Jhumpa Lahiri! Colson Whitehead! Sex cults! 25 new books out in paperback this June.
June, joyfully, is here, bringing with it the official start of summer and Pride month—two grand things in my book. And, speaking of books, it’s a new month, which means there’s a whole new set of exciting ones to look forward to in hardcover and paperback alike. Below, I’ve compiled a list of twenty-five books being rereleased in paperback this June.
It’s a particularly strong month for fiction, with exciting novels and short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri, Colson Whitehead, Gabrielle Zevin, Jenny Xie, Tania James, Cristina García, Henry Hoke, and more. And there’s scintillating nonfiction on offer, as well, with Anne Hull’s poignant and evocative memoir, Through the Groves; John Vaillant’s celebrated account of a wildfire and its implications for our future in Fire Weather; Michael Finkel’s remarkable tale of an obsessive art thief; Alexander Stille on the notorious cult of the Sullivanians; and more.
If you missed them in hardcover, well, you’ve got another chance to enter into their fictive and all-too-real worlds. Summer is always better with new things to read, after all. Enjoy the sun with one (or many) of these!
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Jhumpa Lahiri, Roman Stories (trans. Todd Portnowitz)
(Knopf Doubleday)
“A dazzling collection of nine stories originally written in Italian and featuring characters who grapple with vast emotional and social chasms that cleave the lives of families, longtime friends, and immigrants….Throughout, Lahiri’s luminous prose captures a side of Rome often ignored….These unembroidered yet potent stories shine.”
–Publishers Weekly
Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto
(Vintage)
“Whitehead’s New York of the ’70s is a fully realized universe down to the most meticulous details….Crook Manifesto and Harlem Shuffle also form a joint reminder, as if we still needed one, that crime fiction can be great literature. These books are as resonant and finely observed as anything Whitehead has written. They have the pulpy verve of Harlem’s crime fiction godfather, Chester Himes, combined with the literary heft of Whitehead’s more garlanded novels.”
–Los Angeles Times
Keziah Weir, The Mythmakers
(S&S/Marysue Rucci Books)
“Keziah Weir’s The Mythmakers is a wildly inventive, thought-provoking page-turner filled with luminous language and resonant characters. It tackles the weightiest of subjects—love, art, inspiration, death—with grace and wit. This is the rare novel that will stay with me for a very, very long time.”
–Tara Conklin
Anne Hull, Through the Groves: A Memoir
(Holt)
“Evocative and haunting, Through the Groves is reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit what with its handling of a precocious child who discovers a sexual identity at odds with her matriarchal yet still repressed family. Both books have oranges, but Hull’s story is thoroughly Southern and utterly unique. You will return to it again.”
–Southern Review of Books
Alexander Stille, The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune
(Picador)
“The tragic history of the notorious pseudo-psychoanalytic group known as the Sullivanians…is chronicled here by Alexander Stille with great clarity….The reader is given a carefully nuanced, insightful history of a social experiment begun in the 1960s that went horribly out of control….Stille’s portrait of the Sullivanians…is fully relevant today. Cults and conspiracy theories have never been more prolific than now….Stille tells this fascinating history masterfully.”
–Daniel Shaw
John Vaillant, Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World
(Vintage)
“All-too-timely….The real protagonist here is the fire itself: an unruly and terrifying force with insatiable appetites. This book is both a real-life thriller and a moment-by-moment account of what happened [in the 2016 McMurray wildfire]—and why, as the climate changes and humans don’t, it will continue to happen again and again.”
–The New York Times
Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
(Vintage)
“A tour de force….A moving demonstration of the blended power of fiction and gaming….Zevin describes herself as ‘a lifelong gamer’…[and] she’s written a novel that draws any curious reader into the pioneering days of a vast entertainment industry too often scorned by bookworms. And with the depth and sensitivity of a fine fiction writer, she argues for the abiding appeal of the flickering screen.”
–The Washington Post
Tania James, Loot
(Knopf Doubleday)
“A luminous novel of history that explores the far reaches of empire and of human desire, of love, greed, betrayal, and possible redemption. In this genuine page-turner, Tania James does the seemingly impossible: not only does she breathe life into charismatic characters, she repeats the feat with automatons….Tipu’s Tiger might be a stolen artifact in a British museum, but you can hear its roar in these pages. Loot is a historical story that bristles with contemporary urgency.”
–Rabih Alameddine
Jenny Xie, Holding Patterns
(Riverhead)
“A sparkling jewel of a book, lighting up all the most alienating and bizarre features of our contemporary world with its brilliant language. Jenny Xie writes about the alienation and darkness of our world with a hopeful pen, her literary genius shining through on every page and through the vivid portrayals of each character.”
–Lydia Conklin
Patrick Mackie, Mozart in Motion: His Work and His World in Pieces
(Picador)
“A welcome reminder that the universe reflected in Mozart’s operas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber works was very much shaped by political and social currents—some of which reflect the anxieties and hopes of our own time as well….Mozart’s music continues to inspire love because it holds space for sensual delight and evinces a knowing, generous view of humanity….For ardent Mozarteans and classical-curious streamers, [Mozart in Motion] will do the same.”
–The Atlantic
Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
(Vintage)
“In this masterful true crime account, Finkel traces the fascinating exploits of Stéphane Breitwieser, a French art thief who stole more than two hundred artworks…turning his mother’s attic into a glittering trove of oil paintings, silver vessels, and antique weaponry….Drawing on art theory and Breitwieser’s psychology reports, Finkel speculates on his subject’s addiction to beauty….It’s a riveting ride.”
–Publishers Weekly
Peter Moore, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream
(Picador)
“Like Jenny Uglow’s The Lunar Men and Leo Damrosch’s The Club, Moore’s vibrant group biography brings to life the intellectual and political currents, in Britain and Colonial America, that gave rise to the phrase ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’….An energetic and meticulously researched history.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Henry Hoke, Open Throat
(Picador)
“A wide-ranging portrait of technology-fueled, lucre-gorged loneliness in an uncaring, self-congratulatory liberal city obsessed with fame and ignorant of its own ecological and social breakdown. The writing is so sinuous, so wry and muscular, yet with a padding, pawing playfulness, that you’re ready to go anywhere Hoke wants to take you…a clever, witty conceit, cleverly, wittily executed. It’s funny, it’s heartbreaking and nail-bitingly propulsive, with an exquisite Hitchcockian climax.”
–The Guardian
Max Porter, Shy
(Graywolf)
“Shy‘s disordered, multidimensional consciousness careens through Max Porter’s brief and brilliant fourth book, a bravura, extended-mix of a novel that skitters, pulses, fractures and coalesces again with all the exhilaration and doom of broken beats and heavy bass lines….[Shy’s] both a hapless, hurting child and a dangerous, violent young man, and his author has loved each part of him into being with the same steady attention.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Nathan Hill, Wellness
(Vintage)
“A love story of dislodged chronology, Nathan Hill’s brilliant interrogation of a single relationship spiderwebs out into almost every facet of our contemporary anxieties. Few writers working today have dissected, with such a sharp scalpel, the fundamental paradox of modern American life: this hopelessly broken need to fix what may not need fixing, to reach with utter desperation for a version of better that may not be better at all. Read Wellness with caution: it lays…our little self-deceptions bare.”
–Omar El Akkad
David Lipsky, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial
(Norton)
“Humor accompanies horrific truths in this vital look at the rise of climate change denial. With dry wit and novelistic flair, National Magazine Award winner Lipsky chronicles how harnessing electricity changed the world….[R]evelatory…sobering and incisive. Buoyed by thorough historical research, this is a first-rate entry.”
–Publishers Weekly
Katherine Turk, The Women of Now: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America
(Picador)
“Finally, we have a book that centers a diverse array of women leaders who built NOW, a singularly important American organization formed to end male supremacy. The Women of Now is an excellent work of history and essential reading for those who continue to fight for a society that values the experiences, recognizes the rights, and supports the aspirations of all women.”
–Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Cristina García, Vanishing Maps
(Vintage)
“A kaleidoscopic, dazzling portrait of global diaspora—the ties that bind, the winds that scatter, and the passions that connect and divide human hearts. Sexy and philosophical, cosmic and intimate, rippling with humor and insight and tenderness, this novel is a wonder and a joy to read.”
–Carolina de Robertis
Molly Lynch, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman
(Catapult)
“[A] spectacular debut….Writing in tight, precise prose, Lynch weaves environmental disaster, feminist theory, and classical myth into a mesmerizing tale. Lovers of Margaret Atwood and Lauren Groff will be among the many enthralled.”
–Publishers Weekly
Thao Thai, Banyan Moon
(Mariner Books)
“Tender, gripping and heartbreaking. A haunting page turner that reexamines lineage, motherhood, and what it means to be a survivor—in every definition of the word. A welcome debut from a stunning voice who will forever impact the Vietnamese American canon.”
–Carolyn Huynh
Deborah Levy, August Blue
(Picador)
“A new book from Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy is always a joy to see, and August Blue lives up to the hype….Part travel novel and part portrait of melancholy, Levy’s latest is a spectacular ride that is guaranteed to be the perfect accompaniment for your summer plans.”
–The Chicago Review of Books
Emily Habeck, Shark Heart: A Love Story
(S&S/Marysue Rucci Books)
“Shark Heart is a fantastical, original, and beautifully-written novel of abandonment, love, and Ovidian transformation. It explores illness, caretaking, devotion, magical thinking, and loss—and of course great white sharks—in ways that are funny, sad, and surprising. Every page bursts with heart.”
–Anthony Doerr
Lisa See, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
(Scribner)
“Lisa See’s spellbinding historical novel…vividly depicts fifteenth-century China with artfully woven details, rich characters and descriptive language. See captures a world of propriety and cruelty as she ruminates on the disparity between the lives of men and women, and how women—no matter their class—are treated as possessions of the men around them. But through her strong-willed characters, See also emphasizes how women can act as the anchors of society.”
–BookPage
Nathan Go, Forgiving Imelda Marcos
(Picador)
“There is something almost Kierkegaardian in the way Go weaves together fictional narrative and nuanced explorations of forgiveness, redemption, guilt, and commitment to one’s ideals. His attention to historical detail breathes life into the novel’s philosophical inquiry, which avoids didacticism while striking at the heart of some of the most pressing questions of the human condition….Go’s narrative burns slowly, gracing the novel with an understated yet profound power.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Peace Adzo Medie, Nightbloom
(Algonquin)
“Nightbloom is a book about secrets; not just the ones passed between sister-cousins giggling in the dark, but the kinds our families require us to keep, the ones that reshape the landscape of who we become….In these pages, Medie has achieved a symphonic feat, weaving a delicate narrative of multivocal familial history, where sameness and difference, sisterhood and division, salve and destruction walk hand in hand on a journey that feels both achingly familiar…yet fresh and utterly new.”
–Destiny O. Birdsong
