10 books you should read in September, including Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and Alex Ross’ Fantastic Four: Full Circle

Also check out All The Women In My Brain And Other Concerns, a candid collection of personal essays from Emmy Award-nominated actress Betty Gilpin

By Cat Auer | August 24, 2022 | 9:00am

Books News Fairy tale

10 books you should read in September, including Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and Alex Ross’ Fantastic Four: Full Circle

Clockwise from bottom left: How Not To Drown In A Glass Of Water (Image: Macmillan); Fantastic Four: Full Circle (Image: Abrams ComicArts); Rules Of Engagement (Image: Berkley Books); Fairy Tale (Image: Scribner), Ducks (Image: Drawn & Quarterly); The Furrows (Image: Hogarth); The Storm Is Here (Image: Penguin Press); All The Women In My Brain And Other Concerns (Image: Flatiron) 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 September, The A.V. Club has narrowed down the options to 10 books we’re most excited about, including a trope-twisting dark fantasy novel from horror master Stephen King, an interdimensional journey through the Negative Zone with Marvel’s original superhero squad, and a collection of comical musings from GLOW star Betty Gilpin.

Rules Of Engagement by Stacey Abrams as Selena Montgomery (September 6)

Yes, that Stacey Abrams. Before she was a world-famous voting rights activist and candidate for governor, and even before she was a state rep, Stacey Abrams was a tax attorney who wrote fiction on the side under the pen name Selena Montgomery. Rules Of Engagement is her first full-length book, a story of international espionage shot through with relatively chaste romance. Feisty Dr. Raleigh Foster, chemist, spy, and virgin, is recruited by the International Security Agency straight out of school. She must resist her intense physical attraction to Atlanta billionaire and former secret agent Adam Grayson so they can carry out a mission of global import: Stop terrorists from acquiring a new weapons system. She’s also got her own plans to avenge the death of her mentor. But can she trust Adam—and can he trust her? The tension of the will-they/won’t-they dynamic amounts to literary edging. First published in 2001, this reissue from Berkley Books includes a charming new foreword from Abrams.

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