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Cozy Books to Read in the Fall of 2024
By: Angela & Melissa
Updated:
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we may earn a referral fee from qualifying purchases.As the air turns crisp and the sun begins to set earlier, it’s the perfect excuse to spend more time curled up reading fall books. This autumn reading list invites us to slow down with a cozy blanket and an apple cider or a pumpkin spice latte while losing ourselves in stories that mirror the season.
The Best Fall Books to Read This Year
A Brighter Flame
Book Summary
Vale has long-searched for a sense of belonging, and at twenty-nine, she was starting to hit her stride in the Pittsburgh bar she opened with her father, Bo. However, when the bar has a fire and she learns the insurance hasn’t been paid, she’s back to square one.
Her grandmother, Iris, lets Vale return to her home in Philadelphia. However, she learns that her half-sister, Blythe, has already moved into the guest room amidst problems in her marriage. Everyone in the family brings their own complications, including Vale’s mother, Audrey, whom she hasn’t seen in years. This poignant novel is about family secrets, healing, and the hope of second chances.
Go As a River
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Book Summary
This novel transports you to 1940s rural Colorado and the home of teenager Victoria Nash. Despite her young age, she runs the household as the sole female in a family of troubled men. One day, she meets Wilson Moon, a mysterious young drifter who has been displaced from his tribal land. Their sudden and passionate connection is full of danger and secrets.
Victoria ends up fleeing to the harsh mountain wilderness in a small hut, where she struggles against impossible conditions. As the Gunnison River rises and threatens her homeland, she begins a quest to fight for all she has lost.
The Book Girls Say…
A large portion of this book is set during the fall peach harvest season and then into the looming winter months. It’s a great pick if you enjoy deep and descriptive, character-driven reads.
Don’t miss our entire book club guide for Go As a River, which includes discussion questions, food ideas, and so much more!
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Tell Me How This Ends
Book Summary
Thirty-two-year-old Henrietta once wanted to be a librarian, but now her work transcribing life stories for terminally ill patients is the perfect distraction from her own past. It typically allows her to separate fact from emotion, but when Henrietta meets 60-something Annie, who is both eccentric and terminally ill, she feels herself being drawn into Annie’s story.
When Annie reveals her sister’s mysterious drowning back in 1974, Henrietta begins methodically following the story’s loose ends. Annie, on the other hand, has long been afraid to look too closely into her murky memories of that terrible night. The push and pull between these two women will unearth a surprising emotional connection between them before it’s too late.
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland
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Book Summary
While this book takes place on September 11, 2001 and the following days, it’s not the constantly devastating story you would expect. Instead, this heartwarming book recounts the experiences of countless passengers from some of the 38 planes that were unexpectedly diverted to Newfoundland – an island in Canada’s easternmost province – when US airspace was closed on 9/11. On that day, the small town of Gander, with a population of just 10,000, received more than 6,600 passengers from 92 countries. Ganderites, along with residents of the surrounding towns, opened the doors to the local churches, schools, and even their own homes.
Throughout this book, you’ll not only learn the personal stories of the passengers, but you’ll also learn a lot about life on this tiny, remote island and about the unexpected hosts who welcomed strangers from around the world with open arms and generous hearts.
The Book Girls Say…
We’ve both seen and loved the musical Come From Away, so we already knew some of the story, but we learned so much more from this book. The selflessness of the residents of Gander and the surrounding towns will warm your heart page after page. It is one of the most uplifting, faith-in-humanity-restoring books we’ve ever read. The audiobook, narrated by Ray Porter, is especially well done.
If you are looking for a non-fiction book that provides a detailed account of what was happening in the air and on the ground in NYC, D.C., and Pennsylvania on 9/11, we recommend The Only Plane in the Sky. This oral history brings together never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly 500 people – including government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, family members, and friends.
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All We Were Promised
Book Summary
Charlotte escaped from the White Oaks tobacco plantation in Maryland and made her way north to Pennsylvania. At the plantation, she was enslaved as a housemaid, and she expected freedom to feel different. But in Philadelphia, she acts as a servant to her white-passing father. The two of them must be very careful to hide their identities from the slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.
Charlotte can finally begin to envision a different future for herself after she befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from a very wealthy Black family.
When Evie, a friend from White Oaks is brought to Philadelphia by the plantation mistress, what is Charlotte willing to risk to help her escape? Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue Evie, but with the city embroiled in race riots, their fight for Evie’s freedom could end up costing them their own.
The Book Girls Say…
We are both looking forward to reading this debut historical fiction novel. Author Ashton Lattimore is a graduate of Harvard College, Columbia Journalism School, and Harvard Law School. The New Jersey native now lives in suburban Philadelphia.
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
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Book Summary
Looking for an eerie mystery that’s perfect for book lovers wanting to read something a bit haunting around Halloween?
This highly-rated debut novel follows a bookshop employee named Lydia, who ends up investigating the suicide of one of her bookshop regulars. As Lydia delves into his past, she also uncovers a buried memory from her own violent childhood.
This is a twisty crime thriller with a very creative puzzle element that will keep readers guessing.
The Book Girls Say…
Colorado-based readers will recognize the Bright Ideas bookstore as The Tattered Cover. The author was a bookseller at this Denver book institution during the 1990s and used the store as his inspiration.
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The Once and Future Witches
Book Summary
Historical fiction meets magic and fantasy in this unique novel from the author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
The story centers around the Eastwood sisters – Juniper, Agnes, and Bella. They’ve been estranged from one another for most of their lives. But on the day of the equinox in 1893, the sisters all find themselves at the same suffragist rally in New Salem. Reunited, the sisters now fight for women’s rights, as well as the right to practice witchcraft.
Intermixed within this historical fantasy are a few well-known, real-life historical women from the Suffrage Movement, which lends a layer of realism to the fantasy elements.
The Book Girls Say…
This dark and moody novel is over 500 pages, so be sure to pick it up when you have the time to devote to it.
Take It From Me
Book Summary
Harper is a young author with one major best-seller under her belt, but now she’s in need of a career comeback. At the suggestion of her agent, she rents a house in New Canaan, Connecticut. Hiding her author identity from everyone she meets, Harper seeks to draw inspiration for a new novel about women in the suburbs.
Soon Harper befriends her empty-nester neighbor. It’s October, and Wendy’s son just moved away for college. She’s struggling with being all alone. But not just because she misses her son. Wendy is keeping a secret of her own – her struggle with kleptomania.
The Book Girls Say…
Angela was initially drawn in by the kleptomania/mental health focus of this novel, which was very well done. Ultimately, however, it was the intergenerational relationship element of this story that she enjoyed the most.
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October in the Earth
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Book Summary
In Depression-era Kentucky, Del is the wife of the most celebrated preacher in Harlan County. She tries to lay low in her rigid life but can’t keep the status quo amid her husband’s infidelity. When a coal train comes through town, Del bravely jumps aboard in what she sees as her only chance for freedom.
As she travels across the country, she finds a new community among the other transient outcasts. Nomadic single mom Louisa quickly befriends Del and helps her learn how to live life on the rails. But the Depression is taking its toll, and desperate circumstances threaten their close bond.
The Book Girls Say…
This 2023 release was a popular pick with our readers in the Decades Reading Challenge.
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Join the Fall Reading Mini Challenge
Our free self-paced reading challenge will keep you reading engaging books throughout the autumn season. To make it easy and fun, we include highly-rated book recommendations for each of the four fall reading prompts.
The Witch’s Lens
Book Summary
While Petra’s husband is off fighting at World War I’s eastern front, she spends her nights roaming the city with her camera. Petra was born a witch, and she discovers that she can capture the souls of the dead on film. When Josef Svoboda begins recruiting a team of sorcerers to infiltrate the front lines, Petra’s supernatural skills do not go unnoticed. He needs her unique abilities to help identify the most dangerous enemy of all – the undead.
Venturing deep in the cursed Carpathian Mountains, the horrors Petra photographs are beyond anything she could have imagined. She wants to turn back, but not before she discovers her husband’s fate.
The Book Girls Say…
The Carpathian Mountains span Central and Eastern Europe and are the subject of many myths and legends. The most popular myth of this region places the castle of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula in Transylvania on a Carpathian mountaintop.
This unique novel is a mix of paranormal and historical fiction that’s perfect for fall reading in the lead up to Halloween.
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Book Summary
Jen is waiting up for her 17-year-old son to come home one night in late October. Through the window, she witnesses the unthinkable. Her son kills a man right there in the street outside their home and is taken into custody.
She goes to sleep that night, wishing it was all just a bad dream, and then she wakes up yesterday. The next day she wakes up the day before yesterday.
Day after day, she wakes up another day earlier and has another opportunity to stop the murder if only she can figure out what caused her son to commit the crime in the first place.
The Book Girls Say…
This time-loop book was a 2022 Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller.
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A Fall of Marigolds
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Book Summary
September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries…and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made.
September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, which was the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. But a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf may open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life.
The Book Girls Say…
Melissa chose this book during the first year of our Decades Reading Challenge, and since that time, nearly 100 of our readers have read it, with nearly all rating it highly. One reader states, “I really appreciated the juxtaposition of the fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers.”
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Embers on the Wind
Book Summary
This book weaves together a haunting tale of past and present. In 1850 Massachusetts, Whittaker House was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Sadly, some people seeking freedom didn’t make it out alive – including Little Annie and Clementine.
More than a century and a half later, Whittaker House is now a vacation rental in the Berkshires. But many of those who visit the house are not there merely as tourists – they are contemporary Black women struggling to reconcile the legacy of slavery.
This haunted story is described as the perfect mix of history and paranormal suspense.
The Book Girls Say…
This is a short novel at just over 200 pages, but it covers a lot of ground – with many shifting points of view and storylines. If you prefer books written in a linear style, this one might not be a good pick for you.
HEADS UP: This book deals with many difficult topics, including rape and stolen babies.
Eliza Starts a Rumor
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Book Summary
Eliza is a suburban wife secretly struggling with a new, intense fear of leaving her house. She forces herself to go to the store in preparation for a visit from her college-age children. While there, she hears younger moms talking about a new local online forum for women. Eliza has run a similar group for years, but these strangers are calling her original group boring.
In a moment of desperation and weakness, Eliza starts a rumor about a new neighbor on her board to liven it up. But soon, the rumor has reached further than she expected.
The Book Girls Say…
This book is a great mix of comedy and drama about a group of neighbors overcoming their individual problems when they’re willing to share them and lean on other women.
Most of this book is set in the fall leading up to Thanksgiving, which ends up being the setting of a major revelation.
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First Frost
Book Summary
It’s October, the temperatures are dropping, and the leaves are changing in North Carolina. Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley’s Candies. She loves the way her specialty products heal others, but along the way, she’s losing herself.
Sydney Waverley has also lost balance in her life as she’s become singularly focused on having a baby. When a mysterious stranger shows up and challenges the very heart of the Waverly family, each of them must make choices they have never confronted before. Along the way, romance is in the air.
The Book Girls Say…
This magical realism romance is a follow-up to Garden Spells, but it takes place 10 years later. You need not have read Garden Spells in order to read and enjoy First Frost. However, if you’re planning on reading both, it’s better to enjoy them in chronological order.
First Frost was a Goodread Nominee for Best Fiction in 2015. You may also recognize the author from her 2022 hit, Other Birds.
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Weyward
Book Summary
Weyward weaves together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, using a bit of magical realism along the way.
In 1619, Altha is awaiting trial after being accused of using witchcraft to murder a local farmer. She knows that she’ll need to use all her deep knowledge of the natural world if she wants to remain free.
In 1942, the world is at war. Violet longs for the education her brother receives in their grandfather’s crumbling estate, but as a girl, she’s not entitled to knowledge. Her mother was rumored to have gone mad, and the only connection Violet has to her is a locket and the word Weyward carved into the wooden floor.
In 2019, Kate is fleeing London in the dark and heading to Weyward Cottage. She inherited the ramshackle home with its overgrown garden from an aunt she barely knew. It’s given her the much-needed opportunity to escape her abusive boyfriend. However, she doesn’t know that the cottage has secrets dating back to the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
The Book Girls Say…
While most readers rate this book highly, some have found the dark and atmospheric novel too heavy for their current state of mind.
HEADS UP: This book contains several themes that could be upsetting, including rape, abuse, stillbirth, and suicide.
The Great Alone
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Book Summary
When a Vietnam POW returns home, he carries new anger and impulsiveness. Determined to stand by her husband, his wife agrees with his plan to move his family to Alaska to live off the grid. Soon after arriving, the harsh reality of rural Alaska sets in for 13-year-old Leni and her mom.
For a while, things are better with her dad as they spend the fall season preparing for their first Alaskan winter, but she fears his more balanced self is only temporary.
The Book Girls Say…
If you don’t have time to add this book to your reading list this fall, it also makes a great winter read!
WARNING: This book includes descriptions of domestic abuse.
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One Two Three
Book Summary
The Mitchell triplets, Mirabel, Monday, and Mab, live in a small town with a terrible past of water-quality issues, which have led to numerous health issues.
Because the town has spent years in the national news, everyone is shocked when a new family decides to move in. When the family’s past connection to the town is revealed, it affects everyone, including all three sisters.
The Book Girls Say…
This novel was a Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Best Fiction in 2021.
If you enjoy audiobooks, this one is well done, with different narrators for each sister.
Fall Book Club Books
The Echo of Old Books
Book Summary
Ashlyn Greer is a rare-book dealer who loves the smell of old paper, ink, and leather. Old volumes appeal to all of her senses, including a sense the rest of us don’t have. She is gifted with the unique ability to feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners.
When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound, unpublished volumes with no evidence of how they came to be, she gets wrapped up in a decades-old literary mystery. Each volume bears a curious inscription, as well as the emotional fingerprints of the authors, Hemi and Belle. The books tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the closer she comes to bringing closure to their love story, and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.
The Book Girls Say…
This 2023 release is already receiving rave reviews! It’s perfect for book lovers and those who love a story within a story. This novel also delves into deeper historical issues, including anti-Semitism and the roles of women in society in the 1940s.
A Season for Second Chances
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Book Summary
When Annie’s 20+ year marriage ends suddenly, leaving her single for the first time in her adult life at age 44, she’s not sure how to start over. Her kids are grown, and there’s nothing keeping her in the city where she and her ex-husband were successful restauranteurs. So, she answers an ad for a temporary position as a winter caretaker of a historic home in the small English seaside community of Willow Bay. This decision turns out to be even more impactful than she expected.
Annie is immediately charmed by the house, and the quirky but friendly villagers welcome her with open arms. All except the grumpy nephew of the home’s owner, who sees her as a roadblock to his plans. But as fall turns to winter, Annie begins to formulate her own plan for the next season of her life.
The Book Girls Say…
While this is largely a book about finding herself, it only happens through her relationships with her new friends in town. There is a romance thread later in the book, but there’s a more significant focus on female friendships. If you are looking for books that are heavier on cozy fall romance, check out this list.
Book lovers will especially love the way these women bond over books!
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Alchemy of a Blackbird
Book Summary
This is a story of tarot cards and the way they impacted the dynamic female friendship between two now-revered real-life painters, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. Both women began their careers as a muse for a man but managed to become icons in their own right.
Remedios and her lover, a poet named Benjamin Peret, fled from the Nazis in Paris for Villa Air Bel, a safe house for artists on the Riviera. Along with Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and others, the two anxiously waited for exit papers to travel outside Europe. However, the longer they stay at the house, the more Remedios realizes that the others don’t see her as an artist, just as Benjamin’s beautiful inspiration. She begins to find refuge in a mysterious bookshop, where she stumbles into the world of tarot.
When Remedios and Benjamin finally receive the paperwork to travel, they head to Mexico and are reunited with fellow painter, Leonora Carrington. Together, the women tap their creativity, stake their independence, and each finds their true loves. Tarot assists them in finding their true subconscious and in achieving success as Surrealist painters.
The Book Girls Say…
The narrator changes through the book, so be sure to watch the tarot cards within a chapter. The name of the person retelling the story in the following pages is under each card.
Before She Finds Me
Book Summary
This psychological thriller features two strong female main characters trying to understand a murder. Julia is helping her daughter Cora move into her new college dorm. While she is on campus with Cora, a tragic shooting occurs. Julie is able to get her daughter to safety, but she’s not sure this was a random act.
Ren is an assassin and soon-to-be mother. Her husband Nolan is also an assassin, but they live by a strict set of rules. They only target the guilty while remaining dedicated to protecting the innocent and their own family. However, Nolan went rogue for his last assignment.
The story is told in the alternating viewpoints of Julia and Ren as they try to figure out who ordered the assassination at the college, and why.
The Book Girls Say…
If you enjoy the fall college setting of this psychological thriller, be sure to check out the other back-to-school themed books further down on this list.
The Gifted School
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Book Summary
This juicy contemporary drama focuses on four families that have been friends since their children were born. However, secrets and resentments were buried along the way.
Early in the book, we are introduced to each of these families as they discuss a new, exclusive school that will be opening in the town of Crystal, Colorado (which many readers will recognize as a slightly fictionalized version of Boulder, CO). What starts as good intentions is quickly derailed by very questionable actions as they each fight to get their kids into the new school. These ambitious parents will go to any length to secure a spot for their children. Along the way, secrets and lies will resurface in explosive ways.
This novel explores issues of talent versus privilege, achievement versus potential, and the pursuit of prestige at any cost.
The Book Girls Say…
Fans of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies will especially enjoy the intertwined stories of these very imperfect characters. This book is on the longer side, and it may take several chapters to keep the large cast of characters straight, but it’s worth sticking with it, and the narration is well done!
We also have a separate list of 22 Novels About Education for the Back to School Season.
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The Night Circus
Book Summary
The black-and-white striped tents appear overnight. There are no announcements or advertisements, and the circus- with its breathtaking amazement – is only open at night.
Two young magicians – Celia and Marco – have been trained since childhood by their two mentors. The Night Circus is the stage on which the two will compete for superiority, using all the powers they have been perfecting over the years.
This is a heart-wrenching love story with magical fantasy elements and memorable quotes throughout.
The Book Girls Say…
We also highly recommend The Magician’s Lie, which combines the historical fiction elements of Water for Elephants with the fantasy and magical realism elements of The Night Circus. In this novel, the country’s most notorious female illusionist is accused of her husband’s murder and has one night to convince a small-town policeman of her innocence.
What are Fall Aesthetic Books?
While both Book Girls always look forward to reading in our favorite season, we initially struggled to articulate our favorite types of books to read in the fall. So, we polled our Read with the Book Girls Facebook group! They helped us come up with a list of characteristics that make the best fall books. Of course, anything set in the fall was the easiest qualifier.
We also agreed that fall is a time for deeper reads after the lighter beach-read season. Thrillers, historical fiction with fantasy elements, and contemporary fiction with cozy fall vibes also made it to our fall reading list.
Our readers also recommend books with back-to-school themes and fall-themed romances and rom-coms. We have created stand-alone book lists for these themes, as well as a complete list of Fall Book Club Books.
Finally, the anniversary of September 11th, 2001, is a good time to read 9/11 books in remembrance of the lives cut too short that fall day.
More Fall-ish Authors
The list above includes our favorite cozy autumn books, along with the books at the top of our fall reading lists. However, there are a few other authors that consistently pen winners for this season. If you need more fall reads for your TBR pile, try Anthony Doers, Colson Whitehead, and Sally Rooney. Some even find fall the perfect season for romance novels by Nicholas Sparks.
More Autumn Book Recommendations
For even more cozy books to read in autumn, check out our other fall-themed book lists:
