The Anti-Woke Fall Reading List

As always, these have been vetted so you can read in peace, spared from performative political lectures (you’re welcome). So find your favorite reading nook, snuggle in, and disappear into a good story for a while. Fiction I sorted by putting the more lighthearted ones first, followed by deeper, darker options if that’s what you’re looking for. Autumn at the Cat Café by Kathleen Fuller I'm pretty sure it doesn’t get more “fall” than this one. A cozy small-town romance about a cat café owner in Pecan Corner, Ohio, and a brooding LA transplant who inherits the bookstore next door. The two of them spend a month working through her Autumn Bucket List while an adorable slow-burn romance brews. Get it on Amazon Before We Were Us by Denise Hunter An “amnesia romance” similar to 50 First Dates , but this one feels distinctly autumn. She loses her memory of the exact months she fell in love with her coworker and wakes up still convinced she can’t stand him. He knows everything that happened between them while she doesn’t. Watching him fall for her all over again, from scratch, with the stakes doubled, is darling. Get it on Amazon The Cul-de-Sac War by Melissa Ferguson Another cute rom-com style story, perfect for a cozy reading session on the front porch. It's about two next-door neighbors who declare all-out war over a shared fence line and somehow can’t stop finding excuses to see each other while it escalates. Get it on Amazon A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus Technically middle-grade, but adults are raving about this one too. When their not-so-grandmotherly grandmother dies, three orphaned siblings are evacuated from London during WWII and bounced from one ill-suited foster family to the next. Their one refuge through it all is the village library. It has Narnia-adjacent vibes, and is a real tearjerker by the end. Get it on Amazon A Heart’s Disguise by Colleen Coble A post-Civil War historical romance that opens with actual turning leaves in October 1865 with a woman mourning the man she believes died in the war, right before he turns up alive and everything she thought she knew falls apart. Get it on Amazon My Dear Hemlock by Tilly Dillehay It turns out we needed the female version of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters , and here it is: a senior boss-babe demon coaching her junior demon on how to derail a Christian woman’s faith through marriage, motherhood, and the ordinary stuff of everyday life. Funny and sharply insightful. This one doesn’t really compete on the same darkness scale as the rest of this list (since it’s satire, not suspense), but it’s a great palate cleanser before things start getting heavier. Get it on Amazon Bright Stars by Kimberley Tait A wistful, literary historical novel: four college friends starting their real lives in New York City, unaware the world is about to change. When the towers fall on September 11th, their futures become tied together through a letter that never got delivered. Have some tissues ready for this one. Get it on Amazon Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier The classic gothic novel for a reason. A shy new bride moves into her husband’s grand estate only to find his dead first wife’s shadow over everything, including her marriage. Nearly 90 years old and still the gold standard for eerie vibes and about as clean as thrillers get, since it predates the genre’s modern appetite for shock value entirely. Get it on Amazon The Curious Case of the Midnight Specter by Moriah Chavis A YA gothic mystery with a fun hook: a girl in Victorian England who can see ghosts is pulled into investigating a socialite’s murder after the victim’s spirit starts appearing to her directly, pleading for justice before the killer strikes again. Get it on Amazon The House on Foster Hill by Jaime Jo Wright A dual-timeline gothic suspense novel: a woman buys a long-abandoned Victorian sight unseen and immediately regrets it when its century-old murder starts feeling very unfinished, told across two timelines a hundred years apart. There’s darkness in the backstory, but nothing graphically sexualized and no gratuitous language. Get it on Amazon The Girl Upstairs by Jessica R. Patch A gritty psychological thriller for a chilly evening. A former homicide detective and her husband buy a secluded cliffside house in coastal Maine, hoping for a fresh start until she finds a message carved into the floor under the attic carpet. Twisty and unsettling without a single curse word or sex scene. Get it on Amazon Never Lie by Freida McFadden A psychological thriller where newlyweds get trapped in a remote mansion during a blizzard while they’re out house-hunting. It turns out the house formerly belonged to a psychiatrist who vanished years ago, and her old therapy tapes are hidden in the walls. It's very dark and twisty, but no explicit sex to speak of. McFadden fans love her for this. Get it on Amazon Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney A domestic thriller about a couple that travels to a remote Scottish chapel to save a marriage that’s already falling apart. What should be a romantic weekend turns into something much darker. There is some sex, but the door is closed, and the profanity stays fairly light. Get it on Amazon Nonfiction The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook by Jill Winger ’Tis the season for tasty treats, so enjoy over 100 heritage recipes from the woman behind The Prairie Homestead, all cooked and tested on her own working farm in Wyoming. This is the cookbook for anyone who wants homemade sourdough and nourishing comfort food to be a lifestyle rather than a one-time Pinterest project. Get it on Amazon The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith A classic that’s been blowing minds since 1875—over 10 million copies sold and still in print for a reason. It's not a striving, five-step-plan kind of book, but more like a gentle argument for simple trust over more effort. It’s one of those books you’ll be telling everyone to read when you’re done. Get it on Amazon Heirloom Rooms by Erin Napier Fall is the perfect time for a home reset, and this stunning book is all about decorating with what you already have. I love Erin Napier’s show Home Town (she and her husband Ben are too cute), and this book bottles up their unique, “lived-in” design perspective. It's especially timely since layered Americana is very in right now. Get it on Amazon Homemaking with Babs by Barbara Costello This #1 New York Times bestseller from the internet’s favorite grandma will help you get your home in tip-top shape, just in time for making holiday magic. It’s a beautiful handbook for running a home, including seasonal cleaning, daily routines, and the systems that keep a household from falling apart, all built on decades of doing it herself. Get it on Amazon The World of Downton Abbey by Jessica Fellowes It’s Downton Abbey season (literally, since autumn was when the real English estates the show is modeled on hosted their big shooting parties), which is exactly the kind of old-money rituals this gorgeous coffee-table companion is packed full of. English estates, candlelit dinners, old-money drama, all of it. Fun to flip through with your own homemade pumpkin spice latte in hand, and an even better conversation-starter for whoever finds it on your coffee table first. Get it on Amazon The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond Ree’s delightful memoir about her real-life love story. A city girl one bar-stop away from moving to Chicago spots a quiet cowboy across a smoke-hazed Oklahoma dive bar, and three weeks of dinners on his cattle ranch later, they married that September. Ranch life, in-laws, and their first year of marriage that followed make up the rest of the book. Funnier and messier than you might expect. Get it on Amazon Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star by Christy Carlson Romano If Kim Possible was your after-school ritual, consider this required reading. Romano was the Disney Channel’s dependable good girl in Even Stevens , Kim Possible , and Cadet Kelly , but behind the scenes, childhood fame was costing her more than anyone knew. Her memoir walks through the bullying, the controlling boyfriends, addiction, a predatory psychic, and a rock bottom that landed her in an FBI office, then the slow, honest work of rebuilding her life. The letters to her two daughters woven throughout will get you every time. Get it on Amazon The Steps by Sylvester Stallone This time of year always carries a little whisper of nostalgia for me, maybe because Rocky’s whole love story with Adrian actually kicks off on Thanksgiving Day. Stallone’s own memoir picks up the real version: broke in New York City in 1969, refusing to sell his script unless he got to star in it himself, and eight years later standing on stage as Rocky won Best Picture. A memoir with a great hook (pun intended). Get it on Amazon