Here are 20 new books coming to an indie near you this week.
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
(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
(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
(Knopf)
“‘Kafkaesque’ is an overused term, but it’s an apt one for this dark tale of fear and injustice.”
–Kirkus
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
(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
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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(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
(William Morrow)
“This stellar and unflinching look at racism and greed will have readers hooked til the end.”
–Publishers Weekly
Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus
(FSG)
“There are almost no stories that can compete with Toussaint’s, as Hazareesingh’s exciting narrative proves.”
–Spectator
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
(William Morrow)
“Sloan takes on the fraught topic of mental illness coupled with the pressure of fame in her sensational debut.”
–Publishers Weekly
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
(Riverhead)
“A typically thoughtful set of Biss essays: searching, serious, and determined to go beyond the surface.”
–Kirkus
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 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
(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
