Belle Starr! Agatha Christie! A reality-TV Lord of the Flies! 22 new books out today.
June is nearing its end, and though I come bearing no good news about the fate of the world—it remains as destructively chaotic as last week, if not more so—I do come bearing some good tidings: that new books are here. Below, you’ll find twenty-two excellent choices to consider as alternatives to, or palliatives for, the tragedies of the day-to-day.
In fiction, you’ll see powerful new work from Dwyer Murphy, Aisling Rawle, Danit Brown, Hal Ebbott, and many others; a stirring new collection of Palestinian poetry from Fargo Nissim Tbakhi; and an array of exciting nonfiction cataloguing the real woman behind the outlaw Belle Starr; Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on Blackness and womanhood; a look through the fatal chemicals at the heart of Agatha Christie’s work; the women of Marvel comics; a history of the mask as shield against “bad air”; and more.
I hope these help, whatever you may be feeling or enduring as the wheel of the year continues its slow, strange turning. Let these grace your to-be-read piles. It’ll be worth it.
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Dwyer Murphy, The House on Buzzards Bay
(Viking)
“The sly, subversive way Murphy undercuts Agatha Christie and Big Chill tropes keeps the reader on edge….Another top-notch effort by Murphy, one of the most distinctive of young crime-oriented novelists.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Hal Ebbott, Among Friends
(Riverhead)
“A masterly debut. Hal Ebbott ranges from the most exquisite, Jamesian discriminations to the graspable, all-American solidities of Updike and Richard Yates. This is a writer to watch, with excitement and the highest expectations.”
–John Banville
Aisling Rawle, The Compound
(Random House)
“Love Island meets Lord of the Flies….Manna to fans of reality TV and some haters as well.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings
(Harper)
“I would follow Jeffers’s voice anywhere. Her wide-ranging symphony of essays on Black womanhood is a treat—incisive, intellectual, intimate, funny, and formally inventive. I felt like I was listening to a brave yet vulnerable big sister riff blazingly on topics of history, family, politics and culture. Above all, she writes with a poet’s heart.”
–Emily Raboteau
James Rebanks, The Place of Tides
(Mariner Books)
“In these two hundred and eighty-five thoughtful, beautifully written pages, James Rebanks shows, better than anything I’ve read recently, the precise quality of the catastrophe befalling the natural world and also what we might begin to do about it. Humane, beautifully paced, gentle, and strangely compelling, The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right now.”
–George Saunders
Michael Wallis, Belle Starr: The Truth Behind the Wild West Legend
(Liveright)
“A dazzlingly written and copiously researched biography of that flamboyant outlaw from Missouri….Stealing horses, befriending rogues, and mastering firearms, the real Belle Starr, as documented by Michael Wallis, is far more beguiling than the pulp Westerns, Woody Guthrie folksongs, and Hollywood portrayals anchored around her notorious high-stakes antics….Highly recommended.”
–Douglas Brinkley
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Terror Counter: Poems
(Deep Vellum)
“Anyone who understands poetry as a search for liberation, whatever the level of that liberation, will hold Terror Counter as compass. Filled with fierce lyric tenderness and clear-eyed commitment to revolutionary aesthetic, Terror Counter devoted to the redemption of the self from a world ready to usurp this resistance. Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian poetic being of the most natural order.”
–Fady Joudah
Sebastian Castillo, Fresh, Green Life
(Soft Skull)
“Our narrator in Fresh, Green Life, one ‘Sebastian Castillo,’ is a contemporary anti-hero, a descendent of Underground Man and Zama—neurotic, pretentious, and willfully lonely, a minor fraud and struggling academic, an adorably wretched idealist—who asks us, as we spend a few hours in the ‘life-world’ of his mind, to consider the gap between passivity and action, between genius and stupidity, and what it might mean to live our philosophy…hilarious and unpredictable.”
–Elisa Gabbert
Leila Mottley, The Girls Who Grew Big
(Knopf)
“This broken world is lucky to have Leila Mottley writing in it. Like Jesmyn Ward, Kiese Laymon and Toni Cade Bambara before her, Mottley digs deep into the parts of America that many tell us to forget. In gorgeous prose, she brings to life the beauty and brutality of the Florida panhandle, and turns narratives about motherhood, girlhood and the South on their heads. Mottley is the real deal—a vital voice in the American literary tapestry.”
–Kaitlyn Greenidge
Danit Brown, Television for Women
(Melville House)
“I can think of no other novel that depicts the first months of parenthood and its disillusionments so honestly and with so much humor and pathos and clarity. An engrossing, hilarious read.”
–Rebecca Makai
David Litt, It’s Only Drowning: A True Story of Learning to Surf and the Search for Common Ground
(Gallery Books)
“It’s Only Drowning is captivating and engaging, witty and funny, and the deeper issues it raises—about living with uncertainty, the importance of stepping outside one’s comfort zone, and the value in spending time with those who see the world differently—stuck with me long after I put it down. This book is easy to read and hard to forget
–Robert Rubin
Kathryn Markup, V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death
(Bloomsbury Sigma)
“Hugely entertaining and informative, V is for Venom is an expertly written exploration of a fascinating topic. It’s also a brilliant reminder of Agatha Christie’s incredible skills as the Duchess of Death.”
–Mark Aldridge
Michael Shaikh, The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found
(Crown)
“An examination of the role political violence plays in shaping culinary traditions around the world….Shaikh travels the world to portray loss and recovery, documenting how Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are laboring to keep their food traditions from disappearing, [what] Czech farmers are rediscovering…and more—with the bonus of recipes….A revealing inquiry at the intersection of food, culture, war, and power politics.”
–Kirkus Reviews
André Aciman, Room on the Sea: Three Novellas
(FSG)
“This exquisite triptych from Aciman explores desire and fate among old friends, new acquaintances, and heartbroken lovers….A triumph.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jennifer Trevelyan, A Beautiful Family
(Doubleday)
“Dappled in sand and shadow, A Beautiful Family is part coming of age story, part taut thriller, part travelogue, perfectly transporting the reader not only to summer holiday on the New Zealand coast but also to that magical age between childhood and adolescence when the world starts to reveal its dark secrets and everything is more complicated—and, yes, beautiful—than it has seemed. Jennifer Trevelyan’s immersive debut is atmospheric and aching.”
–Laurie Frankel
Andrew Kaufman, Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel
(Coach House Books)
“A delightful concoction of whimsy and insight, the appealing short story collection Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel mixes cathartic experiences with fantastical occurrences, rooting its weirdness in recognizable emotions and desires.”
–Ho Lin
Margaret Stohl, Jeannine Schaefer, Judith Stephens, Super Visible: The Women of Marvel Comics
(Gallery 13)
“A homage to pathbreaking women….Bursting with anecdotes and illustrations—photos, drawings, comic book pages—the book traces the advent of women into what was then a domain of straight white men who assumed that females didn’t read comics, sci-fi, or fantasy….A lively history of female artists, writers, editors, proofreaders, and colorists who forged their careers at Marvel. Bursting with anecdotes and illustrations….Vivid testimony of resilience and grit.”
–
Carter Sherman, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future
(Gallery Books)
“Finally, a book that does young people and sex justice! Carter Sherman has written a timely and thrilling examination about the intersection of politics, culture and sexuality that will surely become a classic.”
–Jessica Valenti
Marc Raimondi, Say Hello to the Bad Guys: How Professional Wrestling’s New World Order America Changed America
(Simon & Schuster)
“To Raimondi, the WCW broke new ground, demonstrating how to ‘manipulate the masses’ by playing with the boundary between fiction and truth. More broadly, pro wrestling helped clear a path for Donald Trump, who appeared in wrestling performances, has threatened political adversaries, and appointed a wrestling promoter to his cabinet….[Raimondi’s] overarching idea is that wrestling’s fakeness shouldn’t prevent it from being taken seriously….Readers who agree will enjoy his many blow-by-blow accounts of in-the-ring matches and backstage scuffles.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Amy Bloom, I’ll Be Right Here
(Random House)
“I read this stunning novel in a single sitting and then moped around for days because I missed the characters so much. Amy Bloom is at the height of her powers in this epic tale of how we shape the lives of those around us in ways both ordinary and extraordinary, and how they shape ours in return.”
–J. Courtney Sullivan
Fran Littlewood, The Accidental Favorite
(Holt)
“A tender story about the corrosive power of secrets and what it means to finally let them go. Littlewood writes with pinpoint accuracy about the dynamics between siblings and the beautiful and terrible mess that is family.”
–Daisy Alpert Florin
Bruno J. Strasser, Thomas Schlich, The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air
(Yale University Press)
“This captivating and richly illustrated book offers an ambitious and expansive history of ‘bad air, ‘ the plague, and approaches to widespread disease. It uses the mask–as both physical object and metaphor–to uncover and reveal, brilliantly charting a course through the intertwined histories of disease, war, the environment, and identity.”
–Sharrona Pearl
