A Stunning Memoir and More of the Best Books Out in October

Sometimes I crave something green, but also a little greasy. Just a little. And these veggie pancakes hit the spot. The ingredients are also pretty ubiquitous in North American kitchens, I think. You’ll need: flour, salt, water, leek greens, carrot, scallions, red cabbage, Jalapeño slices, and avocado oil (or any oil).

Mix the ingredients and fry up your little pancakes!

For more detailed instructions, ingredients, and a video, please visit here.

Nguyen, author of the bestselling The Sympathizer, writes a memoir that feels original, with humor strewn throughout. He details his journey from Vietnam to the U.S. as a child and how he was separated from his family but eventually reunited. The longer he lives in the U.S., the more he sees that it isn’t quite the promised land it’s been labeled as.

This National Book Award finalist is a highly imaginative look at personal and combined histories. The narrator reunites with a man he met in a hospital when he was much younger — a man who is now dying. He promises to finish a project the man, named Juan, was working on that involved a ’40s research book titled Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns (which actually existed). Much of Juan’s copy of the book has blackouts (or redactions — places where pieces of text are blacked out, only allowing certain words to be read). As Juan’s health continues to fade, the two share stories of past joys and lost loves.

After Cam’s love, Kai dies and starts haunting him, he leaves L.A. for a visit to his hometown of Houston. There, he reunites with his former bestie TJ. But it’s not super easy to fall back in step with how their old friendship used to be after such a long estrangement, especially with TJ not knowing what to do with the new Cam, who is bent on destroying himself. With luxurious descriptions of food and food preparation, Washington tells a story of messy relationships and found family.

Ms. Ward has been snatching edges for a minute, and I’m sure this will be one of the most talked about books of the year. The title is from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’”).

Annis is our guide as we descend into the hellish world of American slavery. Sold by her white enslaver father, she nurtures her spirit with memories of her mother and the stories she told her of her African warrior grandmother. As she’s forced to journey through the harshest conditions — from the Carolinas’ rice fields to New Orleans’ markets for enslaved people — she finds herself both aided and potentially manipulated by spirits. This is a magically rendered account of a terrible time in history.