Put away the beach reads: we’re now firmly in fall, the best reading season of the year. In September, the majority of the most-read titles were carryovers from previous months, including The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.
The Netflix adaptation of The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood came out near the end of the month, but that was enough to catapult it into the top five most-read books in September. I expect it will climb up the ranks in the October roundup.
3 New Books Out in September You Should Know About
Unfortunately, the most read books on Goodreads tend not to be diverse by any definition of the word. So, here are a few of the buzziest books by authors of color that came out in September.
The Disappearers by Marlon James
Marlon James is the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings. His newest novel follows eight gay men in 1980s in Kingston, Jamaica. They met while rehearsing for a play together. One night, they are the victims of a gay bashing, and one is killed. In the aftermath, some seek revenge and some try to disappear.
The early reviews of this one are effusive, especially from The New York Times, which calls it “the novel of the decade, if not the century.” —Danika Ellis
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Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang
An R.F. Kuang release is always an event. I love that for her as much as I love it for us, and I especially love that her latest is a bit different from what I’ve seen of her so far. In this contemporary coming-of-age novel, we see through Chinese American college freshman Lily Chen how homegoing isn’t always quite like what you think it will be. When Lily sets off for Taipei and the intensive Chinese language summer course she enrolled in, she’s hoping to feel closer to the culture her parents were born into, but that she never fully grasped. But then everything seems to just crumble. Her roommate sucks, her classes are a little too intense, and there’s a piece of nasty gossip floating around about her. Then her grandfather dies, and suddenly, the search for who she is takes a different turn. —Erica Ezeifedi
Mazywood by Tananarive Due
Tananarive Due blew us away with her literary horror novel The Reformatory in 2023. Now she’s back with Mazywood, a multi-generational horror story following filmmaker Johnny Washington.
Hoping for a quiet retreat with his family, Johnny takes his wife and two daughters to the cabin he inherited from his late grandmother, Mazelle. Instead, Johnny is confronted with the trauma and dark secrets of his family’s past. Something from Mazelle’s past is still there, watching them and hunting them. —Emily Martin
The Most Read Books on Goodreads in September 2026
#5:
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
This turned out to be the sleeper hit of 2025: it has kept growing in popularity, seemingly just from word-of-mouth recommendations. Katie Couric also named it the first pick for her new book club. It’s about a woman who has written letters daily her whole life. When someone from her past writes back, she has to reevaluate a painful period in her life and find a way to forgive. This was read by almost 65,000 users in September and has a 4.4 average rating.
#4:
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
This 2021 romance is getting a boost from the movie adaptation, which came out on September 23rd. It’s one of the STEMinist romances Ali Hazelwood is known for, following Ph.D candidate Olive Smith as she accidentally starts fake-dating a grouchy professor—as you do. (I was pleasantly surprised to learn the movie is the first major motion picture to have a character on the asexual spectrum. Olive is demisexual, which is mentioned on screen.) 67,000 users read it in September, and it has a 4.1 average rating.
#3:
Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth
In this 2025 thriller, 81-year-old Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is trying to live a quiet life in the suburbs, but when one of her neighbors turns up dead, all eyes turn to her. When Elsie was 14, she was Mad Mabel, the youngest convicted murderer in Australia. Now, with the help of a couple of podcasters, she’s ready to tell the story in her own words. Almost 71,000 users read it in August, and it has a 4.4 average rating.
#2:
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
This is the newest book from the author of The Help. The Help was a huge bestseller, made into a blockbuster movie, but it received a lot of criticism for its use of stereotypes of Black people and white saviorism, as well as its historical inaccuracies. This criticism didn’t prevent Stockett from snagging a lucrative book deal for her new novel, however, and it looks like it hasn’t hurt its sales. The Calamity Club was read by 113,000 users in September and has a 4.6 average rating.
#1:
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
At the top of the list is Yesteryear, which came out in April. It’s one of several buzzy tradwife novels out this year. In this one, a tradwife influencer wakes up one day in the time period she’s been romanticizing, and real-life homesteading turns out to be much more difficult—and dangerous—than it looks on Instagram. Yesteryear was read by almost 143,000 users in August and has a 3.9 average rating.
If you’re looking for more buzzy books, check out The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists.
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