22 new books to get you through the week.
Living for the weekend? Living for Saturday afternoons spent at your local bookstore and Sunday mornings curled up in your favorite chair? Yeah, us too. This week brings us a spate of new books: from Stacey Abrams to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Billie Eilish to Seth Rogen. Yessiree, there’s something for everyone here.
*
Stacey Abrams, While Justice Sleeps
(Doubleday)
“Abrams keeps the action in check with the story, making each death matter, even those expected, while using chess moves, intricate puzzles and even the musings of a French philosopher as plot devices.”
–The South Florida Sun Sentinel
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief
(Knopf)
“I really appreciated Adichie’s discomfort with the language of grief … Books often come to you just when you need them, and it is unimaginable to think just how many people have, like the author, lost someone in this singularly strange period of our history.”
–The San Francisco Chronicle
Virginie Despentes, tr. Frank Wynne, Vernon Subutex 3
(FSG Originals)
“Despentes writes like Armistead Maupin, but about aging Gen-Xers instead of hippies and New Agers.”
–Vulture
Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo
(FSG)
“This book is a wonderful tribute to a family and to an idea.”
–The Guardian
Simon Kuper, Spies, Lies, and Exile
(New Press)
“Simon Kuper tells this extraordinary tale with wit and vim in his entertaining account of the spy’s life.”
–The Economist
Anne Garréta, tr. Emma Ramandan, In Concrete
(Deep Vellum)
“Through a unique writing style where spelling mistakes coexist with onomatopoeias and saucy allusions, the border between spoken and written language gradually ceases to exist.”
–The Cultural Services of the French Embassy
Nesrine Malik, We Need New Stories
(W. W. Norton)
“With careful analysis and a great historian’s expertise for synthesising a huge amount of information into a clear arc, she engages in a powerful and persuasive debunking exercise.”
–The Guardian
Emily Midorikawa, Out of the Shadows
(Counterpoint)
” A well-researched, fresh contribution to women’s history.”
–Kirkus
Sean Flynn, Why Peacocks?
(Simon & Schuster)
“…the book makes for pleasant reading, especially for bird lovers. A unique journey punctuated with insight, humor, and lessons learned.”
–Kirkus
Linda Rui Feng, Swimming Back to Trout River
(Simon & Schuster)
“With disarmingly quiet prose, Feng digs beneath Cassia’s and Momo’s reluctance to mine their emotional depths as they struggle to grasp their individual experiences as well as their fractured relationship. Filled with tragedy yet touched with life-affirming passion.”
–Kirkus
Rachel Eisendrath, Gallery of Clouds
(New York Review of Books)
“This indulgent and singular exercise in lit crit offers much food for thought.”
–Publishers Weekly
Will Leitch, How Lucky
(Harper)
“A lightweight thriller contours an earnest, sincere portrait of a hero whom many insist on seeing as a victim.”
–Kirkus
James McAuley, The House of Fragile Things
(Yale University Press)
“A moving portrait of a glittering, doomed world.”
–The Economist
Jennifer Weiner, That Summer
(Atria)
“Weiner’s storytelling skill is such that she paints an uncompromising, complicated portrait of the insidious dangers of the patriarchy that is also a lot of fun to read.”
–Booklist
Brad Stone, Amazon Unbound
(Simon & Schuster)
“If Amazon is a challenging environment for a manager, in Stone’s telling, rank-and-file employees may have it worse.”
–The Washington Post
Polly Samson, A Theater for Dreamers
(Algonquin)
“Samson’s achingly beautiful depictions of the sun-soaked Greek paradise contrast strongly with the dark inner lives of its inhabitants. Tantalizing summer reading.”
–Booklist
Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place
(Penguin)
“With their backs literally to the wall—a brick barrier that has turned Brewster Place into a dead end—the women make their stand together, fighting a hostile world with love and humor.”
–The New York Times
Marjorie Welish, A Complex Sentence
(Coffee House Press)
“[Welish’s] writing is marked by the legacies of multiple modernisms and by sly misprisions and recursions, an obsession with logical forms that flip abruptly into their shadow selves.”
–BOMB
Andrew McCarthy, Brat
(Grand Central)
“Brat is just what you would expect: an entertaining, yet self-reflective, romp down memory lane. McCarthy’s writing is solid and flowing, honest and critical. Fans with a special place in their heart for ‘80s nostalgia are sure to enjoy the stories shared here.”
–The Nerd Daily
Jake Tapper, The Devil May Dance
(Little, Brown and Company)
“Fans of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller books will be pleased.”
–Publishers Weekly
Billie Eilish, Billie Eilish
(Grand Central)
“Billie Eilish opens up with a personal photo album.”
–USA Today
Seth Rogen, Yearbook
(Crown)
“Seth Rogen’s hilarious memoir Yearbook earns its superlatives.”
–The Washington Post
