Living with Mr. Spock! Thom Gunn! Harriet Tubman! 25 books out in paperback this June.
June is here, which means that summer has also arrived. And even in a horrific world—or especially in one—there is power in small comforts, including warmer, sunnier days, and what better than to have a lovely new book at your side? A paperback, no less? I come bearing twenty-five new ones to consider in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, each out this June. If you missed them in hardcover, you have another chance to enjoy them in these fresh new editions. And what a treasure trove we have below, with exciting new names and beloved favorites alike, as well as powerful examinations of the people, technologies, and ideas shaping our world, for better or for worse.
I hope you choose some of these to keep at your side this June. There’s always something special about a book, no matter the state of the world. Never forget that.
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Rachel Cusk, Parade
(Picador)
“Examining the life of the artist and the composition of the self, Rachel Cusk’s Parade exposes the power and limitations of our alternate selves. Probing the limits of the novel form and pushing back against convention, this is a work that resets our understanding of what the long form makes possible.”
–Abigail Shinn
Marcela Fuentes, Malas
(Penguin Books)
“Fuentes’ propulsive plotting; rich and precise depiction of Tejano culture; complex characters; and thoughtful exploration of female anger, grief and intergenerational trauma combine to form a fully immersive reading experience that—for all its specificity—will be compelling and meaningful to readers of all backgrounds. Brimming with brio, [Malas] deliciously defiant debut breathes new life into classic lore and heralds the arrival of a bold new literary powerhouse.”
–BookPage
Rosalind Brown, Practice
(Picador)
“There’s a genius in the idea of using Shakespeare’s sonnets, which form an exploration of desire deeply and messily concerned with questions of gender and selfhood, to illustrate the complicated process of a young woman figuring out who and what she is….A novel written for readers…appeals specifically to those who have found themselves shaping their own identities around the words of others, and then coming to wonder whether that process has honed their individuality or lessened it.”
–The Washington Post
Ann Leary, I’ve Tried Being Nice: Essays
(Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books)
“[Leary’s] candid essays invite readers to laugh and cry along with her… She fluidly guides us through her thought processes, while finding humor and displaying a refreshing vulnerability. A humorous and honest tale of a woman and her struggle as a people-pleaser.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Michael Nott, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life
(Picador)
“Thom Gunn was the most exciting poet of his generation, and he lived an exciting life. He loved adventure, but he was also self-disciplined and blessed with acute intelligence….Nott…though he never knew Gunn, gets him exactly as I remember him: kindly, courteous, self-deprecating, daring, playful, and a master of words. Nott’s skill as a biographer is exactly suited to his subject. Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life is gripping from the start and beautifully written.”
–Clive Wilmer
Tiya Miles, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People
(Penguin Books)
“[Night Flyer], like All That She Carried, is not an academic study of nineteenth-century Black history but a moving account of Tubman’s intellectual life….It reminds us of the redemptive possibilities of patriotism and religious belief, ideologies that today are too often associated with the reactionary rather than the radical.”
–The New Yorker
Robert Pinsky, Proverbs of Limbo: Poems
(FSG)
“While [Pinsky’s] poetics have changed across the decades, [his] trademark preoccupations shine in [Pinsky’s] newest collection, Proverbs of Limbo: the history and culture that binds and divides us…quiet observations of the people around you; your weaving of a personal past with a universal present. In this new collection, [Pinsky] also spend time meditating on death and conceptions of the self.”
–The Adroit Journal
Frederick Seidel, So What: Poems
(FSG)
“Frederick Seidel’s best poems balance on a razor’s edge between diagnosing what’s wrong and being in the wrong. Like his previous eighteen volumes, So What concerns aesthetic pursuits and bodily trouble, deeply felt personal losses and the jangle of harm and horror in the world….Much of So What is as vigorous, insightful, moving and disturbing as his work has ever been: lots of politics, noise, luxury, literature, disease, war and strife…poems that won’t let us look away.”
–The New York Times
Musih Tedji Xaviere, These Letters End in Tears
(Catapult)
“Powerful and moving. There are few Cameroonian queer novels, and the bravery it takes to identify as LGBT in a country that persecutes this community is a bold act of queer courage.”
–Monica Carter
Louisa Luna, Tell Me Who You Are
(Picador)
“This fantastic novel is like going out drinking with your sharpest, sexiest, most dangerous friend, and getting into trouble that’s both unexpected and inevitable. Dr. Caroline Strange is a terrific and terrifying protagonist, the interwoven plots lines are propulsive, and the voice is absolutely riveting.”
–Chris Pavone
J. Courtney Sullivan, The Cliffs
(Vintage)
“J. Courtney Sullivan is so skilled at multi-threaded narratives, and this is her most ambitious book yet. Weaving together the stories of women in Maine over centuries, this novel is about maternal loss and trauma, the idea of home, and most affecting, the stories that remain untold.”
–Emma Straub
Thom Gunn, Clive Wilmer (editor), August Kleinzahler (editor), The Letters of Thom Gunn
(Picador)
“A poet of great wit and style, Thom Gunn was also a lyrical portraitist, which is especially evident in his recently collected letters….These letters vastly increase our understanding of his painstaking compositional processes….One is struck by his startling lack of hubris or defensiveness—his openness, even late in his career, to advice and criticism.”
–The New York Review of Books
Adam Nimoy, The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy
(Chicago Review Press)
“Attorney Nimoy (My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life) holds nothing back in this raw look at his relationship with his father, Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)….Adam’s candor about his own shortcomings lends warmth and self-awareness to the account. Even non-Trekkies will be moved.”
–Publishers Weekly
Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports
(Picador)
“[A] riveting history of trans and gender-nonconforming athletes…sweeping….While the culture wars light up headlines and trans athletes continue to face discrimination around the world, this immersive account of forgotten histories couldn’t be more timely.”
–Esquire
Tracy Chevalier, The Glassmaker
(Penguin Books)
“Tracy Chevalier pens a novel as ambitious, audacious, and artistic as a Venetian glass goblet. Beginning in the height of the Renaissance and hopscotching with casual ease through the centuries to the modern day, she examines the ever-changing city of Venice through the eyes of Orsola Rosso, defiantly gifted daughter of a Murano glassmaking family, and how her unique gift with glass shines through time, fragile but unbreakable. The Glassmaker is a thing of beauty.”
–Kate Quinn
Morgan Richter, The Divide
(Knopf)
“A riveting neo-noir thriller about mistaken identity and what it means to live and die in LA. Weird and wonderfully addictive—reads like Agatha Christie on acid, or maybe Raymond Chandler adapted by the Coen Brothers.”
–Ernest Cline
Helen Philips, Hum
(Simon & Schuster/Marysue Rucci Books)
“A transcendent portrayal of artificial intelligence, love, the fate of families, and the emergence of synthetic beings beyond human imagination.”
–Clifford A. Pickover
Jessica J. Lee, Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
(Catapult)
“Weaving material from literary, personal, scientific and historical sources, Lee examines plants—including seaweed and far beyond it—that broach human borders, exploring their migrations alongside her own….Lee writes intimately about her own oscillating cravings for movement and rootedness against a backdrop of COVID and new motherhood….Dispersals asks readers to consider how plants challenge not only spatial borders but taxonomic ones.”
–Erica Berry
Jorrell Meléndez-Badillo, Puerto Rico: A National History
(Princeton University Press)
“A stunning account of Puerto Rico’s history that invites readers to understand how Puerto Ricans negotiate, resist, and construct their identities within and in defiance of their colonial position. Consulting an exhaustive breadth of interdisciplinary scholarship within Puerto Rican studies….Meléndez-Badillo captures the attention of the reader with clear storytelling, historical rigor, and emotional care of the subject matter….Handled with care.”
–Manuel A. Grajales
Maggie Haberman, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
(Penguin Books)
“Confidence Man [is] Maggie Haberman’s much anticipated biography of the president she followed more assiduously than any other journalist. No doubt, there are revelations aplenty here. But this is a book more notable for the quality of its observations about Trump’s character than for its newsbreaks. It will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.”
–The New York Times
Clare Pooley, How to Age Disgracefully
(Penguin Books)
“Joyful, life-affirming and full of heart, How to Age Disgracefully is an absolute riot of a read, full of perfectly flawed characters who made me laugh, cry and cheer. After reading this triumphant book, you’ll never look at a septuagenarian the same way again!”
–Freya Sampson
Robin Sloan, Moonbound
(Picador)
“Coming at the dawn of the AI era, this is a thoughtful (and hopefully not prescient) book that, like its characters, asks: What happens next? An expansive adventure that blends fantasy and SF to address one of the most pressing issues of our time.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Madhumita Murgia, Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
(Holt)
“A clear-eyed and incisive book…Murgia deftly cuts through techno-heavy jargon and academese to reveal the real people on the AI frontlines….Code-Dependent’s value ultimately lies not in its being a blueprint for ways to mitigate the deleterious effects of AI or as a philosophical user’s manual, but as a detailed record of the ways that AI has indelibly remade the lives of ordinary people the world over. There’s no app for that.”
–Boston Globe
John Gaz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
(Picador)
“In When the Clock Broke, John Ganz offers a continuously absorbing and bracing genealogy of today’s incontinent far-right. A must-read for those wondering why the collapse of communism did not bring about the end of the history, and instead inaugurated the apotheosis of fanatics in the free world.”
–Pankaj Mishra
Mara Kardas-Nelson, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance
(Metropolitan Books)
“By turns a fascinating global history of micro-credit and a haunting account of its effects on a handful of women in Sierra Leone, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky traces the rise, fall and afterlife of an industry built on neoliberal fantasies, on the preening of powerful poseurs, and on the backs of millions of desperate people.”
–James K. Galbraith
