As our bookshop celebrates Independent Bookshop Week hot on the heels of The Bookseller’s Northern Powerhouse analysis, I have again been thinking about what we sell in our shop and why it matters. While we sell a fair share of national bestsellers, about 80% of our book sales are spread over the thousands of titles that do not trouble the Top 50. One browser, who memorably berated their partner for “not finishing the last Marcus Aurelius they bought”, demonstrated how a writer’s trajectory ebbs and flows; I’m inclined to think that the spread of sales bookshops make are essential for seeding conversations around myriad books and supporting what might become the next word of mouth hit. My colleague Abi recently raved about Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men, (Vintage) which, though published 30 years ago, has TikTok to thank for renewed attention. Who is to say which book will experience that kind of amplification next?

I was delighted by Daniel Handler’s memoir, And Then? And Then? What Else? (Oneworld), which is this month’s Book of the Month for many reasons, but particularly because he suggested he wanted other people to read the (often obscure) books he loved so that he had more people to talk to about them. I am resolving to think less about charts and sales figures and more about the joy of sharing a book that will resonate with a customer.

A huge amount of non-fiction is hitting the shelves in September. The bulk of submissions centred around history, politics and current affairs reflecting, perhaps, the perpetual feeling that there is “a lot going on”. Publishers are 
feeding our appetite to understand the context of the contemporary moment, from the tremendous courage and sacrifice of wars past and present in Daniel Huhn’s I Will Come Back For You (Ithaka) and Lara Marlowe’s How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying (Apollo) to how we measure our self-worth and recognise those around us 
in Michèle Lamont’s Seeing Others: How to Redefine Worth in a Divided World (Penguin). Children’s reading remains a pressing concern too, and Sam Leith’s The Haunted Wood (Oneworld) has some pointed observations from history about meeting children where they are.

Two new reissue series land this month, both focusing on eclectic selections of women writers. The new Vintage Classics Weird Girls series champions nine works of “weird-girl fiction” that disrupt standard notions of femininity, including works by Audrey Niffenegger, Intan Paramaditha, Hitomi Kanehara, Yoko Ogawa, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jewelle Gomez, Angela Carter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Marjorie Bowen.

Meanwhile, Penguin Michael Joseph (PMJ) celebrates 90 years of publishing with the Mermaid Collection, striking B-format paperbacks with flaps designed by PMJ senior designer Lauren Wakefield and picture editor Alice Chandler. The collection will champion quality commercial women’s fiction from the mid-to-late 20th century, with a firstinstalment including novels by Lettice Cooper, Helen McCloy, Fay Weldon and Margaret Kennedy. A new commercial heritage list will be hugely appreciated by readers who have been well served in recent years by the brilliant work of Persephone, British Library Publishing, Handheld Press and Dean Street Press among others, all of whom draw attention to neglected women writers.

Film and TV tie-ins range from Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro (Canongate) ahead of a six-part Sky TV adaptation starring Matt Smith and Lindsay Duncan, to Ryan David Jahn’s Texan crime-thriller The Dispatcher (Pan) transposed to Australia in an upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation starring Patrick Brammall and Maxine Peake. Jussi Adler-Olsen’s final Department Q novel Locked In (Quercus) arrives just after viewers are getting a taste of the new Edinburgh-set adaptation on Netflix starring Matthew Goode.