The Most Read Books on Goodreads in September 2026

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

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

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

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.

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.