For my September 2025 TBR, I am keeping it relatively small, with a mix of owned books and library books. This month features a good selection of genres, and if I complete all of these in good time, I have some other books lined up to fill in the rest of the month. Without further ago, here are the books I plan to read in September.
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September 2025 TBR
Physical Books
Checked Out by Shadon St. George
When rodeo cowboy Cody O’Brien is found dead in his horse trailer, it appears that his horse, Game Boy, is the culprit. Aimee Machado, health sciences librarian at Timbergate Medical Center, has no reason to doubt the preliminary finding—at first. Cody had been in the hospital awaiting an operation the night he died, but he checked himself out. Had he reason to believe his surgeon, Dr. Phyllis Poole, was incompetent? Or is his death related to his complex relationship with his family? It turns out his father is dying, and four people other than Cody stood to inherit: his young trophy wife Echo, his son James, his daughter Keely, and her fiancé Tucker. How does Dr. Poole fit into all this? Her surgical outcomes have not been the best. Not to mention that Laurie Popejoy, TMC nurse and Poole’s rival in the hospital’s blues combo, disappeared the night of Cody’s death. Aimee is highly motivated to investigate. She once had a crush on Cody’s brother James, who has now set his sights on her. The missing nurse, Laurie, left Aimee a desperate phone message the night she disappeared. Moreover, Aimee’s friend and co-worker Cleo has elicited her help to discredit Dr. Poole. Aimee is already confused romantically. Although it pains her, she is trying to keep Nick, the pilot she loves but does not trust, at arm’s length. But his help proves too invaluable to refuse. Can Aimee ferret out the truth without losing her job and her life?
Deadly Election by J. R. Roberts
RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE
Someone’s been using a gun to cast his vote, killing eleven candidates for the United States congress over eight years. Exhausted in their search for the culprit, the Secret Service has decided to use someone on the inside to end the bloodshed—the Gunsmith, Clint Adams.
Clint soon finds himself in Austin, living in a fancy house with a butler and a cook who makes the best peach pie he’s ever tasted. His gorgeous secretary Carla styles him into a distinguished candidate, dressing him in the finest clothes and taking him to parties to meet campaign donors. But the Gunsmith better not get too comfortable. Even though he’s been asked to run as a Democrat, the streets will soon be running red…
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.
Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?
The Once And Future Sex by Eleanor Janega
What makes for the ideal woman? How should she look, love, and be? In this vibrant, high-spirited history, medievalist Eleanor Janega turns to the Middle Ages, the era that bridged the ancient world and modern society, to unfurl its suppositions about women and reveal what’s shifted over time―and what hasn’t.
Enshrined medieval thinkers, almost always male, subscribed to a blend of classical Greek and Roman philosophy and Christian theology for their concepts of the sexes. For the height of female attractiveness, they chose the mythical Helen of Troy, whose imagined pear shape, small breasts, and golden hair served as beauty’s epitome. Casting Eve’s shadow over medieval women, they derided them as oversexed sinners, inherently lustful, insatiable, and weak. And, unless a nun, a woman was to be the embodiment of perfect motherhood.
In contrast, drawing on accounts of remarkable and subversive medieval women like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen, along with others hidden in documents and court cases, Janega shows us how real women of the era lived. While often mothers, they were industrious farmers, brewers, textile workers, artists, and artisans and paved the way for new ideas about women’s nature, intellect, and ability.
In The Once and Future Sex, Janega unravels the restricting expectations on medieval women and the ones on women today. She boldly questions why, if our ideas of women have changed drastically over time, we cannot reimagine them now to create a more equitable future.
My Happy Marriage Vol. 4 by Akumi Agitogi
CAUGHT BETWEEN FRIEND AND FOE…
On their trip home from the Kudou family villa, Miyo and Kiyoka narrowly escape an ambush from the leader of the Gifted Communion, Naoshi Usui, who claims to be Miyo’s father. Fearing that Miyo will be targeted again, Kiyoka insists that she accompany him to his workplace from now on and appoints a female soldier named Kaoruko as her bodyguard. Though Miyo is unsettled by the revelation that Kaoruko was one of Kiyoka’s previous marriage candidates, the two women gradually warmup to each other and become friends. But can their bond survive the hidden threat coming for Miyo…?
Library Books
A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama
When her mother emigrates to China for work, 20-year-old Chizu moves in with 71-year-old Ginko, an eccentric distant relative, taking a room in her ramshackle Tokyo home, with its two resident cats and the persistent rattle of passing trains.
Living their lives in imperfect symmetry, they establish an uneasy alliance, stress tested by Chizu’s flashes of youthful spite. As the four seasons pass, Chizu navigates a series of tedious part-time jobs and unsatisfying relationships, before eventually finding her feet and salvaging a fierce independence from her solitude.
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
It has a dark past―one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.
Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.
What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…
I hope you enjoyed my September 2025 TBR. What books do you plan to read this month?
BUTTER is one that recently came on my radar! Maybe I should pick it up soon too, since I don’t know what I feel like reading these days.
I’ve heard lots of good things about it, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet myself, but might be worth picking up.