15 new books to read immediately.
This Tuesday would feel like a Monday—if not for all the good books coming our way! New titles from Bernardine Evaristo, Weike Wang, Brian Cox, and more await.
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Bernardine Evaristo, Manifesto
(Grove Press)
“Part coming-of-age story and part how-to manual, the book is, above all, one of the most down-to-earth and least self-aggrandizing works of self-reflection you could hope to read. Evaristo’s guilelessness is refreshing.”
–The Times Literary Supplement
Brian Cox, Putting the Rabbit In the Hat
(Grand Central)
“Wisdom, a modicum of modesty, and delicious gossip make for an entertaining memoir.”
–Kirkus
Weike Wang, Joan Is Okay
(Random House)
“[A] tender and enduring portrayal of the difficulties of forging one’s own path after spending a life between cultures.”
–Publishers Weekly
Kendra James, Admissions
(Grand Central)
“This phenomenon is about the best depiction of elite whiteness I’ve read, nailing the belonging derived from institutional affiliation, which is therefore impersonal and false, but manifests value in spite of this.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go In the Dark
(William Morrow)
“…absorbing and heartbreaking … This is not a book to read straight through (as I did)—it will make you weep—but it is a book as full of hope, humanity, and possibility as the grief and loss of climate disaster and pandemic laid unflinchingly bare.”
–The Brooklyn Rail
Sara Freeman, Tides
(Grove Press)
“The beauty of Freeman’s prose lies as much in this unexpected cadence as in the contrast between beauty and harshness tucked into every page.”
–Shelf Awareness
Sjón, tr. Victoria Cribb, Red Milk
(MCD)
“In this short and bleak novel, Sjón makes us think again about what empathy can—and frequently enough simply can’t—achieve.”
–4Columns
Bianca Stone, What Is Otherwise Infinite
(Tin House)
“What is the meaning of our lives? How should we be spending our time? Poets are great at ruminating on these questions, and Bianca Stone is one of them.”
–NPR
Angela Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiography
(Haymarket)
“Angela Davis: An Autobiography continues to fulfill that goal as the rare book that even almost 50 years later feels timely and relevant. Maybe too relevant, considering how little has changed in the interim.”
–Los Angeles Times
Jérôme Ferrari, tr. Alison Anderson, In His Own Image
(Europa)
“Moral questions take on human form in Ferrari’s stunning narrative.”
–Kirkus
Jenny Pentland, This Will Be Funny Later
(Harper)
“A mordantly poignant memoir of finding oneself amid hectic external forces.”
–Kirkus
Charles J. Shields, Lorraine Hansberry
(Henry Holt)
“A revealing and rewarding biography documenting the life, work, and historical relevance of a great American author.”
–Kirkus
Lea Ypi, Free
(W. W. Norton)
“Lea Ypi, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, wanted to write a thoughtful book about concepts of freedom. She succeeded, quite brilliantly, although by means other than she had intended at first.”
–The Irish Times
Jing Tsu, Kingdom of Characters
(Riverhead)
“We meet engineers, novelists, monks, rogues, brave librarians, imprisoned geniuses. It humanises what might seem like a fringe concern. It also gives the reader insight into the geopolitical dilemmas around what was once brush-marks on paper … Jing Tsu’s book may be as prophetic as it is historical.”
–The Scotsman
Andrew Lipstein, Last Resort
(FSG)
“…at its heart [Last Resort] is a surprisingly traditional, almost Dickensian, story about the vagaries of fate. For anyone who can’t look away from a juicy literary scandal.”
–Kirkus
