Toni Morrison! Joyce Carol Oates! Britney and Beyoncé! 27 new books out today.
The summer continues on, a summer already marked by corybantic chaos in America and abroad. Sometimes, I must admit, it feels so strange to see the horrors of the world in one moment and think about recommending books in the next. And yet the truth is that this is part of how we make it through this long dark night of a nation. Art may not stop the bloodshed and bigotry and buffoonery of despots in any one moment, and yet by offering us lights to live by, it helps us keep going, helps us find new meanings, helps us not give in—and giving in, of course, is precisely what despots most want. A book can be like a lantern, whether it be a cozy quick read or one that lights our salamandrine fires into revolt. Remembering this helps me remember what it’s all about—and how grateful I am to share these lists with you each week, no matter the state of the world.
So I hope you enjoy the twenty-seven new offerings below in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which include new work by Joyce Carol Oates; a new imagining of the life of Dorothy’s family before Oz; a rare look at Toni Morrison the editor; an exploration of the oft-unfairly-maligned women of pop who shaped the world today; musical odysseys into The Grateful Dead, ABBA, and Talking Heads; and much, much more. Let these console, provoke, and offer new ways of encountering the world.
Stay safe in these tumultuous times, Dear Readers, and see you next week.
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Joyce Carol Oates, Fox
(Hogarth)
“Reading Fox is like being spellbound by a hypnotist who may not wish you well, who leads you, with a deceptively gentle hand, toward that dark forest you fear. Joyce Carol Oates has created a sinister fable all the more chilling for persuading its readers to collude in the unthinkable. Eerie, shocking, provoking, and beautifully written, Fox is yet further proof that Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today.”
–Gillian Flynn
Shoshana von Blackensee, Girls Girls Girls
(Putnam)
“Girls Girls Girls tackles addiction and depression, loneliness and otherness; it’s a teary-eyed love letter to the San Francisco that remains and to its establishments that are long-gone. But above all it tenderly tells the story of a vulnerable young queer person in an unfamiliar place, just trying to create a new version of home.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Jonas Hassen Khemeri, The Sisters
(FSG)
“The Sisters is a thoroughly fascinating story about sibling rivalry, loyalty, and love, one that is about the microcosm of the family as much as it is about the bigger world. Jonas Hassen Khemiri is the very rare combination of a deep intellectual and a true storyteller, as smart as he is entertaining. He is an important voice, a curious mind, and a generous teacher to all of us who have tried to imitate him.”
–Fredrik Backman
Dana A. Williams, Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship
(Amistad)
“[I]n this meticulously researched work Dana Williams introduces us to Morrison the literary editor, who shaped American publishing by introducing a generation of new voices and topics to the reading public. Through Williams we come to see Morrison’s editorial work, along with her fiction, as part of a larger visionary project that was nothing short of transformative. Toni at Random is a major accomplishment.”
–Farah Jasmine Griffin
Catherine Lacey, The Möbius Book
(FSG)
“Is it a memoir or a novel or a little of both? Better to categorize Lacey’s latest as its own genre, a category-defining, creative, thought-provoking piece of literature on loss, betrayal, friendships, faith, and more….Unlike life, there is no beginning or end, just a story that follows its own strange, wild, and mesmerizing pattern. A sui generis work, like no other.”
–Booklist
Nora Princiotti, Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade
(Ballantine Books)
“Hit Girls serves as both a scholarly exploration and a joyful celebration of the female pop titans who not only dominated charts but rewrote the pop music playbook of an entire generation. What makes Hit Girls shine is how it bridges our butterfly-clipped, bedazzled past with today’s music world, revealing how the pop songs we belted in our bedrooms shaped everything we’re streaming now.”
–Kate Kennedy
Aaron Shurin, Elixir: New and Selected Poems
(Nightboat)
“[Shurin’s] has never been a poetry of uncomplicated self-expression, but a poetry that seeks both to embody and to incite transformation….An important addition to and revision of the canon of American poetry.”
–Reginald Shepherd
Heather Clark, The Scrapbook
(Pantheon)
“Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook is a masterpiece. This beautifully crafted, quietly devastating love story reminds us of the epic impact of the Second World War across continents and through generations, its scars perhaps most poignantly felt in the intimate interactions between two solitary people.”
–Rebecca Donner
Hazel Gaynor, Before Dorothy
(Berkley)
“In Technicolor prose, Hazel Gaynor gives new meaning to the familiar phrase ‘there’s no place like home’ in this stunning novel that imagines the real lives of Auntie Em, Uncle Henry, Dorothy, and Toto in the dust bowl of the Depression. Readers will love collecting Easter eggs from the 1939 movie scattered throughout this moving story about family secrets and the enduring power of love. Ingeniously done.”
–Kerri Maher
Ivy Pochoda, Ecstasy
(Putnam)
“[A] defiantly feminist reimagining of Euripides’ The Bacchae….Pochoda’s sun-drenched, blood-soaked literary fever dream pits hubris against hedonism, likens religion to rave culture, and explores the transformative power of female rage. Incandescent prose, present-tense narration, and frequent perspective shifts impart urgency, rendering the characters’ passions palpable. It’s a gleefully transgressive tour de force.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jonathan Gould, Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock
(Mariner Books)
“Definitive….Not just for Talking Heads fans—it’s a masterful dive into downtown New York in the 70s, and the changing face of rock music.”
–Town & Country
Jan Gradvall, The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover
(St. Martin’s Press)
“There are very few artists who are both extraordinarily successful and culturally important. ABBA were both and only Jann Gradvall—as the most respected of Swedish critics—could tell their story of sex, drugs and pop and roll with the gravitas their incomparable songs deserve.”
–Merck Mercuriadis
Brian Anderson, Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Loud and Clear reveals that the Grateful Dead’s iconic sound system was far more than a fleeting experiment; it was a landmark in the band’s tireless quest to achieve the utmost clarity in live sound. Through extensive research, Anderson presents the Wall as both a groundbreaking technological feat and a living character shaped by the labor and singular vision of the many collaborators who brought it into being…[explores] one of the most ambitious and mythologized sound systems in live music history.”
–Annabelle Walsh
Irene Solà, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness
(Graywolf)
“In the spirit of Ágota Kristóf and Juan Rulfo, I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness is forged from the deepest and truest stories about the perversity of the body, the sheer drama of the natural world, and the vengeful side of the divine. A fecund and daring book.”
–Catherine Lacey
Emma Pei Yin, When Sleeping Women Wake
(Ballantine Books)
“Yin’s debut is a riveting account of the resistance of three very different women during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong—not only against the occupation, but against the traditions that bound them. These are women’s stories beautifully intertwined with history brought to life!”
–Eve J. Chung
Jayson Greene, UnWorld
(Knopf)
“Gripping, tender, haunting, and so gorgeously written, UnWorld is a staggeringly beautiful debut novel. With nuance and subtlety, with grace and deep feeling, Jayson Greene writes about the most ancient of human stories of love and grief, alongside the pressing, hypermodern concerns of the digital age, like artificial intelligence. On an idea level, on an emotional level, and on a sentence level, I was entranced.”
–Suleika Jaouad
Robert W. Fiesler, American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives
(Dutton)
“American Scare is an important history of how Black activists and gay teachers were targeted by a legislative inquest in Florida in the late 1950s. But it’s also something more: The story of how this history was recovered and revealed after authorities tried to hide it. An important, riveting book both for those who value history and for those who want to understand the process by which history is preserved—and the ways the past impacts the present.”
–Walter Isaacson
Alix Dick, Antero Garcia, The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman’s Reckoning with America’s Inhumane Math
(Beacon Press)
“In a time of rising xenophobia, Alix Dick courageously shares her story—her fears and her dreams, her struggles, her determination, and her heart. The Cost of Being Undocumented is a deeply intimate accounting of the economic, mental, and physical toll of living as an undocumented person in the United States.”
–Jessica Lander
Dorothy Armstrong, Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets
(St. Martin’s Press)
“A wonderfully conceived and very engagingly written window onto global culture, history and politics through the prism of carpets….[T]hese textiles have formed the home-settings of nomadic and settled peoples from lowly farmers to the highest aristocracy, across the world. Armstrong’s enthusiasm, historical and technical command of her field, and her deep knowledge of so much of world history shines through like a bolt of enlivening sunshine.”
–Jaś Elsner
Dennard Dale, How to Dodge a Cannonball
(Holt)
“Grand dreams, inflated egos, and cruel twists of fate are often the stuff of great satires and this first novel by Dayle evokes such classic accounts of the human condition in conflict as Candide, Catch-22, and at least a couple of books by Evelyn Waugh. Historical burlesque as lively in invention as it is ingenious in execution.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Mia McKenzie, These Heathens
(Random House)
“A one-of-a-kind, urgently needed novel about choosing the life you want to lead….Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and Atlanta’s queer Black community, Mia McKenzie vividly depicts how Black women create circles of trust, freedom, and autonomy with one another.”
–Leila Mottley
Amber Oliver, When the Music Hits
(Ballantine Books)
“When the Music Hits compellingly and hauntingly amplifies the unending conflict between striving for more and not losing your soul in the process. Amber Oliver shatters preconceived notions about the music industry’s glamour and romance, revealing truths that, despite everything, still comprise a song of hope….A decibel-raising debut.”
–Mateo Askaripour
Robert Finch, Summers in Squid Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey
(Norton)
“Summers in Squid Tickle is astonishing. Robert Finch’s deeply moving meditation is utterly transporting–as alive as the rugged landscape that Robert Finch so vividly describes. I was completely immersed in Squid Tickle. This is a tour de force, a brilliant coda to a remarkable career, and one of the best travel books I’ve ever read.”
–Susan Cahalan
Kate Marvel, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet
(Ecco)
“The brilliant gift of Human Nature is that not only does it educate, delight, and inspire, but it allows us to finally feel a multitude of responses to climate change—what many books fail to recognize, and yet what humans actually do. This is essential reading from one of the kindest and most whip-smart guides for understanding our planet. Kate Marvel’s writing is very much a marvel—I’m left astonished and so grateful this book finally exists.”
–Aimee Nezhukumatathi
Kelly Ramsey, Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
(Scribner)
“Nobody has captured the violent dualities of wildfire, its destruction, and its visceral, almost inexplicable allure quite like Kelly Ramsey has in Wildfire Days…provid[es] an intimate look at the devastation not only of wildfire, but of witnessing the places and people you love change before your eyes…a captivating, detailed exploration of the culture of fighting fire in the American West…[and] a truly masterful rumination on growing and learning amidst—and in spite of—the scorched earth around us. I was left in awe.”
–Amanda Monthei
Evanthia Bromiley, Crown
(Grove Press)
“This is a book of poetry, every sentence offering up gifts. It is also a book built of deep suspense, a survival story of the first order. An evicted mother must leave her two children alone in the world while she goes to the hospital to give birth…each voice in this novel comes alive with ferocious originality and tenderness. Evanthia Bromiley writes at the intersection of poverty and motherhood better than almost anyone I know…an astonishing, revelatory first novel.”
–Emily Fridlund
Karim Dimechkie, The Uproar
(Little Brown)
“A white New York City social worker confronts the limits of his altruism in this tense offering from Dimechkie…Dimechkie’s morality tale asks tough questions about the role of self-interest in conflicts fueled by class and race divisions. It’s sure to start conversations.”
–Publishers Weekly
