24 new books to check out today.
It’s a new Tuesday, and that means, as ever, that a lot of new books are out. As the days (generally) get a bit warmer and more conducive to that special pleasure of reading outside (or in the cool indoors), I hope you’ll choose one of the books below—which include moving memoirs, new books from beloved authors, genre-crossing fiction, deep dives into history, a powerful new biography of a famous figure, and more—to add to your ever-expanding lists!
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Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, Glassworks
(Bloomsbury)
“Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s first novel is a generation-spanning epic of family, inheritance, and identity….With richly drawn characters and deft storytelling, Glassworks is a beautifully crafted, memorable debut.”
–Booklist
Breanne Mc Ivor, The God of Good Looks
(William Morrow)
“Part ribald farce, part feminist tract, part love letter to an island, The God of Good Looks takes a look at Caribbean island life and culture rarely seen in books, that of its bristling, competitive carnival culture and beauty world. Mc Ivor writes with wit and confidence of a world where female beauty is celebrated and monetized… A self-aware, modern, female-centered novel out of Trinidad which breaks new ground.”
–Monique Roffey
Nicole Cuffy, Dances
(One World)
“A ballet dancer herself, Cuffy brings grace, control, and vigor to her prose. Through Cece’s trials, the story movingly explores the secrets and inner demons of a performer who struggles with artistic competition, betrayal, guilt, family, and ‘the ever-present weight’ of her race… Readers will be enchanted.”
–Publishers Weekly
Cassandra Jackson, The Wreck: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother
(Viking)
“Jackson’s is an uneasy journey, finely balanced between hope and dread. She leaves readers with the knowledge that the past is just as infinite as the future—and that grief and healing alike never truly end.”
–Booklist
Emma Cline, The Guest
(Random House)
“A grifter tale for the post Anna Delvey era, a spellbinding literary rendering told from the perspective of the deceiver herself… Cline is a master of depicting the nefarious and atmospheric menace that often lurks adjacent to our most glittery environments, and she does so here with subdued but no less cutting aplomb.”
–Vogue
Nick Harkaway, Titanium Noir
(Knopf)
“An SF-tinged romp that blends elements of the noir thriller and the picaresque novel… [Echoes] the Thomas Pynchon of Inherent Vice… A tale of genetic manipulation—familiar to fans of movies such as RoboCop and Elysium… An entertaining shaggy dog of a futuristic whodunit.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Simon Sebag Montefiore, The World: A Family History of Humanity
(Knopf)
“Award-winning historian Montefiore draws on thirty years of research, reading, and travel to create a panoramic, abundantly populated, richly detailed history of the world through the stories of families across place and time… A vibrant, masterful rendering of human history.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile: Essays
(Vintage)
“One of our finest comic writers returns with a gut-busting variety pack of intimate essays. As ever, Irby shines….Bracing and brutally honest, Quietly Hostile reminds us why Irby is one of our most essential essayists.”
–Esquire
Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, & M. J. Rose, The Friday Night Club: A Novel of Hilma af Klint and Her Creative Circle
(Berkeley Books)
“A fascinating look at the process behind af Klint’s pioneering vision of abstract art… A great choice for discussion that will inspire a deeper look at marginalized women artists.”
–Library Journal
Joanna Biggs, A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again
(Ecco Press)
“In this trenchant and wide-ranging book, Biggs writes about starting over after divorce while seeking wisdom from a canon of great female authors. In Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, George Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir, Elena Ferrante and others, Biggs finds inspiration, advice and cautionary tales that shade her experience.”
–The New York Times
Brad Fox, The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths
(Astra House)
“Brad Fox knows that the descent into the deep meant a sea-change not just in science, but in aesthetics, philosophy, the sense of what it is to be human. All have been changed, become rich and strange, as this rich, strange book shows so beautifully.”
–China Miéville
Ana Castillo, Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home
(Harpervia)
“This rich collection is brimming over with yearning, love and memories so visceral, I’d linger on them as if they were my own. Castillo has always birthed indelible characters, and the men and women who inhabit Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home prove her gift for illuminating the nuances of humanity are more lustrous than ever.”
–Xochitl Gonzalez
Dominique Fabre, My Life as Edgar (trans. Anna Lehmann)
(Archipelago Books)
“A sort of savant, somewhat developmentally disabled but clairvoyant, Edgar spends the first years of his life with his divorced mother, then is sent to a foster family in Savoie… Fabre’s tale… carries an important message: saving language and culture from oblivion is one important way to repair the world.”
–World Literature Today
Henry Threadgill & Brent Hayes Edwards, Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music
(Knopf)
“The personal, the political, the musical, the spiritual: all merge in this brilliant, beguiling memoir by one of the major musical minds of our time. Easily Slip into Another World not only documents a radically inventive individual talent but also celebrates a singularly vital collaborative community… It shows the indivisibility of what comes from within and what comes from without: making music as a way of being in the world.”
–Alex Ross
Rachel E. Cargle, A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining (Ballantine Books)
“Dazzling—a loving, bold tale of imagination, bravery, and radical action in the face of injustice… Through an account of Cargle’s own complicated life journey, she provides a framework for our own acts of courage as brutality threatens to strip us of humanity.”
–Elle
Bina Shah, The Monsoon War
(Delphinium Books)
“In this sequel to Shah’s Before She Sleeps (2018), readers return to Mazun, a Middle Eastern country formed after a nuclear war between Pakistan and India… [T]he result is a cinematic mashup of spy tale, geopolitical SF, and war epic. Shah ups the action and the stakes in this second foray into a feminist dystopia.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Brooke Kroeger, Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism
(Knopf)
“Kroeger’s immersive history examines the myriad challenges [women journalists] faced professionally and from society writ large and celebrates the ingenuity, valor, and integrity with which they pursued their goals. Merging feminist struggles with journalistic triumphs, Kroeger sheds an important light on both spheres.”
–Booklist
R. F. Kuang, Yellowface
(William Morrow)
“Reading Yellowface felt like being inside a wild, brutal, psychological knife fight with a deranged clown. A merciless satire that left me screaming inside… from both its horror and humor.”
–Constance Wu
Jonathan Eig, King: A Life
(FSG)
“The first comprehensive biography of [Martin Luther] King in three decades. It draws on a landslide of recently released White House telephone transcripts, F.B.I. documents, letters, oral histories and other material, and it supplants David J. Garrow’s 1986 biography Bearing the Cross as the definitive life of King, as Garrow himself deposed recently.”
–The New York Times
Jenny Fran Davis, Dykette
(Henry Holt)
“In her first novel for adults, Davis explores what happens when people are isolated physically while remaining very much online… A view of contemporary queer life presented by a spectacularly unreliable narrator.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Natalie Eilbert, Overland
(Copper Canyon Press)
“Snapshots of everyday life examine environmental devastation, violence, and the complex range of human experience, from the deeply personal to the universal, in Eilbert’s elegant third collection… The works in this collection communicate our inextricable and bountiful connection with language. A powerful and striking collection.”
–Booklist
Kapka Kassabova, Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time
(Graywolf)
“Elixir is the vibrant, beautiful story of a singular, remarkable place. It issues a call to reclaim the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection between humanity and the natural world.”
–Foreword Reviews
Ruta Sepetys, You: The Story: A Writer’s Guide to Craft Through Memory
(Viking)
“Sepetys discusses the principles that underlie good fiction and recounts details from her own life to illustrate how personal anecdotes can fuel literary creativity… Novice writers will appreciate a bounty of writing prompts.”
–Publishers Weekly
Will Leitch, The Time Has Come
(Harper)
“A lovely book. Set in Athens, Georgia, the novel is a model of verisimilitude. It is also beautifully written and suspenseful, at the same time being all about goodness and caring without once being sappy, or, well, sentimental. And that is a rare feat in fiction.”
–Booklist
