From Rodrigo Cortés to Julia Navarro: 22 Most-Anticipated Books in September’s New Releases

The latest from Freida McFadden, the most intimate work by Elisabet Benavent, or the latest investigation by journalism master Patrick Radden Keefe… The autumn’s most anticipated books had already brought us some editorial novelties we could not miss in September. But we have delved deeply into the releases awaiting us this month and have selected 22 books that are going to make waves, from Rodrigo Cortés to Julia Navarro.

Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads illustrated by the Murcian artist Ilu Ros, a fascinating essay on procrastination, or the latest book in the successful Rebecca Yarros series, Empyrean, are other new literary proposals we will find in our favorite bookstore soon. Releases that will make returning to routine much more bearable through gripping narratives, real stories full of interest, and novels from our favorite writers that always bring us joy.

So if you too are longing to find that literary proposition to enjoy your favorite hobby this September, here are the 22 most anticipated books from upcoming editorial releases in the coming weeks.

The Swindler. Francesco Casolo. Seix Barral.

When Fabio Montari and Angelo Cantuzzi meet, the former is a young banker newly separated; the latter, an elderly businessman scarred by a family tragedy. Fabio manages the fortunes of wealthy northern Italian heirs whom he despises and, hungry for revenge, begins to swindle; at first small sums, then the fraud becomes a fever.

Between the two, an unlikely friendship arises, but both hide dark secrets and in that bond the worst betrayal will be forged. The murky world of high finance, combined with a portrait of the system and the mechanisms that move and hide wealth, while composing a powerful tale about ambition and the pursuit of happiness in the wrong places. On sale September 2.

Agent Rossini. Álvaro Soto. Ediciones B.

Rossini was an FBI agent who had been assigned to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, where he held key information about two terrorists that could have thwarted the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. But his agency superiors forbade him from sharing it with his New York FBI colleagues, the ones in charge of pursuing al-Qaeda. No one could foresee then how far the consequences of this decision would reach.

Led by its protagonist, this book reconstructs Mark Rossini’s life: from his years at the FBI and CIA’s elite to his fall from grace and reinvention. A journey through the guts of intelligence services and the errors that shaped history, but also through the life of a man who wonders if behaving differently would have changed things. In bookstores on September 3.

Daughter of Heaven. Rodrigo Cortés. Random House.

Gabaón is a town perched on a cliff, facing the sea, but it is also a school, an orphanage, a monastery. There live sixty-one busy and purposeful nuns. And three indolent priests, led by the lean and upright Father Alén, with his voice like a bread grater at a sigh from Mother Adriana and his enormous glasses. And a demon-possessed girl in a windowless room. And the Handsome Man inside her. And a swarm of lost characters to muddy it all.

A dazzling novel about the history of a place, a girl, a love, but above all the story of two voices: that of the narrator, precise and carved, and that of the girl herself, with a wild, tumultuous tongue capable of recounting horror with almost comic naturalness. On sale September 3.

Romancero Gitano. Federico García Lorca. Illustrated edition by Ilu Ros. Lumen.

Ilu Ros returns to the Lorca universe to illuminate the most celebrated poem of the Granadan poet, with illustrations that open a surprising and renewing dialogue with the verses, revealing, with a unique sensitivity, the visual, symbolic, and fully contemporary strength of this classic.

Since its publication, nearly a century ago, Lorca’s work has continued to fascinate generations of readers with the dark beauty of the metaphors that traverse a universe where symbols and images pulse with a musical rhythm and intensity almost impossible to forget. In bookstores on September 3.

Film Hablado. Irène Nemirovsky. Nórdica Libros.

This unpublished short novel by the French writer deals with the loneliness of Anne, a sixteen-year-old girl in interwar Paris, who moves from adolescence to the adult world. A story doomed to the definitive rupture of the relationship and the decay of its two protagonists, a recurring theme in the author’s work, told through a cinematic narrator that the writer conceived right at the moment the talking cinema was born. On sale July 7.

Más allá de las razones. Yiyun Li. Chai Editora.

The author’s son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize this year with En la naturaleza las cosas crecen, takes his own life at 16 and she seeks to survive that wrenching and incomprehensible void with the tool she knows best: words. Then she calls forth her son’s voice through writing to continue dialoguing with him despite his absence.

Li’s skill and talent meet a clear limit: how to converse with someone you love who has decided to be gone? Despite the impossibility of her mission, the author presses on because it is the only way she can bear the abyss and the pain. A dazzling exercise in honesty, contradiction, impotence, and, above all, love. In bookstores on September 7.

The Last Time I Follow You. Natza Farré. Sexto Piso.

With humor, tenderness, and disarming honesty, the author turns her family’s story into the portrait of an entire generation. And she does so by dissecting her experiences as the younger sister of a drug-dependent sibling, in first person and with a brave narrative that does not shy away from or sugar-coat discomfort. Hers was a middle-class family that, like many others, in the 80s had to confront heroin and all its consequences.

From memories and family correspondence, she sketches a time and, at the same time, a very personal portrait of a life full of small hopes, fleeting victories, and relapses. With brutal precision, she narrates silence as a collective pact and the weight of guilt as an emotional prison. On sale September 7.

Honey. Imani Thompson. Letras de plata.

After a fortuitous incident, in which the professor who had just stolen her best friend’s research dies, Yrsa discovers an unexpected satisfaction in crime. Fed up with her doctoral program and the arrogant university students she must appease, Yrsa decides she wants to feel that euphoria again and, soon, there is no rude and chauvinistic man around her who is safe.

With every murder, Yrsa feels increasingly that she has a purpose: she has finally found a use for her thesis. But how long can she keep justifying the murders in the name of feminism and racial solidarity? Will this massacre temper her rage and thirst for revenge? How long will her acts and the old family secrets torment her? In bookstores on September 8.

The Gardener’s Cat. Thomas Schlesser. Lumen.

A storm has devastated Provence with unparalleled force, but for Louis, a solitary, taciturn and highly sensitive gardener, that disaster is nothing compared to what happens in his own home: the small cat he has picked up and formed an improbable attachment to is gravely ill. Louis isolates himself in total muteness, as if words no longer matter.

Across the street, Thalie, a recently retired literature professor, cheerful and imaginative, has just moved in and needs help to recover the olives and oleanders destroyed by the storm. And he proposes a deal: he will take care of her and the garden in exchange for teaching him the power and mystery of poetry. The beginning of an unexpected friendship, among battered trees and verses by Sappho, Pessoa, Lorca, Pavese, Rimbaud or Neruda, in which the gardener discovers that poetry has long been naming the world for us: pain, beauty, fear, desire, nature, and everything we do not always know how to express. On sale September 10.

Snow and Ashes Country. Petra Rautiainen. Errata Naturae.

In 1944, after the break between Finland and Nazi Germany, the soldier Väinö is assigned as interpreter to a prison camp on Lake Inari. There he discovers brutal violence, marked by racism, which he records in his diary while trying to keep his sanity amid the horror.

Three years later, Inkeri, a journalist, travels to Lapland to write about the reconstruction of the north, devastated by the war. But her real mission is to follow the trail of her missing husband, last seen in those lands. Under the midnight sun, as she befriends Piera, an elderly Sami woman, and her granddaughter Bigga, Väinö’s and Inkeri’s stories intertwine with the voices of a silenced people, in a landscape of breathtaking beauty where the past reveals its secrets. In bookstores on September 14.

Good Boy. Neil McRobert. Muñeca infinita.

In a small English town, the disappearance of a boy reopens old wounds. From her house window, Margie watches a man digging a grave right where the boy was last seen. What begins as a suspicion soon becomes something much darker: a story of old horrors, silent sacrifices, and secrets. But at the heart of that darkness also beats another story: Jim and Riot, his inseparable dog, bound by a loyalty capable of facing even what should not exist.

A gripping tale about paths not taken, about tenderness and pain, about courage and sacrifice, about what we do with the time we have, but also an ode to kindness and solidarity. On sale September 14.

A Modern Family. Julia Navarro. Plaza & Janés.

Martha and Thomas form a modern family. Both belong to the artistic-cultural vanguard. She shone on international stages as the principal dancer of the most prestigious ballet companies; he is a renowned philosopher with an intense academic life. Their daughter Felicitas runs a digital channel successfully and, as a mother by choice, has raised Penny, a teenager who challenges all conventions.

However, at sixty, Martha and Thomas watch with bewilderment as the world they believed they knew has changed forever. In bookstores on September 15.

The Natural Order of the World. Ben Brooks. Blackie Books.

After an accident, Arthur Candlewick, a family man and prosperous businessman, receives a revelation: he will become an exemplary man and dedicate his life to others. To this end, he decides to sell the family business and donate the money to charitable organizations. His family, incredulous, believes he has lost his mind. Evangeline, his university daughter, also wants to change the world, but not at the cost of renouncing the comfortable life they lead.

Emil, his misunderstood son, is a reclusive person who cannot tell the difference between a life with a lot and a life with almost nothing. And Arthur’s wife and mother of both, Yara, only wants the doctor to run another brain scan and see what is happening to him. But Arthur has already made a decision that affects them all. The Chadwick family is about to discover that a better world may not be a place for them. On sale September 16.

Human Safaris. Ezio Gavazzeni. Peninsula.

In the 1990s, during the siege of Sarajevo, wealthy foreigners from different Western countries paid exorbitant sums to accompany for a weekend the Serbian-Bosnian army snipers and shoot at defenseless people in the capital. Thanks to meticulous research and unprecedented testimonies from witnesses and companions, journalist Ezio Gavazzeni reconstructs the organization of these gruesome safaris and details the fees paid by those “sniper clients,” for whom children were the most coveted prey.

A detailed account of this macabre form of war tourism and a terrifying yet moving testimony about dehumanization, violence, and impunity that characterize wars. In bookstores on September 16.

Dead and Alive. Zadie Smith. Salamandra.

The new work by the philologist, professor and London writer is a compendium of sharp, luminous essays in which she reveals her unique ability to look at reality with intelligence, irony, and a sensitivity that turns any topic into an invitation to think. Contemporary art, cinema, music, or urban landscapes serve to turn her interests into a clear, approachable, and revealing reflection.

But Smith also finds time to pay homage to voices that shaped her literary formation, from Joan Didion to Toni Morrison or Martin Amis, analyzing with clarity and serene humor the political changes that have transformed the last years on both sides of the Atlantic. A critical perspective that illuminates both the tensions of our era and the questions that thread through personal experience. On sale September 17.

The River of Blindness. Mia Couto. Alfaguara.

In August 1914, World War I reaches Africa when Germany attacks the Madziwa post, a border village by the Rovuma River in Mozambique. Its waters, disputed by German and Portuguese armies, become the stage of a mysterious episode: the spread of a strange disease begins to affect only the colonizers, depriving them of the ability to read and write. Soon no invader can decipher the world through writing, and books, reports, documents, photographs and maps look colorless to them.

Threatened by German power and subjected to Portuguese colonization, the peoples of Mozambique find refuge in what is impossible to erase: ancestral knowledge through orality. But what will the Westerners do in the face of that reversal of roles? A sharp view of memory, culture, and the human capacity to face adversity with hope, guided by the tenderness and originality that characterize the Mozambican writer. In bookstores on September 17.

Fuegos artificiales. Paul Pen. Planeta.

Following successes like The Glow of Fireflies, The House Among the Cacti and The Song of the Crickets, Paul Pen returns with a chilling novel that drags the reader into the terrifying journey of two friends who dreamed of being free under the glow of fireworks and discovered that you can escape from everything, except yourself.

Two boys plan to escape the boarding school where they feel trapped. Uve has suffered for years from the scorn and laughter of his peers. Jota is the new student, with a charismatic yet dark personality. A plan derailed by an unforeseen event, an escape that takes a sinister turn. It will be then when their adventure becomes a spiral of terrible consequences. On sale September 17.

The Night in the Heart. Natacha Appanah. AdN.

Winner of the 2025 Femina Prize, 2025 Choix Goncourt España, and a finalist for the 2025 Goncourt, this novel interlaces three stories of women victims of violence at the hands of their respective partners. On the edge between strength and humility, the author scrutinizes the unbearable enigma of conjugal femicide when night closes in instead of love. In bookstores on September 17.

The Kingdom and the Power. Gay Talese. Alfaguara.

In a fourteen-story Gothic building, gray in color, located on 43rd Street in Manhattan, lay the headquarters of the most powerful journalism empire in the world: a newspaper whose influence remains such that those who run and work there helped shape the course of history. How a newspaper in decline (in the late 19th century it barely sold ten thousand copies) reached such a position of power is the story the journalist and writer from New Jersey reconstructs with brilliance and an extraordinary narrative sense.

The 1970s were rolling when Talese penned this fascinating tale, after immersing himself in The New York Times, a publication that continues to shape the world order, uncovering intrigues hidden behind the scenes and revealing the stories behind rivalries and exclusives. With meticulous attention to detail, he explored the public and private life of the renowned family that acquired it and its descendants, as well as the relationships of the executives with powerful figures such as presidents, kings and ambassadors, without overlooking the power struggles and control that marked the newspaper’s history. On sale September 17.

The House of the Red Thread. Ana B. Nieto. Duomo.

Madrid, 1889. The capital is a city of vibrant contrasts. In that world of ferment, a fourteen-year-old girl faces the premature death of her mother. Her name is Julia Loewe. Intelligent, bold, and with prodigious vision, Julia understands that a new woman has been born, who travels the world, who works, who rides a bicycle, and who, to conquer her independence, needs something revolutionary, a new fashion.

From her workshop in central Madrid, Julia will change the way women travel and dress, opening the doors to a business that is exclusively male in order to grant them the freedom they claim. In bookstores on September 21.

Hotel Exile. Jane Rogoyska. Salamandra.

Paris, 1938. At the heart of the city, the Hotel Lutetia, famous refuge of artists and exiles, welcomes writers, painters and travelers fleeing a Europe on the brink of abyss. Among its guests cross James Joyce, André Gide, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, names that embody the intellectual splendor of an era that is about to disappear. In its salons mingle elegance, fear, and the foreboding of an imminent catastrophe.

During the occupation, the Lutetia is requisitioned by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, and turned into a center of operations and surveillance. In its rooms, officers stay, missions are plotted, and suspects are interrogated; the art-deco mirrors reflect uniforms, maps, and fear. After the liberation, the hotel reopens its doors to accommodate those deported who return from the camps. Among them, Irène Némirovsky’s daughters, seeking news of their missing mother. In its corridors, joy and guilt mix, hope and devastation. On sale September 23.

Jump! Simon May. Alpha Decay.

Do you tend to postpone life for later, waiting for the day when you will finally be able to seize the opportunities life provides? Do you spend a large portion of your time on household chores or trivia before deciding to tackle what matters most to you? The true enigma of procrastination does not reside in why we postpone cleaning the house or filing taxes, but in why we avoid the person we love, why we shelve a long-awaited vocation, or why we postpone a life-changing shift we deem decisive.

Against what self-help manuals usually defend, the author of this book argues that procrastination originates in conflicts that go far beyond laziness or lack of discipline, such as fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of our own vulnerability. A manifesto proposing seven ways to defeat procrastination, from adopting a playful spirit and embracing our mortality, to turning regret and boredom into powerful allies. Because the unexpected gift of procrastination can be the possibility of becoming who we truly are. In bookstores on September 28.

The Day of the Threshing. Rebecca Yarros. Planeta.

The fourth book in the Empyrean series contains thirteen stories featuring the characters who have conquered readers worldwide and their dragons. The edition includes 16 original full-color illustrations by artist Joe Requeza. On sale September 30.

What Am I, a Deer? Polly Barton. Anagrama.

Rising onto the school stage, dressed in her mother’s golden nightgown and with a brush as a microphone, a British girl is about to become Céline Dion. The music doesn’t play and she ends up singing a cappella before thousands of people. It’s ridiculous. But brave. And also a revelation: what happens when we unapologetically show the most romantic, intense, and vulnerable part of ourselves? Years later that girl settles in Frankfurt to work as a video game localizer. Translating from Japanese means adapting references and emotions from one world to another, but soon she realizes she is also trying to translate herself, reinventing herself and becoming someone lighter, more confident, and authentic.

It’s then that a chance encounter on the tram, a stranger returning a forgotten umbrella, triggers a love obsession that will accompany her for a year, and for which she will only find solace in karaoke sessions, where pop songs stop being a guilty pleasure to become a form of truth. In bookstores on September 30.