13 new books to look forward to this week.
A baker’s dozen worth of books to hold close as sweater-weather arrives…
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Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
(Scribner)
“Doerr demonstrates a singular gift for bringing these complex, fully realized characters to empathetic life in this brilliantly imagined story, which moves backward and forward in time.”
–Booklist
Anita Hill, Believing
(Viking)
“With searing insight, Hill shows how much and how little things have changed since 1991. Her book gives hope, inspires activism, and discourages complacency.”
–Library Journal
Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken, The Morning Star
(Penguin Press)
“The Morning Star becomes, in other words, a somewhat programmatic novel of ideas. Knausgaard chews on notions of faith, free will, the transmigration of souls, the nature of angels, on meaning and nothingness in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Rilke’s poetry.”
–The New York Times
Joshua Ferris, A Calling for Charlie Barnes
(Little, Brown)
“A Calling for Charlie Barnes may just be the work that finally wins Ferris his place on the podium. The humour throughout is exquisitely judged, with some passages genuinely eliciting belly laughs.”
–The Irish Times
Lucy Ellmann, Things Are Against Us
(Biblioasis)
“It’s somehow hard not to be optimistic in the hands of a writer so angry and intelligent.”
–The Guardian
Jelani Cobb and David Remnick, The Matter of Black Lives
(Ecco)
“This standout anthology illuminates a matter of perennial concern.”
–Publishers Weekly
Richard Osman, The Man Who Died Twice
(Pamela Dorman)
“The Man Who Died Twice, like its series predecessor, is an unalloyed delight, full of sharp writing, sudden surprises, heart, comedy, sorrow and great banter.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Wole Soyinka, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
(Pantheon)
“Breezy, sometimes, punchy, it is typical Wole Soyinka: brimming with wisdom and full of words you may never have heard or seen or read anywhere. You have to polish your vocabulary with it.”
–The Lagos Review
Sophie Ward, Love and Other Thought Experiments
(Vintage)
“Ward’s ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire’s Candide, Sartre’s Nausea. It sets out to be intellectually provocative; to tease, vitalise and liberate our thought processes.”
–The Guardian
Phoebe Robinson, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes
(Tiny Reparations Books)
“Her no-holds-barred essays are deliciously confessional—no topic is deprived of caps lock or gushing footnotes.”
–Publishers Weekly
Steve Van Zandt, Unrequited Infatuations
(Hachette)
“Van Zandt’s bravado shines through his prose, and he’s refreshingly honest as he takes readers through his many professional triumphs and disappointments.”
–Booklist
Max Seeck, The Ice Coven
(Berkley)
“Seeck throws in a murder that definitely happened, human trafficking, frog toxin, and somnophilia into the mix, masterfully ratcheting up the tension. Ragnar Jónasson fans will be mesmerized.”
–Publishers Weekly
Charles Gallagher, Nazis of Copley Square
(Harvard University Press)
“This vigorously researched chronicle uncovers a dark chapter in American history.”
–Publishers Weekly
