15 Best Fall Books to Read

Magical, whimsical, romantic books to add to your Fall reading list. Cozy up with one of these books and a cup of tea. 

Fall is just a month away. Which means it is almost, “Cozy Season.” It is the perfect time to add to your Fall book stack for the dark and cool days ahead. After all is there anything better than snuggling up with a comfy throw, a cup of hot chocolate and a book  in front of a fire? Spooky, creepy books are optional but you might like something with a little magic, a witch or two or maybe a gothic romance?

Here are some of my top picks to read this Fall and to get you into the new season ahead.

15 Cozy Fall Books to Add to Your Autumnal Reading List

Butter, Sugar, Magic: Baking Up a Magical Midlife

At best, she’s expecting a kitschy candy dish, at worst a beloved taxidermied pet, so when Cassie-newly divorced, single mom with zero prospects-discovers she’s inheriting a fully stocked bakery along with a beautifully furnished apartment from a great aunt she’d never even heard of, she’s convinced she must be dreaming.

The apartment bizarrely adapting itself to her whims and the friendly neighbor floating fireballs in the air aren’t helping.

Cassie has two choices. She can hightail it out of this bewildering town and figure out another way to support her pre-teen daughter. Or she can stay and live the life of her dreams in this unsettling place where the rules of physics don’t seem to apply, and people are suspiciously friendly and welcoming.

When Cassie and her daughter agree to give this new place a trial run (the fantastic pet shop next door is a helpful draw), she’s not convinced they’ve made the right choice. That hesitation just might cost her the fantastic life she and her daughter deserve.

The Keeper of Lost Things

Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.

Bone china cup and saucer—Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidently left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.

A charming, clever, and quietly moving novel of of endless possibilities and joyful discoveries that explores the promises we make and break, losing and finding ourselves, the objects that hold magic and meaning for our lives, and the surprising connections that bind us.

Garden Spells

Ferney

It was an accidental detour inspired by one of Gally’s frequent panic attacks that sent her husband Mike down a twisting, lane to the abandoned cottage.  Yet from the moment she saw it, Gally felt a peace she hadn’t known in years and the inexplicable sense that she had finally come home.

And so she had.

For as Mike worries and fusses over their new home’s restoration, it is Gally who seems to know exactly how it should look. Indeed, Gally seems to flourish in the tiny village of Penselwood, deep in the Somerset countryside. But the greatest mystery of all is her growing and unexpectedly intimate relationship with an irascible eighty-three-year-old countryman named Ferney.

Not even Gally herself can explain the bond between them–or how Ferney seems to know her better than she knows herself. Yet through Ferney’s old stories Gally finds herself transported down hazy pathways to a past unrecorded in any history book: a magnificent sweep of time and events when the woods were alive with thundering hooves, peasants and soldiers, bloodshed and bravery, and two tragic young lovers who made a vow even death could not break.

Now, as the days slip away, Gally begins to understand her connection to Ferney: a bond wrought of many meetings and many partings. And as this short, bittersweet rendezvous draws to a close, she must face a life-and-death dilemma that has followed them down the centuries to one moment of unbearable suspense. For Gally must make a decision that will forever change not only their lives, but the lives of all they touch.

The Echo of Old Books

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer’s affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners―an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.

With no trace of how these mysterious books came into the world, Ashlyn is caught up in a decades-old literary mystery, beckoned by two hearts in ruins, whoever they were, wherever they are. Determined to learn the truth behind the doomed lovers’ tale, she reads on, following a trail of broken promises and seemingly unforgivable betrayals. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story―and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

Practical Magic

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic…

The Lost Apothecary

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

Meanwhile in present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, running from her own demons. When she stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London two hundred years ago, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.

With crackling suspense, unforgettable characters and searing insight, The Lost Apothecary is a subversive and intoxicating debut novel of secrets, vengeance and the remarkable ways women can save each other despite the barrier of time.

Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone

Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter ‘H’.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, is a classic ghost story that has mystery, horror and humor. The story revolves around Ichabod Crane, a superstitious schoolmaster who falls in love with Sleepy Hollow’s Katrina Van Tassel. However, Ichabod’s pursuit of love is impeded by the ghostly specter haunting the town. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a must-read for fans of Ghost Stories and Classic American Literature.

September 

A cast of memorable characters from Europe and America converges on the Scottish town of Strathcroy–ostensibly for a birthday celebration–where intertwining tales of romance, excess, and heartbreak unfold

The Thirteenth Tale

Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author’s tale of gothic strangeness—featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter

Based on some of literature’s horror and science fiction classics, this is the story of a remarkable group of women who come together to solve the mystery of a series of gruesome murders – and the bigger mystery of their own origins. 

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless following her parents’ deaths, is curious about the secrets of her father’s mysterious past. One clue in particular hints that Edward Hyde, her father’s former friend and a murderer, may be nearby, and there is a reward for information leading to his capture…a reward that would solve all of her immediate financial woes. 

But her hunt leads her to Hyde’s daughter, Diana, a feral child left to be raised by nuns. With the assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary continues her search for the elusive Hyde and soon befriends more women, all of whom have been created through terrifying experimentation: Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein. 

When their investigations lead them to the discovery of a secret society of immoral and power-crazed scientists, the horrors of their past return. Now it is up to the monsters to finally triumph over the monstrous.

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

Banished! is how twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce laments her predicament, when her father and Aunt Felicity ship her off to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, the boarding school that her mother, Harriet, once attended across the sea in Canada. The sun has not yet risen on Flavia’s first day in captivity when a gift lands at her feet. Flavia being Flavia, a budding chemist and sleuth, that gift is a charred and mummified body, which tumbles out of a bedroom chimney. Now, while attending classes, making friends (and enemies), and assessing the school’s stern headmistress and faculty (one of whom is an acquitted murderess), Flavia is on the hunt for the victim’s identity and time of death, as well as suspects, motives, and means. Rumors swirl that Miss Bodycote’s is haunted, and that several girls have disappeared without a trace. When it comes to solving multiple mysteries, Flavia is up to the task—but her true destiny has yet to be revealed.

Eat Feed Autumn Winter: 30 Ways to Celebrate When the Mercury Drops

Going well beyond cookbooks that focus solely on the holidays, Eat Feed Autumn Winter finds reason to celebrate throughout the year’s twilit time. After helping you stock your pantry, Bramley presents meals to sustain you from the first chilly evenings of fall through the lengthening days that herald spring. With menus for enjoying the autumn harvest (Wheat Berry and Fig Salad, Feta-Olive Phyllo Cigars), celebrating the winter solstice (Lambswool Punch, Yule Log Cake), and warming up après ski (Onion Rösti, Cheese Fondue), the book is a cornucopia—not just of delectable recipes but also of imaginative ideas for cold-weather entertaining.

Where to find Fall Books

If you have already read these books or missed something I have featured before on the blog check out My Bookshop on Amazon. 

Be sure to check out the Free books on Kindle from Amazon.

Or  your local library, there are thousands of books available on the Libby app to read for free! Last but not least, look at Thrift stores and used book stores!

For more Fall reading check out my friends Nicolle and Kim.

Until Next Time

These 15 best Fall books will keep you warm and cozy all Autumn long. I hope that you found something new to read this Fall or something familiar that you would like to read again.

Do you have a favorite Fall book or two? Please share them in the comments.

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Looking for a cozy beverage to enjoy while you are reading this Fall? Try my recipes for:

Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix

Pumpkin Pie White Hot Chocolate

Vanilla Dalgona Whipped Coffee with Cinnamon

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