Paige Lewis, Ali Smith, Jesmyn Ward, and more: 21 new books out today!

With full force, a new season has arrived. Spring, elusive as ever, has molted completely into a preview of the summer that awaits, and all that it will hold: soft serve ice creams, quests to enter any pool on offer, and endless reading in parks. A new collection of park reading material arrives today: the much anticipated debut novel, a “nonbinary epic” by Paige Lewis, as well as the counterpart to Ali Smith’s Gliff both hit the shelves. Essays by Jesmyn Ward, and a revealing and staggering portrait of Stanford University’s inner workings are also released. Whether you’re in the mood for a novel or nonfiction, this week holds an enormous amount of new material. Read on, and happy Tuesday!

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Paige Lewis, Canon
(Viking)

“I promise that you have never read a book like Canon. It’s a scorchingly brilliant, wildly funny, and deeply moving epic.”
–John Green

Ali Smith, Glyph
(Pantheon)

“An abstract and mordant meditation on the long aftereffects of violence.”
–Kirkus

Jesmyn Ward, On Witness and Repair: Essays
(Scribner)

“Few contemporary writers express the agony and beauty of Black American life as evocatively as Ward.”
–Booklist

Theo Baker, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University
(Penguin Press)

“Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the culture of money and ambition that has taken hold at one of America’s most storied institutions.”
–Jake Tapper

Ayelet Waldman, A Perfect Hand
(Knopf)

“An absolute delight and a joy to read.”
–J. Courtney Sullivan

Emily LaBarge, Dog Days
(Transit)

“Haunting and questing meditations on life, art, dreams, and death … A trauma narrative that extends and subverts the very notion of trauma narrative.”
–Kirkus

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction
(Random House)

“Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve is a masterful storyteller and a rigorous scholar. Yet again, she has written a book that is deeply moving, brilliant, and righteous.”
–Imani Perry

Djamel White, All Them Dogs
(Riverhead)

“A book you inhale, devour, grapple with, and reel from more than read.”
–Marlon James

Katherine Packert Burke, All Us Saints
(Bloomsbury)

“A gorgeous puzzle-box of a book, with the pieces carved from dread, sex, and secrets.”
–Torrey Peters

Geoffrey Cain, Steve Jobs in Exile
(Portfolio)

“A remarkable fly-on-the-wall account of the wilderness years that taught a visionary monster empathy and humility.”
–Peter Robison

Kayla Rae Whitaker, Returns and Exchanges
(Random House)

“With a heart so strong you can hear it beat on the page, Returns and Exchanges deftly explores the price of ambition as one family grapples with the weight of its own success.”
–Grant Ginder

Ed. by Rachel Meade Smith, Search Work: A Collective Inquiry Into the Job Hunt
(O/R Books)

“A creative response to a demoralizing reality.”
–Publishers Weekly

Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
(W. W. Norton)

“Poignant, fueled with love for justice, with faith in other people, with terrific, often heartbreaking stories … A page-turner and a statement of belief in the future.”
–Aleksandar Hemon

Steven W. Thrasher, The Overseer Class: A Manifesto
(Amistad)

“Steven W. Thrasher’s latest tour de force exposes an inconvenient truth: today’s rising fascism, state violence, campus repression, carceral expansion, and U.S.-backed war and genocide would not be possible without the rainbow coalition of the willing…”
–Robin D.G. Kelley

Jonathan Alpert, Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided
(Hanover Square Press)

“A refreshing and well-reasoned look at the ways the practice falls short of its goals in the paradoxical interest of making patients feel good.”
–Publishers Weekly

Emily Haworth-Booth, Mare
(FSG)

“An affecting portrait of love and care in its many forms, written with a calm, incantatory beauty.”
–The Daily Mail

Trevor Paglen, How to See Like a Machine: Art in the Age of AI
(Verso)

“Paglen’s essays are impressively cogent, engaging, and relevant.”
–Library Journal

Ada Ferrer, Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter
(Scribner)

“A devastatingly human portrayal of the effects of migration, family secrets, and the history that binds and moves us, this book is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved.”
–Javier Zamora

Eduardo Halfon, trans. by Daniel Hahn, Tarantula
(Bellevue Literary Press)

“A darkly unsettling but highly readable novel by a leading voice in Latin American fiction.”
–Kirkus

Emily Rapp Black, I Would Die If I Were You
(Counterpoint)

“Out of all the bitterness and narrowness around us, Emily Rapp Black shines a light and reminds us why honoring our drive to tell our stories is, in and of itself, a way to survive.”
–Matthew Zapruder

Nastassja Martin, trans. by Sophie R. Lewis, East of Dreams
(NYRB)

“Nastassja Martin offers readers a literary pleasure and poses one of the major political questions of our time.”
–Marc Lebiez