18 new books to check out today!
It’s Tuesday again, and a lot of fascinating new books are out today. Here are a few to consider picking up.
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Stephanie Marie Thornton, Her Lost Words: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (Berkeley)
“Thornton writes lyrically about the two Marys, and readers will sympathize, deeply, with their struggles to find their own paths.”
–Library Journal
Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog: Stories (Random House)
“A set of seven slipstream short stories that edge, in length, toward novelettes. Where her earlier collections were anchored by a zany, wondrous youthfulness…this one seems to convey: Never fear, aging has entertaining horrors all its own.”
–The Washington Post
Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope (Penguin Press)
“Erudite and accessible, Bakewell’s survey pulls together diverse historical threads without sacrificing the up-close details that give this work its spark. Even those who already consider themselves humanists will be enlightened.”
–Publishers Weekly
Sharon Dodua Otoo, Ada’s Room (trans. Jon Cho-Polizzi) (Riverhead)
“Thrillingly, astonishingly original. You will not have read anything quite like this before.”
–R. O. Kwon
Tim Z. Hernandez, Some of the Light: New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press)
“Some of the Light arrives to remind us that Hernandez has been turning over the stones, cradling them, and tumbling them in his mouth until he can taste and recite every fissure and form that must be sung. It awakens the inner light that empires, trials and tribulations, others, and even the self have attempted to extinguish and failed. Hernandez lets the light radiate, and we must follow.”
–Anthony Cody
Soraya Palmer, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (Catapult)
“Vivid and otherworldly, this masterfully told novel brings together many threads of family history, personal memory, collective choices, sexuality, and a realm of mysteries and mythic creatures with deep origins and powers….A striking and imaginative debut.”
–Booklist
Lizzie Stark, Egg: A Dozen Ovatures (Norton)
“Stark proves to be an excellent storyteller… This delightful paean to the egg is equal parts fun, philosophical, educational, and irreverent.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jeannette Walls, Hang the Moon (Scribner)
“Walls has created a magnetic, irreverent dynamo in Sallie, whose transporting narration is incandescent with incisive observations, moral dilemmas, and startlingly gorgeous descriptions….Hang the Moon is vital, provocative, and intoxicating.”
–Booklist
Clint Smith, Above Ground: Poems (Little Brown)
“I long for a literature—especially a poetry—of joy; life is too short and bland without it. Smith’s new poetry collection teems with images of love and fatherhood. Great poetry comes in many modes and subjects, but there’s something unique about a book of verse that makes me want to hold my own children a little tighter.”
–The Millions
Rachel Heng, The Great Reclamation (Riverhead)
“I loved this book, its layering of Singapore’s history with a very complicated love story… what a marvelous novel.”
–Megha Majumdar
Rose Hackman, Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power (Flatiron)
“This is an inspiring, infuriating study of the toll it takes on people when they’re expected to smile, while taking on more and exhausting responsibilities without getting paid more.”
–Library Journal
Jaroslav Kalfař, A Brief History of Living Forever (Little Brown)
“Inventive and heartfelt, this dystopian take on the immigrant experience and the American Dream packs a walloping punch.”
–Esquire
Abraham Riesman, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America (Atria Books)
“This revelatory biography of Vince McMahon argues convincingly that pro wrestling can explain contemporary America. It’s a knockout.”
–Publishers Weekly
Clancy Martin, How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind (Pantheon)
“A book called How Not to Kill Yourself is not only tough to read on the subway in hardcover, it also seems, at first blush, possibly dangerous for a depressed or suicidal person to read. But even as Martin spares no detail about his depressive episodes or suicide attempts, the book lives up to its ambitious title. Inherent to the hopeful message is Martin’s overarching philosophy that we as a society must eliminate the idea that suicidal or depressive or addictive people are bad or sinful, an idea that’s baked so deeply into our culture we may not even realize it’s there.”
–Vulture
Allegra Hyde, The Last Catastrophe (Vintage)
“Allegra Hyde wrote one of 2022’s best novels, Eleutheria, and her second story collection, The Last Catastrophe, contains more optimistic visions of the future than most of the books on this list, despite the specter of climate change.”
–Polygon
Jess Row, The New Earth (Ecco)
“Jess Row interrogated American whiteness with great creative power in Your Face in Mine and White Flights. The New Earth extends his thinking on historical amnesia and erasure, race and family, in extraordinary ways.”
–Claudia Rankine
Brian Lowery, Selfless: The Social Creation of “You” (Harper)
“Lowery] investigates many commonly held assumptions that selfhood is, for the most part, a privately malleable entity originating within us at birth, and that absolute liberty in defining it might be both possible and desirable. We know ourselves better and can improve our chances at self-improvement, the author explains convincingly, if we accept that our identities are fluid, socially determined phenomena….An informed, thought-provoking consideration of the relational dimensions of our lives.”
–Kirkus
Tara Conklin, Community Board (Mariner)
“A bittersweet, laugh-out-loud novel….Community Board is a crafty send-up about one woman struggling to come to terms with—and rebuild—her battered self-esteem.”
–Shelf Awareness
