10 books you should read in October, including David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream and William Shatner’s Boldly Go

Also check out Nerd by Maya Phillips, Demon Copperhead from Barbara Kingsolver, and more

By Cat Auer | September 27, 2022 | 12:00pm

Books News David Bowie

10 books you should read in October, including David Bowie’s Moonage Daydream and William Shatner’s Boldly Go

Clockwork from bottom left: Boldly Go (Image: Atria); Demon Copperhead (Image: Harper); Ghost Town (Image: Europa Editions); Liberation Day (Image: Random House); Nerds: Adventures In Fandom From This Universe To The Multiverse (Image: Atria); Nights Of Plague (Image: Knopf); Moonage Daydream (Image: Genesis Publications) Graphic: Libby McGuire

Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. To help you navigate the wave of titles arriving in October, The A.V. Club has narrowed down the options to 10 books we’re most excited about, including a collection of hundreds of photographs chronicling David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era, a ninth autobiographical outing from Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner; and the tumultuous memoirs of Fresh Off The Boat star Constance Wu.

Our Missing Hearts: A Novel by Celeste Ng (October 4, Penguin Press)

In the America imagined by Celeste Ng in Our Missing Hearts, the “Preserving American Culture and Traditions” Act is the chilling law of the land, installed after the Crisis, a devastating era credulously blamed on China. Unpatriotic books are destroyed; teaching actual American history is disallowed. Asian Americans face prejudice and violence, and all parents pay a steep price for resistance: Voice dissent, and the government takes away your kids—the so-called missing hearts. Twelve-year-old Bird last saw his poet mom three years ago, after her writing was co-opted as an anti-PACT rallying cry. Now an unexpected message sets Bird on a dangerous quest to find her outlawed book—and then to find her. Ng’s previous novel was the twisty, bestselling , the basis for the Reese Witherspoon . It’s easy to envision Our Missing Hearts—bold, powerful, and timely—soon making its way to the screen.

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