Editor’s Note: Roxanne J. Coady founded R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, in 1989 after leaving her job as national tax director at a New York-based international accounting firm. Roxanne is the co-editor, with Joy Johannessen, of The Book That Changed My Life. Visit R.J. Julia at www.rjjulia.com.

Summer is over, but people are still asking me to recommend a great book. Many are friends and customers who started the summer with big dreams of reading piles of books that they never got around to. And now it’s September, but hope springs eternal … So here’s a list of wonderful books to get you going this autumn, beginning with Alice Eve Cohen’s memoir What I Thought I Knew.  

This book is an adventure of personal exploration that challenged Cohen to reassess how she saw herself, what she thought she was about and what she thought she was capable of. Often this sort of memoir feels pretty self-indulgent to me, yet I found Cohen’s fast-paced and intimate storytelling drawing me in and compelling me to be a part of her journey. It’s almost like sitting with an especially candid friend and listening to her story.

Cohen is a New York playwright and solo theater artist who is going happily along at the age of 44 with a wonderful boyfriend and an adopted daughter. She is reveling in her growing career. And then, she starts to have stomach pains. At first misdiagnosed with a tumor, Cohen finds out that she is six months pregnant. Because of her age and the medication she’s on, it’s highly likely that this child will be born with a host of potentially serious medical issues. You can only begin to imagine the ramifications — issues centering around abortion, marriage and parenting.

For more, read "How My Decision About a Late-Term Abortion Affected My Marriage, by Alice Eve Cohen."

I read very few mysteries but am a huge fan of Michael Connelly. His new novel, The Brass Verdict, came out this the summer and is on my bedside table. A houseguest of mine whose taste I trust completely and who’s also a big Connelly fan just finished The Scarecrow, and was completely satisfied with it. A serial killer who is an MIT graduate and computer expert (of course) comes in and starts ruining people’s lives (i.e., killing people). The protagonists are the same reporter and FBI agent team from Connelly’s 2001 bestseller The Poet, and the story follows them as they chase down the killer. My houseguest still feels that the books from Connelly’s Harry Bosch series are his best — but he ranks this book pretty high. I can’t wait to find the time to read it.

But of all the books I read this summer, two stand out as classic, riveting and important.

The first is The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam. It is not for the faint of heart, but is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. This young Pakistani author has written an astonishing and devastatingly sad tale about what it means to be in Afghanistan right at this minute. And it’s not just about the politics or social climate. This story goes beyond the news about the war and the boots on the ground to take us inside and see the lives that are lost, the bodies that are damaged, the minds that are unraveling. The Wasted Vigil changed the way I think about what’s going on in that part of the world. It is one of the most haunting stories I’ve read in a very long time.