The Beatles! Natasha Trethewey! Librarians’ secret lives! 24 new books out today.
Ah, another April Tuesday, that undefinable month of storm and blossom, coolness and warmth, cruelty and catharsis. April may represent many a thing, depending on whom you ask, but what’s clear on this particular Tuesday is that new things to read are here. Many new things, in fact—twenty-four, to be exact.
Below, you’ll find a bevy of exciting new novels, story collections, poetry books, memoirs, and general nonfiction from well-known and new names alike. If one of those proverbial April showers has you stuck inside with a mood the color of stormclouds, I recommend picking up something from the list below, where you’ll find everything from a new memoir by the poet Natasha Trethewey; a compilation of true tales from booksellers and librarians; never-before-published material from and about the Beatles that helps explain why they broke up; and much, much more.
Let that to-be-read list gloriously grow. Spacetime considerations aside, it can never really get too tall, right? Enjoy, Dear Readers.
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Claire Beams, The Garden
(Doubleday)
“No one writes feminist historical fiction like Clare Beams. With her singular lyricism, elegance, and candor, The Garden powerfully illuminates what is, for many women, a private and isolating grief. Ingeniously using elements of the gothic and weaving in today’s most pressing questions about female bodily autonomy, Beams captures the magic, strangeness, terror, and all-consuming pressure of pregnancy….I’m in awe of this book.”
–Jessamine Chan
Jen Silverman, There’s Going to Be Trouble
(Random House)
“[A] beautifully paced page-turner with memorably flawed and sympathetic characters, heart-stopping ethical dilemmas, a deeply imagined and absorbing world, and descriptions of activism so painfully accurate you’ll gasp….It’s masterful, taut, funny, and sad—full of canny insights on how the political plays out in our personal lives. There’s Going to Be Trouble is an absolutely perfect book for this moment, and also one that will stay with you well beyond it.”
–V. V. Ganeshananthan
Henriette Lazaridis, Last Days in Plaka
(Pegasus)
“A stunning novel about an unlikely friendship that had me utterly enthralled. In luminous prose, Last Days in Plaka lays bare the yearnings of a trio of heartbreakingly human characters in modern-day Athens as they navigate a hot, deserted city haunted by memories and their own obscured agendas. A poignant, surprising read that will make you look more closely, and with greater tenderness, at the world around you.”
–Katrin Schumann
Nathasha Trethewey, The House of Being
(Yale University Press)
“In this lyrical, thoughtful volume, Trethewey not only makes surprising, insightful connections between personal and national history; she also paints a profound portrait of unresolvable grief. . . . A thoughtful meditation on a celebrated poet’s reasons for writing.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son
(Grove Press)
“Fuller’s prose is raw, primal, and electric, pulling the reader into both her shock and her attempts to carry on with a heart cleaved in two. Readers who are experiencing their own grief will find solace here, while those who’ve been following Fuller for years through her beautifully written memoirs will want to be with her as she recounts this tragedy.”
–Booklist
Bruce Whiteman, Work to Be Done: Selected Essays and Reviews
(Biblioasis)
“Whether it’s the challenges of translating Sappho’s poetry, an evaluation of the life and legacy of iconic figures like Goethe, Beethoven and Flaubert, or the wanting verse of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Whiteman brings not just aesthetic insight but a deep humanism to every subject he writes about. Whiteman is that increasingly rare breed: the well-read critic who brings to the page the deeply considered opinion, rather than the knee-jerk take….[I]ntelligent but never pretentious.”
–Emily Donaldson
Joy Sullivan, Instructions for Traveling West: Poems
(Dial Press)
“Instructions for Traveling West is remarkable for how it captures this moment, the essence of this weird middle time–and for how thrilling it is to read someone who is noticing, who is saying despite every terrible thing, ‘This place is great, I want to be here, what a thing to be alive.’ Joy Sullivan will make you want to live the way that Mary Oliver makes you want to live. You read this to remember.”
–Holly Whittaker
Rosa Alcalá, You
(Coffee House Press)
“Do we have a way of explaining the imaginative tangle of what your life has been, but what you wished it could have been, and what you still wish it might become? Rosa Alcalá’s You is a book of spells that fearlessly confronts this question. Her unforgettable prose poems are feminist, feminine epiphanies, recklessly abundant in erotic charge and bitter wisdom.”
–Katie Peterson
Tayi Tibble, Rangikura: Poems
(Knopf)
“Māori poet Tibble (Poukahangatus) meditates on the turbulence of youth and the spiritual guidance of her ancestors in her sagacious and impishly outspoken second collection. These poems engage with overt and overlooked subjugation, the weight of expectation, and the quest for self-containment in piquant, virtuosic stream of consciousness fused with ripe sensuality and robust lyricism. Playful slang, refreshing impropriety…These poems pulsate.”
–Publishers Weekly
Nell Freudenberger, The Limits
(Knopf)
“A big-hearted, tightly-plotted novel that bravely takes on our times—from Covid-19 to climate change—by looking at the timeless stuff of human intimacy. Nell Freudenberger writes beautifully about the bonds between people: parents and children, lovers and exes, even strangers. The Limits is an immersive and powerful book.”
–Rumaan Alam
Katrina Carrasco, Rough Trade
(MCD)
“An addictive treat sure to please fans of Sarah Waters and HBO’s Our Flag Means Death….Detailed historical research bolsters dynamic crime fiction in this spectacular queer adventure about opium smugglers in 19th-century Washington Territory.”
–Publishers Weekly
Fiona Williams, The House of Broken Bricks
(Holt)
“Fiona Williams captures the rural English countryside, exposing it to a loving and critical eye through a family haunted and grieving the loss of love, themselves, and the promise of the future….I really loved this book. The language, structure, and characterization are all exquisite, and Williams is clearly a writer in control of her craft.”
–Asale Angel-Ajani
Amanda Montell, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
(Atria/One Signal)
“Written with wit, smarts, and self-deprecating charm, The Age of Magical Overthinking is at once a guidebook for the era of misinformation and an illuminating, palm-to-the-forehead reveal of the delusions that underlie our own beliefs. Rarely have so few pages explained so much, so entertainingly.”
–Mary Roach
Peter Brown, Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love: The Beatles in Their Own Words: Unpublished, Unvarnished, and Told by the Beatles and Their Inner Circle
(St. Martin’s Press)
“[A] revealing oral history of the forces that spurred the band’s breakup…drawing from a trove of never before published conversations with each band member, except for John Lennon, and their intimates….Taken together, the interview transcripts reveal that ‘the time had come’ for the band’s split….Beatles fans will be impatient to get their hands on this.”
–Publishers Weekly
Tom Maxwell, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene: 1989 – 1999
(Hachette)
“In prose that is erudite, moving, and at times both hilarious and heart-breaking, Tom Maxwell has written the definitive history of the Chapel Hill music scene. Arduously researched and built around extensive interviews with almost all the major figures of the time, Maxwell reveals in…how one small group of people in a tiny southern town could come together to create a community of artistic exploration that…made a whole bunch of noise that inspired the world.”
–Nic Brown
Marie-Claire Bancquart, Every Minute Is First: Selected Late Poems (trans. Jody Gladding)
(Milkweed Editions)
“In Marie-Claire Bancquart’s Every Minute Is First, endlessness goes inward. We encounter…the infinite divisibility of time, of daily life, the transitory nature of our bones and skin. Gladding’s translation, visceral yet clear as glass, renders each poem as a lucid pane into a world that is eternally dissolving, eternally becoming, a world that ‘doesn’t refuse / to be broken like fresh bread.’ This collection brought me, again and again, to the place where eternity touches the body.”
–Michael Bazzett
Annell López, I’ll Give You a Reason: Stories
(Feminist Press)
“Through these elegant, poetic, and often devastating short stories, López explores both the profoundly familiar and the strange in everyday immigrant and working-class American life. I’ll Give You a Reason is a rare page-turner of a collection: startlingly sensitive, oozing with compassion, and full of both gentle and explosive revelations about human nature, forgiveness, and the grace we sometimes fail to offer ourselves. I couldn’t put this extraordinary book down.”
–Nancy Jooyoun Kim
Lily Meyer, Short War
(Strange Object)
“Lily Meyer writes with transfixing concision. In this excellent, assured first novel, Meyer’s knowledge of Chile comes vividly to life. Short War is astute and absorbing, a complex novel about adolescence and the insidious role of the United States in the Pinochet dictatorship.”
–Idra Novey
Astrid Roemer, Off-White (trans. Lucy Scott and David McKay)
(Two Lines Press)
“Roemer is equally interested in the (mis)treatment of women and race, particularly in the case of Heli, who has a married boyfriend back in Suriname while pursuing another frustrating relationship in the Netherlands. Roemer (via translators Scott and McKay) sustains a steady, patient delivery and deftly shifts perspectives among the characters….The narrative ripples with the feeling of history.”
–Kirkus Reviews
James Patterson, Matt Eversmann, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading
(Little Brown)
“A lighthearted compendium of first-person reflections from librarians and booksellers about their work and passion for literature…comfort food for bookworms.”
–Publishers Weekly
Clayton Page Aldern, The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains
(Dutton)
“This important watershed book has powerful immediacy as it explains in a clear, warm voice precisely how climate change is making tiny incremental changes in our brains and bodies. Many believe that human brains and bodies can resist or adapt to a warming world. But we learn here that there are limits. Penetrating, intensely personal, and impossible to put down, this is a book you need to read.”
–Annie Proulx
Norman Ohler, Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age
(Mariner)
“A fascinating book about the battle for LSD, which shines a light on the relationship between antagonistic powers, secret services, and the medical industry. An astonishing read, with remarkably vivid protagonists.”
–Edward B. Westermann
Charlie Huston, Catchpenny
(Vintage)
“Gripping and deeply imaginative, Catchpenny has the soul of a classic LA noir and the beating heart of an epic fantasy. Filled with literal magic and an unforgettable cast of characters, this novel pulsates with life and heat, anchored by a lovable anti-hero you can’t help but root for. Much like the eponymous Sid Catchpenny, a thief who can travel through mirrors, this book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me across the threshold of its world. A dazzling joyride of a book.”
–Gina Chung
Isaac Arnsdorf, Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy
(Little Brown)
“Isaac Arnsdorf is a political journalist par excellence, whose work is shaped by deep, immersive reporting, perceptive analysis and a keen understanding of history. Finish What We Started is a sophisticated yet unnerving portrait of the MAGA movement and a stark preview of what a second Trump term might portend. This is urgent and essential reading for anyone who cares about the state of America’s democracy.”
–Phillip Rucker
