20 new books to pick up from your local indies.
Oh, glorious day! Bookstores across the country are opening up again. (My local Greenlight is browsable as of this week—I’m not crying, you’re crying.) As you cross the threshold of your favorite local indie for the first time in months, you might be wondering what you’ve missed. Here are 20 of the big new titles coming into the world today. Happy (sanitized, masked) browsing, everyone!
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Leila Slimani, Sex and Lies
(Penguin Books)
“In an act of rare humility and generosity, Slimani offers [these women] what they’ve been deprived of: a space to tell their stories, to exist.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue
(Random House)
“Mitchell is expert at excavating the seams of loss, ambition and mere chance that lie under the edifice of fame.”
–The Guardian (UK)
Kelli Jo Ford, Crooked Hallelujah
(Grove Press)
“Her book reads like a series of acoustic songs recorded on a single microphone in a bare room with a carpet … Ford’s novel finds its center of gravity at the intimate human level.”
–The New York Times
Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, Big Friendship
(Simon & Schuster)
“A deeply funny and immensely heartfelt look into what makes a friendship last despite time, distance, trials and major life changes.”
–Elle
Mary L. Trump, PhD, Too Much and Never Enough
(Simon & Schuster)
“Too Much and Never Enough is a deftly written account of cross-generational trauma, but it is also suffused by an almost desperate sadness.”
–The Washington Post
Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City
(Scribner)
“Stranger in the Shogun’s City is the most evocative book this review has read about Japan since The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris.”
–Asian Review of Books
Colin Jost, A Very Punchable Face
(Crown)
“Colin Jost is as funny as his face is punchable. Which is to say: very.”
–Zadie Smith
Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians
(Gallery / Saga Press)
“While fully entrenched within the genre, its well-developed cast, lyrical language, and heightened suspense will have broad appeal.”
–Library Journal
Kate Greene, Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Poet and science journalist Greene writes of isolation, deprivation, and boredom in this enlightening account of her sojourn in a habitat mimicking the conditions of a future Mars mission.”
–Publishers Weekly
Christopher Buckley, Make Russia Great Again
(Simon & Schuster)
“Amid the twin economic and health catastrophes of our era, Buckley has done the impossible: Made Politics Funny Again. Laughter may not be the best medicine for covid-19, but it’s a heck of a lot better than bleach.”
–The Washington Post
Norman Ohler, The Bohemians
(Houghton Mifflin)
“Each chapter leaves readers wanting more and rooting for the ill-fated group.”
–Library Journal
Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body
(Two Dollar Radio)
“An urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength.”
–Kirkus
Charles Leerhsen, Butch Cassidy
(Simon & Schuster)
“Leerhsen is a nimble storyteller whose revisionist agenda doesn’t get in the way of crowd-pleasing drama. Old West history buffs will be thrilled.”
–Publishers Weekly
Margaret Sullivan, Ghosting the News
(Columbia Global Reports)
“Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan’s book about what happens to local democracy when local newsrooms shrivel couldn’t be publishing at a better time.”
–Seattle Times
Miles Harvey, The King of Confidence
(Little, Brown)
“The King of Confidence reads akin to the best of thriller fiction. The true nature of the book renders the events all the more shocking and makes for an impactful read.”
–San Francisco Book Review
Leah Hampton, F*ckface
(Henry Holt)
“Her strength is characterization, with each short story fully developing empathy and honesty.”
–PopMatters
Ryad Girod, tr. by Chris Clarke, Mansour’s Eyes
(Transit Books)
“Girod’s incisive, sometimes terrifying tale illuminates colonial history and the fraught nature of Mansour’s ideals, gleaming as brightly in the believer’s eyes as on the blade above his head.”
–Publishers Weekly
Carlos Fonsela, tr. Megan McDowell, Natural History
(FSG)
“Ultimately, Fonseca’s challenging and transcendent novel offers a prescient message about media fabrications and the unreliability of history.”
–Booklist
Amanda Brainerd, Age of Consent
(Viking)
“The takes on parental neglect and the ways young women are taught to see sex as transactional make this more than a throwback.”
–Publishers Weekly
Kirkland Hamill, Filthy Beasts
(Avid Reader Press)
“A stunning, deeply satisfying story about how we outlive our upbringings.”
–Kirkus
