Arundhati Roy! Helen Garner! Joan Silber! 20 new books out today.
September is back to school season: a busy time of fresh starts, remembering how to work hard, trying to multitask, and generally getting the old chestnut back in action. In the world of publishing, this feeling is no different. September is often a deluge of our biggest and best titles of the year. For editors and publicists — bless you, and good luck. For readers, it’s our lucky day!
This week we can grab a western novel by Nathan Harris, debut titles by Zoe Dubno and Amie Barrodale, and a steamy romance novel by Bolu Babalola. There are nonfiction titles on Austen, mathematics, consent, football (the UK version) and ghost hunting. We have memoirs by poets, athletes, businessmen, activists, and grandmothers. And poems, galore, including new collections by Kevin Young and Barbara Fant.
Happy reading everyone, and stay tuned: there’s a lot more headed our way.
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Nathan Harris, Amity
(Little Brown)
“A smartly imagined western with a different sort of hero….To top off a skillfully constructed plot, Harris has a gift for vivid imagery…and period language….A memorable, impeccably written tale that engages the reader, with its twists and turns, from beginning to end.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Beatriz Serrano, Discontent (trans. Mara Faye Lethem)
(Vintage)
“Office Space for literary weirdos. Discontent is brimming with witticisms and scathing observations about our modern-day malaise. While Serrano’s narrator is drowning in existential dread, her debut novel never feels weighed down. Electric, lively, and brilliantly constructed by a new writer of immense talent.”
–Jean Kyoung Frazier
Nikki Giovanni, The New Book: Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Things
(William Morrow)
“A fitting and electrifying final offering from one of the most vital American voices…pulses with emotional and political resonance, capturing the poet’s unflinching voice as she traces personal history alongside broader struggles for racial justice. Charged with energy and insight, these poems blend intimate moments with sweeping commentary. To read this collection is to witness a rich, defiant, and generous life.”
–Library Journal
Devoney Looser, Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Jane the prim and proper is laid to rest here, so that Jane the satirist, Jane the subversive, Jane the wild can rise and make her trouble. This reading of all her work, some of her biography and family history, and many of the reactions—as criticism, as movies, as fandom—gallops along, as exhilarating as it is illuminating. Devoney Looser is a superb interpreter and astonishingly erudite scholar of all things Austen, and she brings her expertise to bear deftly, amusingly, informatively, leaving us with an Austen who’s ready to roll.”
–Rebecca Solnit
Emily Meg Weinstein, Turn to Stone: A Memoir
(Simon & Schuster/Simon Element)
“Weinstein’s poignant writing and vulnerable memoir of self-discovery, forgiveness, and friendship will endear readers, both those who don’t need to hang from stone walls and members of the rock-climbing community who will value the details of each climbing escapade. Weinstein reclaims her spirit, living an authentic life on her own terms.”
–Booklist
Barbara Fant, Joy in the Belly of a Riot: Poems
(Amistad with Moore Black Press)
“Barbara Fant gives testimony and a blueprint for surviving. Fant revives the people with her poetry and studies each line, like one might study love. With true tenderness, she scribes liberatory practices and prayers; affirmations and songs, a healing song for us wearied by journey. A salve for the numb. Here are the poems we didn’t know we needed, they give birth to bravery and give us space to “find the strength to fly.”
–Mahogany L. Browne
Kevin Young, Night Watch: Poems
(Knopf)
“Concentrated, intricately crafted, richly evocative, peppered with song lyrics and conversational turns of phrase, alive with birds, trees, rain, and snow, Young’s poems delve into the mysteries of body and soul, memory and death, life and love.”
–Booklist
Amie Barrodale, Trip
(FSG)
“Amie Barrodale’s Trip is an extraordinary novel. It is as if Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson have joined together to write a tender story of a recently dead mom who wanders the bardo but is always drawn back to her imperiled son, an autistic teenager who is on a boat with a stranger, lost at sea.”
–Akhil Sharma
Patrick Ryan, Buckeye
(Random House)
“Patrick Ryan conjures a vanished America with uncanny skill and writes with deep insight and lyrical intelligence about war and adultery, the mysteries of sexuality and family life, and the strange paths we have to travel to forgive—or at least begin to understand—the people who’ve hurt us the most. This is a novel to settle in with, a world unto itself.”
–Tom Perrotta
Bolu Babaloa, Sweet Heat
(William Morrow)
“Bolu Babalola’s rom-com drizzles honey and spice into modern love….Like a Gen Z meeting of Nora Ephron and Bernadine Evaristo, in her first romance novel, the author of the myth-inspired story collection Love in Color infuses the joy, pain, and laughter of young love with cultural insight and drama….This swoony coming-of-age tale cements Babalola’s superlative status as a queen of romantic comedy and master chronicler of Black British life.”
–Oprah Daily
Helen Garner, The Season: A Fan’s Story
(Pantheon)
“Australian writer Garner reflects on aging, family, boyhood, and manhood in a bittersweet memoir centered on her relationship with Amby, her youngest grandchild, a fifteen-year-old member of an Under-sixteen Australian football team. Wanting to be a ‘silent witness’ to his life, she decides to write a book about football, a sport she admits having no clue about….A tender reminiscence, fueled by love, tempered by loss.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Christine Webb, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters
(Avery)
“Webb debuts with a persuasive and accessible critique of anthropocentrism. She urges humans to relinquish their self-inflated top-dog status and recognize the symbiosis among organisms. As global warming and wildlife destruction threaten planetary health, Webb makes a convincing case for humility.”
–Publishers Weekly
Alice Vernon, Ghosted: A History of Ghost Hunting
(Bloomsbury Sigma)
“Whether you believe in ghosts or are skeptical—this book will enthrall. Vernon describes beautifully the history of ghost hunting and questions why we keep searching for ghosts. Ghosted is not really about ghosts at all—but about the living, and the grief which touches us all.”
–Alice Gregory
Eugenia Cheng, Unequal: The Math of When Things Do and Don’t Add Up
(Basic Books)
“Cheng’s aim is to explore how we decide when things are ‘the same’ in mathematics. Her approach is both playful and deeply serious, leavening abstract concepts with entertaining tangents….Neither is she afraid to discuss important political and rights-based questions around equality….Exploring the meaning of ‘equals’ in mathematics gives us a better understanding not just of the nuance and richness of the field, but of how ideas of equality are used (and misused) in life.”
–New Scientist
Robert Cowley, The Killing Season: The Autumn of 1914, Ypres, and the Afternoon That Cost Germany a War
(Random House)
“Among military historians, nobody is better than Robert Cowley at breathing new life into long dead battles, demonstrating their true significance by presenting us with a host of key but never fully-considered factors. The Killing Season, the product of three decades of research, is a triumph of retrospection and reconsideration; but so well-written it’s easy to forget how much new ground is being broken. My advice is simple: Read This Book.”
–Robert L. O’Connell
Gene Pressman, They All Came to Barneys
(Viking)
“Name-droppy? Sure. But oh, what names! For those of us who delight in dishy details, there are just enough bitchy gems…to keep us satiated … And for nightlife history nerds like myself, Pressman’s recollections are a breath of fresh air … It’s his visceral passion for the fashion business that makes They All Came to Barneys more than the diary of a nepo baby playboy … Pressman [has] deep knowledge and sincerity. He deftly weaves his family’s story with the larger history of the American fashion industry.”
–Washington Post
Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me
(Scribner)
“[Roy’s] strength has always been as a writer of the visceral, experiential, ephemeral, and small — the charge between two people, the light in a room, the texture of a child’s fear. In Mother Mary, she finally lets herself scale down. Nothing focuses the mind like the need to get your own story straight.”
–Vulture
Joan Silber, Mercy
(Counterpoint)
“The sections leap decades and continents to uniquely dazzling effect … The central questions set up by Ivan’s opening story remain on the table, even as Silber’s roomy form opens the door to new ones. If you are interested in friendship and betrayal, pain and relief, the power of sex, the ever-present mixture of love and misunderstanding between generations of a family, the process of coming to terms with one’s past — the characters of Mercy have some stories they would like to tell you.”
–Boston Globe
Quill Kukla, Sex Beyond Yes
(W. W. Norton)
“Thoughtful and refreshing … Advances a vision of sex that is mutually fulfilling and respectful … Kukla proceeds to lodge less-predictable and more-creative objections to the narrow emphasis on consent … I have few bones to pick with the content of Sex Beyond ‘Yes.’ Its ambitions are admirable, its execution cheerfully competent.”
–Washington Post
Zoe Dubno, Happiness & Love
(Scribner)
“Zingy… Told in a single long, savage and hilarious paragraph, Happiness and Love can be gulped in one delicious go.”
–Financial Times
