16 new books to check out this week.
A bunch of exciting new books are out today from authors new and old alike! There’s definitely something here for everyone’s TBR pile.
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The Best of Everything, Rona Jaffe (Penguin Classics 65th Anniversary Edition)
“Sixty years later, Jaffe’s classic still strikes a chord, this time eerily prescient regarding so many of the circumstances surrounding sexual harassment that paved the way toward the #MeToo movement.”
–Buzzfeed
Take What You Need, Idra Novey (Viking)
“Idra Novey appears capable of doing it all. She is a poet, a translator, and with Take What You Need, her third book of fiction, she is firmly establishing herself as one of the finest and bravest novelists working today.”
–Vulture
Bootstrapped, Alissa Quart
“A provocative, important repudiation of gig-economy capitalism that proposes utopian rather than dystopian solutions.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Our Best Intentions, Vibhuti Jain (William Morrow)
“A powerful, story-driven exploration of some of today’s most pressing social issues.”
–Kirkus
Island City, Laura Adamczyk (FSG)
“Adamczyk knows how to destabilize the reader while holding their attention and intrigue, which makes for a devastating first novel that you won’t soon forget.”
–The Chicago Review of Books
He Said He Would Be Late, Justine Sullivan (Henry Holt)
“A sharp debut examining the often-destabilizing identity of new motherhood, as well as postpartum depression, anxiety, and insecurity. Sullivan deftly conveys the overwhelming frustration of maintaining appearances as she leads readers through an emotional journey to an open-ended but deeply satisfying conclusion.”
–Chris Cander
How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind, Regan Penaluna (Grove)
“An alternate philosophical canon, where women and their intellect are deeply and rigorously examined.”
–The Millions
Künstlers in Paradise, Cathleen Schine (Henry Holt)
“Few authors could pull off what Cathleen Schine does in Künstlers in Paradise: creating a seamless, multilayered saga about family dynamics and relationships, immigration, the early days of Hollywood and the often disturbingly cyclical nature of history… Künstlers in Paradise is truly a trove of unexpected rewards.”
–Bookpage
Happily: A Personal History—With Fairy Tales, Sabrina Orah Mark (Random House)
“[Sabrina Orah] Mark writes with profound curiosity, attentive awe, and a poet’s magnifying vision. Seamlessly, [her] imagination makes new the ancient and oft-told.”
–Booklist
Heart Sutra, Yan Lianke (Trans. Carlos Rojas) (Grove)
“Subversive satire of the collision of Chinese state bureaucracy, academia, and religion… Picaresque, but with serious matters of faith, love, and political wrangling at its fast-beating heart.”
–Kirkus
Dust Child, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (Algonquin)
“Dust Child establishes Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai as one of our finest observers of the devastating consequences of war, and proves, once more, her ability to captivate readers and lure them into Viet Nam’s rich and poignant history.”
–Viet Thanh Nguyen
Blue Hunger, Viola di Grado (Trans. Jamie Richards) (Bloomsbury)
“Readers will be fascinated by the novel’s scenery, psychological acuity . . . Queerness, grief, isolation, dependence, and love merge in this novel of geographically-based healing and descent.”
–Booklist
Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, Richard Mirabella (Catapult)
“Mirabella’s debut novel—about a pair of once-close siblings and how the bruises of their youth swell into adulthood—is both bracing and a balm, his softly disarming sentences like cotton puffs that absorb the pain of deep cuts.”
–Electric Literature
Rombo, Esther Kinsky (Trans. Caroline Schmidt) (New York Review of Books)
“Kinsky expertly animates the natural world around her while removing her human hand. . . . If trauma is the inability to redescribe, Rombo offers a powerful antidote in language and the infinite possibilities of description.”
–Financial Times
The Fear, Christiana Spens (Repeater)
“Spens writes beautifully about self-government… The writing is so wonderfully strong about fragility.”
–Ambit Magazine
Dragons: Poems, Devin Johnston (FSG)
“[Dragons] explores the present and past with effortless rhyme and gentle music… These poems are well wrought and moving, each filled with a ‘mild expectancy’ that connects the mundane with the awe that gives life meaning.”
–Publishers Weekly
