OCTOBER
The hard work of adaptation is at the forefront of our shelves this month, featuring a stirring intergenerational novel from the heart of a future San Francisco; a bold challenge to re-frame your thinking from a veteran campaigner; a thrilling call to celebrate what can be saved and honour what can’t – and more. Plus, we revisit Rebel Library founder, Liz Jensen’s searing psychological thriller, The Rapture. Recently adapted for television, the storyline now seems all too prescient. Cosy up this autumn and watch on BBC iPlayer. Enjoy!
October 2026
Fiction
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
Set in a future San Francisco, Kwan’s novel of a young woman choosing to stay in the flooded city is both a visceral manifestation of a fragile environmental reality, and an exploration of how the mind adjusts to impermanence. In Kwan’s vividly-drawn city, residents must constantly adapt, improvise, and negotiate with an environment that is both indifferent and overwhelming. Yet far from being a chronicle of decline, it is a quietly profound testament to endurance, and to the impulse to live fully, even when the ground beneath has disappeared.
The Rapture by Liz Jensen
In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox’s main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake.
Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters – a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in ‘interesting times’?
A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, The Rapture is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind’s self-destruction in a world on the brink.
Arborescence by Rhett Davis
What makes a person want to be a tree?
Bren and his partner Caelyn are feeling at a standstill in their lives. One day they come across a video of people in the forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough they will transform into trees. The idea is absurd. But it’s spreading. Soon, people start to go missing and trees appear in unlikely places. As cities decay and the world becomes greener, Caelyn becomes more and more convinced that arborescence is exactly what will save the planet from human destruction. Bren isn’t so sure. Drifting apart, Bren and Caelyn are forced to question what it really means to be human – and if they are ready to stand still.
“A strange and compelling exploration of our current moment. Arborescence is part Sally Rooney, part Stephen King. It reads like a thriller but has the tenderness and insight of poetry” – Ben Rawlence
The Thinning by Inga Simpson
Fin grew up by an observatory, learning about telescopes and planets, inspired by the passions of her parents, then leaders in their fields of astrophotography and astronomy. Those days are long over. Now Fin, her mother, Dianella, and a band of outliers live deep off the grid, always on amber alert and always ready to run.
In the outside world, things are not good: extinctions and a loss of diversity threaten what’s left of the environment. With a new disaster looming, Fin finds herself thrust into an unlikely partnership with a stranger who has appeared in their camp – one of a new breed of evolved humans, the Incompletes, who are widely distrusted. But the pair will need to work together during a dangerous journey if they are to play their part in an audacious plan to help restore the natural world – and humankind.
The Thinning is both an exquisitely written novel of nature and urgent thriller.
NON FICTION
How Not to Save the World by Anthea Lawson
Anthea Lawson’s much-praised exploration of social and political activism is written from the realistic, candid, and hopeful perspective of a committed campaigner. Lawson argues that the urgency of crises like climate change can drive activists into unhelpful habits, such as self-righteousness, impossible purity tests, moral superiority, and ignoring diverse perspectives and class divisions. This isn’t a how-to guide for starting a petition, mapping out a campaign plan, or avoiding arrest at a protest. Instead, Lawson looks at the emotional, tactical, and ethical traps that movements fall into. If you want to avoid them, this is the book for you.
I Eat the Stars by Sarah Wilson
In this timely addition to the collapse literature genre, Sarah Wilson, host of the excellent Wild podcast, argues that there is less that we can “control” or even “do” than we might have believed. Instead of striving for the impossible, and clinging to the lethal delusion of infinite growth, Wilson argues, it is better (and saner) to live and enjoy life while honouring the truth that climate change and its consequences can’t be reversed. Post-tragic consciousness, in her framing, means a shift from wishful thinking to a life in which we “do less, buy less, grab less” and bravely confront the realities of today’s and tomorrow’s world, finding ways to live fully, meaningfully, and “beautifully” despite the gravity of the situation.
Wild Anthropocene: Literature and Multispecies Justice in Deep Time by Louise Economides
Despite the International Commission on Stratigraphy rejecting Anthropocene as the designation of a new geological epoch, the concept remains useful in ecocriticism, in considering how literature should respond to climate change, mass extinction and environmental justice.
Wild Anthropocene examines four key areas—the politics of deep time, neoliberalism’s social and ecological impacts, global population growth and inter-species entanglement—to demonstrate how literature illuminates solutions to the challenges of the Anthropocene. The book argues that technological mitigation of contemporary environmental crises must be complemented by a politics committed to multispecies justice. Central to this new politics is the project of reimagining our relationship with time with something other than its status within capitalism.
The book brings together poetry and fiction to show how contemporary literature addresses important connections between social oppression and environmental issues. It critiques techno-fix visions of the future that celebrate humanity’s ever-growing “control” over ecosystems by examining multiple sources of wildness. Readers will be introduced to a way of understanding the Anthropocene, informed by recent discoveries in earth science and evolutionary biology, that makes a strong case for a humanities-based understanding of environmental politics.
This interdisciplinary text will be a useful addition to theoretical discussions on the Anthropocene for scholars, researchers and students in the environmental humanities, literary studies, ecocriticism and environmental philosophy.
Not cheap to buy but ask for it at your local library.
The Medicine Tree: Repairing the Rotten Roots of England by Nick Hayes
Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite an unusual tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada.
The land was the Hardwick estate, whose picturesque beauty – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Hayes learns that its hills and valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. He explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost.
Living and working among this community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts
Everybody has a taste for Stanley – and the other ocean creatures just keep mistaking him for a delicious treat – but this is no ordinary jellyfish.
Most jellyfish have dangly-gangly tentacles, but Stanley has two handles…
Other jellyfish have a magical glow, but Stanley has stripes…
Because Stanley (spoiler alert) is a plastic bag!
A beautifully illustrated picture book with a powerful message about plastic pollution from environmental expert Sarah Roberts.
Poem of the Month
Two Futures by Louisa Flynn
Part I
Levelled terrains
oceans raised
resort-pod flotillas adorned with vinyl Peacock feathers
deluxe crafts suspended above storm systems
a “serene 360 panoramic view”
for the mere few who made sure they could afford it.
Meanwhile, huddled behind the blinking eye of ‘truth’
we – the destitute –
cluster like clouds of carrion flies picking at wounds
bundled and braced for the next wake
of polymer limbs and powerless rings
the only ones to realise the criticality of blood and bone.
Part II
Entitlement, annulled
the once disparate, now a fusional whole
benign olive wood lines drawn through the sands of time
solar, wind, and hydro energies combined
– the people’s feu de joie –
rekindling hearts pounding in unison for all critters
da-dum, da-dum, da-dum…
astounded by history, beholden to the revival
a dumfounded disbelief
that we almost accepted that nothing could be done
to regain our planet, to regain our power.
Us, the realised ones.
Louisa Flynn is an emerging poet passionate about exploring themes of wellbeing and climate breakdown. Based in the UK, she’s currently working on a collection that delves into identity, holistic wellbeing, and sociopolitical and climate activism, with the hope of fostering reconnection, understanding, and empathy.
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for ideas for books to add to our growing collection of literature on the climate and nature crisis. If would like to share ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com.