Gillian Anderson’s collection of fantasies submitted anonymously to her, Want (which suggests to me the incredibly important place TV continues to have in our culture: Anderson is not an actual sex therapist, she just played one in Sex Education!). Thomas Mayo, one of the tireless campaigners for the Voice to Parliament and co-author of Readings’ bestselling book of 2023 and ABIA Book of the Year The Voice to Parliament Handbook, has written another essential book on the next steps in Indigenous recognition post-referendum in Always Was, Always Will Be.

And finally, dear Reader, one of the biggest books of September and indeed the whole of the 2024 publishing calendar is the new book from Sally Rooney, Intermezzo. Published on 24 September, this is a proper literary event of international proportions. Reviews are embargoed until publication so you can read ours in the October Readings Monthly, but I can say that this book is worthy of all the anticipation building in the Rooney faithful. I think this book and its exploration of bereavement, family, love and everything in-between will win her even more acclaim and new admirers too. We’ll have a beautiful special hardcover edition for release, as well as the standard paperback edition (though from one book lover to another: why would you want that when you can have the special one for the same price?).