Lydia Millet! Marie-Helene Bertino! The downfall of Elon Musk! 25 new books out today!
Each week, as the wheel of the year turns, it feels as though far more than a week has passed, what with the deluge of political chaos we face almost daily, and it’s easy to start to feel drained and demotivated. And yet it is also spring, with new blossoms and bouts of brighter and warmer weather, and there’s something in remembering that.
All things pass, in time. Pendulums swing. The daily horrors that seem inescapable and Sisyphean will become memories, replaced, we can be sure, with something else—better or worse, we cannot know, but something different, at least. There’s hope in reflecting on this change, at least, and when the world gets you down, it’s worth it to spend some time, if you can, amongst the springtime blooms, detoxing from the doom in a world that keeps on going winter after winter.
And what better thing to have for such moments than a new book to read in the sunnier moments outside, or in the rainy April days inside? I’ve selected twenty-five brand-spanking new ones for you to check out in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, each out today, each fascinating and worth consideration. You’ll find powerful poetry from Nasser Rabah; wide-ranging fiction from Morgan Jerkins, Lydia Millet, Marie-Helene Bertino, Jo Harkin, Doug Jones, and many others; and a lovely cornucopia of nonfiction from Sarah Aziza, Faiz Siddiqui, Kristen Kish, Ana Hebra Flaster, and many, many other exciting authors.
The world is on fire in many a way, yes, but let us enjoy the cooler, quieter moments when we can slip away for a bit, and let one, or many, of these new literary beauties accompany you.
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Morgan Jerkins, Zeal
(Harper)
“If ever there was a time for textured art that takes the complicated, often comically ironic, intoxicating love lives of the enslaved serious, it is now. It is Zeal. Morgan Jerkins made it. We can rejoice. Zeal is the rare buoyant and absolutely sturdy work that meets the reader where we are, and refuses to coddle. It is faithful fiction that should have readers and writers talking about this book forever.”
–Kiese Laymon
Jo Harkin, The Pretender
(Knopf)
“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 Russel
Marie-Helene Bertino, Exit Zero
(FSG)
“[A] potent and darkly funny collection…driven by energetic pacing, quick wit, and surprising twists. Bertino once again displays her formidable talent for the uncanny.”
–Publishers Weekly
Sarah Aziza, The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders
(Catapult)
“If warring nations were to fall away what would be left but bodies? Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half brings a Palestinian song and body back to life from the ruins. To sing this blood song she must cross all boundaries, between people, places, histories, and languages. Here is a heart beating, not beaten. The question is, how will we hold such a sacred text?”
–Lidia Yuknavitch
Ana Hebra Flaster, Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town
(She Writes Press)
“If you think Cubans in the diaspora have only looked to Miami to find their new homes, this book will take you on a very different Cuban journey: to New Hampshire….A compelling and beautiful memoir, read it to gain a capacious view of what it means to be both Cuban and American and to understand the hurt and hope of those whose ideals of revolution were betrayed.”
–Ruth Behar
Faiz Siddiqui, Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Siddiqui blends insightful reporting with prescient analysis to give an authoritative look at one of the world’s most polarizing figures. He captures the ambition of Elon Musk’s innovations while also holding power to account, questioning the societal and cultural impact at the heart of his transformation. In this time, when Musk’s influence is tangible in everything from how information is shared to the race for space colonization, Siddiqui’s work could not be more vital.”
–Astead Herndon
Nasser Rabah, Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece (trans. Ammiel Alcay and Emna Zghal)
(City Lights Books)
“Besieged by death and destruction, the poet performs his eternal task; saying the unsayable. Rabah digs deep, finds these rivulets of tears, and gives them wings. Rescued poems that rescue us from our own silence, reminding us that poetry is a refuge in this cruel world. Elegantly translated in a labor of love and solidarity.”
–Sinan Antoon
Doug Jones, The Fantasies of Future Things
(Simon & Schuster)
“This novel returned me to so many feelings about gay life of the recent past, a now vanished world, full of tension, sublimation, desire, confusion, joy. I cannot put it more clearly than this: Doug Jones is a masterful chronicler of the striving city and the restless heart.”
–Justin Torres
Sarah Damoff, The Bright Years
(Simon & Schuster)
“To attempt to tell a convincing love story at this late stage in the history of the novel is to set the bar ambitiously high, and yet Sarah Damoff somehow pulls it off twice in a single book, penning two thoroughly persuasive, interrelated relationship histories, each with appealing texture and depth…The Bright Years builds symphonically, polyphonically, reaching emotional crescendos and gliding into perfectly calibrated decrescendos that mimic the rhythms of real life.”
–Matthew Thomas
Maren Uthaug, Eleven Percent
(St. Martin’s Press)
“A haunting, horrifying, beautiful, and at times truly disgusting story of a mostly female utopia turned into a dystopia by a reductive understanding of gender that elevates a few and persecutes the rest. This dark and surprisingly funny tale of witches, snakes, priests, and genital-based oppression takes the reader into the depths of a matriarchy that has fallen into the same traps as the patriarchy it replaced. A wild, electric, essential read.”
–Gabrielle Korn
Kristen Kish, Accidentally on Purpose: A Memoir
(Little Brown)
“Finding her own voice and staying true to her values are at the heart of Kish’s engaging memoir…Some of her memoir’s strongest moments detail the author’s Top Chef triumph, her pain as a closeted gay woman in young adulthood, and her eventual coming out and living a full, authentic life.”
–Booklist
Annie B. Jones, Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put
(HarperOne)
“Annie B. Jones gently and deftly pushes back on the idea that an interesting life has to be an adventurous one. Through stories of friendship, marriage, and running a small town bookstore, she shares a life rich with beauty and meaning. Ordinary Time will make readers reflect on their seasons of letting go and the merits of staying put.”
–Laura Tremaine
Susannah Cahalan, The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary
(Viking)
“Rosemary Woodruff Leary was more than just the First Lady of 1960s counterculture. As this deeply researched, fun, and fascinating biography from the Brain on Fire author Susannah Cahalan reveals, Leary—who was married to psychedelic icon Timothy Leary—is no mere supporting character. Instead, the biography depicts a smart, driven, creative, and cunning woman who lived a life just as interesting, if far less known, than that of her one-time husband.”
–Town & Country
Lydia Millet, Atavists: Stories
(Norton)
“In this interconnected collection of short stories, Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet offers various slice-of-life vignettes that capture the alienation of modern life for families, couples, and communities. The characters that populate these stories feel utterly familiar, and the worlds they inhabit also reflect the chaos of our own, from reflections on post-pandemic life to the digital age.”
–Harper’s Bazaar
Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Separate Rooms
(Zando)
“Separate Rooms is a classic in Italy: a story of love and youth and pain that will have you clutching at your heart. I want everyone to read it; I want to press it into people’s hands. Surely one of the best novels I’ve ever read.”
–Andrew Sean Greer
Errick Nunnally, The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile
(Clash Books)
“The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile is a beautiful, messy, and profound coming of age novel, deftly exploring the joys and dangers of growing up Black in 1970s Boston. Part The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Fortress of Solitude, and a comic book-style origin story, Errick Nunnally has penned a marvel. One that—in a fair universe—will put him on the radar of readers everywhere.”
–Paul Tremblay
Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
(Pantheon)
“Mary Annette Pember has left it all on the line. Through her, her Ojibwe ancestors speak boldly about how the US government has treated them and every Indigenous nation in these so-called-United States. I have never read a book that has changed me so profoundly. Pember not only points to what has been done, but also offers a way forward. Everyone, absolutely everyone, should read this book.”
–Javier Zamora
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, A Protest History of the United States
(Beacon Press)
“To Gloria Browne-Marshall, protest is primal and a prism through which she has exhaustively examined its resonance in American history. Her broad and insightful discussion of protest, from its most violent expression to the mere thrusting of one’s fist in the air, shows how it has been persistently at the core of the nation’s existence. She thoughtfully demonstrates that protest is essential to the origins of the US, an unbroken thread from the Powhatan to George Floyd.”
–Herb Boyd
Sophy Roberts, A Training School for Elephants: Retracing a Curious Episode in the European Grab for Africa
(Atlantic Monthly)
“A rich, engrossing tapestry of greed and disregard for life, human and animal, that stretches across continents, and across time, from the late nineteenth century to this day. Few write as compellingly as Roberts, this is her as only she can write.”
–Amal Chatterjee
Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women
(Harper Muse)
“In The Book Club for Troublesome Women, the talented Marie Bostwick says this, ‘Acquaintances abound, but true friendships are rare and worth waiting for,’ capturing the essence, and the heart, of this story. If you love stories about friendships, strong women, the ’60s, and the power of the written word, this is the book for you.”
–Marybeth Mayhew
Matthew Specktor, The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood
(Ecco)
“Matthew Specktor’s biography of a Hollywood talent agent is ambitious, tough, and as heartfelt as his subject, who also happens to be his father….In his telling, The Golden Hour delivers both an ingenious perspective of Los Angeles, and the history of movie business from the birth of television to the age of streaming.”
–Griffin Dunne
Stephen S. Hall, Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World
(Grand Central Publishing)
“Hall delivers both a compendium of new ways to consider one of our most feared and loathed creatures as well as an insightful meditation on our long social history with them. Each beautifully researched chapter unfolds as a new investigation of their sheer otherness. What emerges is a surprising look at the ways that the lives of human and snake lives have long been intertwined…[a] surprising book.”
–Leila Philip
Drew Harvell, The Ocean’s Menagerie: How Earth’s Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life
(Viking)
“The Ocean’s Menagerie is a marine smorgasbord of the spineless. [Harvell’s] life’s-work, exploring the cracks and crevices of seafloors across the world is the backbone of a story full of overlooked organisms who thrive without one. What she has discovered is magic and bewildering, astonishing creatures that challenge our idea of animalhood and pull off biological tricks that transform our landlubber lives. This will make you look again at the marine lives around you….surprising and wonderful.”
–Tom Mustill
Adam Becker, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
(Basic Books)
“Becker surveys the grand ambitions of our technological elite—their messianic faith in AI, their imperialist yearnings for space, their moral gymnastics in the name of humanity’s unborn trillions—with the sharp eye of someone watching a high-stakes magic trick where the rabbit never actually appears….[T]he quiet devastation at the heart of More Everything Forever…[is] that these grand techno-utopian visions, rather than democratizing the future, consolidate control over it.”
–Worth Magazine
Alan Weisman, Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
(Dutton)
“Weisman takes us on a global journey to witness both humanity’s impact on our planet and our extraordinary resilience in the face of environmental crisis. Through vivid portraits…he introduces us to the engineers, scientists, and visionaries working to imagine creative solutions for an uncertain future….profound…offers not just a clear-eyed look at our predicament, but a testament to the remarkable human capacity for hope even in extraordinarily challenging times.”
–Neil Shubin
