BOOKMARK September 2025 Book recommendations
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September titles
All books are available from Adventure Into Books in Blairgowrie.
SEPTEMBER RECOMMENDATIONS -
One month in, and I am having a blast in the bookshop! Is this real life? Or is it fantasy? Well, there are many genres to recommend when it comes to reading. So here are my September picks.
Nordic noir visits Minneapolis in Jo Nesbo’s Wolf Hour and still on crime fiction - A new crime series by Lynda La Plante in The Scene of The Crime.
Let us travel back to 100BC for the next book: Those Who Are About to Die by Harry Sidebottom and for something devilishly different, check out R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis.
For those who like their humour darker than their coffee, we have John Niven’s The Fathers and, lastly, from Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago comes Death At Intervals.
Shaun Donald
BOOKMARK friend
PS: The Adventure Into Books Book Blether Group meets at 7pm on the first Wednesday of each month. On 3rd September, we’ll be meeting to chat about Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout (ISBN: 9781846976940, paperback, Polygon, 2024). All are welcome.
Jen will be appearing at this year's BOOKMARK Book Festival in October for more details of Jen's event, please click here.
Wolf Hour by Jo Nesbo
(Vintage Publishing, 2025)
Crime Fiction
Nordic noir visits Minneapolis as Jo Nesbo’s Wolf Hour (ISBN: 9781787303768, hardback) embroils us in parallel investigations into the same crime. 2016: when a small-time criminal and gun dealer is shot down in the street, all signs point to Tomas Gomez, a quiet man with a mysterious past who has seemingly vanished into thin air. Other murders soon follow, and it appears Gomez is only getting started. 2022, an enigmatic Norwegian man has travelled to the United States to research the Gomez case, in the hopes of writing a book. But as his investigation progresses, the writer’s seemingly neutral position reveals itself to be more complicated than the reader is initially led to believe.
The Scene of the Crime by Lynda La Plante
(Zaffre, 2025)
Crime Fiction
Lynda La Plante's The Scene of The Crime (ISBN: 9781838779979, hardback). The husband of a prominent barrister is found in horrific condition after a robbery. Now in a coma, a major investigation is launched using the newly formed, experimental Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Analysis Unit. Jessica Russell is an experienced CSI with degrees in psychology and criminology, but her first job is entirely new to her: to bring together a team of three trusted officers. Between them, the team has dealt with every kind of murder and major crime scene. Now they must piece together the complex puzzle at the heart of this brutal crime. If it was a robbery gone horrifically wrong, what was so important to have been stolen?
Those Who Are About To Die by Harry Sidebottom
(Cornerstone, 2026)
History
Those Who Are About to Die by Harry Sidebottom (ISBN: 9781529154009, hardback). See ancient Rome, and peer into the Roman mind, through the eyes of a gladiator—from the evening before the games at the Colosseum to the evening after. Harry Sidebottom pulls us into the arena, and into the homes and forums of ancient Rome, taking the reader on an eye-opening, twenty-four-hour tour through Roman life at the height of the gladiatorial games, from the first century BC to the second century AD.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
(Harper Collins, 2025)
Fantasy
R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis (ISBN: 9780008501860, hardback). Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick. But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him. But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.
The Fathers by John Niven
(Canongate, 2025)
Humour
John Niven’s The Fathers (ISBN: 9781837260515, hardback). In a busy maternity ward, first-time father Dan meets Jada, a dad welcoming his fifth – no, sixth? – child into the world. Dan and Jada come from very different places: both called Glasgow. Dan is a successful TV writer with a townhouse in the West End and a shiny Tesla. Jada is a small-time criminal who is already planning how to separate Dan from some of the luxuries Jada has never been able to enjoy. Dan plans to walk away from his TV success, while for Jada it’s the opportunity for one last get-rich-quick scheme – ripping off a local airport. When a tragedy occurs, their worlds are brought closer than either could ever have imagined – close enough that it could mean destruction for both of them…
Death at Intervals by José Saramago
(Vintage Publishing, 2017)
Fantasy
José Saramago - Death At Intervals (ISBN: 9781784871789, paperback. In an unnamed country, on the first day of the New Year, people stop dying. There is great celebration and people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Soon, though, the residents begin to suffer. Undertakers face bankruptcy, the church is forced to reinvent its doctrine, and local 'maphia' smuggle those on the brink of death over the border where they can expire naturally. Death does return eventually, but with a new, courteous approach – delivering violet warning letters to her victims. But what can death do when a letter is unexpectedly returned?