October Reading 2026

I was looking forward to reading a number of books in October and in general they lived up to my expectations.  These are the books that I finished in October

General Fiction

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

This novel has been out for a few years and I remember seeing it everywhere, so when it was sitting there, unclaimed, on the library shelf I decided to give it a try. For some reason the title made me think that this was going to be a story about Asian Americans. I couldn't have been more wrong! The Heaven & Earth Grocery store is a story set in the first part of the 20th Century in a mixed Jewish and Black community in a small town in Pennsylvania, although over time the Jewish community moved away from the neighborhood where the titular store was located. But the owners, Moshe and Chona, kept the store and lived above it. Eventually the whole community comes together to save a deaf black teenager from the people who want to put him in an asylum. This is a story of outsiders, a story about disabilities and a story about sexual predation, all of which sounds like it could be very depressing. But McBride has a humorous style and his depictions of all the residents of the town sometimes made me laugh out loud. The main reason to read this novel is for the multitude of characters that McBride creates. From a plot point of view, I kept wondering how all the strands of the story would come together by the end. Truthfully, I think he cheats a bit at the end by not going into too much detail and not dealing with a big question - wouldn’t the disappearance of a well known citizen have caused issues? But maybe it’s better not to think too deeply about it. 

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

Ray Carney and his friend and mentor Pepper are back in this third novel by Colson Whitehead.  Although Ray wants to go straight the world of crime draws him back in ostensibly to make a little extra cash to lend to his wife Elizabeth who has started her own travel agency. I wrote about this novel separately here. I highly recommend this because Whitehead is a brilliant writer who combines plot, character and sense of place seamlessly. Set in the 1980's in New York, the city is as much a character as Ray and Pepper, who are each memorable in their own way. 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 

This was a re-read for me because the BlueSky Book Group was reading it this month. I don’t want to say too much about this classic except if you’ve never read it, what are you waiting for?

Our Noble Selves by Kate Atkinson

As usual, Kate Atkinson wrote a novel I enjoyed although I don't think it is as brilliant as some of her earlier novels. This one is centered around the 1951 Festival of Britain (of which I knew nothing) but also contains a murder (maybe?) mystery. The mystery is cleared up (cleaned up?) a little too neatly for my taste but the main character, Harry Flynn, is well developed as are all the other quirky characters surrounding him. And Kate Atkinson is an excellent writer. More of my thoughts are here.

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry

A Booker Prize long-listed novel about a curator who takes on a commission to create historically accurate rooms at an old palace. She chooses as her time period the reign of a King who never wanted to become King and whose life is full of ambiguities. Perry is a poet and this novel is beautifully written on a sentence level. The plot and characterization (and even the setting) did not appeal to me however. My full thoughts are here.  One irony is that I read two books in a row that contained lots (lots!) of details about things that would be used to dress a display room. One (the Atkinson novel) entertained me, the other (the Perry novel) I found tedious by the end.

Mysteries

Murder in Purple and Gold by Lindsey Davis

The 14th of the Flavia Albia series, set in ancient Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, finds Flavia Albia and her family returning to Rome from their extended trip to the South. While walking her dog the first night home she (really her dog) stumbles across the dead body of a young, upcoming charioteer named Lepo. While she is perfectly content to simply report this to the authorities and not take it on as a case, he husband urges her to solve the crime. He is a supporter of the "Golds", a chariot racing team, and he suspects that one of the "Golds" will be accused of murdering Lepo, who drives for the "Purples".  What makes this a little tricky (besides the fact that Flavia' father is a "Blue" supporter) is that the "Golds" and the "Purples" are new teams started by the Emperor Domitian and supported by Big Money. Flavia (and pretty much everyone else in Rome) would like to avoid having anything to do with Domitian. Thus begins a mystery set among the racing world. Davis includes a lot of detail about the racing world but, unlike a few of her books, she manages to incorporate it within the plot and not have too much narrative (at least until the end, during the final race).  In reading this I realized that at this point the number of volumes in the Flavia Albia series has gone well past the number in Davis' Didius Falco series (Flavia Albia's father).  In general I like both series, they generally have good mysteries, I like the characters and I like the ancient Rome setting (which Davis makes seem not that different from living in modern Rome). For a while, I thought Davis had lost her way with the Flavia Albia series, incorporating too much of her research into the books as straight narrative, but the last two have been very good. 

The Crossroads by C.J. Box

Over the years that I have been reading the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box I've always said that in real life Joe would have died in each book because he always stupidly got himself into situations that seemed to have no way out. But a Deus Ex Machina (usually his friend Nate) always swooped in to save him. This novel begins with the news that Joe has been shot and left for dead. As he lays unconscious in a hospital, MaryBeth at his side, his three daughters team up to discover what happened to their dad. None of them are sure that the new Sheriff in town will do his job (the Sheriffs in this series have up to this book all been terrible).  Joe's truck was found on a road with three ranch entrances at the end. Each of the ranch owners has had a run in with Joe. Which was it? Or was it someone else? As usual, I was entertained by this novel. Box has gotten better at writing women over the years ( he started out terrible) and I enjoyed the three daughters although he did occasionally fall back on stereotypes. 

Nonfiction

Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry

This memoir by author Sarah Perry is about one specific period in the author's life: the death of her much-loved father-in-law David. The memoir begins with a day out for David, Sarah and David's son (Sarah's husband) Robert. David seems fine. Three weeks later when they meet David again Sarah can tell that something is terribly wrong with him.  Almost immediately David is diagnosed with esophageal cancer and he dies at home shortly thereafter. I'll be honest and say that I found this memoir very triggering and almost gave up on it a few times. She is unflinching in her description of the very fast process of David becoming ill and dying. But I kept on because I also felt that she completely captured the sense of helplessness that loving caregivers feel, not so much in failing to stop the death but in simply knowing what to do on a daily basis. And she completely captured how grateful one feels for the professional caregivers who calmly know what to do. This memoir was longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non Fiction.