SEPTEMBER
We have an abundant harvest of books this autumn, including three novels with wildly different framings of the future, a deep investigation into the far right’s relentless lie-spinning on climate breakdown, and a journey into the hidden life of soil. Dig in!
September 2026
Fiction
The Rewilding by Donna M Cameron
Donna M Cameron’s novel is a striking hybrid of thriller, love story, family reckoning, and sly polemic about a planet on fire. Jagger Eckerman, on the run from his billionaire father and his hit men, hides deep in a rain forest in a cave already occupied by Nia — a woman on a mission to save the planet. But Nia isn’t just the story’s love interest: she is also its conscience, challenging Jagger’s first-world faith in technofixes and steadily dismantling them. Cameron’s gripping narrative is proof that cli-fi doesn’t have to choose between urgency and heart.
Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins
As Watkins’ celebrated Gold, Fame, Citrus showed, she has never been interested in comfortable fiction. Her latest novel, set in the Mohave desert, digs deeper into the discomfort through its protagonist Rose, an on-and-off Twelve-Stepper circling an old flame and craving another baby. The Yellow Pine of the title –a real solar farm in Nevada – embodies the central tension of the book: the collision between “green” energy and the wild land it demolishes. The result is a story that mourns the land as Rose knew it while insisting, stubbornly, on love, joy, humour, and the hope of future life amid the ruins.
A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millett
A group of children are holidaying with their parents in a crumbling lakeside mansion. Having long since diagnosed the adults as boozy, self-absorbed, and allergic to consequence, they retreat into a shadow society of their own, closer to feral than filial. When the storms come and the lights go out, the grown-ups drink through the apocalypse while the children, led by the deadpan Eve and her strange, prophetic little brother Jack, start actually doing something about survival. Millett’s genius is to smuggle an entire eco-apocalypse into a story of Genesis playfully rewritten by the generation stuck cleaning up after their forebears. A compelling, unsentimental, and quietly devastating read.
NON FICTION
The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change by Geoff Dembicki
Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. They chose to ignore that warning. Instead they went ahead in developing one of the largest, most polluting oil sources in the world – the oil sands of Alberta, Canada.
In The Petroleum Papers, Geoff Dembicki documents how specific oil companies such as Exxon, Koch Industries and Shell had an early awareness of the relationship between climate change and fossil fuels but then deliberately made efforts to discredit the climate science and prevent government regulation.
The Petroleum Papers covers the history of the oil and gas industry in Canada; the warning given to political leaders and oil company executives in 1959 by Edward Teller; and the climate science undertaken by Exxon in the 1970s, when the company measured ocean carbon dioxide levels.
In addition to studying the impact, oil companies also researched potential solutions. In 1991, Exxon subsidiary Imperial Oil concluded that starting an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax could help curb climate change. The book documents that the companies did everything that they could to ensure solutions were not implemented. Funding of front organisations and think tanks by the Koch brothers and others, was done via intermediaries. Strategies to prevent solutions being implemented shifted from discrediting science to greenwashing and lobbying against government policy to limit emissions.
The Future of The Past: When Cultural Heritage Meets Climate Change by Thijs Weststeijn
As the wooden piles under Amsterdam begin to rot, water levels rise in Venice. The 4,500-year-old ruins of Mohenjo-daro flood in Pakistan. Compaction of peat soil in northern England is causing Hadrian’s Wall to collapse. The bricks of excavated Babylon are exploding as a result of increasing salt levels. Melting permafrost in Siberia is endangering the ancient burial mounds of the Scythian civilization. In the US, hurricanes have partially destroyed the heritage of New Orleans and Puerto Rico, while the 2019 wildfires forced the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to close.
The climate crisis is threatening historical heritage all over the world, with higher temperatures, more storms and fires and, of course, rising sea levels. Monuments, buildings, inner cities and cultural landscapes are at risk, and museums such as the Louvre have already started relocating parts of their collections to climate-proof storage facilities. The Future of the Past addresses this urgent issue and asks us to include the fate of beauty in our conversations on climate change.
The World Beneath Our Feet by Frank Ashwood
In The World Beneath Our Feet, scientist and macro-photographer Frank Ashwood takes us on an unforgettable journey into the ecosystems of the underground. Travelling from the ancient forests of New Zealand to the vast black soils of the US and China, he reveals a world teeming with life: miniature engineers, microscopic predators, vast fungal networks and billions upon billions of microbes. A single teaspoon of soil can contain up to six billion organisms.
Meet earthworms that transform the ground as they move through it, pinhead-sized pseudoscorpions, almost indestructible tardigrades and nematode worms that may be the most abundant animals on Earth. Together, these extraordinary creatures help sustain life above ground, recycling nutrients and supporting the soils that feed our crops, store water and sustain our forests. Soil microbes have even given us life-saving medicines, including antibiotics.
Soil stores more carbon than all the world’s plants and atmosphere combined, yet degradation, erosion and climate change are putting this vital ecosystem under increasing pressure.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Old Enough to Save the Planet by Loll Kirby
Be inspired by real-life children taking action against climate change and discover how the future of our planet starts here… with you.
Hear from Amy and Ella in the UK, two sisters committed to eradicating single use plastic through their charity Kids Against Plastic. Meet Shalise from Australia who protects the ocean by picking up rubbish on her local beach. Learn from Adeline in Indonesia who reintroduced native species of plants and animals after severe floods affected her home. Meet Vincent from France who started a community garden to reduce food waste.
Perfect for children aged 7+, read their stories and discover how they became campaigners for the future of our planet.
Poem of the Month
The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
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.