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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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