September is always a time for reflection, as the seasons turn and summer is slowly edged out by the growing chill and the darkening afternoons. Justin Hayward’s version of that classic sad song from War of the Worlds is a particularly persistent ear-worm for me this time of year.

It is, in short, a melancholy month. And the fiction we’ve featured in the past few weeks has shared a bit of that feeling.

We launched the month with Addiction, an offering about the opposing forces of futility and allure in the scientific profession from our Deputy editor, Richard P. Grant. And we leave it with Blurred reality, a haunting tale of the slipping away of someone you love by our mystery PhD student who writes under the pseudonym of Jan Jacardos.

Possibly more dark fiction awaits as I download onto my Kindle This Living and Immortal Thing by Austin Duffy, a novel about cancer which was reviewed earlier this spring here. Written by an oncologist, it’s the pick for October’s Fiction Lab book group at the Royal Institution.

Do join us if you’re in or near London.