Brit Bennett's first book The Mothers is the hottest debut novel in the US this autumn, generating buzz from the media and readers alike before its October 11 release with Riverhead.

The Mothers is set in a black community in a Southern California beach town and follows the coming-of-age story of teenager Nadia, who falls for a pastor's son after her mother's suicide. Bennett, known for her essays about race that have appeared in the New Yorker and The Paris Review, has created a novel that's lyrical, affecting and hard-hitting, described by Jezebel as 'astute and absorbing and urgent'.