27 new books out today!
It’s officially August, and, because it’s also officially Tuesday, that means that there’s a myriad of intriguing new books out today. As many of us continue to face sweltering heat, I hope you’ll be able to curl up somewhere shaded with one of these brand-new novels, story collections, poetry collections, memoirs, or nonfiction histories. Below, you’ll find exciting work from established and new authors alike, and I hope you’ll join me in adding some of these to your ever-enlarging to-be-read lists.
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Ann Patchett, Tom Lake
(Harper)
“Patchett’s intricate and subtle thematic web…enfolds the nature of storytelling, the evolving dynamics of a family, and the complex interaction between destiny and choice….These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Nicola Dinan, Bellies
(Hanover Square Press)
“The best kind of queer love story….This is a vulnerable, moving, riotously funny and deeply honest book. Bellies celebrates a hundred different kinds of transformation and, like the very best novels, has the power to transform its readers in unexpected ways.”
–Bookpage
Edan Lepucki, Time’s Mouth
(Counterpoint LLC)
“Lepucki’s latest novel is, in a word, a trip, narrated by Time itself….Lepucki is known for combining domestic realism with a magical worldview and/or SF-adjacent elements…and for evoking California in all its real, surreal, and unreal glory. She does it again. This emotionally intense, wildly imaginative novel is both down-to-earth and out-to-lunch. One of a kind.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Roger Reeves, Dark Days: Fugitive Essays
(Graywolf)
“Dark Days is a testament to Roger Reeves’s dazzling intellect and passion. His essays are soaring reflections on joy, ecstasy, and stillness as profound practices that fuel Black freedom and resistance. He loads every rift of his subjects with ore, as he pays generous attention to artists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to OutKast to Michael K. Williams. Reeves’s declamations are riven with insights that have truly changed my way of thinking.”
–Cathy Park Hong
Tahir Hamut Izgil, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide (trans. Joshua L. Freeman)
(Penguin Press)
“[Waiting to Be Arrested at Night] is lyrical, heartfelt, and perfectly paced; the narrative unfolds with a slow, simmering burn. Never shying away from vulnerability, the author shines a much-needed light on the complex, contradictory emotions of trading a homeland for a lifetime of both safety and survivor’s guilt. A profoundly moving memoir about China’s oppression of the Uyghurs.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Khashayar J. Khabushani, I Will Greet the Sun Again
(Hogarth Press)
“A story for us brown kids who grew up in apartment complexes, making our own breakfast, lunch, and dinner because our immigrant parents were away at work….Khabushani’s voice is a revelation; he has written a novel that shows what it means to grow up into a beautiful young man.”
–Javier Zamora
Yu Miri, The End of August (trans. Morgan Giles)
(Riverhead)
“A multigenerational saga about small-town Korean life under Japanese imperialism. Yu’s novel, first published in Japan in 2004, likely appears in translation nearly two decades later for two reasons. First is the success of her novel Tokyo Ueno Station (2020), which won the National Book Award for Translated Literature; second is the success of Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko (2017), a similar epic about Korea under Japanese rule….A…commanding study of oppression at the individual and national levels.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Kai Cheng Thom, Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls
(Dial Press)
“Kai Cheng Thom’s new collection is a tender incantation against the failures of hope. In these letters, Thom reaches toward lost souls of all kinds: outlaws, movement martyrs, fellow trans femmes of color, and ‘the ones this world was never made for,’ to whom she sends poems that read like prayers, rituals to lay down our collective hurts. What is most astonishing, however, is the way Thom refuses to turn away from those who have inflicted harm, writing: ‘the world i dream of is big enough for both of us.’ I am grateful for these spells and balms.”
–Franny Choi
Steven Millhauser, Disruptions: Stories
(Knopf)
“A mélange of fantastical imaginings and scenes of domestic oddness….Millhauser exhibits a Cheeveresque curiosity about—and a fun house distortion of—a small town’s placid façade….This will please Millhauser’s longtime fans and earn him new admirers.”
–Publishers Weekly
Elizabeth Acevedo, Family Lore
(Ecco Press)
“Family Lore is a deeply Dominican book, full of raw emotional power. It is at once intimate and epic, one of the most resonant representations of a family and world like my own that I’ve ever read. There is so much to love about this wise, funny and original novel—and it’s a singular contribution to Dominican diasporic letters.”
–Naima Coster
David Joy, Those We Thought We Knew
(G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
“In every line of this outstanding novel, you feel David Joy’s deep connection to the mountains he comes from and the people who live there. With his faultless ear for dialogue and exceptional sense of place, he has crafted a beautiful literary crime thriller about belonging and betrayal in rural America.”
–Paula Hawkins
Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean
(Doubleday)
“Masterful and mesmerizing, Susan Casey’s The Underworld is an irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure writing, and vivid, visceral prose. Her book about the ocean’s deeps is both uplifting and profound in the literal sense. I was riveted to every page.”
–Sy Montgomery
Lydia Kiesling, Mobility
(Crooked Media Reads)
“ydia Kiesling writes beautifully and rigorously about the rotten systems that ensnare her characters and the many imperfect ways in which they try to free themselves. Mobility‘s Bunny Glenn is a complicated heroine for the ages, a striver who values the comforts of her oil-industry job even as she must reckon with the fact that the world is quite literally on fire.”
–Vulture
Ben Purkert, The Men Can’t Be Saved
(Overlook Press)
“Funny, witty, and incisor-sharp, Purkert nails down the hypocrisies of modern masculinity and capitalism with the graceful hand of a poet. This novel says so much so well about the absurd moment in which we, grudgingly, live.”
–Alexandra Kleeman
Yepoka Yeebo, Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
(Bloomsbury)
“For two decades, a Ghanaian con man surfed a wave of lies and luck, living large on multiple continents while swindling ‘millions upon millions of dollars’….Even as [Yeebo] catches readers up in what often reads like a breathless caper, the author takes care to ground them in what matters most: Ghana and its sadly ‘fragile’ history….Utterly absorbing.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Jamel Brinkley, Witness: Stories
(FSG)
“One of the finest young writers working today….Brinkley is a skilled, patient prose stylist and deft writer of character who isn’t afraid to engage with the difficult moral complexity of contemporary life. Reading Witness will make you consider your place in the world as both a bystander and a participant.”
–Vulture
Jason Guriel, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles
(Biblioasis)
“Jason Guriel returns with a bonkers adventure story of werewolf whalers and cult YA authors so immersive you forget the damn thing unfolds in flawless rhyme. Sold as a follow-up to Forgotten Work, it is in fact a freestanding lark of genius. No clue what verse genre Jason Guriel is creating here, but we are all under its shadow now.”
–Carmine Starnino
Mindy Mejia, To Catch a Storm
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
“Mejia delivers her best work yet in this propulsive, intelligent page-turner….Mejia gives Eve and Jonah uncommon depth, which makes their potentially clichéd skeptic/believer dynamic feel surprisingly fresh….This indelible thriller has series potential.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jenn Northington & S. Zainab Williams, Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined
(Vintage)
“Fit for the Gods reimagines, subverts, and expands the Greek mythological canon in thrilling and inspiring ways, across space and time and perspectives and genres. The labyrinth as an escape room for a last-ditch intervention, the Furies as a Filipino-American detective agency, Odysseus trapped by their spaceship’s AI—every story in this brilliant collection is both a surprise and a satisfying delight.”
–Jane Pek
Kyle Dillon Hertz, The Lookback Window
(Simon & Schuster)
“The Lookback Window is a beautiful and heartbreaking tour de force. Hertz writes vengeance as salvation, refusal as a reclamation of humanity.”
–Raven Leilani
Eddie Ndopu, Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever
(Legacy Lit)
“An incredible and riveting story that leaves an indelible mark on your heart. Eddie Ndopu invites us to imagine a more audacious life–and then to live it. How lucky are we to witness this kind of genius, this kind of glamor.”
–Alok Vaid-Menon
Sally Wen Mao, The Kingdom of Surfaces: Poems
(Graywolf)
“By turns ‘maker, muse and beholder,’ Mao (Oculus) explores in her ruminative third collection the politics of beauty and the ironies inherent in culture and civilization under the sign of empire….Emerging from epic battles and ‘wreckage,/ wrack of flesh and blood tide,’ Mao brandishes her own tenacious imagination.”
–Publishers Weekly
Brando Skyhorse, My Name Is Iris
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
“Any new book by Brando Skyhorse is a cause for celebration. My Name Is Iris is rich and full of heart and emotion. This is the work of a lifetime of experience, and you will not forget his characters.”
–Luis Alberto Urrea
Rebecca Sacks, The Lover
(Harper)
“A brilliantly rendered novel raises crucial questions about identity, justice, war, and belonging….Sacks’ talent as a novelist who takes on thorny, multifaceted, unanswerable questions is clearly unmatched.”
–Kirkus Reviews
J. Vanessa Lyon, Lush Lives
(Roxane Gay Books)
“Lyon writes a compelling and sexy story of the lives of queer women, both past and present, grounded in the beautifully drawn atmosphere of Harlem. The novel successfully blends real and speculative history to evoke what may hide in the silence of historical records.”
–Library Journal
Wendy Holden, The Princess
(Berkley Books)
“Holden’s unique framing device allows readers to get an intimate look at the early life of Princess Di, giving them a fresh perspective on a woman whom many people feel they already know.”
–Library Journal
Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever
(Harper)
“Prudence Peiffer has brought a singular mix of style and expertise to the story of Coenties Slip, a sliver of land at the tip of Manhattan that became a legendary art-world address. Here, at last, is the definitive history of the Slip—and of bohemia’s final years in New York.”
–Deborah Solomon
