Brandon Taylor, Megha Majumdar, Susan Orlean, and more: 27 new books out today!

Literary fiction-heads (as LH devotees usually are) must celebrate: new Brandon Taylor AND Megha Majumdar in one week?! Not to mention exciting, unputdownable novels by Quan Barry, Anna North, Adam Johnson, and a selection of compelling and masterful stories by Thomas McGuane.

If it’s nonfiction you seek, look no further. Susan Orlean has released a new memoir entitled Joyride, and a joy it is sure to be. Though there are also heavier options out there: a look at the generation who fought in World War II, and the wounds both visible and unseen they carried forever, a narrative encapsulation of the year the stock market fell, and a detailed history of the Spanish-American War.

Though there are many to choose from, I’ll be picking up Megha Majumdar, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Quan Barry this week. Happy reading!

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Brandon Taylor, Minor Black Figures
(Riverhead)

“A story unafraid to foreground love and lust, and that treats emotional ambiguity as a starting point, not as the fuzzy ending common in literary fiction. A piercing, precise, and affecting tale of young love and high art.”
–Kirkus

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
(Knopf)

“Majumdar brilliantly blurs right and wrong, ethics and legality … [An] exquisitely wrenching novel.”
–Booklist

Susan Orlean, Joyride
(Avid Reader Press)

“For anyone who’s asked—and haven’t we all—‘How does she write like that?,’ this wise and exuberant book is the answer. It’s funny, as well. Just masterful.”
–David Sedaris

Quan Barry, The Unveiling
(Grove)

“A luxury trip to Antarctica goes horribly wrong in Barry’s triumph of literary horror … A terrifying must-read set at the ends of the Earth.”
–Kirkus

Gabrielle Hamilton, Next of Kin
(Random House)

“In her singular, lyrical style, Hamilton has given us nothing less than an exploration of death, love, and the meaning of life.”
–Ariel Levy

John Fabian Witt, The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America
(Simon and Schuster)

“An important and meticulous look at the impact of a forgotten fund’s revolutionary work.”
–Kirkus

Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, Gone Before Goodbye
(Grand Central)

“A tour de force thriller that delivers a killer premise and thundering plot with serious emotional punch.”
–Lucy Foley

David Nasaw, The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II
(Penguin Press)

“Richly informative and compelling, The Wounded Generation is an important history of the tragedies of war and the triumphs of a democratic society that fully supports veterans’ well-being.”
–Booklist

Ariana Harwicz, trans, by Jessie Mendez Sayer, Unfit
(New Directions)

“Harwicz’s assured pacing is bolstered by her gorgeous and often darkly funny prose, immaculately translated by Mendez Sayer. The result is a wild and unforgettable ride.”
–Publishers Weekly

Lance Richardson, True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
(Pantheon)

“Richardson’s fine-toothed research establishes Peter’s importance as a writer and a singular inhabitant of his time.”
–Alta

Thomas McGuane, A Wooded Shore: And Other Stories
(Knopf)

“Spare, engaging, and full of sardonic moments, McGuane…continues to show his mastery.”
–Booklist

Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation
(Viking)

“This gripping account revisits timeless themes—greed, hubris, comeuppance—but it also sets that fateful year in a moment in time, at once distant, and bracingly familiar. A riveting, crucial read.”
–Jill Lepore

Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder
MCD

“How lucky we are that Adam Johnson has ignited for us this wild, epic, and utterly captivating skein of human history.”
–Jennifer Egan

Hester Kaplan, Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography
(Catapult)

“Melancholy and meticulously written, this excavation of a literary lineage isn’t easy to forget.”
–Publishers Weekly

Jelani Cobb, Three or More is a Riot
(One World)

“Insight, historical memory, reportage, pith, and, not least of all, wit. All these gifts he deploys here without missing a beat, effortlessly weaving them into his own distinctive style.”
–Ta-Nehisi Coates

Julian Brave NoiseCat, We Survived the Night
(Knopf)

“Thoughtful, informative, often entertaining, and just as often saddening, [We Survived the Night] is a book to remember.”
–Kirkus

Courtney Kampa, A Bright and Borrowed Light: Poems
(William Morrow)

“Courtney Kampa captures the wrecked and wondrous world with a brilliant command of deeply felt language and startling beauty … Kampa’s blazing, virtuosic syntax unspools like lush honey, drizzling over intensely ephemeral snapshots that flicker and blaze.”
–Tiana Clark

Anna North, Bog Queen
(Bloomsbury)

“A remarkably crafted tale that asks important questions about the imprint we leave on our loved ones, our culture, and our land.”
–Booklist

Joe Jackson, Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire
(FSG)

“Narrative nonfiction at its very best—intelligent, propulsive, and somehow both intimate and panoramic in scope. Americans should read it to understand how we became a world colonial power and how, in many senses, we lost our way.”
–Hampton Sides

Caroline Palmer, Workhorse
(Flatiron)

“Palmer renders Clo’s world in vivid, gritty detail alongside sharp commentary on class, ambition, and women’s roles in the publishing industry.”
–Booklist

Joe Sacco, The Once and Future Riot
(Metropolitan)

“Meticulous and beautifully crafted … Paying homage to the importance of seeking truth, however elusive, this timely work is as powerful as it is artful.”
–Publishers Weekly

Victor M. Sweeney, Now Departing: A Small-Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between
(Gallery Books)

“This reflective book signifies the value of building relationships and is a highly recommended read.”
–Library Journal

Delaney Nolan, Happy Bad
(Astra)

“Nolan leavens the novel with gallows humor … The darkness of this excellent novel is amplified by how terrifyingly plausible it all is.”
–Kirkus

Siddharth Kara, The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
(St. Martin’s Press)

“Enthralling and elegant … A harrowing glimpse of slavery’s horrors and an incisive investigation into one of history’s most reviled crimes.”
–Publishers Weekly

Rachel Corbett, The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling
(W. W. Norton)

“A highly readable, endlessly revealing primer on the homicidal mind.”
–Kirkus

Michael J. Fox, Future Boy
(Flatiron)

“The spirit of gratitude that runs through all of Mr. Fox’s books continues to be a pleasure and an attraction.”
–The Wall Street Journal

Amber Sparks, Happy People Don’t Live Here
(Liveright)

“This is an enthralling novel about how mothers haunt their daughters and vice versa, and the beautiful fact of love after death.”
–Marie-Helene Bertino