JUNE

Francine Prose, 1974: A Personal History
Harper, June 4

Francine Prose’s first foray into memoir should be a memorable one: it’s about her tumultuous relationship with Anthony Russo, one of the Pentagon Papers leakers, and how it helped her see the end of the idealist ‘60s. Prose is always thoughtful and tenacious in her writing, and we expect nothing less from her turning her eye inward. –DB

Sarah Perry, Enlightenment
Mariner Books, June 4

The latest novel from the author of The Essex Serpent follows an unlikely pair of friends over twenty years, as they are brought apart and also together by their affairs and obsessions—in large part the obsession one of them has with the ghost of a nineteenth-century astronomer. Perry is a lush, rich writer, and no doubt this will be another book of spells. –ET

Tom Cech, The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets
W.W. Norton, June 4

For brains of a mortal frequency, RNA may have only popped into consciousness with the groundbreaking introduction of COVID-targeting mRNA vaccines and CRISPR therapies. In the telling of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Tom Cech, RNA was long the sidelined brother of DNA, with its showy double helix. Thanks to work by Cech and others, the power of RNA to impact aging and catalyze biochemical reactions is made apparent. –JM

Morgan Talty, Fire Exit
Tin House, June 4

A river divides Charles Lamosway from the life he might have had. On the other side of the river that runs in front of his house, Charles has watched his community in the Penobscot Reservation change, watched time pass, and watched a young family raise their daughter. The whole time, he’s been keeping a secret. The couple’s daughter is actually his. As his home and family life begin to crumble around him, Charles is forced to deal with the many burdens he’s spent his life carrying. Talty’s debut novel Fire Exit is tender, sparse, and thoughtful. –MC

Joseph O’Neill, Godwin
Pantheon, June 4

One of the delights of O’Neill’s fiction is that the characters move. They’re on planes, traveling, interacting, and much more in the world than are the characters in so much contemporary fiction. In his new novel, two brother cross the world in search of Godwin—an African soccer prodigy—who might change their fortunes. Here, the legacy of colonialism and global capitalism appear in the context of family love, and the dreaming individual. –EF

Patrick Nathan, The Future Was Color
Counterpoint, June 4

In 1950s Hollywood, Hungarian immigrant George Curtis is powerless, working as a hack on monster movies, before he is taken in by a famous actress who lets him stay at her Malibu mansion provided she can show him off. George may have left the war behind, but the monsters pursue, starting with his own ditched identity as György, a queer Jew. –JM

Nicola Yoon, One of Our Kind
Knopf, June 11

The best-selling YA author makes her adult debut with a thriller about the terrible secrets that underpin a new utopian Black community in California. Frankly, they had me at the logline: “Get Out meets The Stepford Wives.” Plus, it continues the Knopf-pastel-sky cover trend! –DB

Liz Moore, The God of the Woods
Riverhead, June 11 

Liz Moore’s knotty literary thriller/psychological family portrait/examination of the anatomy of a city Long Bright River was one of the standout novels of 2020, so I was pleased to see that her latest offering, The God of the Woods, looks to be cut from similar cloth. Set in the summer of 1975, it’s the story of Barbara Van Laar—the thirteen-year-old daughter of one of the region’s wealthiest families—who vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, and of the buried secrets of both the troubled Van Laar family and the working-class community that operates in its shadow. –DS

Zach Williams, Beautiful Days
Doubleday, June 11

If you haven’t read Zach Williams’ haunting New Yorker story “Wood Sorrel House,” go read it now—that way, won’t have to explain how excited you should be about Williams’ debut collection. I expect it will be strange, nightmarish, and unsettlingly magical, with a razor-sharp wit. According to Samantha Hunt, “You will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed.” –JG

Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles
William Morrow, June 11

The critically acclaimed Rufi Thorpe feels woefully under-read to me, but something tells me her latest novel will right that wrong—and not only because A24, the coolest movie studio of them all, won a bidding war for the rights to adapt it before we even got our hands on it. Twenty-year-old Margo is the mom of a newborn and the daughter of a Hooters waitress who becomes an OnlyFans sensation by taking career/writing advice from her estranged dad, a former pro wrestler. As the Love Island contestants like to say, it checks all the boxes for me, mate. –ES

Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Gretel and the Great War
FSG Originals, June 11

I loved Sachs’s 2019 debut novel, The Organs of Sense, which managed to be both madcap and cerebral, both absurd and serious, both human and surreal; I’ll now happily read anything he writes. In the latest novel, an unknown woman’s past is pieced together (maybe) through a barrage of stories. “Think Mary Poppins’s satchel, think one deranged matrioshka constantly coming out from under another,” writes Camille Bordas. “Gretel and the Great War is the gift that keeps on giving.” Lucky us. –ET

Porochista Khakpour, Tehrangeles
Pantheon, June 11

Even if I wasn’t already a fan of Khakpour and her work, this cover alone would get me—and if not the cover, the description: this is a novel about a family of Iranian-American multimillionaires who are about to become the next Kardashians (read: they’re getting a reality show), but might not be ready for the scrutiny that will come with it. Uh oh! Khakpour excels at the double edged coin of humor and tragedy; I can’t wait to read this. –ET

Clare Sestanovich, Ask Me Again
Knopf, June 11

The two main characters in Ask Me Again are opposites: Eva is a middle-class achiever from south Brooklyn. Jamie is a wealthy Upper East Sider experimenting with political movements and spiritual quests. Previously, Sestanovich’s short story collection Objects of Desire was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. –JM

Rachel Cusk, Parade
FSG, June 18

There isn’t much more one needs to say other than “Rachel Cusk has a new novel out” to get someone excited about a Cusk book: that name carries its own weight and mutual understanding. Even if we don’t know exactly what’s coming, we know it’s going to be wildly unique, spare, gorgeous, totally new in its form. The most recent books that have come from Cusk’s mind have been the Outline series, and Second Place, books that were such different projects from one another that they have made it clear that whatever you’re expecting: accept defeat now, it won’t be that. This one will be about art, and storytelling, victimhood, and freedom, and no matter what: it’ll be different, and better, than whatever we’re expecting. –JH

Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot
Riverhead, June 18

The latest novel from the super-prolific Emezi is set in the dark underbelly of a Nigerian city, where five friends suddenly find themselves aswirl—and in danger. You can always trust Emezi to go there—wherever there might be—so I’m looking forward to getting swept away by this one. –ET

Juliet Escoria, You Are the Snake
Soft Skull, June 18

Escoria’s autofiction novel/memoir Juliet the Maniac impressed critics with its heft, rocketing off course through a mental health episode that included drug abuse, self-harm and a therapeutic boarding school. In her new short story collection, You Are the Snake, she’s exploring more girlhood terrain. –JM

Vajra Chandrasekera, Rakesfall
Tor Books, June 18

The Saint of Bright Doors was one of my favorite books of 2023 and I’m eager for Chandrasekera’s follow-up, an eons-spanning novel about two souls reincarnating across generations. It’s guaranteed to include some incisive political commentary, ebullient imagination, and a powerful love for (and willingness to mess with) the very idea of story. –DB

Uchenna Awoke, The Liquid Eye of a Moon
Catapult, June 25

This might be billed as a kind of Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, but Dimkpa, the fifteen-year-old protagonist of Awoke’s début novel, is nothing like the cosmopolitan elite he observes from up close as a house boy in Lagos, after making the long journey from his village in rural Nigeria. Deeply committed to class and the clash of tradition with modernity, The Liquid Eye of a Moon is a typically messy but also stoic coming of age story without any of Holden Caulfield’s phony fussing. –SR

Tracy O’Neill, Woman of Interest: A Memoir
HarperOne, June 25 

The first work of nonfiction from National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree O’Neill (Quotients) is a psychological detective story about the author’s journey to find her missing birth mother—a mysterious South Korean woman whom O’Neill had never met and about whom she knew nothing. It’s a quest which features “a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family.” I adore O’Neill’s writing—which is always probing and cerebral, lyrical and humane—and I cannot wait to get my hands on this one.  –DS

Julia Phillips, Bear
Random House, June 25

I read Julia Phillips’ debut novel Disappearing Earth when it came out nearly five years ago, and it has lingered in my mind more than most others. Phillips is brilliant at balancing sharply-drawn characters with finely woven plot and unnerving atmosphere, and Bear, which tells the story of two sisters whose lives are upended by the appearance of a mystical (yes) bear sounds like the perfect showcase for her considerable gifts. –JG