There are 26 new books out today!
September is upon us! And, while this does sadly mean the end of summer (on calendars if not always on thermometers), it also means that a month of exciting new literary releases is here. Below, you’ll find nearly thirty fascinating new books out today: debut novels, new fiction from established authors, contemplative and controversial nonfiction, wide-ranging poetry, and more. I know that your to-be-read lists keep growing and growing, but, if you’ll allow me to play the tempting devil of tomes, it can’t hurt to add a few more—or many more—below to that list, can it? (I know I’ll be, despite the unnerving size of my own to-be-read piles lying around the apartment). No matter what you’re in the mood for, you’ll almost certainly find something intriguing on the shelves today!
*
Zadie Smith, The Fraud
(Penguin)
“The cultural and literary life of Victorian England erupts vibrantly from each page of this extraordinary novel….Smith wrestles contemporary themes surrounding women’s independence, racism, and class disparity from centuries-old events.”
–Library Journal
Anise Vance, Hush Harbor
(Hanover Square Press)
“Taut, gripping, morally complex, and masterfully executed, Hush Harbor could not be more timely. Anise Vance illuminates America’s racial realities with unflinching, clear-eyed vision while also asking a timeless question. How do we remain humane to those who strip us of humanity? This is a marvelous achievement.”
–Ye Chun
Ruth J. Simmons, Up Home: One Girl’s Journey
(Random House)
“Told with both forthrightness and humility, this compellingly written memoir is a story of dreaming and becoming….Up Home is far more than a record of the path to success of one of the truly great college presidents in the history of American education; it is a riveting work of literature, destined to take its place in the canon of great African American autobiographies. Simmons’s best friend and confidante, Toni Morrison, would be proud!”
–Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Meg Kissinger, While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
(Celadon Books)
“Bearing witness is an act of courage. Meg Kissinger has courageously given us a chronicle of love, loss, family and obligation, all refracted through the lens of mental illness. Here is a story as urgent and indelible as the bonds that hold its characters together. In speaking to her family’s experience she has laid bare our own collective one.”
–Jelani Cobb
Yiyun Li, Wednesday’s Child: Stories
(FSG)
“In this exquisite collection of eleven stories, the immigrant experience is exponentially complicated by a far more commonplace predicament: having to care for children….The…stories largely revolve around Asian-born or Asian American women dealing with anxiety and loss in their or their parents’ adoptive country, the United States….Wednesday’s Child highlights the vulnerability of children, but Li…allows for quiet acts of audacious resilience by women who have likely been fortified by their previous trials.”
–Shelf Awareness
Etaf Rum, Evil Eye
(Harper)
“Wise, expansive, and deeply compassionate, Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye takes a deep dive into the tensions between generations and cultures as it follows a young Palestinian-American woman on her journey into self-discovery. This fierce story explores the notion of women’s freedom and of what becomes of identity when gender roles, family, and cultural traditions are challenged and rewritten. A rich and compelling read.”
–Diana Abu-Jaber
Ben Lerner, The Lights: Poems
(FSG)
“In a muted and heartfelt collection that alternates between poems and prose pieces, Lerner (Mean Free Path) brings new life to familiar fixations: the mediation of experience, contemporary art, fatherhood, and the poet’s role as conduit for both individual desire and collective action….Readers are left with a gorgeous artifact of impasse between ‘lyric and epic, ‘ and a mournful yet exuberant catalogue of ‘darker ruminations tinged with gold.'”
–Publishers Weekly
Mary Jo Bang, A Film in Which I Play Everyone
(Graywolf)
“Bang’s cinematic ninth collection (after A Doll for Throwing) takes a tour of lived experience through a capricious lens that superpositions the familiar and the uncanny….Wry and invigorating, this resonant collection mollifies the need for certainty.”
–Publishers Weekly
Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
“Truly exceptional….Gurba’s lyrical prose forces us to face the sexism, racism, homophobia, and other systems of oppression that allow some Americans to get away with murder while the rest of us live in constant fear. Every piece is rife with well-timed humor and surprising conclusions, many of which come from the author’s staggering command of history….[T]his book is a masterpiece of wit and vulnerability.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Margaret Meyer, The Witching Tide
(Scribner)
“With characters refreshingly of their time, rather than straw men parroting the mores of ours, this novel is an immersive tale of the East Anglian witch trials as seen through the eyes of an absorbing protagonist. It showcases the horrors inflicted by social hysteria, and offers a three-dimensional view of individual participants whose roles and motivations are differently shaped by religious faith, interpersonal connections, and intellectual acuity. This is an accomplished debut work by an author to watch.”
–Booklist
Lang Leav, Others Were Emeralds
(Harper Perennial)
“A heartrending novel….Leav skillfully captures the details of senior-year high school life, but is even better in depicting Ai’s parents’ stories of surviving war and persecution and Ai’s teenage experiences with microaggressions and outward racism. It’s a resonant portrayal.”
–Publishers Weekly
Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for Is In the Library
(Hanover Square Press)
“A comforting read filled with serendipity and simple wisdom, this is a celebration of community, connection, and the transformative power of libraries.”
–Booklist
Melissa Etheridge, Talking to My Angels
(Harper Wave)
“[Etheridge is] especially good at linking the lyrics of her best-known work to the experiences that inspired them….Most affecting, though, are the sections about Etheridge’s son, Beckett, and his descent into opioid addiction….This clear-eyed look at life, loss, and art-making resonates.”
–Publishers Weekly
Aaron Neville, Tell It Like It Is: My Story
(Hachette)
“[Neville] leaves readers sharing his conviction that his life has been something of a miracle and that ‘my voice was my salvation’….The author’s life has been an inspiration….A worthwhile musical survivor’s story.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Chris Bachelder, Jennifer Habel, Dayswork
(Norton)
“How to describe this deeply moving and entirely original book Dayswork is at once a portrait of a marriage, a meditation on art and ambition, a pandemic novel, a middle-age comedy, a brilliant collage of Herman Melville, and a tour de force of collaborative writing. Above all, it is a love story. Out of the most difficult times and unlikely materials, Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel have created something that can only be described as extraordinary.”
–Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Gill Paul, A Beautiful Rival: A Novel of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden
(William Morrow)
“A brilliantly entertaining novel about the ugly side of the beauty business. With incredible attention to detail, Gill Paul takes the reader up close and personal with Arden and Rubenstein and their battle for dominance in the emerging beauty industry of the 1900s. Paul blends fact and fiction as smoothly as Arden’s Venetian cream, and with pithy dialogue and a wicked sense of humor, brings her leading ladies and their outrageous backstabbing and jealousies roaring to life on the page.”
–Hazel Gaynor
Phoenicia Rogerson, Herc
(Hanover Square Press)
“A brilliant debut! Rogerson has produced a fresh and totally original retelling of the Hercules myth. For the first time, long-silent characters from the hero’s story are given a voice. They provide a sparkling new perspective on the club-wielding, all-daring son of Zeus. A Herculean triumph of creative writing, and a joy to read. Finally, a Hercules for the twenty-first century!”
–Alex Rowson
Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born?
(Astra House)
“Michaels merges modernist poetry with contemporary technology in this inventive outing….[Do You Remember Being Born? asks] probing and humane questions about what it means to be an artist.”
–Publishers Weekly
Marcie Bianco, Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom
(PublicAffairs)
“Anyone who believes equality with men is the benchmark for women’s rights, well-being, safety, or power should read this book. Bianco’s thought-provoking, myth-busting rejection of this idea, in defense of freedom as our goal, is an essential read.”
–Soraya Chemaly
Sheena Patel, I’m a Fan
(Graywolf)
“Patel’s debut is one of the first great social media novels….A bold, electric, and ruthless tale of sex, class, status, obsession, self-destruction, and the worst parts of being online, all told from the perspective of a beguiling unnamed narrator.”
–The Millions
Catherine LeRoux, The Future (trans. Susan Ouriou)
(Biblioasis)
“The novel answers concrete questions: what happens after the end of the world?….Nothing can erase the survivors’ traumatic memories but their hope persists and their present is full of intergenerational support and characters who create new ways of living among the ruins….Catherine Leroux delivers a dazzling and original novel, above all a testament to the humanity and resilience of communities in the margins.”
–Etudes
William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember
(Atria Books)
“Historical fiction that resonates with our time makes for a great reading experience—especially when it’s done in the literary style of rich, careful language; realistic evocation of place; and deep exploration into character. William Kent Krueger has delivered just this combination in his latest standalone novel, The River We Remember.”
–New York Journal of Books
Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany
(Basic Books)
“With Beyond the Wall, Hoyer confirms her place as one of the best young historians writing in English today. On the heels of her superb Blood and Iron…comes another masterpiece, this one about the aftermath of the Third Reich in the East. Well-researched, well-written, and profoundly insightful, it explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany.”
–Andrew Roberts
Kim Coleman Foote, Coleman Hill
(Sjp Lit)
“In this sweeping and astonishing debut, Kim Coleman Foote explores complex questions of legacy and inheritance, reckoning frankly with the violence that has followed the Coleman family from slavery through emancipation and the Great Migration, but holding space for the resilience, storytelling, and second acts that also compose the family history. Coleman Hill is a gorgeous collage of history, memory, and imagination.”
–Danielle Evans
Ghassan Zeineddine, Dearborn
(Tin House)
“At once urgent and timeless, the stories in Dearborn are searing and unflinching snapshots of an immigrant community struggling to carve out space for itself, to find home in unfamiliar territory. The unforgettable characters slash through stereotypes as they navigate heart-wrenching and absurd situations, all the while grappling with identity and intergenerational tensions. The world Zeineddine creates is filled with beauty, brutal realities, and humor. I couldn’t put it down.”
–Zaina Arafat
Jonathan Conyer, I Wasn’t Supposed to Be Here: Finding My Voice, Finding My People, Finding My Way
(Legacy Lit)
“A heartfelt memoir about overcoming long odds to rise from poverty, dysfunction, and the tyranny of low expectations. Inspirational but never sentimental, with many lessons on ‘adding value to the world.'”
–Kirkus Reviews
