20 new books to warm your cold, unfeeling heart.
Here in Brooklyn, there’s a blizzard. No better cure for the winter blues than a brand new book to snuggle up with. Luckily, you can get these beauties from your local indie.
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Dantiel W. Moniz, Milk Blood Heat
(Grove Press)
“Reading one of Moniz’s stories is like holding your breath underwater while letting the salt sting your fresh wounds. It’s exhilarating and shocking and even healing.”
–The Washington Post
Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls
(One World)
“Bestseller Kendi and historian Blain present an engrossing anthology of essays, biographical sketches, and poems by Black writers tracing the history of the African American experience from the arrival of the first slaves in 1619 to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
–Publishers Weekly
Melissa Broder, Milk Fed
(Scribner)
“Broder has a rare ability to ground her fantasy in reality without undermining her her imaginative vision, making it feel personal and raw and relatable.”
–The Boston Globe
Ethan Hawke, A Bright Ray of Darkness
(Knopf)
“A brilliant insider’s account of the joys and terrors of acting, the trials of celebrity, and the secrets of Henry IV.”
–Kirkus
Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts
(Catapult)
“Oyler’s debut does not disappoint. Fake Accounts is a sharply observed and wryly funny satire on the banal sociopathy of online life.”
–The Times
Dorthe Nors, tr. Misha Hoekstra, Wild Swims
(Graywolf)
“Dorthe Nors writes short fiction that is precise, brief and shattering … Lyrical stream-of- consciousness prose is intercut with short, blunt sentences, enacting the push and pull of revelation between her protagonists and their environment.”
–The Times Literary Supplement
Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers
(Mariner Books)
“Wall Street Journal correspondent Chen emerges as a fiction powerhouse, each of her 10 stories an immersive literary event.”
–Booklist
Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
(Little, Brown and Company)
“Jones’s intense debut explores the poverty and crime in Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, amid an explosive collision between tourists and locals.”
–Publishers Weekly
Anakana Schofield, Bina
(NYRB)
“The slow disclosure of plot, at first frustrating, becomes one of the greatest pleasures of this excellent book. Painted with colour and wit, there emerges a whole host of absurdist characters clamouring for Bina’s attention.”
–The Times Literary Supplement
Brontez Purnell, 100 Boyfriends
(MCD x FSG Originals)
“This stunning collection of vignettes from artist, punk rocker, and Whiting Award winner Purnell (Since I Laid My Burden Down) forms a delightfully crass, kaleidoscopic worldview.”
–Publishers Weekly
Brandon Hobson, The Removed
(Ecco)
“Once in a while, you come across a book that seems to exist in its own bubble of space-time … A word for such a story might be numinous, which ably describes Brandon Hobson’s splendid The Removed.”
–BookPage
Robert Paarlberg, Resetting the Table
(Knopf)
“Environmentally conscience readers will find much food for thought in this informative narrative.”
–Publishers Weekly
Selina Hastings, Sybille Bedford: A Life
(Knopf)
“Gracefully written, largely sympathetic and very gossipy.”
–The Wall Street Journal
Catie Disabato, U Up?
(Melville House)
“…poignant … Disabato makes [the characters] come alive on the page and in her texts.”
–Publishers Weekly
Tim Harford, The Data Detective
(Riverhead)
“Conquering the intimidating world of statistics is a daunting task, but Harford has a knack for making complex subjects accessible.”
–Booklist
Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life
(Penguin Press)
“He was a man in perpetual motion, and Harris chases him with patience, clarity and care.”
–The New York Times
Philippe Sands, The Ratline
(Knopf)
“Sands has once again written a riveting and insightful historical page-turner that proves to be part History Channel, part W. G. Sebald.”
–Harper’s
Russell Shorto, Smalltime
(W. W. Norton)
“[A] beautifully rendered, spellbinding saga about family secrets and taboos.”
–Shelf Awareness
John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
(Vintage)
“A rowdy, bawdy, feeling, root-sensed New England gallery, this has its high — and not quite so high — moments for an audience which may suffer shock but never shame.”
–Kirkus
Ina Park, Strange Bedfellows
(Flatiron)
“Informative and frank, Park’s account of sex and STDs is ideal both for the curious and for those too embarrassed to ask.”
–Publishers Weekly
