20 new books to dive into this week.
Rejoice, friends, for we only have a three more days left of the work week and these beautiful new books are coming out today! This week sees the return of Julie Otsuka, Quan Barry, Roddy Doyle, and Bambi (to name a few) plus a few pretty stunning debuts. Happy Tuesday!
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Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers
(Knopf)
“The puzzling narrative structure makes a kind of poetic sense as myth … The Swimmers makes an archetypal story wholly personal.”
–The New York Times Book Review
David Wright Falade, Black Cloud Rising
(Grove Press)
“A masterful depiction of the precarious nature of Black life during the war and of slavery’s unrelenting assault on human dignity.”
–Booklist
Roddy Doyle, Life Without Children
(Viking)
“A moving and quick-witted portrait of Dublin lives under lockdown.”
–Kirkus
Quan Barry, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
(Pantheon)
“When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is no ordinary adventure tale. Although the events, and the landscapes, are strange and wondrous, Quan Barry’s new novel is utterly original, a unique immersion in history, philosophy, religion, the nature of time, and the clash of old and new happening all over our world.”
–Washington Independent Review of Books
Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment
(William Morrow)
“Foley builds her suspense slowly and creepily, deploying an array of narrators bristling with personal secrets … Pay close attention to seemingly throwaway details about the characters’ pasts. They are all clues.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Gabrielle Civil, The Déjà Vu: Black Dreams and Black Time
(Coffee House Press)
“In this radiant work, poet and performance artist Civil pays tribute to a legacy of Black artists while contending with the ‘twin moments of pandemic and uprising’ after the murder of George Floyd.”
–Publishers Weekly
Tanaïs, In Sensorium: Notes for My People
(Harper)
“Novelist and perfumer Tanaïs (Bright Lines) blends in this beautiful work memoir, history, and notes on perfuming to interrogate love, violence, and generational healing.”
–Publishers Weekly
Yuko Tsushima, tr. Geraldine Harcourt, Woman Running in the Mountains
(New York Review of Books)
“Tsushima left behind a stunning legacy of stylistically inventive and lyrically fierce prose that continually featured individuals pushed to the edges of society.”
–The Japan Times
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt
(Tor)
“Original and unabashed, Manhunt is unafraid to be messy as it cultivates a flawed and intriguing cast of characters, centering voices that have been previously unheard in dystopian fiction.”
–BookPage
Amelia Morris, Wildcat
(Flatiron)
“The thing I was prepared to like least about Amelia Morris’s funny and engrossing debut novel — new motherhood and all the requisite growing pains — ultimately became the thing I admired about it most.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Maud Casey, City of Incurable Women
(Bellevue Literary Press)
“Casey evokes—with no shortage of verve and gusto—the romance of 19th-century Europe, when madness plagued more than asylums.”
–The Washington Post
Hannah Arendt, tr. Clara Winston, Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman
(New York Review of Books)
“Arendt’s insight into the psychology and the situation of pariah and parvenu is essential.”
–Kirkus
Joel Agee, The Stone World
(Melville)
“The beauty and hardship of post–World War II Mexico are brought to life through the eyes of a young child in this semiautobiographical debut novel.”
–Kirkus
Isaac Fellman, Dead Collections
(Penguin)
“There’s a magic to Isaac Fellman’s fiction, born of his depth of perception, precise prose and straightforward sense of expression.”
–BookPage
Shelley Puhak, The Dark Queens: The Blood Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
(Bloomsbury)
“Poet Puhak (Guinevere in Baltimore) delivers a lyrical and astute assessment of the political maneuvers, battlefield strategies, and resilience of medieval queens and rivals Fredegund and Brunhild.”
–Publishers Weekly
Sarah Weinman, Scoundrel
(Ecco)
“Did a savage thug exploit smart, decent people? Can altruism sometimes be as lethal as psychopathology? Evil pervades this book, but it makes for a terrific read.”
–Air Mail
Daniel Genis, Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison
(Viking)
“The author’s voice is insightful, candid, and sometimes darkly humorous. A vivid portrait of endurance behind bars.”
–Kirkus
Ben Okri, Every Leaf a Hallelujah
(Other Press)
“Coupled with vibrant illustrations by Ejaita, this gem will resonate with both adult fantasy readers and their children.”
–Publishers Weekly
Adam Nicholson, Life Between the Tides
(FSG)
“Memoirist, historian, and nature writer Nicolson brings capacious erudition and acute sensitivity to his intimate investigation of the ebb, the flow, and the teeming variety of life in tidal pools.”
–Kirkus
Felix Salten, tr. Jack Zipes, The Original Bambi
(Princeton University Press)
” It’s a pretty brutal meditation on existence, serving as a kind of wild counterpart to Orwell’s domesticated animals on the Farm … There are plenty of compensations along the way, though: the love of mother and mate, and the beauty of the place.”
–The New York Times Book Review
