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Here are 20 new books coming to an indie near you this week.

Katie Yee

September 1, 2020, 9:45am

This past weekend was Independent Bookstore Day! I hope you used it as an excuse to buy all the books your beautiful nerd heart desired. (Me? Yes, despite the fact that I had frequented two of my favorite indies the weekend prior, I returned to my local Greenlight for a copy of this year’s International Booker Prize-winner, The Discomfort of Evening, and my nerd heart can’t wait to dig in.) Of course, isn’t every day Independent Bookstore Day when you really think about it? If you just believe?! If there are, say, these 20 shiny new titles hitting shelves today?

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Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom
(Knopf)

“Gyasi’s ability to interrogate medical and religious issues in the context of America’s fraught racial environment makes her one of the most enlightening novelists writing today.”
–The Washington Post

 

Elena Ferrante, tr. Ann Goldstein, The Lying Life of Adults

Elena Ferrante, tr. Ann Goldstein, The Lying Life of Adults
(Europa)

“We see an author at her peak, deftly synthetizing the density of her first three novels with the sprawling quality of the Neapolitan Novels, all while managing to uncover complex and challenging human truths.”
–Asymptote

 

Hari Kunzru, Red Pill

Hari Kunzru, Red Pill
(Knopf)

“‘Kafkaesque’ is an overused term, but it’s an apt one for this dark tale of fear and injustice.”
–Kirkus

 

Emma Cline, Daddy

Emma Cline, Daddy
(Random House)

“The pieces soar independently — dark slices of life confidently weaving between styles — and in unison.”
–Entertainment Weekly

 

Evie Wyld, The Bass Rock

Evie Wyld, The Bass Rock
(Pantheon)

“Wyld lures the reader into what might have been any other split-time frame, slightly quirky novel and then lets rip. As the men lure the women, the writer lures the reader.”
–The Scotsman

 

mill town

Kerri Arsenault, Mill Town
(St. Martin’s Press)

“Mexico’s melancholy story—one that’s mirrored today in thousands of struggling small towns across the U.S.—comes to life in Arsenault’s sympathetic, but unfailingly clear-eyed, telling.”
–Shelf Awareness

 

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, A Girl Is a Body of Water

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, A Girl Is a Body of Water
(Tin House)

“Makumbi is a mesmerizing storyteller, slowly pulling readers in with a captivating cast of multifaceted characters and a soupçon of magical realism.”
–Library Journal

 

Maxim Loskutoff, Ruthie Fear

Maxim Loskutoff, Ruthie Fear
(W. W. Norton)

“With its humor and heart, Loskutoff’s harrowing tale offers a heroine to root for.”
–Publishers Weekly

 

Eliot Weinberger, Angels and Saints

Eliot Weinberger, Angels and Saints
(New Directions)

“[A] charming meditation on the nature of angels and saints, illustrated with gorgeous reproductions of the works of ninth century German Benedictine monk Hrabanus Maurus.”
–Publishers Weekly

 

Arundhati Roy_Azadi

Arundhati Roy, Azadi
(Haymarket)

“No writer today, in India or anywhere in the world, writes with the kind of beautiful, piercing prose in defense of the wretched of the earth that Roy does.”
–Jacobin

 

Nancy Jooyoun Kim_The Last Story of Mina Lee

Nancy Jooyoun Kim, The Last Story of Mina Lee
(Park Row)

“Haunting and heartbreaking, troubled threads between a mother and daughter blend together in a delicate and rich weave.”
–Booklist

 

Alyssa Cole, When No One Is Watching

Alyssa Cole, When No One Is Watching
(William Morrow)

“This stellar and unflinching look at racism and greed will have readers hooked til the end.”
–Publishers Weekly

 

Black Spartacus_Sudhir Hazareesingh

Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus
(FSG)

There are almost no stories that can compete with Toussaint’s, as Hazareesingh’s exciting narrative proves.”
–Spectator

 

Box Hill_Adam Mars-Jones

Adam Mars-Jones, Box Hill
(New Directions)

“An exquisitely discomfiting tale of a submissive same-sex relationship.”
–The Guardian

 

Elissa R. Sloan_The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes

Elissa R. Sloan, The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes
(William Morrow)

“Sloan takes on the fraught topic of mental illness coupled with the pressure of fame in her sensational debut.”
–Publishers Weekly

 

alone together_jennifer haupt

Jennifer Haupt (ed.), Alone Together
(Central Avenue Publishing)

“A heartening gathering of writers joining forces for community support.”
–Kirkus

 

Eula Biss, Having and Being Had

Eula Biss, Having and Being Had
(Riverhead)

“A typically thoughtful set of Biss essays: searching, serious, and determined to go beyond the surface.”
–Kirkus

 

Hitler_Volker Ullrich

Volker Ullrich, tr. Jefferson Chase, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
(Knopf)

“Smoothly written and splendidly translated, Ullrich’s book gives us a Hitler we have not seen before.”
–The Sunday Times

 

Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Kurt Beals, Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces

Jenny Espenbeck, Not A Novel
(New Directions)

“An ideal introduction to the life and work of an exceptional artist.”
–Kirkus

 

Ian W. Toll_Twilight of the Gods

Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods
(W. W. Norton)

“Toll’s expertly navigated narrative includes a number of new insights as well as a new approach that hypothesizes the struggle between ‘sequentialists’ and ‘cumulativists’ inside the American military.”
–The New York Times Book Review

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