{"id":231296,"date":"2024-01-03T04:55:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T09:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=231296"},"modified":"2024-01-22T13:22:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T18:22:54","slug":"lit-hubs-most-anticipated-books-of-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hubs-most-anticipated-books-of-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub\u2019s Most Anticipated Books of 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year, readers. 2023 had its ups and downs (mostly downs)<\/a>, but as always, at least it brought us some very good books<\/a>. But now that you\u2019ve read\u00a0all the books last year had to offer<\/a> (right?),\u00a0it\u2019s time for a brand new list.<\/p>\n

Here are the books Literary Hub editors are most looking forward to (so far!) in the months to come.<\/p>\n

JANUARY<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Vanessa<\/p>\n

Vanessa Chan, <\/strong>The Storm We Made<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nS&S\/Marysue Rucci Books, January 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This highly anticipated debut novel from Vanessa Chan tells the story of a housewife turned spy in occupied Malaya during WWII. The chapters alternate between Cecily\u2019s perspective and those of her children: her teenage son, one of many who\u2019s gone missing; her daughter Jujube, who spends her days catering to Japanese soldiers; and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, hidden away for her own safety. An epic historical novel that\u2019s both propulsive and poignant\u2014expect to see this one about town. \u2013Eliza Smith, special projects editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tara<\/p>\n

Tara Isabella Burton, Here in Avalon<\/em><\/a>
\nSimon & Schuster, January 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Tara Isabella Burton is a fascinating thinker and writer\u2014she has a doctorate in theology from Oxford, and in addition to novels she writes nonfiction on things like contemporary American post-religious spirituality and our obsession with self-branding. I particularly loved her 2018 novel Social Creature <\/em>(think Tom Ripley gets Instagram), so would I like to read her new book about a possibly magical theater cult? I would, I would. \u2013Emily Temple, managing editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mike<\/p>\n

Mike McCormack, This Plague of Souls<\/em><\/a>
\nSoho Press, January 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was blown away\u2014or let\u2019s be specific and say both profoundly moved and intellectually thrilled\u2014by Irish writer McCormack\u2019s 2016 Solar Bones<\/em>, a novel about death (and also, necessarily, life) told in a single, enthralling sentence. Thus it is no surprise I am very much anticipating his next book, an \u201cexistential noir\u201d in which a man returns home from prison to find his house empty, his family gone\u2014and calls from a mysterious man who claims he can reveal the truth. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kate<\/p>\n

Kate Brody,\u00a0Rabbit Hole<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\nSoho Crime, January 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This promising debut looks perfect for our Internet sleuth-y, murder-fixated age. It\u2019s about a woman named Teddy whose sister, Angie, disappeared ten years ago, leaving behind a cold case and a broken family. Now their father has killed himself, and upon going through his belongings, Teddy discovers that he was involved in a Reddit community concentrated on solving Angie\u2019s case. Teddy can\u2019t help herself and falls down the \u201crabbit hole\u201d of the Reddit community\u2019s obsession, and allows it to take over her life. She forms a friendship with another member of the community, and slowly but surely loses sense of any previous priority, loses sense of who she was before. It\u2019s twisty and addictive, just like the Reddit community, and the reader becomes as obsessed as Teddy is to solve this mystery.\u00a0\u2013Julia Hass, contributing editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Alvaro<\/p>\n

Alvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer, You Dreamed of Empires<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Hell yes. I\u2019m very much looking forward to reading another one of Enrigue\u2019s bonkers, brain-bending historical novels (in his 2016 novel, Sudden Death<\/em>, also translated by Wimmer, the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo play tennis with a ball made from Anne Boleyn\u2019s hair). Cort\u00e9s also features heavily in Sudden Death<\/em>, and Enrigue returns to his story in You Dreamed of Empire<\/em>\u2014but of course, it will not be the story we know, but a strange, fantastical version, Enrigue-style. Can\u2019t wait. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"nonfiction\"<\/p>\n

Julie Myerson,\u00a0Nonfiction<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\nTin House Books, January 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Myerson’s latest novel is an urgent, edged book about a novelist’s relationship with her daughter, who has sunk into a dangerous form of drug addiction, and also her own, cold, mother, or rather her memory of her. As a new parent I thought I might not be able to handle this novel, but as it turned out, I couldn’t stop reading. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Olivie<\/p>\n

Olivie Blake, The Atlas Complex<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tor Books, January 9 <\/strong><\/h5>\n

Olivie Blake concludes her much-celebrated dark-academia trilogy in suitably devastating fashion. The six Alexandria Society initiates are back together and back in the library, but not for long: their dangerous caretaker Atlas Blake is still working on his world-ending plan. Expect equal parts romantasy and philosophy\u2014Blake writing about the ethics of power is always a fun ride. \u2013Drew Broussard, contributing editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Claire<\/p>\n

Claire Oshetsky, Poor Deer<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Ecco, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The latest from PEN\/Faulkner nominee Oshetsky is about a young girl trying to come to terms with the death of her friend. But instead of facing the tragedy, she spins happily-ever-after stories for herself\u2014until a strange creature called Poor Deer makes its way into her tales and demands the truth. By turns strange, beautiful, and tragic, Oshetsky\u2019s story of tragedy and redemption is charming and eerie. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Flock, The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice<\/em><\/a>
\nHarper Books, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Journalist Elizabeth Flock looks at justice with a Taddeo-esque approach, telling the stories of three women who killed after a wrong. There is a Southern U.S. woman who killed her rapist; the leader of a northern Indian gang that avenges victims of domestic violence; and a fighter in an all-female militia in Syria, where ISIS is working to dismantle the lives and rights of women.\u00a0 \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jami<\/p>\n

Jami Attenberg, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round<\/em><\/a>
\nS&S\/Simon Element, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Devotees of Attenberg\u2019s fiction (All Grown Up, All This Could Be Yours, <\/em>many others), and her pandemic-sparked newsletter, Craft Talk, have used her 1000-words-a-day-in-summer model to push novel and book projects along, helped by Attenberg\u2019s feel-good approach to the sweaty toil of ~generative~ work. This offshoot of the project stretches the approach to get you through the year and includes tips from other Names like comedian and essayist Josh Gondelman. It will be the new Bird by Bird<\/em>, you heard it here first. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jill<\/p>\n

Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes: Stories<\/em><\/a>
\nAlgonquin Books, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Those waiting for more of Jill McCorkle following her most recent novel Hieroglyphics<\/em> are in for a treat. Her new short story collection is out January 9, and includes a couple who bring a confession booth into their home, initially for fun, and a phone-line service-man (think the Norman Rockwell painting<\/a>) who feels estranged from his family in the mobile age. Take me there, Jill! \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hisham<\/p>\n

Hisham Matar, My Friends<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

American-Libyan Hisham Matar has written an exile novel with the Arab Spring at its center, pushed along by the power of fiction. Khaled\u2019s journey from Libya to the UK begins when he hears a short story read on the radio about a man eaten alive by a cat\u2013it\u2019s the early days of his waking up to understand the Qaddafi regime. He leaves his parents behind and moves to London to study. There, he attends a protest that turns ugly, stranding him outside his country and family. People who loved Matar\u2019s In the Country of Men<\/em> will be on this one early. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Linnea<\/p>\n

Linnea Axelsson, trans. Saskia Vogel, Aednan<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, January 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This family epic about two S\u00e1mi families begins in the 1910s with matriarch Ristin leading a reindeer migration meets with the new border between Sweden and Norway, rupturing family and culture. Fifty years on, Lise is \u201ceducated\u201d in a boarding school for indigenous children, and her daughter Sandra later on fights for S\u00e1mi land rights. Listen to a sample here<\/a>. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lea<\/p>\n

Lea Carpenter, Ilium<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, January 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

At last Lea Carpenter is back (after 2018\u2019s Red, White, Blue<\/em>) with another sideways approach to the international spy novel\u2014in this one, a young woman is swept off her feet by a much older suitor, but after they\u2019re married, he asks her for a \u201cfavor\u201d…never a good thing. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Marie-Helene<\/p>\n

Marie-Helene Bertino,\u00a0Beautyland<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>FSG, January 16<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Marie-Helene Bertino\u2019s wry, melancholy, utterly bewitching third novel is the coming-of-age story of a young Philadelphia woman named Adina who also happens to be an alien\u2014born in 1977 to a hardworking Italian-American \u201cEarth mother\u201d but \u201cactivated\u201d at age four by her extraterrestrial superiors and tasked with sending dispatches about the nature of humanity back to her home planet (though where that planet is, what life might be like there, or what her true kin even look like, Adina does not know). Deftly blurring the line between reality and metaphor to create a work of exquisite beauty, joyfully off-kilter humor, and aching sorrow,\u00a0Beautyland<\/em>, and Adina\u2019s lonesome journey, will fill and then shatter your heart.\u00a0\u2013Dan Sheehan, Book Marks editor-in-chief<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Susan<\/p>\n

Susan Muaddi Darraj,\u00a0Behind You is the Sea<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>HarperVia, January 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This debut novel-in-stories from the award-winning author of\u00a0A Curious Land: Stories from Home<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0Farah Rocks\u00a0<\/em>children\u2019s book series is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore, focusing on three immigrant families and their differing experiences of life in the U.S. Muaddi Darraj, a vocal advocate for Palestinian culture who won an American Book Award in 2016, has written a rich, complex, and moving immigrant story with a beautifully-rendered ensemble cast.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Manjula<\/p>\n

Manjula Martin, The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History<\/em><\/a>
\nPantheon, January 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If you\u2019ve fantasized about moving back to your childhood home, you know it can never be quite the same. For Manjula Martin, a tree-change to the Sonoma forests is defined by the naked threat of forest fires and climate change: in 2020, she was evacuated as the state burned. A personal history turned examination of fire and ecology, The Last Fire Season<\/em> is strangely timely amid a balmy winter some have never experienced before. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kyle<\/p>\n

Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture<\/em><\/a>
\nDoubleday, January 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Kyle Chayka is a master at capturing truths about our online existence (like why the internet isn\u2019t fun anymore<\/a>) in a manner as astute as it is entertaining. His sophomore book \u201ctraces the creeping, machine-guided curation\u201d of the all-powerful algorithm \u201cas it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces.\u201d I\u2019m as terrified as I am excited to read this one. \u2013Jessie Gaynor, senior editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"martyr<\/p>\n

Kaveh Akbar,\u00a0Martyr!<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, January 23<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This satirical autobiographical debut novel by Iranian-American writer and Poetry Editor of\u00a0The Nation\u00a0<\/em>is the story of a\u00a0<\/strong>newly sober, martyr-obsessed orphaned son of Iranian immigrants who embarks on a\u00a0quest to uncover for a long-buried family secret\u00a0that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. The buzz around\u00a0Martyr\u00a0<\/em>has been intense, and if it\u2019s even a fraction as good as the wildly effusive blurbs suggest (\u201cAn absolute jewel of a novel. A diamond. I haven\u2019t loved a book this much in years,\u201d said Tommy Orange, while Lauren Groff called it \u201cThe best novel you\u2019ll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.\u201d), it promises to be one of the most dazzling debuts of the year.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/p>\n

Lee Gutkind, The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble-Rousers, Outsiders, and Ne\u2019er-do-wells Concocted Creative Nonfiction<\/em><\/a>
\nYale University Press, January 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Though I am sure there were plenty of people who knew how to be weird while telling true stories prior, Lee Gutkind is credited with \u201cfathering\u201d the CNF movement in the \u201860s. Here, he traces his own route from Easy Rider<\/em> bikie to academic and writer, and looks at how writers like Joan Didion, Uptown Sinclair, Janet Malcolm and James Baldwin navigated the gap between facts and storytelling. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Christina<\/p>\n

Christina Cooke, Broughtupsy<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Catapult, January 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve been looking forward to this since I heard Cooke read the opening pages nearly two years ago. Set in the 1990s in Jamaica, this assured debut begins when Ak\u00faa\u2019s brother dies and she leaves Canada to return to her native Jamaica in the hopes of reconnecting with her sister, Tamika. But when Ak\u00faa starts spending her time with a stripper, the difficult realities of being gay in a religious family and in a homophobic society provoke a reckoning for Ak\u00faa and Tamika. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adam<\/p>\n

Adam Shatz,\u00a0The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon<\/a>
\n<\/em>FSG, January 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In 2023, with Verso, Adam Shatz published Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination,<\/em>\u00a0which looked at the sometimes thorny relationship between contemporary writers’ writing and their politics, so a biography of Frantz Fanon makes sense as the subject of his new book.\u00a0The Rebel’s Clinic<\/em>\u00a0charts the life of Fanon, who left Martinique to fight for France in WW2, then found himself drawn into Existentialism in the postwar years. An examination of one of the pre-eminent writers\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>activists of the postcolonial period,\u00a0The Rebel’s Clinic<\/em>\u00a0also serves as a primer for Fanon’s most famous works,\u00a0Black Skin, White Masks\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Wretched of the Earth. \u2013Samuel Rutter, contributing editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kiley<\/p>\n

Kiley Reid, Come and Get It<\/em><\/a>
\nPutnam, January 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

As a massive Such a Fun Age <\/em>fan, I\u2019ve been waiting for the new Kiley Reid for a long time. I thought her 2020 novel was so incisive and accessible, plotty and smart, that it makes me all the more excited for her next venture. Reid was good at every part of that story: depicting whiteness, the bond between babysitter and child, being 25 and lost, she could do it all, and did it all with warmth and empathy, even for the characters who didn\u2019t always deserve it. This new book promises all the same ability at depth and poignancy through a fun, plotty story: a campus novel this time, about an RA named Millie, and her entanglement with a visiting professor. It\u2019s a perfect recipe for a great January read: in a college setting, about discretion and desire, about money, want, and, most importantly, it\u2019s by Kiley Reid.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

Chris Dixon, Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, January 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

One of the curious things about the internet is that discourse about the internet is often led by the same VCs and tech visionaries looking to capitalize on it, as evidenced by the rupture around EA in 2023. Read Write Own<\/em> promises to put the eras of internet in context up to web3, and is blurbed by Bob Iger, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban (\u201cShark Tank; Dallas Mavericks\u201d) and the president of Coinbase. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gregory<\/p>\n

Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, January 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

When one of America\u2019s foremost poets publishes a collection for the first time in nearly a decade it is a major event\u2014particularly when that poet is uniquely suited to grappling with what\u2019s been going on in America over the past nine years… Spectral Evidence<\/i> is Gregory Pardlo\u2019s first collection of poetry since he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015, and it picks up where Digest<\/i> left off. As ever Pardlo moves through poetic registers with ease, from high to low and back again, as he witnesses the world in all its terrible beauty. From fallen heroes of professional wrestling (seriously) to this country\u2019s infinite hostility to its Black citizens, Pardlo\u2019s is the poetic eye (and heart) we need right now. \u2013Jonny Diamond, editor in chief<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ijeoma<\/p>\n

Ijeoma Oluo, Be a Revolution<\/em><\/a>
\nHarper One, January 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Ijeoma Oluo\u2019s breakout hit So You Want To Talk About Race<\/em> came out in 2018 but was discovered by many readers as the 2020 murder of George Floyd galvanized people across the U.S. to face the racist undercurrents. Be a Revolution<\/em> sets out to look at how everyday people are using anti-racist approaches to reform systems big and small\u2013in schools, in hospitals, in criminal justice\u2013and map a way forward for those who want to push for change. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kwame<\/p>\n

Kwame Alexander, ed., This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets<\/em><\/a>
\nLittle, Brown, January 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This collection of \u201cresilient joy\u201d includes work from Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith and Terrance Hayes that captures poignant moments of beauty and pride: Jacqueline A.Trimble likens \u201cBlack woman joy\u201d to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of \u201chome\u201d through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. I feel this will make a good gift in 2024. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

FEBRUARY<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"GennaRose<\/p>\n

GennaRose Nethercott, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: Stories<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Vintage, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Nethercott continues to build on the successes of her magical debut Thistlefoot<\/em> with a collection of strange and fantastical tales that bring to mind Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link. Filled with folklore, Americana, and an infectious imagination, every single story is a knockout\u2014but the gorgeously illustrated titular bestiary is a highlight. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sheila<\/p>\n

Sheila Heti, <\/strong>Alphabetical Diaries<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nFSG, February 6 <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If I\u2019m being honest, I had doubts about this one. The story goes that Sheila Heti\u2014she of literary cool girl status\u2014transcribed ten years\u2019 worth of her diaries into Microsoft Excel, sorted them alphabetically, and voila<\/em>! Alphabetical Dairies <\/em>was born. (I\u2019m being completely facetious about the voila<\/em>; at least I think <\/em>I am.) What emerges, however, is an entirely new reading experience, and a better portrait of growing into one\u2019s self than most coming-of-age novels I\u2019ve read. I only wish my own diaries were so appealing. \u2013ES \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/p>\n

Paul Theroux, Burma Sahib<\/em><\/a>
\nMariner Books, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The concept: Retracing the beginnings of George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, an Eton graduate and conscript of the British Empire in India. Burma Sahib<\/em> follows Eric through his first assignment abroad in colonial India, where he is put in charge of local Burma police and clashes with his superiors. Somewhere along the way this friction sparks the anti-colonial writer we all know. Paul Theroux has taken us back and forth across the subcontinent many times, and this feels like a fascinating journey. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Megan<\/p>\n

Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings<\/em><\/a>
\nLittle, Brown, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Continuing the boom in Irish lit, Megan Nolan\u2019s latest delves into class and bias in 1990s London. A dead child sparks an investigation by a reporter looking for a good scoop, and leads him toward a family of liminal Irish peasants: the Greens. Among the family is Carmel, once beautiful, we are told, and living a life of disappointment and loss, and hemmed in by family secrets.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bianca<\/p>\n

Bianca Bosker, Get the Picture<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Viking, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Bosker\u2019s Cork Dork<\/em> probably my most-gifted book, and I loved her whole-hearted dive into the world of wine. When I found out that her next journey would take her into the fine-art world, I was immediately all-in. It\u2019s a passionate, brilliant examination of why humans make and value art, from a joyous and gifted investigator. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Shayla<\/p>\n

Shayla Lawson, <\/strong>How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nTiny Reparations Books, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If you haven\u2019t encountered Shayla Lawson\u2019s work yet, consider this your formal invitation. How to Live Free in a Dangerous World <\/em>is a jet-setting memoir that explores race, gender, disability, and love through an unbelievable itinerary: Venice, Zimbabwe, Mexico City, Portugal, Tokyo, Bermuda\u2014the list goes on. Lawson writes with fierceness, wisdom, and vulnerability in a voice that can\u2019t help but captivate. Treat yourself. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Isabel<\/p>\n

Isabel Waidner, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Graywolf, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Corey Fah has been named the winner of a major literary award that turns out to be a UFO\u2026 and things get weirder, much much weirder, from there in this bizarre and hilarious look at internet fame and literary success. Waidner\u2019s last novel (Sterling Karat Gold<\/em>) won the Goldsmiths Prize, which is awarded to fiction that \u201cextends the possibilities of the novel\u201d\u2014and Corey Fah<\/em> promises even more gonzo imagination and structural strangeness. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rebecca<\/p>\n

Rebecca K. Reilly, Greta & Valdin<\/em><\/a>
\nAvid Reader Press, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This novel is being pitched as\u00a0Normal People\u00a0<\/em>meets\u00a0Schitt’s Creek<\/em>, which I have to say . . . I really cannot imagine. But if it’s as funny as early reports suggest, I’ll be giving this novel, a quirky family epic\/queer love story that was a bestseller in the author’s native New Zealand, a chance. I think we’ll be needing some extra light this year. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ingrid<\/p>\n

Ingrid Robeyns, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth<\/em><\/a>
\nAstra House, February 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Belgian economist and philosopher Robeyns coined the term “limitarianism,” which refers to the idea that there should be a cap on how much money any one person is able to accumulate; this is her argument for its practical value to the world at large (even rich people). It’s not as radical as it sounds, especially given the state of, well, everything right now. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kelly<\/p>\n

Kelly Link, The Book of Love<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It’s not so often that a debut novelist is already a MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient and a Pulitzer finalist, but then we’ve been waiting for Kelly Link’s debut novel for a long time now. Lovers of big, immersive literary fantasy (and, of course, of Link) will not be disappointed\u2014this is a nimble, clever, and deeply satisfying novel, in which a handful of teenagers, most of them recently dead, get dragged into an age-old grudge match between mythic creatures of unending (or possibly ending, but no spoilers) power. All of it is rendered in Link’s trademark winking, personable prose, which tends to deliver something pleasurable on every page. (Very often, in this case, it is a sassy comeback.) So yes, this novel has Big Buffy\u00a0<\/em>Energy\u2014that is, sometimes it is fun and ridiculous, sometimes it is a tragedy on an epic scale, but always there is someone looking askance at the goings-on, even while their world is ending. Well, there are worse ways to get through February. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bora<\/p>\n

Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur, Your Utopia: Stories<\/em><\/a>
\nAlgonquin Books, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Chung\u2019s last short story collection, Cursed Bunny<\/em>, also translated by Hur, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award in Translated Literature; I can only assume this one will be just as good. If you need any further convincing, read Hur\u2019s answers to our interview questions<\/a> from earlier this year. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Yangsze<\/p>\n

Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife<\/em><\/a>
\nHenry Holt, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Late in the Qing Empire, foxes are rumored to be gods of a kind, capable of luring people to their deaths by appearing as beautiful men and women. A courtesan is found dead, kicking off an investigation by a man named Bao. His quest crosses paths with a bereaved mother and a family cursed to see their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. Lots of mythology, family intrigue, and of course foxes<\/a>. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hamilton<\/p>\n

Hamilton Nolan, The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor<\/em><\/a>
\nHachette, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

You don\u2019t have to read Thomas Piketty\u2019s Capital<\/i> to understand that extreme wealth disparity is bad for any society (but it helps!). And as labor reporter and longtime Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan shows with The Hammer<\/em>, the best way to reverse America\u2019s decades-long slide into a new Gilded Age is through the power of organized labor. Though unions have long been targeted by those in power, Nolan shows how a new generation of activists\u2014catalyzed by the stark lessons of the pandemic\u2014has rallied support for labor across this country, winning some real battles in the long, slow war against the top of the wealth pyramid. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"T.<\/p>\n

T. Kingfisher, What Feasts at Night<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tordotcom, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Alex Easton returns in the sequel to Kingfisher\u2019s What Moves the Dead, <\/em>her spectacular re-telling of \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher.\u201d Easton has made it back home to Gallacia but the family estate is in total disarray, the groundskeeper is dead, and rumors abound about a breath-stealing monster out of folklore. It\u2019s sure to be eerie and gripping, as Kingfisher novellas always are. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Amitav Ghosh, Smoke and Ashes: A Writer’s Journey through Opium’s Hidden Histories<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Amitav Ghosh, it would seem, can just about do it all as a writer: as a wonderful novelist, a brilliant essayist, and now, with Smoke and Ashes<\/i>, as a historian-cum-memoirist-cum-travel writer. Based on decades of archival research, both personal and historical, Ghosh\u2019s hybrid history follows the intersecting routes of the 19th-century opium trade, a transnational economy powered by the devastating fusion of colonialism and capitalism. As one of the world\u2019s first truly global commodities, opium made its way from China to India to Britain and back again, impacting the lives of many millions, from the lowliest deckhands to the richest New York families to members of Ghosh\u2019s very own family. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lucy<\/p>\n

Lucy Sante, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Penguin Press, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The iconoclastic Sante opens up with stories about her life (born in Belgium, transplanted to the US, finding her way in \u201870s NYC) to help illuminate the journey of personal discovery that led to her transition. Not to be missed, it\u2019s a powerful example of self-reflection and a vibrant exploration of the modern dynamics of gender and identity. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lauren<\/p>\n

Lauren Markham,\u00a0A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lauren Markham’s intrepid reporting is always a pleasure to read, and you get the feeling that with\u00a0A Map of Futures<\/em>\u00a0many of her writerly interests, from the heritage of ideas to her own family heritage, and, of course, the ethics and praxis of migration, have found their perfect combination. This book charts how a sprawling refugee camp in Greece, that no one wanted in the first place, was burnt down in 2020, with six young Afghan refugees arrested for the crime. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Brontez<\/p>\n

Brontez Purnell,\u00a0Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse<\/a>
\n<\/em>MCD\/FSG, February 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

To say that Brontez Purnell is one of my favorite American writers isn’t quite right, mostly because the word “writer” doesn’t nearly encapsulate the high-camp-queer-gonzo-performance-art that is inseparable from his daily life. Written in a similarly hectic style to 2021’s 100 Boyfriends,\u00a0<\/em>this is a memoir in 38 fragments that pulls no punches: one of the essays is in fact about a punch-on at a poetry reading. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"J.<\/p>\n

J. Robert Lennon, Hard Girls<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Mulholland Books, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

J. Robert Lennon is one of the great genre-hoppers and I can\u2019t wait to see what he gets up to in the crime sphere. We\u2019ve got estranged twins reconnecting to find their mother, globe-hopping adventure, family secrets, and the pace of a great thriller? Plus, things are often quite a bit stranger than what the jacket copy says in a Lennon novel, so I\u2019m excited to see how this goes. And it\u2019s apparently the first in a series! \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sloane<\/p>\n

Sloane Crosley, Grief is for People<\/em><\/a>
\nMCD, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I love Sloane Crosley\u2019s voice: she\u2019s wry and conversational and real, and she feels like someone I know, or want to know. Which makes it all the harder when she goes through something devastating, as she did a couple years ago: she lost her closest friend Russell, her old boss, her dearest confidante, to suicide. Grief is For People <\/em>is her attempt at comprehending the incomprehensible: how this could have happened, were there signs, and most horribly, was there anything she could have done to prevent it. A suicide memoir can be a tough cookie, but this one manages to not be as brutal as they can be. It is more a meditation on loss, and a eulogy for this man she loved than anything else, and manages to hold onto that trademark Crosley humor and tenderness throughout.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Leslie<\/p>\n

Leslie Jamison, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story<\/em><\/a>
\nLittle, Brown, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I haven\u2019t read a book so earth-shatteringly honest as this in a while: it brings to mind I Love You, But I\u2019ve Chosen Darkness <\/em>by Claire Vaye Watkins in its rawness, its truth. We last heard from Leslie Jamison with Make it Scream, Make It Burn, <\/em>a trademark book of Jamison essays that discussed, among many other things, her marriage. Here we are on the other side, after the splintering, after the marriage ended. Splinters<\/em> is about divorce, and family, and motherhood, and lineage, and mainly about the stories of our life: what to do when the story no longer fits. How to put together a quest for beauty and the ugliness of a hard marriage and hard choices. How to move forward, how to forgive ourselves. The best, most bracing, powerful memoir I\u2019ve read: set an alert for February 20th and get it as soon as you can.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Michiko<\/p>\n

Michiko Kakutani, The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider<\/em><\/a>
\nCrown, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

What has the ex-chief book critic of the New York Times<\/em> been up to? Well, this: A deep-dive into the chaos post-Global Financial Crisis. It\u2019s a story of digital disruption, the politics of outsiders, and multiplying crises. Author Joseph Ellis writes that \u201cIf you\u2019re trying to decide whether the world is going crazy or you are, Michiko Kakutani\u2019s new book should prove uplifting.\u201d \u2018Tis me. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Phillip<\/p>\n

Phillip B. Williams, Ours<\/em><\/a>
\nViking, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In the 1830s, a woman named Saint creates a hidden town outside St. Louis she calls \u201cOurs.\u201d There, she welcomes those she has freed from slavery by attacking plantations, attempting to keep Ours a utopia for those within. But over time, her power to magically conceal the town falters, and cracks appear in the safety of her sanctum. What is freedom if you can\u2019t leave? If you loved Libertie<\/em>, or you\u2019re a Toni Morrison acolyte, this one will be a goodie. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Joan<\/p>\n

Joan Acocella, The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Joan Acocella has been on staff at the New Yorker for almost 30 years, and has tackled all manner of art as critic (dance, foremost, but her insights stretch to everything from Richard Pryor\u2019s comedy to Greta Gerwig\u2019s Little Women<\/em>). Here, a collection spanning the past decade and a half gathers sharp insights on J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf and the writer Elmore Leonard, among 22 other witty, probing essays. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lyz<\/p>\n

Lyz Lenz, This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life<\/em><\/a>
\nCrown, February 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lyz Lenz is a fearless writer. Whether via tweet, newsletter, or book, Lenz is always ready to call out the myriad hypocrites and idiots that seem to dominate contemporary American life (regardless of how powerful the idiot in question might be). With This American Wife<\/i> Lenz adds to her already impressive canon of cultural criticism by taking on one of patriarchal America\u2019s bedrock institutions: marriage. Through a vivid mix of research, reporting, and personal anecdote, Lenz reveals the power imbalances inherent to traditional heterosexual marriage, and calls for a radical act of refusal by women who have been too-long defined by their relationships to men. \u2013<\/em><\/b>JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"turning<\/p>\n

Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Turning Leaves<\/em><\/a>
\nWilliam Morrow, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Post-apocalypse, a community of Anishinaabe people have made a new home in what was at one time called Northern Ontario, Canada, finding that their ancestor\u2019s ways aren\u2019t enough to sustain them on their land anymore and that they must move on. A small exploration party, led by Evan Whitesky, hikes toward the Great Lakes region, encountering the ruins of their old life and the threat of other survivors. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Maurice<\/p>\n

Maurice Carlos Ruffin, The American Daughters<\/em><\/a>
\nOne World, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Ady and her mother Sanite are together in the French Quarter, enslaved to the same man when the novel opens, but of course slavery means that staying together is never a guarantee. Alone, Ady meets a free woman who introduces her to a secret society of revolutionaries\u2013the titular \u201cDaughters\u201d\u2013and sets things in motion for Ady. Ruffin is a son of NoLa, and his previous novel We Cast a Shadow<\/em> was a finalist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award among many other noms. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Martin<\/p>\n

Martin MacInnes, <\/strong>In Ascension<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nBlack Cat, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I can\u2019t wait to read this Booker longlisted novel, which takes its protagonist, Leigh, from the unfathomable depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, while ruminating on little things like existence and big things like familial obligation and love. A literary sci-fi doorstopper is just what the dark days of February call for. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Steve<\/p>\n

Steve Coll, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, The C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq<\/em><\/a>
\nPenguin Press, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Nothing good ever comes from a nuclear power\u2019s asymmetrical response to terrorism, no matter how awful the act; more often than not, many thousands of innocent civilians end up dead. This is but one terrible lesson from Steve Coll\u2019s in-depth new history of America\u2019s misadventures in Iraq and the man at the heart of it all: Saddam Hussein. Drawing from a wide variety of sources\u2014unpublished reports, eye-witness interviews, Hussein\u2019s own personal archives\u2014Coll assembles a portrait of a paranoid dictator who found enemies wherever he looked, some of whom (looking at you Bush family), made the tragic mistake of confirming his worst fears. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/p>\n

Mary V. Dearborn, Carson McCullers: A Life<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The broad strokes of Carson McCullers are: born in the South, a smash debut novel at age 23\u2014The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter<\/em>, published in 1940\u2014and a wild marriage that ended in the suicide of her jealous husband. Dearborn goes deeper here into McCullers\u2019 life using letters and journals to build out the biography of one of the South\u2019s great writers and offer a more complex portrait of someone who felt she was \u201cborn a man\u201d and felt a deal of friction between her understanding of the world and that of the people in it. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Emmeline<\/p>\n

Emmeline Clein, Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, February 27<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The body-positivity, body-neutrality and anti-diet cultural waves have at times limited discussion of eating disorders and dulled the historical nature of the urge to shrink one\u2019s body. Busting somewhat out of the discourse, Emmeline Clein\u2019s essay collection on \u201charm and hunger\u201d goes back to Anne Boleyn and forwards to the era of, in her own coinage, \u201cdissociative feminism<\/a>,\u201d if you recall her viral 2019 BuzzFeed essay, promising to promote \u201cradical acceptance of all our appetites instead: for food, connection, and love.\u201d \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

MARCH<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

Andrew Dubus III, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>W.W. Norton, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A decade after his essential memoir Townie<\/em>, Dubus delivers career-defining suite of essays about working hard, growing up, and growing older. The book includes \u201cIf I Owned a Gun,\u201d his powerful interrogation of guns and masculinity and why he ultimately gave up owning a weapon. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/p>\n

Rachel Lyon, Fruit of the Dead<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Scribner, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

When an 18-year-old camp counselor gets swept away to an isolated island as the nanny for a shady pharma billionaire\u2019s kids, her mother sets off to find her and bring her back. I\u2019m a sucker for a good myth-retelling, especially when it doesn\u2019t sweat the plot points too hard, and so I\u2019m very excited for Lyon\u2019s riff on Persephone & Demeter. Pharma billionaire Hades? Yes please. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Xochitl<\/p>\n

Xochitl Gonzalez, Anita de Monte Laughs Last<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Flatiron, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In 1998, art history student Raquel is struggling to find a place at her elite college where the majority of students are white. But when she starts dating a popular older student, she suddenly finds herself at the top of the social ladder. That\u2019s when Raquel discovers the story of artist Anita de Monte. A rising star who died tragically in 1985, Anita\u2019s story is strangely similar to Raquel\u2019s own, and it forces Raquel to reconsider her own life and relationships. Told by both Anita and Raquel, Gonzalez\u2019s newest novel is a dynamic exploration of love, art, and power.\u00a0 \u2013McKayla Coyle, publishing coordinator<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Cristina<\/p>\n

Cristina Henr\u00edquez, The Great Divide<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Ecco, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Great Divide<\/em> is an epic story told from the perspective of ordinary people. Following the intersecting lives of three characters living in Panama, this historical novel tells the story of the Panama Canal\u2019s construction. Omar is a Panamanian fishmonger who takes a job working on the canal, Ada Bunting is a teenage stowaway from Barbados trying to raise money for her sister\u2019s surgery, and John Oswald is a scientist working to eradicate malaria. When these three meet on the banks of the Panama Canal, their lives are forever changed. A compassionate and insightful historical epic. \u2013MC<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lucas<\/p>\n

Lucas Rijneveld, trans. Michelle Hutchinson,\u00a0My Heavenly Favorite<\/a>
\n<\/em>Graywolf, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Here comes a novel that wears its debt to\u00a0Lolita<\/em>\u2014is it just me, or are we seeing a lot of novels lately that are taking Nabokov’s classic and running with it?\u2014pinned on its chest with abject pride. After winning the International Booker Prize in 2020 with The Discomfort of Evening<\/em>, Rijneveld returns with a novel narrated by a disgraced veterinarian who falls for the daughter of a farmer in rural Netherlands, a protean girl on the edge of puberty who’d much prefer a boy’s body.\u00a0 \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey<\/a>
\n<\/em>Bloomsbury, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

You\u2019ve read the work of brilliant translator Jennifer Croft before\u2014the translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s Flights <\/em>and The Books of Jacob <\/em>(also Romina Paula\u2019s August<\/em> and Sylvia Molloy\u2019s Dislocations<\/em>, among others). <\/em>Her debut novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey<\/em>, follows eight translators who gather in Bia\u0142owie\u017ca forest to meet with world-renowned author Irena Rey in order to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence<\/em>. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears and the translators, slavishly devoted to \u201cOur Lady of Literature,\u201d\u00a0attempt to find her. In an interview with the New York Times<\/em>, Croft says, \u201cTranslators overwrite originals, making texts in other languages visible and invisible at once. Without translators, literary traditions and even languages might rot in isolation. With translators, the literary ecosystem keeps up the diversity it needs in order to flourish.\u201d With this knowledge, The Extinction<\/em> puts translators first, and with humor and grace explores art, celebrity, and the power of language. \u2013Emily Firetog, deputy editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adelle<\/p>\n

Adelle Waldman, Help Wanted<\/em><\/a>
\nW.W. Norton, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

As a fan Waldman\u2019s very funny, painfully familiar debut The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.<\/em>, I\u2019ve been impatiently awaiting her sophomore novel for years. It comes in the form of a workplace comedy about the employees at big box store in upstate New York as they compete for a management position, which sounds like the perfect showcase for Waldman\u2019s skill in both ruthless character study and dark comedy. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\u00c9douard<\/p>\n

\u00c9douard Louis, trans. John Lambert, <\/strong>Change<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nFSG, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Thirty-one-year-old \u00c9douard Louis writes some of the best nonfiction published today, full stop. I can\u2019t wait to read his latest, billed as an autobiographical novel, in which \u201cEddy\u201d becomes \u00c9douard, leaving behind his violent, working-class hometown for Paris, a life of the mind, and the relentless pursuit of becoming someone else (which is, of course, another kind of violence). \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Helen<\/p>\n

Helen Oyeyemi, <\/strong>Parasol Against the Axe<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nRiverhead, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Any year we get a new Helen Oyeyemi is cause for celebration, but I\u2019m particularly excited about this fun, absurdist pitch: two estranged friends, a bachelorette party in Prague, and a book called Paradoxical Undressing<\/em> that changes every time it\u2019s read. Oh, and evidently Parasol Against the Axe <\/em>is written from the perspective of Prague itself. I\u2019m all in. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tommy<\/p>\n

Tommy Orange,\u00a0Wandering Stars<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, February 27<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe member Tommy Orange\u2019s first book, the critically acclaimed short story collection\u00a0There There<\/em>, was a full-blown literary sensation upon its release in 2018, winning both the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the\u00a0PEN\/Hemingway Award. It was also a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, as well as a\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>bestseller. Not bad for a debut. His highly anticipated sophomore novel,\u00a0Wandering Stars<\/em>, traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tana<\/p>\n

Tana French, The Hunter<\/em><\/a>
\nViking, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

French returns to the same small town in the west of Ireland where she set\u00a0The Searcher<\/em>, picking up the story of Cal and Trey, who find themselves embroiled in yet another murderous mystery to do with the Reddys. You needn’t have read The Searcher\u00a0<\/em>to appreciate this novel\u2014which is wonderfully evocative, entertaining and propulsive all the way through, even if I still miss the magic-tinged weirdness of French’s Dublin Murder Squad series\u2014but it helps to understand some of the motivations. Besides, there are worse reasons to revisit a good book. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nam<\/p>\n

Nam Le, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

While I am normally very skeptical of blurbs, it\u2019s hard to ignore praise from J.M. Coetzee AND Nick Cave, both of whom rave about Nam Le\u2019s ambitious book-length poem, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem<\/i>. Le, who burst onto the international literary scene with his 2008 story collection, The Boat<\/i>, continues to grapple with the complexities and contradictions of the diaspora experience, at once articulating the racism and oppression of life as a refugee while also expressing a need to not be defined by that experience. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Russell<\/p>\n

Russell Banks, American Spirits<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Russell Banks, who died a year ago next week, has always been a master at elevating the small calamities of everyday American life into full-blown tragedy, revealing all the dark ways our grief and despair can spill into something larger, more menacing, than we ever imagined. With his final novel, American Spirits<\/em>, Banks takes us to upstate New York with three connected stories of small-town life gone very wrong. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jessi<\/p>\n

Jessi Jezewska Stevens, Ghost Pains<\/em><\/a>
\nAnd Other Stories, March 5<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Another book making the case for 2024 being a banger of a year for short fiction, Ghost Pains<\/em> collects Stevens\u2019 fiction from The Baffler<\/em><\/a>, Harpers, The Paris Review <\/em>and elsewhere into a \u201cshambolic\u201d journey. (I\u2019m in.) Fans of The Exhibition of Persephone Q <\/em>and slightly hallucinatory The Visitors <\/em>will be excited to see where she takes them next. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gabriel<\/p>\n

Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, trans. Anne McLean, Until August<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Until August<\/em> was Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez’s last novel; he finished it near the end of his life, while he was struggling with dementia, but ultimately decided it shouldn’t be published. Now, ten years after his death, his sons are releasing the book, which is being described as \u201can extraordinary and profound tale of female freedom and desire.\u201d One final work from a literary master will certainly be worth a look. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Vinson<\/p>\n

Vinson Cunningham,\u00a0Great Expectations<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Hogarth, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Vinson Cunningham is a brilliant culture writer and theater critic whose\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0pieces have made him one of the magazine\u2019s rising stars, so I was delighted to see that the 2020 National Magazine Award finalist has now written a novel.\u00a0Great Expectations<\/em>\u00a0is the story of a young Black man who goes to work for the presidential campaign of a charismatic Illinois senator (Cunningham previously served as a staff assistant at the Obama White House), along the way encountering \u201ca myriad of people who raise a set of questions … that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.\u201d \u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Andrew Boryga, Victim<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\nDoubleday, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In Boryga’s debut novel, Victim<\/em>, a hustler on the rise learns to manipulate the currency of identity as he bends the truth about his past and establishes himself in the world of New York media and letters. The satire in this novel comes in sharp and merciless, but the friendship at the story’s center steals the show, rounding out all the complexities and contradictions of two young men on different sides of the truth. Boryga is a keen observer of culture and a talented storyteller with style to spare. \u2013DM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Marilynne<\/p>\n

Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

You\u2019ve read Genesis, but have you really read it<\/em>? As a piece of literature, that is, as opposed to a historical document or madlib composed by multiple people over multiple centuries? Honestly, an interesting project for Gilead\u2019s <\/em>Robinson, who gives pre-Milton Eden the proper treatment.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hala<\/p>\n

Hala Alyan,\u00a0The Moon That Turns You Back<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Ecco, March 12<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Palestinian-American poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist\u00a0Hala Alyan<\/a>, a recipient of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, has been an essential voice in these dark, devastating times. She writes about the complexities of displacement and exile, the nature of home, and the dehumanizing nature of the western gaze (\u201cThey like me in a museum. \/ They like me when I spit my father from my mouth\u201d) with incredible lyricism, beauty, and fury. Her new collection of poetry,\u00a0The Moon That Turns You Back<\/em>, \u201ctraces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family\u2014past, present, future\u2014in the face of displacement and war.\u201d \u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Morgan Parker, <\/strong>You Get What You Pay For: Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nRandom House, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I queue up to read Morgan Parker, and you should too. In her debut essay collection, the award-winning author of Magical Negro<\/em><\/a> pursues a personal and cultural history of life as a Black woman in America. Weaving personal narrative with current events and historical context, Parker delivers a must-read account of her own psyche, written with the precision and lyricism of a poet. \u2013ES <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rita<\/p>\n

Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot<\/em><\/a>
\nViking, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Welcome to the 12th Annual Women\u2019s 18 & Under Daughters of America Cup at Bob\u2019s Boxing Palace, and to Bullwinkel\u2019s sports novel that reads like an opera. Alongside dialogue-less accounts of fights that are hypnotically intense, we get the girls\u2019 backstories and the moments that brought them to the ring. \u201cUsually, as a tournament progresses, there is a feeling of whittling, of a group of many reduced to a single champion, but here in Bob\u2019s Boxing Palace, at the Daughters of America tourna\u00adment, as each bout has been fought, there has been the feeling of accumulation.\u201d Bullwinkel\u2019s 2018 story collection\u00a0Belly Up\u00a0<\/em>was beautiful and strange, and the novel has the same intensity of characters and unpacking of the human spirit, with the narrative arc of every great sports story. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Emily<\/p>\n

Emily Raboteau, Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”<\/em><\/a>
\nHenry Holt, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

An instant cornerstone of what I see as the emerging motherhood-climate genre (Mobility, The Quickening<\/em>), Lessons for Survival<\/em> was reported out by Raboteau as a multi-continent journey for stories of mothers trying to help their kids thrive. There are Indigenous stories amid changing ecological patterns, of course, but also meditations on life in cities amid pollution, and the intersection of race and quality of life.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Benjamin<\/p>\n

Benjamin Ware, On Extinction: Beginning Again At The End<\/em><\/a>
\nVerso, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It is foolhardy to think we can reverse the devastating effects of the climate crisis\u2014and the immense threat to human existence they pose\u2014with anything but the most radical change in course. Sadly, with every passing month, that change seems impossible. What philosopher Ben Ware is asking, then, is for us to imagine\u2014to internalize\u2014the reality of human finitude, the end of us. Only then, he suggests, will we be able to take in the full horizon of what we\u2019ve wrought and, perhaps, move forward into a new and radical version of our shared future. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

David Small, The Werewolf at Dusk: Stories<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>W.W. Norton, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

An interesting trio of illustrated stories, one original and two adaptations. The title story is an adaptation of Lincoln Michel\u2019s tale of an aging werewolf, there\u2019s an adaptation of Jean Ferry\u2019s most famous story \u201cLe Tigre Mondain,\u201d and Small adds an original about a man lost on dreamlike streets. All three are brought together by Small\u2019s gorgeous illustrations. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Through<\/p>\n

Various, Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Two Lines Press, March 12<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The latest in Two Lines\u2019 terrific Calico imprint, dedicated to bringing yet-untranslated stories and writers into English in community. This one rides a wave of interest in Latin American horror and features stories from translation sensations like Mariana Enriquez and Monica Ojeda as well as writers making their English-translation debut. It\u2019s guaranteed to be a weird, unsettling, and beautiful collection. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"tea<\/p>\n

T\u00e9a Obreht, The Morningside<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Obreht is known for her masterful, myth-touched epics, but as it turns out, she can do slender and incisive as well as she can do sweeping. (This novel is still myth-touched, though.) Not too long from now, a girl named Silvia lives in a once-luxurious tower in a place called Island City, half-underwater, and half-lawless, the tides and crimes reported by an underground radio host whose identity is a mystery. Silvia and her mother came from somewhere far away\u2014but Silvia doesn’t understand exactly why they had to leave, or why her mother has sworn her to secrecy about their origins. Then there’s the mysterious woman who lives in the penthouse, who might or might not be a magical creature who could fix (or destroy) everything. I won’t give any more away, except to say that like all of Obreht’s work, The Morningside<\/em> is filled with tiny moments of acute observation and beautiful writing that will make you stop and gasp, and also like all of Obreht’s work, you’ll be thinking about it all long after you’ve finished reading. A magical, special book by one of our best working novelists. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Witold<\/p>\n

Witold Gombrowicz, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Possessed<\/em><\/a>
\nBlack Cat, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz is a genius of the absurd (read his masterpiece Cosmos<\/em>); more English speakers should read him. Here’s a good opportunity: The Possessed<\/em>, an early Gombrowicz novel that Grove’s Black Cat is publishing in a new translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a pastiche of the Gothic novel featuring “bewitched towels, conniving secretaries, famous clairvoyants, uncanny doubles” and a mad prince. Can’t wait. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lauren<\/p>\n

Lauren Oyler, No Judgement: Essays<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>HarperOne, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Oyler is one of our most delightful working critics, not least because she’s not afraid to be actually, you know, critical. Her first collection contains eight new essays, the topics being (according to her website) “revenge, gossip, Goodreads, expats, autofiction, vulnerability, anxiety, and spoilers.” So basically all my favorite topics… \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adam<\/p>\n

Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Little Brown, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve been a fan of Rapp\u2019s brand of visceral human storytelling since his upstart-playwright days and his new novel looks like a doozy: a multi-generational saga about a family with a potential serial killer in their midst. What could be more quintessentially American? \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/h5>\n
Rachel Cohen,\u00a0A Chance Meeting: Encounters Between American Writers and Artists<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\nNYRB Classics, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

“The thirty people gathered here met in ordinary ways,” Cohen writes in the introduction to this treasure trove, originally published in 2004. “A careful arrangement after long admiration, a friend’s casual introduction, or because they both just happened to be standing near the drinks.” These aren’t just any thirty people, of course, but rather American cultural icons from Walt Whitman to Gertrude Stein to Willa Cather Marcel Duchamp to Zora Neale Hurston to James Baldwin to John Cage, whose meet-cutes (or meet-plains) are collected in this fascinating, genre-bending treasure trove. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Judith<\/p>\n

Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender?<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

We all love Judith Butler. If Gender Trouble<\/em>, published in 1990, gave us the tools to speak more expansively about gender and the human experience, something seems to have been lost in translation by bad actors since. Who\u2019s Afraid of Gender<\/em> brings us up to today, and explains \u201chow \u2018gender\u2019 has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists.\u201d\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/p>\n

Michael Ondaatje, A Year of Last Things<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

By my counting, Ondaatje is now 80 and has published seven novels (including, yes, The English Patient<\/em>), 13 books of poetry and a host of other anthologies and such. Next up, the Sri-Lankan-Canadian (\u201cI’m not much of a Tamil now,\u201d he told The Guardian<\/em><\/a> in 2011) is turning back to his past with a poetry collection in which we \u201cjourney back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and the abandoned landscapes we hold on to to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.\u201d \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Natasha<\/p>\n

Natasha Pulley, The Mars House<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Bloomsbury, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Pulley (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street<\/em>) turns her eyes to the future in what is already one of my favorite books of the year. A couple hundred years from now, January, the former principal ballerina of the London Ballet flees a flooding London and ends up as an undocumented immigrant on Mars. He ends up in a marriage of convenience with Aubrey Gale, a handsome, xenophobic, anti-Earther political candidate\u2014but as January and Gale start to warm to each other, the political scene on Mars deteriorates and then an existentially threatening sandstorm descends. There\u2019s palace intrigue, a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers plot, sassy footnotes, and also there are mammoths! It\u2019s a total delight from start to finish. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lisa<\/p>\n

Lisa Ko, Memory Piece<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Ko\u2019s gorgeous debut The Leavers<\/em> broke my heart in the best way, so I\u2019m delighted to turn myself over to her latest novel, which tells the story of three childhood friends, \u201callied in the weirdest parts of themselves,\u201d from the 1980s to the 90s to the 2040s. It\u2019s an ambitious premise, and I\u2019m especially excited to read Ko\u2019s portrait of the near-ish future. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Colin<\/p>\n

Colin Barrett, Wild Houses<\/a>
\n<\/em>Grove, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Barrett is one of the most brilliant short story writers working today, with the sentence-level confidence of someone with a dozen books under his belt. His debut novel, Wild Houses<\/em>, treads similar terrain as his short stories\u2014the quiet loneliness of men and boys, the constant threat of violence, the claustrophobic world of a rural Irish town. Here, a small town drug dealer, a kidnapping, and a rescue intersect with tragic results, not to mention Barrett\u2019s trademark verbal brilliance and deeply felt pathos. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Percival<\/p>\n

Percival Everett, James<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Everett\u2019s 24th novel is \u201ca harrowing and ferociously funny retelling of\u00a0The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>\u00a0from the enslaved Jim\u2019s point of view.\u201d While many narrative set pieces of Huck Finn<\/em>\u00a0remain (floods and storms, unexpected death and treasure, the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin\u2026), Jim\u2019s agency, intelligence, and compassion reveal a darkness that Twain\u2019s sentimentality could never showcase. Put this (will-be) award-winner on your TBR list. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Henry<\/p>\n

Henry Lous Gates, Jr., The Black Box: Writing the Race<\/em><\/a>
\nPenguin Press, March 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

At once a work of literary criticism, American history, and sociocultural analysis, Gates\u2019s Black Box<\/i>\u2014based in part on a course he teaches at Harvard\u2014reveals the ways in which Black literature has preserved a space for a people otherwise denied freedom of movement (both literally and figuratively) in their own country. With close readings of texts by Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and more, Gates Jr. tells a story of survival, of Black Americans creating a \u201cnation within a nation\u201d and the indelible culture that goes with it. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Garrard<\/p>\n

Garrard Conley, All the World Beside<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, March 26<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Historical fiction buffs may have known that the Great Awakening concerned the rise in the 18th century of Protestant evangelists (I did not), who jazzed up religion somewhat from the staid old form into something more personal, more emotional, and more contingent on sinners accepting His word to avoid being burned in hell. Into this setting, Boy Erased<\/em> author Conley has put New England Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and the man, Christian physician Arthur Lyman, who falls in love with him. The stakes are high, nigh smoking, for Lyman, Whitfield, and Whitfield\u2019s family who find themselves cast out of the community. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/p>\n

Stephen Graham Jones, The Angel of Indian Lake<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Saga, March 26<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Stephen Graham Jones is the absolute king of horror these days and this final installment in his Indian Lake trilogy should be a total blockbuster. Final girl Jade Daniels returns to Proofrock, Idaho after four years in prison following the end of Don\u2019t Fear the Reaper<\/em>, and the town has changed\u2014not for the better. But one thing\u2019s guaranteed: the curse of the Lake Witch is going to leave another trail of blood across Daniels\u2019 life before everything is said and done. SGJ has gone all-out in this trilogy, crafting a saga of intergenerational trauma with an encyclopedic knack for horror, and this is a totally thrilling conclusion. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hanif<\/p>\n

Hanif Abdurraqib,\u00a0There\u2019s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Random House, March 26<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Everything Hanif Abdurraqib (A Little Devil in America<\/em>) writes\u2014music criticism, poetry, personal essays, tweets about his dog, analysis of NBA oddballs\u2014is worth reading. The depth of insight and humanity he brings to his writing is a marvel. A lifelong basketball fan (who also happens to have come of age in Ohio during LeBron\u2019s rise), Abdurraqib\u2019s latest is a meditative exploration of \u201cwhat it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models.\u201d If you buy it on publication day, you\u2019ll have almost a whole month to get it finished before the playoffs start.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adam<\/p>\n

Adam Phillips, On Giving Up<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, March 26<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It\u2019s finally here, the book we didn\u2019t know we needed, in which acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips tries to answer a question familiar to us all: When should we give up? Maybe it\u2019s ok to let go of your need for closure with your cousin\u2026 And maybe it\u2019s ok to admit you\u2019ll never fully quit smoking\u2026 Insofar as Phillips\u2019s project here is to pop the hood on society\u2019s collectivized expectations of modern life, and how they affect us individually\u2014more often than not in a negative way\u2014this book could also be called What Really Matters<\/i>. But that wouldn\u2019t be quite so fun, would it?\u00a0 \u2013JD<\/p>\n

\"Alexandra<\/p>\n

Alexandra Tanner, Worry<\/em><\/a>
\nScribner, March 26<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Worry<\/em> is within the genre of the millennial malaise lit-girl novel. It\u2019s written in a spare and disaffected tone, about a 20-something in Brooklyn, but instead of centering around situationships and unimpressive men, this one centers another far more interesting relationship: sisterhood. Jules is living alone in Brooklyn when her younger sister, Poppy comes to stay indefinitely. They have that specific sister relationship where they both need each other desperately, and yet in some way hate each other for needing them back. It\u2019s a microcosm of intimacy, a bond from the beginning of time that\u2019s more real and personal than any other, and I am constantly fascinated and saddened by how we treat those we love more than anyone. Alexandra Tanner is an author to watch: she\u2019s both funny and serious, snarky and sweet, and gives us that rare, realistic window into recognizable life.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

APRIL<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Leif<\/p>\n

Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Grove, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\u201cSet in a not-too-distant America,\u00a0I Cheerfully Refuse<\/em>\u00a0is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife.\u201d Honestly say no more: this book sounds funny, strange, and absolutely wonderful. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lydia<\/p>\n

Lydia Millet, <\/strong>We Loved It All: A Memory of Life<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nNorton, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This is an exciting literary event: Lydia Millet\u2019s first book of nonfiction! Earning a place alongside the classics of conservation writing, Millet urges readers to think of themselves as part of a larger tapestry, one that has already seen countless species pushed out of existence to accommodate human concerns. Millet\u2019s awe of nature is catching, even as it lives alongside the grief of our everyday destructions. Pre-order it now for your Earth Day reading. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Marie<\/p>\n

Marie Howe, New and Selected Poems<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\nW.W. Norton, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Finally, one will be able to find all their favorite Marie Howe poems in one place. In April, this new collection will encompass all four of Howe\u2019s previous books, as well as a selection of new poetry. It\u2019s been since 2018 when the stunning Magdalene <\/em>was released that we\u2019ve had new Marie Howe poems: a fiercely loved poet with cult classic poems such as \u201cWhat the Living Do\u201d, this will be cause for celebration for many Howe-obsessives out there, including yours truly.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ada<\/p>\n

Ada Lim\u00f3n, ed., You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World<\/a><\/em>
\nMilkweed, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Ada Limon, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, is someone who\u2019s taste in poetry I trust absolutely. Her own work is glimmering and heart-rendering, much of it in conversation with place, creatures, nature as a whole, and she has now edited a collection about just this very thing. You Are Here <\/em>brings together poems that reflect on our relationship to nature, by over fifty of our most renowned poets, such as Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown, and more. With an introduction by Ada herself, this promises to be a sure delight. \u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Maggie<\/p>\n

Maggie Nelson, Like Love: Essays and Conversations<\/a><\/em>
\nGraywolf, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There are a couple authors and artists out there that I am distinctly grateful to be alive alongside, and Maggie Nelson might be at the top of that list. She\u2019s someone whose mind I trust to tackle the hard, complicated subjects of our age, as well as the long-lasting, eternal ones, like love<\/em>, for example. This new book of Nelson\u2019s is a collection of her writing on the subject, as well as interviews, conversations, and more, all from the last twenty years: a myriad and immersive look at the way this subject has been woven into her life, relationships, and work. The topic is infinitely compelling, the medium is new and different: it all makes for a stunning and integral book on the topic. I know I\u2019ve had a quote of her\u2019s about just this very thing rattling around in my brain since I read the interview in 2015<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Bookforum: [That reminds me of] a line from a Cassavetes film. The line is\u2014and so, I want to ask you\u2014Do you believe that love is a continuous stream<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Maggie Nelson: I guess the parser in me would have to ask, what do you mean by \u201clove,\u201d <\/em>and what do you mean by \u201cstream\u201d<\/em>? But another part of me says, right off the bat, absolutely<\/em>. \u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nicholson<\/p>\n

Nicholson Baker, Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better at Art<\/a><\/em>
\nPenguin Press, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I adore an account of trying to do something for which one doesn\u2019t have a natural aptitude. There\u2019s nothing more human than making small amounts of incremental progress toward a skill that isn\u2019t strictly necessary for survival. I can think of no writer whose account of spending years attempting to improve at painting I would more relish than Nicholson Baker. I have no doubt this will be a work full of charm and wisdom, in equal measure. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Alice<\/p>\n

Alice Notley, Being Reflected Upon<\/a><\/em>
\nPenguin Books, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It is indeed fitting that one of America\u2019s great poets, Alice Notley, should write a memoir in verse. (One could certainly argue that any given poet\u2019s body of work is a kind of memoir, life as a series of moments seen and felt.) Though focused on Notley\u2019s time in Paris from 2000 to 2017, where she underwent treatment for breast cancer, many of the poems in Being Reflected Upon<\/i> move backwards in the artist\u2019s life\u2014her childhood in California, formative years roaming through Europe\u2014to create a metaphysical portrait in glances, of a restless poetic consciousness concerned with life, death, and everything in between. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Amor<\/p>\n

Amor Towles, Table for Two<\/a><\/em>
\nViking, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Fair to describe Amor Towles as a master of the novel; here, he combines stories from the 2000s that touch on the \u201cdelicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages,\u201d as well as a novella based around a character from Rules of Civility<\/em>, extending the thought into the Golden Age of Hollywood.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Patric<\/p>\n

Patric Gagne, Sociopath: A Memoir<\/a><\/em>
\nSimon & Schuster, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It can feel, in the age of TikTok psychology, that sociopathy is something that only exists in AITA forums and viral Thanksgiving dinner Twitter threads, both over-ascribed and under-explored. Gagne plumbs the depths of the condition, starting from childhood, when she realized other people\u2019s reactions to her were off. She is told by doctors that there is no treatment for the condition, and doesn\u2019t have much hope until she connects with an old boyfriend, realizing that if she is capable of love, then perhaps there is more to her psychology than specialists had allowed for. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/p>\n

Ryan Chapman, The Audacity<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Soho Press, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A hilarious leap into the dark depths of the world\u2019s wealthiest, as Guy Sarvananthan weathers the fall-out from his wife\u2019s start-up’s Theranos-esque collapse\u2014and decides, instead of trying to do the right thing, to fly to a private Caribbean island for a billionaire philanthropy summit. Amitava Kumar calls it \u201cMartin Amis\u2019s Money <\/em>for really late, late capitalism\u201d and Chapman\u2019s sharp humor earns him that place among the master satirists. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

Julia Alvarez,\u00a0The Cemetery of Untold Stories<\/a>
\n<\/em>Algonquin, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

By her own admission, Julia Alvarez never liked the role of spokesperson, but it’s hard not to think of her as one of the grand dames of a generation of American authors writing in English, or a mixture of English and Spanish, that includes Cristina Garc\u00eda, Sandra Cisneros, and others. In her latest, Alvarez’s protagonist Alma tries to shrug off years of untold stories by literally burying them in an empty plot in the Dominican Republic, but, it wouldn’t be a Julia Alvarez novel if it was as easy as that. You just can’t keep a good ghost underground. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Marissa<\/p>\n

Marissa Higgins, A Good Happy Girl<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Catapult, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Who among us can say no to a messy queer novel? Certainly not me. When Helen, an anxious attorney struggling with her childhood trauma, starts hooking up with lesbian couple Catherine and Katrina, she thinks sex will be a good distraction from her life. But things with Catherina and Katrina quickly spiral out of control. What was once a fun hook up is now an emotional and sexual vortex. Meanwhile, Helen\u2019s being pulled back into her family drama and forced to face her past. Any book that lets me use the phrase \u201csexual vortex\u201d while describing it is definitely a great read. \u2013MC<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Joyelle<\/p>\n

Joyelle McSweeney,\u00a0Death Styles<\/a><\/em>
\n<\/strong>Nightboat, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In response to the death of her infant daughter, McSweeney set out to write a poem a day. With references ranging from River Phoenix, Mary Magdalene, a backyard skunk, and Terminator 2, McSweeney proposes a link between style and survival, even in the gravest of circumstances.\u00a0\u201cDeath Styles<\/em>\u00a0navigates the opposing forces of survival and grief, finding a way to press against death\u2019s interface, to step the wrong way out of the grave.\u201d \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Becca<\/p>\n

Becca Rothfeld, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Metropolitan Books, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Good rule of thumb for your internet browsing: if you see Becca Rothfeld’s byline, you should actually read the article. I’m especially <\/em>looking forward to doing the equivalent of clicking on this collection of essays (please save me from this metaphor), which rejects the idea that we should all be winnowing ourselves down to our cleanest, most mindful, most decent selves, but rather embracing our darkness and wildness, both in aesthetics and in culture. Tell me about it. Bring on the excess, and bring on the muck! \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Iman<\/p>\n

Iman Mersal, tr. Robin Moger, Traces of Enayat<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Transit Books, April 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In this “biographical detective story,” distinguished Egyptian poet Mersal traces the short life and sputtering legacy of the writer Enayat al-Zayyat, who committed suicide before her first novel was even published, and in the process, wanders through her own biography. Originally published in Arabic in 2019,\u00a0Traces of Enayat\u00a0<\/em>won the Shaykh Zayed award in 2021, and happily comes to our shores this year.\u00a0\u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Leigh<\/p>\n

Leigh Bardugo, The Familiar<\/a><\/em>
\nPenguin Books, April 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I love Leigh Bardugo’s dark and twisted brain\u2014Ninth House <\/em>is the best adult fantasy novel I’ve read in a long, long time\u2014so will I follow her to a historical fantasy novel set in the Spanish Golden Age, featuring a servant versed in minor miracles and an immortal familiar? In a heartbeat. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Scarlett<\/p>\n

Scarlett Thomas, The Sleepwalkers<\/a><\/em>
\nSimon & Schuster, April 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I’ve no idea why Scarlett Thomas isn’t more widely read on this side of the pond\u2014her writing is consistently funny and weird and crystalline. I’ll read pretty much anything she writes, but I’m especially excited for this latest novel, which is set on a Greek island and being pitched as Patricia Highsmith meets White Lotus<\/em>. Um, yes please. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mohamed<\/p>\n

Mohamed Amer Meziane, The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization<\/em><\/a>
\nVerso, April 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It is not hard, when looking at the big picture, to draw a line from the Industrial Revolution to 19th-century global colonialism to post-war consumer capitalism, and right on through to the current climate crisis. But things get a little more complicated the closer you look. With The States of the Earth<\/em>, Mohamed Amer Meziane zeroes in on the half-life of western secularism, investigating the centuries-long fallout of replacing one kind of religion with another: racialized capitalism.\u00a0 \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jen<\/p>\n

Jen Silverman, There\u2019s Going to Be Trouble<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Random House, April 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Fresh off her latest celebrated play (Spain<\/a><\/em>), Silverman returns to fiction with two entwined stories of love and activism. Set both in the 60s and the present, There\u2019s Going to Be Trouble<\/em> makes personal that old adage about how not knowing history makes you doomed to repeat it, when a woman discovers that her father wasn\u2019t always the private and demure man he is now but rather caught up in the swirl of the late 60s and the protests against Vietnam. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nell<\/p>\n

Nell Freudenberger, The Limits<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, April 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The celebrated Freudenberger\u2019s latest, after her grief-and-science novel Lost and Wanted<\/em>, is a COVID-and-climate-change book, bringing a precocious and rebellious teen together with her schoolteacher stepmother and one of her stepmother\u2019s teen-parent students for a luminous look at the pandemic era and what it taught us about intimacy. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Salman<\/p>\n

Salman Rushdie,\u00a0Knife<\/a>
\n<\/em>Random House, April 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Salman Rushdie spent a bleak decade in hiding across the UK and the US after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa in 1989 following the publication of\u00a0The Satanic Verses.<\/em>\u00a0Some thirty years later, Rushdie found himself in a much improved position: he attended literary events, and from time to time he’d pop up in Brooklyn bars. So the fact that he was stabbed ten times on-stage in 2022, while speaking on a panel about the US as a safe-haven for exiled writers, continues to shock. Billed as a series of “meditations on an attempted murder” here Rushdie addresses the attack and its aftermath for the first time at length. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Suzanne<\/p>\n

Suzanne Scanlon, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen<\/a><\/em>
\nVintage, April 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I\u2019m a terrific fan of Janet Frame, and her own accounting of her \u201cmadness\u201d leads you to believe there must be more to the brilliant minds afflicted with psychiatric pain. Scanlon uses her own experience being committed after her mother\u2019s death to launch an investigation into the idea of the madwoman as a portkey. She delves into the work of Frame, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde and other great thinkers labeled as mad women. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Claire<\/p>\n

Clare Beams, The Garden<\/a>
\n<\/em>Doubleday, April 19<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In 1948, Irene Willard retreats to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife team of doctors who are pioneering a cure for infertility. A secret garden with unknown powers can give these women everything, but in a page-turning, horror-infused turn, everything begins to crumble. Shirley Jackson meets The School for Good Mothers<\/em> in Beams\u2019s careful, beautiful prose<\/em>. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Justin<\/p>\n

Justin Taylor,\u00a0Reboot<\/a>
\n<\/em>Pantheon, April 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In what sounds like a mash-up of Bojack Horseman<\/em> and the January 6 insurrection, Justin Taylor’s latest novel sees a washed-up former child star try to get his old show rebooted\u2014because who doesn’t love a bit of nostalgia?\u2014while America slouches towards dissolution. Taylor is a fantastic critic with three novels and a memoir under his belt already, and this might be a strong contender for the emblematic novel that conveys the feeling of what it’s like to be online and alive\u00a0at the same time.<\/em>\u00a0\u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"P.<\/p>\n

P. Dj\u00e9l\u00ec Clark, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tordotcom, April 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

After an assassin job goes bad for Eveen, she has until the sun comes up to save her soul\u2014and so a race across a festival-mad fantasy city ensues. Perfectly pitched to be read in just a couple sittings, Clark masterfully spins up an entire world and sprints through a swashbuckling plot without ever sacrificing character or nuance. Nobody does a Tordotcom novella quite like Clark: he\u2019s an absolute master of the form, and this is no exception. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nell<\/p>\n

Nell Irvin Painter, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays<\/em>
\nDoubleday, April 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Nell Irvin Painter is an essential critical voice who has written brilliantly about art, race and racism, identity, politics, and more. This collection of her essays\u2014which also includes her own artwork\u2014is a gripping and complex read. You\u2019ll come away with a greater understanding of American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Painter herself (among many other subjects). Something I rarely find myself saying about an essay collection: It\u2019s a thrill from start to finish. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jane<\/p>\n

Jane Smiley, Lucky<\/a><\/em>
\nKnopf, April 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lucky begins, like so many of Smiley\u2019s novels, in the midwest, where Jodie Rattler grew up surrounded by a loving family before chasing her dream of becoming a singer to New York City. As Jodie gets closer to her dream, in the shadows of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, she has to decide if it\u2019s the right dream. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/p>\n

Amy Tan, The Backyard Bird Chronicles<\/em>
\nKnopf, April 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Simply add this to my pile of Margaret Renkl, Freida Hughes\u2019 George<\/em><\/a>, and Jenny O\u2019Dell\u2019s rendezvous with Crowson. If you promise me a witty birder book\u2014birds as windows on life!!!\u2014then great, and if the great Amy Tan is writing it, even better. The perfect antidote (with illustrations!) to whatever these past few years have been. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Erik<\/p>\n

Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Crown, April 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

One of the kings of narrative non-fiction turns his gaze to the five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the shelling of Fort Sumter that kicked off the Civil War. Lincoln and William Seward are major characters, as are lesser-known names like Major Robert Anderson, Edmund Ruffin, and Mary Boykin Chesnut\u2014giving the book both a pulse-pounding political thriller quality and an on-the-ground look at life in a dangerously unsettled America. Warning: you might see some parallels to the present, and Larson urges you not to look away. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/p>\n

Rachel Khong, Real Americans<\/a><\/em>
\nKnopf, April 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was a big fan of Goodbye, Vitamin, <\/em>so I was thrilled to hear Rachel Khong has a new release upcoming\u2014this one is different and heftier sounding than Vitamin<\/em>, in that it spans three generations of a family, each attempting to understand their place within the family, and within the world they\u2019ve been born into. By encompassing a family as a whole, the novel asks big questions about our lineage and futures, how much is really up to us, whether the fact of our pasts guarantee our fate, or whether we have agency over the lives we live.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/p>\n

Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Oracle<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tor Nightfire, April 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Olde Heuvelt\u2019s Hex<\/em> is one of the scariest books I\u2019ve ever read, and apparently he\u2019s bringing back that book\u2019s supernatural investigator Robert Grim for another go-round, this time investigating a sailing ship that somehow ended up stranded in a field and with a propensity for disappearing those who climb aboard. If it\u2019s half as scary as Hex<\/em>, it\u2019ll be worth reading during the brightening spring evenings instead of saving for the darker months. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Danielle<\/p>\n

Danielle Dutton, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other<\/a>
\n<\/em>Coffee House Press, April 24<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The co-founder and editor of Dorothy, a publishing project, Danielle Dutton\u2019s new book is \u201ca haunting landscape of wildflowers, megadams, black holes, violence, fear, virtual reality, abiding strangeness, and indefinable beauty.\u201d This is a book that defies categorization\u2014a collection of stories, literary criticism, an essay on visual art and fiction, and stories-as-essays or essays-as-stories. I still think about Dutton\u2019s novel Margaret the First<\/em>, which was published almost a decade ago, and anticipate that this is one everyone will be talking about. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Geoffrey<\/p>\n

Geoffrey Mak,\u00a0Mean Boys<\/em><\/a>
\nBloomsbury, April 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

“Edgelords all the way down” must have been a tempting subtitle for this collection of essays from Geoffrey Mak, one of my favorite contributors to Spike Art Magazine. Fortunately, there’s more to it than that: memoir meets cultural critique as Mak explores everything from the commodification of queer spaces to memes to fashion, and his youth as the gay son of an evangelical minister. \u2013SR<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

MAY<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Kailane<\/p>\n

Kailane Bradley, The Ministry of Time<\/a><\/em>
\nAvid Reader Press, May 7<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This much-hyped genre-bending (time travel\/romance\/spy thriller\/workplace comedy) debut\u2014in which a civil servant of the future is tasked with babysitting a 19th century explorer, and of course falls in love with him\u2014sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Also, not for nothing, but this book has blurbs from writers as disparate as Eleanor Catton, Emily Henry, and Max Porter, which is intriguing on its own. Will be reading. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Aimee<\/p>\n

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Bite By Bite<\/em>
\nEcco, May 7<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lyrical essays about food? I\u2019ll have seconds. In Bite by Bite<\/em>, Aimee Nezhukumatathil looks at how food shapes our identities, focusing on minor miracles like rambutan, shaved ice and who knows what other delights. Nezhukumatathil is a professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi\u2019s MFA program, and this looks like just the thing for Vittles <\/em>fans. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lilly<\/p>\n

Lilly Dancyger, First Love: Essays on Friendship<\/a><\/em>
\nDial Press, May 7<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Any work that treats friendship as a weighty and valued thing, rather than second fiddle to romantic relationships, will always be on my TBR pile. The concept of this new book reminds me of the beautiful Atlantic<\/em> article on best friendship<\/a> from 2020 that felt revelatory and radical in its centering of female friendships over any other kind of relationship. Lilly Dancyger gives the proper due to each of her primary female friendships, each essay dissecting a certain friendship, as well as braiding in literary and cultural analysis. Every book and article like this shows me that we\u2019re on a path to understanding friendship in a new light, and I know I\u2019m only grateful to witness the carving of that path, thanks to people like Lilly Dancyger.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lindsay<\/p>\n

Lindsay King-Miller, The Z Word<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Quirk Books, May 7<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\u201cThe first Pride was a riot, the last Pride is a bloodbath\u201d goes the cover quote and King-Miller\u2019s debut is going to be kick-ass. It\u2019s about a chaotic bisexual and her group of friends\/lovers\/frenemies from the queer scene in an Arizona town struggling to save Pride and stop a zombie plague from breaking out\u2014heartfelt, heart-warming, and heart-eating. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Colm<\/p>\n

Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn,\u00a0Long Island<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/strong>Scribner, May 7<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn, inarguably one of Ireland\u2019s greatest living writers, has penned plenty of successful novels, but none have had a greater cultural impact 2009\u2019s\u00a0Brooklyn<\/em>, which was nominated for a clutch of top tier literary awards before being adapted into a Major Motion Picture starring Ireland\u2019s favorite daughter, Saoirse Ronan. Fifteen years on from our first introduction to Eilis Lacey, we\u2019re now getting a sequel, set in the Spring of 1976 on the titular island where a now-fortysomething Eilis lives with Tony and their two teenage children. One day, while Tony is out at work, a mysterious Irishman comes to the door to tell Eilis that his wife is pregnant with Tony\u2019s baby, and that he (the mysterious Irishman) intends to leave the child on Eilis\u2019 doorstep as soon as it\u2019s born.\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dino<\/p>\n

Dino Buzzati, trans. <\/strong>Anne Milano Appel, The Singularity<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>NYRB Classics, May 7<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A new translation of this seminal work of Italian science fiction, about a Cold War-era professor sent on a secret mission to an isolated research center where he assumes he\u2019ll be working on nuclear weapons, but discovers instead that he and his colleagues are working on the very nature of consciousness. Another classic work predicting the dangers of artificial intelligence and human hubris? They never stop being timely! \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Claire<\/p>\n

Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History<\/a><\/em>
\nW.W. Norton, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There are few genres more enjoyable than the sprawling, decade-spanning family saga (especially in the hands of a brilliant novelist). Claire Messud\u2019s latest novel tells the story of an Algerian-born French family from 1940 through 2010 as they navigate personal and political upheaval. Yiyun Li calls it \u201ca tour de force… one of those rare novels which a reader doesn\u2019t merely read but lives through with the characters.\u201d Sold. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kathleen<\/p>\n

Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Ecco, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Kathleen! Hanna! Memoir! Get ready for the story of the 90s punk rock scene told through the badass Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman, the heart of the Riot Grrrl movement, which she documents in an \u201cuncut voice all her own…Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful\u2014and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.\u201d \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Miranda<\/p>\n

Miranda July, All Fours<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Riverhead, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This is a gut-punch of a novel, a must-read for every woman nearing or over forty, confronting the malaise of midlife, fertility, marriage, and menopause, packaged in July\u2019s delirious style. The publisher judiciously describes \u201cJuly\u2019s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries\u2026\u201d and calls All Fours<\/em> \u201cone woman\u2019s quest for a new kind of freedom.\u201d But it\u2019s also an absolute excavation of what it means to be a woman in the world. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hari<\/p>\n

Hari Kunzru, Blue Ruin<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A covid-era novel about Jay, once-promising artist-turned-gig worker living out of his car invites his ex-girlfriend\u2019s invitation to isolate with her, her boyfriend (and Jay\u2019s former friend) along with an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend, Kunzru\u2019s novel promises to be harrowing and darkly funny. Kunzru has a knack for the nightmarish present, and few things feel more nightmarish than a forced confrontation with the past in the early stages of the pandemic. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kimberly<\/p>\n

Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In Kimberly King Parsons\u2019s much anticipated follow-up to her 2019 story collection Black Light<\/i> (longlisted for a National Book Award), a young mother, Kit, navigates life in the aftermath of youthful expectation, finding herself caught in increasingly vivid reminiscences of past glories. But after an attempted adventure with an old friend misfires, Kit\u2019s flights of imagination cross the line from nostalgia to projection, and it becomes harder and harder to distinguish what was, what is, and what might be. \u2013JD<\/p>\n

\"Honor<\/p>\n

Honor Levy, My First Book<\/em><\/a>
\nPenguin Press, May 14<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The bluntness of this title feels like an apt entry for Honor Levy into the mainstream publishing scene: she\u2019s one of those writers I\u2019ve been hearing about for years, reading her various essays and stories, and in my mind, she will always be 24. She\u2019s been touted as the \u201cvoice of Gen Z\u201d for some years now, and managed to make a name for herself before she even has a book out. Someone who can do such a thing is always one to watch, and the anticipation has been growing for Levy\u2019s \u201cFirst Book\u201d for a long time. Finally, her collection of short stories about growing up in the digital age will be released in May: they promise to be ironic and poignant and funny and faith-seeking in a collapsing world.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"K-Ming<\/p>\n

K-Ming Chang, Cecilia<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Coffee House Press, May 21<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If you\u2019re not reading K-Ming Chang, then what are<\/em> you reading? Chang should be on everyone\u2019s auto-read list. Plus, Cecilia<\/em> is a novella<\/em>. That\u2019s the best type of book. This novella follows two adult women meeting for the first time since childhood. Their interaction sparks a surreal cascade of girlhood memories about desire, queerness, and obsession. Cecilia<\/em> is at once erotic and repulsive, carnal and tasty. In a word: delicious. \u2013MC<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mesha<\/p>\n

Mesha Maren, Shae<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Algonquin Books, May 21<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In the latest novel rom the author of Sugar Run<\/em>, sixteen-year-old Shae falls in love with Cam, a newcomer to her West Virginia town\u2014but after Shae winds up pregnant, Cam begins transitioning, and once the baby is born, Shae begins to depend on the opioids that once helped manage her pain. “Maren brilliantly gives voice to a New South, introducing us to two unforgettable characters whose journeys echo the struggles of queer people across the country,” wrote Garrard Conley. “This book is essential for the new queer canon emerging from Southern writers.” \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"R.O.<\/p>\n

R.O. Kwon,\u00a0Exhibit<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Riverhead, May 21<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This sophomore novel from the blazingly talented Kwon (The Incendiaries<\/em>) sounds absolutely fascinating. Billed as \u201ca haunting and powerful exploration of art, racism, feminism, and desire\u201d (Madeline Miller),\u00a0Exhibit<\/em>\u00a0is the story of a brilliant young San Francisco photographer, at a crossroads in both her work and marriage, who meets, and becomes entangled with, an injured world-class ballerina, to whom she reveals a long-buried family curse.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/p>\n

Anna Dorn, Perfume and Pain<\/em><\/a>
\nSimon & Schuster, May 21<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I actually don\u2019t think I can do Dorn justice describing the book without just using the promotional copy here\u2014talk about character-writing: \u201cmid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer\u2019s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled,\u201d starts dating Ivy, who is a student researching 1950s pulp lesbian novels, but at the same time Astrid feels a strange attraction to Penelope, a \u201cpainter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money.\u201d Must know what Dorn is up to here. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Joyce<\/p>\n

Joyce Carol Oates, Butcher<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, May 21<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If you guessed that the title referred to the \u201cfather of gyno-psychiatry,\u201d Dr. Silas Weir, you\u2019d be right. Here, JCo takes this very real nightmare of a person and knits together a story about a young Irish servant who becomes Weir\u2019s \u201csubject,\u201d but also the object of his downfall (huzzah!). Sounds like the perfect American novel, delving deep into the horrors of invention. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/p>\n

Kevin Kwan, Lies and Weddings<\/em><\/a>
\nDoubleday, May 21<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Herein, a comedy of manners on a tropical island, concerned with one man\u2019s quest to find a rich woman to marry. The man is Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel. The women? A French hotel heiress with a royal bloodline and a girl-next-door with no money to speak of (but all that chemistry). It\u2019s Kevin Kwan so you know it will be entertaining. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Teddy<\/p>\n

Teddy Wayne, The Winner<\/em><\/a>
\nHarper, May 28<\/strong><\/h5>\n

No one writes male characters (and their flaws) like Teddy Wayne, and this thriller about the Cape Cod elite looks like a promising addition to his oeuvre. Conor O\u2019Toole, working-class man, has free summer accommodation at a gated community in return for tennis lessons, but finds his debt is mounting. When a divorc\u00e9e offers him an especially LARGE fee, he volleys himself into a steamy affair, despite crushing on an artsy girl from the beach, finding himself trapped in a web of his own lies. Since Wayne is scathing in his satire, we must brace ourselves for a dagger late in the novel, which happens to resemble the plot of Aspen Extreme<\/em> (a tick in its box). \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/p>\n

Emma Copley Eisenberg, Housemates<\/em><\/a>
\nHogarth, May 28<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Bernie, an aspiring photographer, and Leah, an aspiring writer, become friends through a housemate-wanted ad. Eisenberg sets them off on a road trip in search of a strange inheritance Leah receives from a professor. Bernie is along for the ride to document the characters out on the road, and it is, per a blurb from our resident advice columnist Kristen Arnett, a \u201cwholly, queerly complex\u201d story.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"No\u00e9<\/p>\n

No\u00e9 \u00c1lvarez, Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico<\/em><\/a>
\nCatapult, May 28<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Migration can be in the near past without your knowing exactly the path your family took. For No\u00e9 \u00c1lvarez, a Mexican-descendent American who grew up in a notch of Washington State\u2019s Cascades, the only thing he knows about his grandfather in Mexico is that he played the accordion. The rest has been lost, possibly due to a curse. So he starts where he can: No\u00e9 takes up the accordion, traveling across the continent to meet other players and understand its significance. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Garth<\/p>\n

Garth Risk Hallberg, The Second Coming<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, May 28<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Nine years on from the publishing event that was City on Fire<\/em> comes another family epic, this time about a recovering addict ex-con and his estranged daughter across the US and the decades at the turn of the recent millennium. Expect a sprawling cast and another Dickensian attempt to put the entirety of the human experience onto the page, with stirring results. \u2013DB<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

JUNE<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Francine<\/p>\n

Francine Prose, 1974: A Personal History
\n<\/em><\/strong>Harper, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Francine Prose\u2019s first foray into memoir should be a memorable one: it\u2019s about her tumultuous relationship with Anthony Russo, one of the Pentagon Papers leakers, and how it helped her see the end of the idealist \u201860s. Prose is always thoughtful and tenacious in her writing, and we expect nothing less from her turning her eye inward. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Sarah Perry, Enlightenment<\/a><\/em>
\nMariner Books, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The latest novel from the author of\u00a0The Essex Serpent\u00a0<\/em>follows an unlikely pair of friends over twenty years, as they are brought apart and also together by their affairs and obsessions\u2014in large part the obsession one of them has with the ghost of a nineteenth-century astronomer. Perry is a lush, rich writer, and no doubt this will be another book of spells. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

Tom Cech, The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets<\/em><\/a>
\nW.W. Norton, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

For brains of a mortal frequency, RNA may have only popped into consciousness with the groundbreaking introduction of COVID-targeting mRNA vaccines and CRISPR therapies. In the telling of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tom Cech, RNA was long the sidelined brother of DNA, with its showy double helix. Thanks to work by Cech and others, the power of RNA to impact aging and catalyze biochemical reactions is made apparent. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Fire<\/p>\n

Morgan Talty, Fire Exit<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tin House, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A river divides Charles Lamosway from the life he might have had. On the other side of the river that runs in front of his house, Charles has watched his community in the Penobscot Reservation change, watched time pass, and watched a young family raise their daughter. The whole time, he\u2019s been keeping a secret. The couple\u2019s daughter is actually his. As his home and family life begin to crumble around him, Charles is forced to deal with the many burdens he\u2019s spent his life carrying. Talty\u2019s debut novel Fire Exit<\/em> is tender, sparse, and thoughtful. \u2013MC<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/p>\n

Joseph O\u2019Neill, Godwin<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Pantheon, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

One of the delights of O\u2019Neill\u2019s fiction is that the characters move.<\/em> They\u2019re on planes, traveling, interacting, and much more in the world<\/em> than are the characters in so much contemporary fiction. In his new novel, two brother cross the world in search of Godwin\u2014an African soccer prodigy\u2014who might change their fortunes. Here, the legacy of colonialism and global capitalism appear in the context of family love, and the dreaming individual. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Patrick<\/p>\n

Patrick Nathan, The Future Was Color<\/em><\/a>
\nCounterpoint, June 4<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In 1950s Hollywood, Hungarian immigrant George Curtis is powerless, working as a hack on monster movies, before he is taken in by a famous actress who lets him stay at her Malibu mansion provided she can show him off. George may have left the war behind, but the monsters pursue, starting with his own ditched identity as Gy\u00f6rgy, a queer Jew. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nicola<\/p>\n

Nicola Yoon, One of Our Kind<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The best-selling YA author makes her adult debut with a thriller about the terrible secrets that underpin a new utopian Black community in California. Frankly, they had me at the logline: \u201cGet Out<\/em> meets The Stepford Wives.<\/em>\u201d Plus, it continues the Knopf-pastel-sky cover trend! \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Liz<\/p>\n

Liz Moore,\u00a0The God of the Woods<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/strong>Riverhead, June 11<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n

Liz Moore\u2019s knotty literary thriller\/psychological family portrait\/examination of the anatomy of a city\u00a0Long Bright River<\/em>\u00a0was one of the standout novels of 2020, so I was pleased to see that her latest offering,\u00a0The God of the Woods<\/em>, looks to be cut from similar cloth. Set in the summer of 1975, it\u2019s the story of Barbara Van Laar\u2014the thirteen-year-old daughter of one of the region\u2019s wealthiest families\u2014who vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, and of the buried secrets of both the troubled Van Laar family and the working-class community that operates in its shadow. \u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Zach<\/p>\n

Zach Williams, Beautiful Days<\/em><\/a>
\nDoubleday, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

If you haven\u2019t read Zach Williams\u2019 haunting New Yorker <\/em>story \u201cWood Sorrel House<\/a>,\u201d go read it now\u2014that way, won\u2019t have to explain how excited you should be about Williams\u2019 debut collection. I expect it will be strange, nightmarish, and unsettlingly magical, with a razor-sharp wit. According to Samantha Hunt, \u201cYou will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed.\u201d \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rufi<\/p>\n

Rufi Thorpe, <\/strong>Margo\u2019s Got Money Troubles<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nWilliam Morrow, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The critically acclaimed Rufi Thorpe feels woefully under-read to me, but something tells me her latest novel will right that wrong\u2014and not only because A24, the coolest movie studio of them all, won a bidding war for the rights to adapt it before we even got our hands on it. Twenty-year-old Margo is the mom of a newborn and the daughter of a Hooters waitress who becomes an OnlyFans sensation by taking career\/writing advice from her estranged dad, a former pro wrestler. As the Love Island <\/em>contestants like to say, it checks all the boxes for me, mate. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Adam<\/p>\n

Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Gretel and the Great War<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>FSG Originals, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I loved Sachs’s 2019 debut novel, The Organs of Sense<\/em>, which managed to be both madcap and cerebral, both absurd and serious, both human and surreal; I’ll now happily read anything he writes. In the latest novel, an unknown woman’s past is pieced together (maybe) through a barrage of stories. “Think Mary Poppins\u2019s satchel, think one deranged matrioshka constantly coming out from under another,” writes Camille Bordas. “Gretel and the Great War<\/em> is the gift that keeps on giving.” Lucky us. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Porochista<\/p>\n

Porochista Khakpour, Tehrangeles<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Pantheon, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Even if I wasn’t already a fan of Khakpour and her work, this cover alone would get me\u2014and if not the cover, the description: this is a novel about a family of Iranian-American multimillionaires who are about to become the next Kardashians (read: they’re getting a reality show), but might not be ready for the scrutiny that will come with it. Uh oh! Khakpour excels at the double edged coin of humor and tragedy; I can’t wait to read this. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Clare Sestanovich, Ask Me Again<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, June 11<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The two main characters in Ask Me Again<\/em> are opposites: Eva is a middle-class achiever from south Brooklyn. Jamie is a wealthy Upper East Sider experimenting with political movements and spiritual quests. Previously, Sestanovich\u2019s short story collection Objects of Desire<\/em> was a finalist for the PEN\/Robert W. Bingham Prize. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/p>\n

Rachel Cusk, Parade<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, June 18<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There isn\u2019t much more one needs to say other than \u201cRachel Cusk has a new novel out\u201d to get someone excited about a Cusk book: that name carries its own weight and mutual understanding. Even if we don\u2019t know exactly what\u2019s coming, we know it\u2019s going to be wildly unique, spare, gorgeous, totally new in its form. The most recent books that have come from Cusk\u2019s mind have been the Outline series, and Second Place, <\/em>books that were such different projects from one another that they have made it clear that whatever you\u2019re expecting: accept defeat now, it won\u2019t be that. This one will be about art, and storytelling, victimhood, and freedom, and no matter what: it\u2019ll be different, and better, than whatever we\u2019re expecting.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, June 18<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The latest novel from the super-prolific Emezi is set in the dark underbelly of a Nigerian city, where five friends suddenly find themselves aswirl\u2014and in danger. You can always trust Emezi to go there\u2014wherever there might be\u2014so I’m looking forward to getting swept away by this one. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"juliet<\/p>\n

Juliet Escoria, You Are the Snake<\/em><\/a>
\nSoft Skull, June 18<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Escoria\u2019s autofiction novel\/memoir Juliet the Maniac <\/em>impressed critics with its heft, rocketing off course through a mental health episode that included drug abuse, self-harm and a therapeutic boarding school. In her new short story collection, You Are the Snake<\/em>, she\u2019s exploring more girlhood terrain. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Vajra<\/p>\n

Vajra Chandrasekera, Rakesfall<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Tor Books, June 18<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Saint of Bright Doors<\/em> was one of my favorite books<\/a> of 2023 and I\u2019m eager for Chandrasekera\u2019s follow-up, an eons-spanning novel about two souls reincarnating across generations. It\u2019s guaranteed to include some incisive political commentary, ebullient imagination, and a powerful love for (and willingness to mess with) the very idea of story. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Uchenna<\/p>\n

Uchenna Awoke,\u00a0The Liquid Eye of a Moon<\/a>
\n<\/em>Catapult, June 25<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This might be billed as a kind of Nigerian\u00a0Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, but Dimkpa, the fifteen-year-old protagonist of Awoke’s d\u00e9but novel, is nothing like the\u00a0cosmopolitan elite he observes from up close as a house boy in Lagos, after making the long journey from his village in rural Nigeria. Deeply committed to class and the clash of tradition with modernity,\u00a0The Liquid Eye of a Moon<\/em>\u00a0is a typically messy but also stoic coming of age story without any of Holden Caulfield’s phony fussing. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tracy<\/p>\n

Tracy O\u2019Neill,\u00a0Woman of Interest: A Memoir<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>HarperOne, June 25<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The first work of nonfiction from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree O\u2019Neill (Quotients<\/em>) is a psychological detective story about the author\u2019s journey to find her missing birth mother\u2014a mysterious South Korean woman whom O\u2019Neill had never met and about whom she knew nothing. It\u2019s a quest which features \u201ca femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family.\u201d I adore O\u2019Neill\u2019s writing\u2014which is always probing and cerebral, lyrical and humane\u2014and I cannot wait to get my hands on this one.\u00a0\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

Julia Phillips, Bear<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, June 25<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I read Julia Phillips\u2019 debut novel Disappearing Earth <\/em>when it came out nearly five years ago, and it has lingered in my mind more than most others. Phillips is brilliant at balancing sharply-drawn characters with finely woven plot and unnerving atmosphere, and Bear<\/em>, which tells the story of two sisters whose lives are upended by the appearance of a mystical (yes) bear sounds like the perfect showcase for her considerable gifts. \u2013JG<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

AND BEYOND<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"Joy<\/p>\n

Joy Williams, Concerning the Future of Souls<\/em><\/a>
\nTin House, July 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Joy Williams has been ringing the bell of concern over our fate as humans for a while now: she is worried, and this is putting it mildly, about our neutrality over the planet, with how fully we have released responsibility for our actions to our world, to each other. This is clear in each of her published works these days, and I\u2019m sure we will witness this fear and sadness in stories such as these, that concern Azrael, the transporter of souls, as he must go about his job and face Death itself. Hard and harrowing, beautiful and devastating, Joy Williams is always toeing these lines as she too confronts the hard job she has: giving cries of warning, looking Death in the face. She\u2019s the story writer of our time, choosing to shine light on the wreckage and the difficult choices that lay ahead: all we have to do is listen. \u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lauren<\/p>\n

Lauren Aliza Green, The World After Alice<\/em><\/a>
\nViking, July 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lauren Green is a poet and a debut author (of Forbes<\/em> 30 Under 30 fame) with a much-heralded title coming this July. The World After Alice <\/em>is about the death of a girl named Alice and a wedding that takes place twelve years later. Alice\u2019s brother, Benji, is marrying her best friend, Morgan, and the families must come together and confront their rocky and devastating past while attempting to celebrate and seek joy in the union. With betrayals and grief and secrets all threatening to interrupt the wedding weekend, The World After Alice <\/em>is a juicy and emotional read that surprises as much as it entertains.\u00a0\u2013JH<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Fernanda<\/p>\n

Fernanda Trias, trans. Heather Cleary, Pink Slime<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Scribner, July 2<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Mentioned in last summer\u2019s New York Times<\/em> piece<\/a> on the new wave of Latin American science-fiction, the US debut of this celebrated Uruguayan writer (Charco Press brought The Rooftop <\/em>out in the UK in 2021) is sure to delight genre readers looking for the far edges of the form. Full of melancholy and anger, it follows one woman\u2019s attempts to survive an increasingly poisonous modern world full of plagues, algae, and corporate food-paste. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mateo<\/p>\n

Mateo Askaripour, This Great Hemisphere<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Dutton, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Askaripour\u2019s speculative epic about a young woman trying to find her brother across an entire hemisphere sounds like something from a 21st Century Jules Verne: Dominant Populations and second-class \u2018invisibles\u2019, ambitious politicians, eccentric inventors, palace intrigue, and obvious real-world parallels. If Askaripour\u2019s debut (Black Buck<\/em>) is any indication, it\u2019s probably got a healthy dose of skewering humor to it, too. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Yasmin<\/p>\n

Yasmin Zaher,\u00a0The Coin<\/a>
\n<\/em>Catapult, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Basically I was all-in on this one from the moment I heard that a major plot point sees the protagonist, a chic, well-heeled Palestinian woman, drawn into a fake Birkin bag scheme with a homeless swindler in New York. This is a very stylish novel that manages to broach class and statelessness with tact and humor, while also touching on beauty, sex, love and the nature of civilization itself, all from a Palestinian debut novelist. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/p>\n

Kevin Barry,\u00a0The Heart in Winter<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/strong>Doubleday, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

As I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve mentioned on this site before, I am a proud Kevin Barry completist. Always wild and lyrical, poignant and profane, Barry\u2014who has been racking up awards and apostles at a steady clip these past fifteen years\u2014has written three novels and three short story collections, and there genuinely isn\u2019t a dud in the bunch. His latest, and first set in the New World, is a western (!) about a pair of young lovers\u2014a degenerate Irish poet and the new bride of an extremely devout mine captain\u2014in flight from a posse of \u201cderanged Cornish gunmen\u201d in 1890s Montana and Idaho. Just hook it to my veins.\u00a0\u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Laura Van Den Berg,\u00a0State of Paradise<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/strong>FSG, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

How Laura Van Den Berg has managed to write so many superb, eerie, thought-provoking works of literary fiction before the age of 40 I will never know (her haunted, Havana-set meditation on sorrow and longing,\u00a0The Third Hotel<\/em>, is a particular favorite of mine). Her sixth book, billed as a \u201cfun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida\u2019s underbelly,\u201d is the story of a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author who returns to the South Florida town of her childhood, where she must reckon with her mother\u2019s burgeoning cult, her mercurial sister\u2019s growing obsession with a virtual reality device, a spate of missing persons, and the buried memories of her own troubled youth. \u2013DS<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Emily<\/p>\n

Emily Van Duyne, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation
\n<\/em><\/strong>W.W. Norton, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A “radical” new reading of Plath’s life and legacy from Plath scholar, superfan, and Literary Hub contributor<\/a> Emily Van Duyne, which examines the many myths surrounding the poet before taking them apart, wiping off the grime, and reconstructing a new vision of Plath for the future. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Paolo<\/p>\n

Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Paolo came up in YA and is set to release a wide-ranging fantasy about the families living in Navola, a city-state with a mysterious history. It\u2019s a coming-of-age for Davico di Regulai who \u201cwill be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese diplomacy: knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile.\u201d \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sarah Gerard, Carrie Carolyn Coco<\/em><\/a>
\nZando, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Femicide is explored in a deeply personal manner by Sarah Gerard, whose friend Carolyn Bush was stabbed to death by her New York City roommate in 2016. Bush was a poet, and her roommate Render was an art handler, and Gerard sets out to understand how it came to murder, looking beyond her friend\u2019s ecosystem to the wider systems at work. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Aysegul<\/p>\n

Ay\u015feg\u00fcl Savas, The Anthropologists<\/em><\/a>
\nBloomsbury, July 9<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Asya, named for the continent, is a documentarian who likes to spend time watching people in her local park, and is discussing a move with her partner Manu to a foreign city. They are already third-culture kids, and their families back home are aging; the are making a world even as the one of their childhoods disappears. Ayseg\u00fcl Savas previously published the well-received White on White<\/em>. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jesse<\/p>\n

Jesse Katz, The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA<\/em><\/a>
\nAstra House, July 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Teenaged wannabe gangster Giovanni botches a hit, instead killing a newborn child in Los Angeles, and is in turn dragged over the Mexican border to be killed. Only that goes wrong too, and Giovanni sets off to bring the gang to justice. This true story looks at what a death is worth and how a crime can be forgiven. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Halle<\/p>\n

Halle Butler, Banal Nightmare<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, July 16<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n

I think we all know something about banal nightmares by now. But Butler’s book, in which a millennial New Yorker winds up back in her Midwestern hometown after a breakup, is unlikely to be banal, though it may be nightmarish\u2014after all, Butler is low-key the voice of a (tired, furious, disappointed, disoriented) generation. I’ll have to read it at arm’s length lest it cut too close to the bone. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lev<\/p>\n

Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Viking, July 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Lev Grossman has been talking about Arthurian legend since before he finished The Magicians<\/em> trilogy\u2014and now he\u2019s made good on his obsession, with a story about a knight who arrives at the Round Table to find that the heroes of Camelot have all left or died, so he and the leftovers set out to try and rebuild Camelot in an increasingly unsettled Britain. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Eugene Lim, Fog & Car
\n<\/em><\/strong>Coffee House Press, July 16<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Eugene Lim\u2019s debut comes back into print, thanks to the fine folks at Coffee House Press! Fans of Dear Cyborgs<\/em> and Search History<\/em> will be delighted to see the genesis of Lim\u2019s searching and curious style, in a novel that follows a couple after their separation who can\u2019t help continue to haunt each other\u2019s lives through strange and surreal occurrences, rendered in strange and surreal prose. \u2013DB<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Shalom Auslander, Feh<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Riverhead, July 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Yiddish for \u201cYuck,\u201d Feh<\/em> tells the story of Auslander\u2019s upbringing in Monsey, New York by a dysfunctional Orthodox Jewish family, and recounts \u201chis attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with\u2014before he inflicts it onto his children and\/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him.\u201d Featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Author Schopenhauer, Wolf Blitzer, and the pastor of a now-defunct church in LA, the memoir promises to be as funny and heartfelt as his other books. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Sarah Manguso, Liars<\/em><\/a>
\nRandom House, July 23<\/strong><\/h5>\n

From the author of Very Cold People<\/em> and 300 Arguments<\/em> comes a new novel about making art and also being married and also having children that is being pitched as Days of Abandonment<\/em> meets Dept of Speculation<\/em>. Which is a very good pitch. Sign me up, please. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dinaw<\/p>\n

Dinaw Mengestu, Someone Like Us<\/em><\/a>
\nKnopf, July 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Home from Paris, Mamush visits his Ethiopian family in Washington D.C. the same day his father is found dead in his garage, with few explanations. Mamush\u2019s marriage is fraying and the urge to understand or solve his father\u2019s death and own repressed memories by crossing the country has a bigger meaning.\u00a0\u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Danzy<\/p>\n

Danzy Senna, Colored Television<\/em><\/a>
\nRiverhead, July 30<\/strong><\/h5>\n

It\u2019s been an interesting couple of years for the racial-identity-industrial complex, and Danzy Senna\u2019s new novel takes an interesting tack. Abandoning a \u201cmulatto War and Peace\u201d to hustle in Hollywood, meeting a producer who starts her on the \u201cJackie Robinson of biracial comedies\u201d (these log lines \u2026). Dark humor is promised. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Helen<\/p>\n

Helen Phillips, <\/strong>Hum<\/em><\/strong><\/a>
\nS&S\/Marysue Rucci Books, August 6<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There\u2019s a lot going on in this novel, but trust Helen Phillips to navigate it effortlessly. May and her husband are raising their kids in a near-future city transformed by climate change (imagine your child has never seen a strawberry) and technology (imagine your laptop becoming a person-sized womb). After earning a big payday for undergoing a procedure that makes her face unreadable to surveillance, she splurges on a weekend trip to the Botanical Garden (think Disney World, but with nature), where things take a bad turn. It’s Anxiety Central, but in a good way. \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Sam Sax, Yr Dead<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>McSweeney\u2019s, August 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Bildungsroman, anyone? Bildungsroman? This lyrical novel in fragments tells the story of a life from the vantage point of the narrator\u2019s final moments. Ezra is a queer, Jewish person carrying out their last act of protest. While they experience their last moments, they also experience their entire life as their memories spill out before them. From diaspora and desire to history and generational trauma, Yr Dead<\/em> earnestly explores the things that make us human and alive while the story rushes headlong into death. \u2013MC<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Si\u00e2n<\/p>\n

Si\u00e2n Hughes, Pearl<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, August 6<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize but only now being published in the U.S.,\u00a0 Hughes’s novel is a refraction of the 14th-century poem of the same name, written by the same unknown author as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight<\/em>, who has become known as “the\u00a0Pearl\u00a0<\/em>poet.” All of that grief, loss, love, family, is here transmuted into the story of an English childhood. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jo<\/p>\n

Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite<\/em><\/a>
\nPantheon, August 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

From the author of\u00a0Three Rooms<\/em>, a novel set during one staging of a play\u2014which the playwright has written about her novelist father’s fall from grace. Natasha Brown calls it “a story of misunderstanding and failed connection, told with a dreamy, Sofia Coppola-esque quality,” and Chris Power described it as “an acid chamber piece that skewers the father, mother and daughter at its heart without denying them their messy, affecting humanity.” Sounds perfect. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Fiona McFarlane, Highway Thirteen<\/em><\/a>
\nFSG, August 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

No one in Australia imade it out of the 1990s without being transfixed by the grisly murder of backpackers looking to hitch a ride. McFarlane pegs her short story collection to a moment in 1998 when a man is arrested for serial murders, but complicates matters by writing stories back into the past and into the future to look at how communities make sense of murder, how personal histories are rewritten, and how grisly stories such as these are spread. Always happy to see an Aussie in the mix! McFarlane has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize and won the Dylan Thomas Prize. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Arianna Rebolini, Better<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Harper, August 13<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The latest book from novelist and essayist Arianna Rebolini (formerly the Books Editor at BuzzFeed News) is a memoir about suicide\u2014the lure of it, despite everything good in her life, and the way that lure snakes through families, especially hers, as well as through our culture. The publisher describes it as “a harrowing intellectual and emotional odyssey marked by remarkable clarity and compassion . . . a tour through the seductive darkness of death and a life-affirming memoir.” Rebolini is a great writer and editor; I’ve no doubt this will be a moving and important book. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gayl<\/p>\n

Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman<\/em><\/a>
\nBeacon Press, August 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

After fighting in World War II for the United States and its allies, army veteran Buddy Ray Guy returns to the Southern U.S., where Jim Crow marks him as less-than. His narration takes the reader out of Memphis and Lexington and back to France, where he recalls love affairs, circus barkers, topiary trimmers, and the titular Unicorn Woman. He\u2019s a dreamer, a spiritualist, and has possibly dreamt a way out of his lot. \u2013JM<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>FSG, August 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In addition to being one of our great living poets, Gumbs is perhaps our most knowledgeable expert on Audre Lorde\u2019s life and work. This brilliant new biography of Lorde should help provide a deeper understanding of Lorde\u2019s writing and life for those who\u2019ve only encountered the most superficial of her quotes and ideas\u2014particularly around Lorde\u2019s incredible ecological activism and her powerful, driving sense that humanity and the Earth are inextricably entwined. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lana<\/p>\n

Lana Harper, Rise and Divine<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Berkley, August 20<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I started reading romance in 2023 and Harper\u2019s Witches of Thistle Grove<\/em> books are simply perfect: one part Hocus Pocus<\/em>, one part Gilmore Girls<\/em>, with just enough steaminess to make your pulse pick up. This one looks like a \u201cthird-time\u2019s-a-charm\u201d will-they-won\u2019t-they and I\u2019m sure it will be exactly the late-summer escape-read we\u2019ll all need by then. May there be a thousand of these delightful, joy-filled books to come. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Knopf, August<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Shafak\u2019s latest is a sweeping, historical novel about three characters whose lives are entwined by the epic of Gilgamesh. Moving from the 19th century to the present, from the River Thames to the River Tigris, this novel is both expansive and tender. Exploring love, memory, healing, and change, There Are Rivers in the Sky<\/em> is an enthralling novel by the internationally bestselling Elif Shafak. \u2013MC<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Binnie Kirshenbaum, Counting Backwards<\/em><\/a>
\nSoho Press, September 3<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Binnie Kirshenbaum novels are sharp, harrowing, and disarmingly funny at the rawest of moments. In her new novel from Soho Press, a woman must reckon with her husband\u2019s dementia and terminal diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. It promises to be a devastating and beautiful read. \u2013EF<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ali Smith, Gliff<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Pantheon, September 3 <\/strong><\/h5>\n

After wrapping up her Seasonal Quartet<\/em> in typically playful fashion with a fifth book (Companion piece<\/em>), Smith embarks on yet another boundary-pushing literary excursion\u2014and all we know about this one is that it\u2019s got a companion novel in 2025 called Glyph<\/em>, and that \u201cgliff\u201d is a Scottish word for a shock or fright. It\u2019s sure to be strange and wondrous. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Emily C. Hughes, Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch<\/em><\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/strong>Quirk Books, September 3<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Emily Hughes is the discerning horror reader\u2019s go-to source for the next best scare\u2014her newsletter and monthly new-horror round-ups<\/a> are truly a gift\u2014and I\u2019m thrilled that her first book is going to be a guide to all of the horror films that I\u2019d rather read a Wikipedia entry for than watch and get nightmares from. Plus I bet it\u2019s going to be funny as hell, too. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Jamie Quatro, Two-Step Devil<\/em><\/a>
\nGrove, September 10<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The first book my now-husband gave me as a gift was Jamie Quatro’s\u00a0I Want to Show You More<\/em>. It worked out for him, and for me\u2014I have been a fan of her sexy, indelible prose ever since (read Fire Sermon<\/em>, if you haven’t) and can’t wait to read more. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Mariana Enriquez, trans. Megan McDowell,\u00a0A Sunny Place for Shady People
\n<\/em>Hogarth, September 17<\/strong><\/h5>\n

At this point, Mariana Enriquez needs no introduction (nor does her translator, Megan McDowell) with her ghoulish stories popping up in all the best magazines and her 2021 collection\u00a0The Dangers of Smoking in Bed\u00a0<\/em>a finalist for the International Booker Prize. In the first of two forthcoming books in English,\u00a0A Sunny Place for Shady People<\/em>\u00a0promises more trademark Enriquez stories combining the macabre with explorations of womanhood, parenthood and the lasting legacy of Argentina’s military dictatorships. The second book,\u00a0Somebody is Walking On Your Grave,\u00a0<\/em>sounds like it could be a lot of fun: Enriquez visits cemeteries all over the world and reviews them, in her kooky gothic style. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Chelsea Bieker,\u00a0Madwoman<\/em><\/strong>
\nLittle, Brown, September<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Chelsea Bieker is back with another novel about mothers and daughters. This one\u2014which Kimberley King Parson calls a “propulsive, unsparing take on generational violence,” centers on Clove, who has gone to great lengths to make her life\u2014and herself\u2014perfect, in order to erase her terrifying, violent childhood. But when that childhood comes back, in the form of a letter from a California women’s prison, she must finally figure out how to face it. I’m always here for Bieker’s vibrant, darkly funny, and devastating prose, so I’m looking forward to more of it. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"adam<\/h5>\n
Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons<\/em>
\nLittle, Brown, Fall<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Adam Haslett\u2019s Imagine Me Gone<\/i> (shortlisted for a National Book Award in 2017) is one of my favorite novels of the last decade, so I am very excited about Mothers and Sons. <\/i>Unsurprisingly, the crux of the novel is the estrangement of a gay immigration lawyer from his mother, a relationship that gets thrown into even starker relief by a difficult asylum case. \u2013JD<\/em><\/p>\n

\"sarah<\/h5>\n
Sarah Moss, My Good Bright Wolf
\n<\/em><\/strong>FSG, Fall<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In another exciting instance of a novelist publishing their first work of nonfiction (see Lydia Millet\u2019s We Loved It All<\/em><\/a>), Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall<\/em><\/a> and The Fell<\/em><\/a>, is giving us a memoir this fall. Details are still mum, but The Bookseller <\/em>reports<\/a> that My Good Bright Wolf <\/em>is \u201ca memoir about thinking and reading, eating and not eating, about privilege and scarcity, about the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood.\u201d That\u2019s enough for me! \u2013ES \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Daniel Salda\u00f1a Par\u00eds, trans. Christina MacSweeney & Philip K. Zimmerman, Planes Flying Over a Monster
\n<\/em>Catapult, 2024<\/strong><\/h5>\n

A collection of ten essays from one of Mexico’s most talented young writers, each one delving into how the city where he lived at the time affected his life: there are the student years in Madrid, party years in Mexico City, recovery in Montr\u00e9al and the story of how he grew up in a cult\u2014not a sex cult\u2014near Cuernavaca, each of them shot through with humor and forming a kind of K\u00fcnstlerroman in their totality. \u2013SR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Sara Gran, Little Mysteries
\n<\/em><\/strong>Dreamland Books, 2024<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Sara Gran is one of those writers I\u2019m always turning people onto, and her next book should be a thrill for long-time fans and new arrivals alike: her first short story collection, with eight stories (and a novella!) featuring characters from the Claire DeWitt books as well as what publicity copy promises to be \u201ca new fictional universe.\u201d What that means in Sara Gran\u2019s hands is anybody\u2019s guess\u2014but I bet it won\u2019t be anything like we expect. \u2013DB<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Carol Rifka Brunt, Mary Ann
\n<\/em><\/strong>Dial, 2024<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Fans of Carol Rifka Brunt\u2019s 2012 debut novel, Tell the Wolves I\u2019m Home<\/em><\/a> (a large and vocal group that includes yours truly), will be delighted to learn that Brunt\u2019s second novel will finally hit bookshelves in 2024. The Publishers Marketplace <\/em>announcement calls it a historical novel \u201cinspired by the life of Mary Ann Bevan, known for many years as \u2018the ugliest woman in the world.\u2019\u201d Good things come to those who wait! \u2013ES<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Emily Witt, Health & Safety
\n<\/em><\/strong>Pantheon, 2024<\/strong><\/h5>\n

New Yorker <\/em>staff writer Witt’s follow up to\u00a0Future Sex<\/em> follows Witt from 2016 (read: Donald Trump’s election) to 2020 (read: George Floyd’s murder), during which time the planet continued to crumble and also she fell in love, finding herself “pining for the same monogamous normy life she once questioned.” As someone who was also in New York, in love, and feeling uncontrollable rage about the end of the world-slash-society during this time, I suspect it will be a bracing read. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h5>\n
Mark Haber, Lesser Ruins<\/em>
\nCoffee House Press, 2024<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I don’t know much about Haber’s third novel, except for its brief Publishers Marketplace description<\/a>, which calls it a “frenetic meditation on love, grief, academia, Judaism, and coffee,” but as Lit Hub’s resident Haber stan, we all know that whatever it is, I am anticipating it with (very intellectual, I assure you) glee. \u2013ET<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year, readers. 2023 had its ups and downs (mostly downs), but as always, at least it brought us some very good books. But now that you\u2019ve read\u00a0all the books last year had to offer (right?),\u00a0it\u2019s time for a brand new list. Here are the books Literary Hub editors are most looking forward to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":231572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43069,11,43070,43135],"tags":[92767,58128,41707,92766,338],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/2024-working-copy.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-YaA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}