16 hotly-anticipated new books coming out this week.
It’s a BIG WEEK, folks! New titles from Emily St. John Mandel, Douglas Stuart, Jennifer Egan, Ocean Vuong, Samantha Hunt, and more are hitting shelves today. Prepare your minds, hearts, and wallets.
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Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility
(Knopf)
“In Sea of Tranquility, Mandel offers one of her finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet, but it is her ability to convincingly inhabit the ordinary, and her ability to project a sustaining acknowledgment of beauty, that sets the novel apart.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo
(Grove Press)
“Young Mungo, like its predecessor, is a nuanced and gorgeous heartbreaker of a novel. Reading it is like peering into the apartment of yet another broken family whose Glasgow tenement might be down the road from Shuggie Bain’s.”
–NPR
Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
(Scribner)
“Egan has a gift for combining the outrageous and the plausible without ejecting us from the narrative … All this is wound together; nearly everyone is somehow connected. It’s all too much, except that it isn’t … She knows where she’s going and the polyphonic effects she wants to achieve, and she achieves them.”
–The New York Times
Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother
(Penguin Press)
“Vuong’s powerful follow-up to Night Sky with Exit Wounds does more than demonstrate poetic growth: it deepens and extends an overarching project with 27 new poems that reckon with loss and impermanence.”
–Publishers Weekly
Samantha Hunt, The Unwritten Book
(FSG)
“Hunt plumbs the depths of human experience in this assemblage of reflections on life’s sweet mystery … A vulnerable, wide-ranging, and at times deeply affecting patchwork of ruminations on the unknown.”
–Kirkus
Jenny Tingui Zhang, Four Treasures of the Sky
(Flatiron)
“The resonance and immediacy of these barbarous 19th-century events are testament to Zhang’s storytelling powers, and should stand as a warning to all of us.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Chelsea Bieker, Heartbroke
(Catapult)
“Bieker flexes a gift for the short form in her searing first collection. Each story draws readers in, moving them to love Bieker’s crusty characters before ending just in time to satisfy.”
–Booklist
Sara Nović, True Biz
(Random House)
“Tender, beautiful and radiantly outraged … True Biz is moving, fast-paced and spirited — we have vivid access to all of the main characters’ points of view — but also skillfully educational.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Audrey Schulman, The Dolphin House
(Europa)
“Both woman and dolphins come to vivid life in this fascinating and beautifully realized novel.”
–Kirkus
Ben McGrath, Riverman
(Knopf)
“The captivating story of an inveterate river wanderer who left a mark on many he met along his journeys before suddenly vanishing… A paean to eccentricity and endurance and a study of a life that changed the chronicler’s own perceptions.”
–Kirkus
Aamina Ahmad, The Return of Faraz Ali
(Riverhead)
“…quietly stunning … stunning not only on account of the writer’s talent, of which there is clearly plenty, but also in its humanity, in how a book this unflinching in its depiction of class and institutional injustice can still feel so tender.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Katya Kazbek, Little Foxes Took Up Matches
(Tin House)
“A rich and moving look at a child in the midst of self-discovery. As dark as a Brothers Grimm fairy tale—and as magical.”
–Kirkus
Elizabeth Alexander, The Trayvon Generation
(Grand Central)
“[A] profound and lyrical meditation on race, class, justice and their intersections with art … As much as this magnificent book is anything else, it’s a commitment to that generous and crucial life’s work.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Lauren Rankin, Bodies on the Line
(Counterpoint)
“Bodies on the Line tells the stories of communities that came together with the opposite goal in mind: to offer patients comfort and protection.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins
(Viking)
“Blood and Ruins is a monumental work; it is hard to imagine that a more comprehensive study of World War II could possibly be contained between two covers. Richard Overy has given us a powerful reminder of the horror of war and the threat posed by dictators with dreams of empire.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores
(Princeton University Press)
“Deutsch, director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago, reflects on the importance of bookselling in his moving debut … A resonant elegy to a changing business, this will hit the spot for literature lovers.”
–Publishers Weekly
