20 new books to add your fall(!) reading list.
This week is a doozy! There are new titles from Lauren Groff, Maggie Nelson, Sandra Cisneros, Simone de Beauvoir, Joy Harjo, and (in case you haven’t heard) Sally Rooney. Not to mention the slate of debut authors and small press titles to love, too! So hunker down with a mug of the seasonal beverage of your choice, pull on your favorite light knit sweater, and let’s get into it.
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Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You
(FSG)
“Rooney’s fiction to this point remains philosophically anchored in the realms of friendship and romance.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Lauren Groff, Matrix
(Riverhead)
“Perhaps the greatest pleasure of this novel is also its most subtle. Groff is a gifted writer capable of deft pyrotechnics and well up to the challenges she sets herself.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Maggie Nelson, On Freedom
(Graywolf)
“[A] sustained, uncompromisingly even-handed meditation … Through twists and turns and idiosyncratic forays, Nelson pursues the ways in which care and constraint impact on any lived experience of freedom.”
–4Columns
Colm Tóibín, The Magician
(Scribner)
“What Mr. Tóibín’s exquisitely sensitive novel gets right, in a way that biography rarely does, is its acknowledgment of unknowability.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Sandra Cisneros, tr. Liliana Valenzuela, Martita, I Remember You
(Vintage)
“Cisneros’s language and rhythm of her prose reverberate with Corina’s longing for her youth and unfulfilled promise. The author’s fans will treasure this.”
–Publishers Weekly
Venita Blackburn, How To Wrestle a Girl
(MCD x FSG)
“Written from a distinct point of view and certainly never dull, this collection will appeal to those who enjoy experimental fiction and firmly places Blackburn as a writer to watch.”
–Booklist
Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria
(Knopf)
“The poise of Mr. Lish’s writing makes this bleak story so dangerously absorbing.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Cadwell Turnbull, No Gods, No Monsters
(Blackstone)
“Multiple viewpoints and protagonists are easy enough to juggle while being compelling, and the inclusion of asexual, trans, and other non-conforming identities and relationships adds a rich layer of truth and reality to the text.”
–Booklist
Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior
(W. W. Norton)
“Throughout this lyrical, beautiful memoir Harjo generously shares her inspirations: family, nature, ritual, music, literature, her life lessons and insights gleaned from her dreams, psychic intuitions, and communications with ancestors.”
–Booklist
Simone de Beauvoir, tr. Sandra Smith, Inseparable
(Ecco)
“Beauvoir the novelist allows us to feel the suffocating weight of an entire society.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Gini Alhadeff, The Water Statues
(New Directions)
“[A] fascinating and memorable portrait of a milieu obsessed with the passing of time.”
–Publishers Weekly
Ye Chun, Hao
(Catapult)
“Tender and skillful … Reveals via bold and spare prose how characters grasp onto language as a means of belonging.”
–Publishers Weekly
adrienne maree brown, Grievers
(AK Press)
“Bestseller Brown (Pleasure Activism) makes her fiction debut with the powerful, emotional story of Dune, a young woman living in Detroit, Mich., in the midst of a bizarre epidemic.”
–Publishers Weekly
Robert Olen Butler, Late City
(Atlantic Monthly)
“Pulitzer winner Butler steps away from his Christopher Marlowe Cobb series for a moving tale of love and misunderstanding.”
–Publishers Weekly
María Amparo Escandón, L.A. Weather
(Flatiron)
“[Escandón] returns with a rollicking and hilarious family drama of telenovela-esque proportions that doubles as a fiery love letter to Los Angeles.”
–Publishers Weekly
Adam Tooze, Shutdown
(Viking)
“As the pandemic hopefully continues to fade, other crises remain. This book is a valuable forecast of future problems.”
–Kirkus
Mariana Dimópulos, tr. Alice Whitmore, Imminence
(Transit)
“Wonderfully atmospheric and evocative, Dimópulos’s latest is exceedingly satisfying.”
–Publishers Weekly
Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country
(Doubleday)
“A potent testament to the love, curiosity, grit, and hope of a courageous and resourceful immigrant child.”
–Kirkus
Annabel Abbs, Windswept
(Tin House)
“British novelist Abbs (The Joyce Girl) finds power in the mundane act of walking in this beautiful and meditative memoir.”
–Publishers Weekly
Phillip B. Williams, Mutiny
(Penguin)
“Sweeping and intimate, fierce and tender, visceral and virtuosic . . . Rage and pure passion jump off the page.”
–The Adroit Journal
