Karen Russell, Wendell Berry, Writers on Freud, and 26 more paperback books out today.

It’s March, and with that comes a new season in a year that has already felt like more than one season has passed by. But even amidst so much bewildering bleakness, there are moments of beauty to be found in a new season, in a new revolution of the wheel of the year. As a complement to such moments, and as an opportunity to reflect on what has passed and what is yet to come, consider picking up a new book (or many). Below, I’ve got twenty-six suggestions for new paperback editions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, covering a truly remarkable range.

If you missed them in hardcover, or if you just want to pick up a fun new version of a beloved book, you should check these out. Add them to your to-be-read piles this month, and stay safe.

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Karen Russel, The Antidote
(Vintage)

“The Antidote is an achingly gorgeous book about dust, memory, basketball, murder, yearning, photography, and the way the land holds both the memory of what went before and the dreams of what may come. Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange.”
–Lauren Groff

Sanjena Sathian, Goddess Complex
(Penguin Books)

“Sathian unspools a wide-ranging, at times hallucinatory yarn that encompasses her protagonist’s frustrations with rigid rules about femininity, motherhood, Indian American social norms, and more….Not for nothing does the novel feature an epigraph from the Gothic classic Rebecca; the novel is rife with doppelgängers, gaslighting, hidden histories, and more, all to the purpose of questioning the behavioral expectations placed on women like Sanjana…both funny and melancholy.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Jeanne Thornton, A/S/L
(Soho Press)

“A deeply evocative novel that pulses with the ache of queer longing, the glitchy hum of ’90s internet culture, and the fractured beauty of trans survival….Thornton’s prose captures the jagged edges of trans becoming, blending dreamy, poetic moments with raw and disjointed passages that reflect the precariousness of forging an identity in a world designed to erase you.”
–Diversishelf

Emily Witt, Health and Safety: A Breakdown
(Vintage)

“There are moments in this book when Witt elevates writing about altered states of consciousness to something akin to the most brilliant art criticism I’ve ever read in my life. With shocking precision and honesty, she maps zones of transcendence and devastation, freedom and repression, both in the individual mind and in the collective experience of America. Health and  Safety is a tribute to the profound and radical potential in substances that insist on bringing another world into being, and an acute, heartbroken reckoning with their limits, too.”
–Jia Tolentino

Phil Hanley, Spellbound: My Life as a Dyslexic Wordsmith
(Holt)

“Candid, heartwarming….Through witty anecdotes and vulnerable confessions, the author’s stories demonstrate how dyslexia extends beyond difficulties with spelling and reading to challenges with mental health… Carried by Hanley’s sincere voice, the memoir remains lighthearted despite intense frustration and heartbreak.”
–Booklist

Olga Khazan, Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change
(Simon & Schuster/Simon Element)

“One of the most important questions we ask ourselves is, ‘How do I change, if I want to change—if change is even possible?’ Olga Khazan tackles this challenge for herself with a determination that’s both comical and admirable. Hilarious, honest, and packed with cutting-edge research, this book got me turning the pages and making lists of things to try in my own life.”
–Gretchen Rubin

Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023
(Counterpoint)

“The pieces have a timeless quality….Berry’s writing has the remarkable quality of being both traditional and revolutionary….This is a collection from the heart of a poet whose philosophy of the interconnectedness of human life to nature remains as steadfast as the deeply rooted trees and river carving the land he writes about.”
–Sara Lynn Eastler

Jo Harkin, The Pretender
(Vintage)

“What Jo Harkin has accomplished in The Pretender left me awestruck on every page. I had no idea that a medieval historical novel could be this wickedly funny, this timely and timeless. A work of genius, a wellspring of laughter and sorrow, a feat of time-travel, and a feast of language.”
–Karen Russell

Anthony Giardina, Remember This
(Picador)

“Remember This is so passionate about the making of art, so intelligent, so rich with memorable characters, and so cunningly suspenseful. As the plot moves between New York and Haiti, daughter and father, I fell increasingly under the spell of the wonderful prose and the profound question: what is success in life, or art? Anthony Giardina has written an amazing novel.”
–Margot Livesy

Yuko Tsushima, Wildcat Dome (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda)
(Picador)

“Enigmatic, elegant novel by one of modern Japan’s leading novelists….A superb literary mystery that leaves readers, like the protagonists, constantly guessing.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Graydon Carter, When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines
(Penguin Books)

““Carter, a former editor of Spy, the New York Observer, and Vanity Fair, has been held up over the years as a force of style, both in his personal taste and in his expansive vision of creative work, which grew from his editorial experiences during a prosperous and thrilling era in American magazines. This winsome memoir is a recounting of that period, brisk, bright, and full of well-told anecdotes about celebrities, artists, and other power players in Carter’s orbit.”
–The New Yorker

Robert B. Richardson, Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives
(Princeton University Press)

“[A] remarkably rich study….[Richardson] expertly frames the emotional and intellectual lives of these three significant artistic figures and demonstrates the relevance, for anyone, of what they accomplished in their profound negotiations with loss….A stirring and keenly perceptive examination of bereavement and recovery.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Andrew Blauner (editor), On the Couch: Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud
(Princeton University Press)

“Eighty-five years after his death, is there anything left to say about Freud? Andrew Blauner’s fine collection On the Couch answers an emphatic yes. A dream-team of leading writers consider subjects ranging from Freud’s first scientific paper (on eel testicles) to the shadowy figure of his wife Martha, and his love of dogs. The book offers lucid, deeply personal reflections on the complicated legacies of psychoanalysis.”
–The Conversation

Sanam Mahloudji, The Persians
(Scribner)

“Mahloudji writes with a wisdom and confidence rarely seen in a debut….Multigenerational stories of family anguish and upheaval remain as popular as ever, from Abraham Verghese’s beautiful The Covenant of Water, to the quiet excellence of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. The Persians earns a place alongside these heavyweights. It is as funny as it is moving, as perceptive as it is pithy. This is a story of Iranian women, told by an Iranian woman.”
–The Guardian

Kristin Koval, Penitence
(Celadon Books)

“Penitence, riveting as a thriller, is a wise and profound novel. After a shocking tragedy unfolds in a small Colorado community, those intimately affected must grapple with their limitations and their buried histories. Kristin Koval relays their stories with great wisdom and compassion in this remarkable debut.”
–Claire Messud

Jennifer Herrera, The Hunter
(Putnam)

“This book is a bonfire on a dark night. Searing hot and enthralling. I want to live in Herrera’s language, where the ordinary becomes magical and strange. Fans of Tana French and Marisha Pessl, take note.”
–Melissa Larsen

Jamie Hood, Trauma Plot: A Life
(Vintage)

“Jamie Hood is not only an uncommon thinker, but a world-class explorer of unthought. She descends into the terrifying dark of the unsayable with the dimmest of flashlights and returns bearing verbal gems, treasures, and marvels.”
–Torrey Peters

Raj Tawney, Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience
(Fordham University Press)

“In his first book, journalist Tawney examines his Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian American heritage and upbringing through the culinary expertise of his family and friends….Each chapter of this memoir ends with a theme-fitting recipe….A heartfelt memoir. The author’s ability to follow his passions and find his place in the world will resonate with many readers, especially those interested in multicultural narratives.”
–Library Journal

Kevin Fedarko, A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
(Scribner)

“Part memoir, part travelogue, part extended essay on the profound meanings of wilderness, A Walk in the Park is a paean to one of earth’s most spectacular places….Fans of Bill Bryson, Cheryl Strayed, and Edward Abbey will love this rich, funny, and spirited work from the Grand Canyon’s most eloquent bard. Fedarko’s bushwhacking, boulder-hopping, scree-slipping odyssey makes for delightful reading.”
–Hampton Sides

Carl Hiassen, Fever Beach
(Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

“Hiaasen is working in a grand tradition that stretches back to Mikhail Bulgakov satirizing Stalinism and Charlie Chaplin mocking Hitler. At his best, he can pack a paragraph with so many little parodic bangs that it feels like a fireworks display when the explosions come so fast you stop saying ‘Ahhh’ and just stand in slack-jawed bedazzlement….While white-shoe lawyers, university presidents and media moguls cower before the MAGA assaults on American democracy and decency, this mischievous seventy-two-year-old writer is fighting back with every political gag and sex joke he can get his hands on.”
–The Washington Post

Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven
(Vintage)

“Seán Hewitt’s Open, Heaven blisses with the bright verdure of youth—blackbirds and blossoming hedges, wet hands held tight under buttery starlight. But Open, Heaven also courses with youth’s great agony, the cruelty that learning to love should be inexorably followed by learning to grieve its undoing. Hewitt’s is a searching novel orbiting pleasure, loss, and the ecstatic release of both; which is to say it’s a novel about time. Which is to say it’s a novel about us.”
–Kaveh Akbar

Kim Fay, Kate and Frida
(Putnam)

“It’s charming to encounter an epistolary novel these days. The once-popular form has fallen out of fashion in the age of digital communication, but Fay resuscitates it….[Kate and Frida’s] voices remain distinct in the letters, often naïve, self-doubting, or overconfident, but authentically the voices of young women finding themselves. The book spans several years with lots of fun ’90s pop-culture details, and it often focuses on food….An old-fashioned form and two lively modern women make for an enjoyable novel.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Alexis Madrigal, The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City
(Picador)

“The Pacific Circuit gives us a thrilling new kind of historical storytelling. Madrigal masterfully weaves together the financial, technological, and geological forces that shaped his hometown, and shows us how individual lives were shaped by these powerful currents. It’s a story about race, urban planning, imperialism, neighborhood activism, technological innovation—the entire complex system, from the hyperlocal to the global, that gives rise to the places we live.”
–Steven Johnson

Clay Risen, Red Scare: Black Lists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America
(Scribner)

“In a narrative both eloquent and incisive, Clay Risen has produced the most complete history of the Red Scare that has ever been written. His judgments about the characters—both famous and obscure—who mattered in this low, dishonest era are always persuasive. While a delight to read, the book explains why the conspiratorial style of politics that dominated America seventy-five years ago is with us still.”
–Michael Kazin

Joyce E. Chaplin, The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution
(Picador)

“It isn’t difficult to connect Ben Franklin to the modern world. Joyce E. Chaplin charts an especially original route, probing Franklin’s work on the stoves he spent half a lifetime inventing and reinventing, stoves that introduced a host of questions. Would clearing forests warm the earth? Was coal the future? What did population growth mean for the allocation of resources? From Chaplin’s engaging, wide-ranging pages a fresh Franklin emerges, this one an eighteenth century aficionado of energy efficiency.”
–Stacy Schiff

Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! The British Invasion of American English
(Princeton University Press)

“The British do make their own coinages, and some of them take up residence in American mouths. Ben Yagoda…has done our nation an invaluable service chronicling the entry of such adoptions…engaging.”
–Jude Russo