July 29, 2022, 9:00am
July 30 is officially Paperback Book Day! It’s apparently the day that Penguin started publishing paperbacks, way back in 1935. And what a glorious day it was! Who doesn’t love paperbacks? They feel so nice in your hands! They fit so conveniently into your bag! Curious about the history behind the great American trade paperback? Look no further. Want to know about the first bestselling paperback original in America? It was a work of lesbian pulp fiction! Pumped for the new paperbacks coming out in August? Here we go…
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Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun
(Hogarth, August 2)
“Fans of Kleeman’s previous work will know that she is an expert at taking the conventions of genre and twisting them to her own ends … You may find yourself, like I did, transformed into one of the novel’s many conspiracy theorists.”
–The Chicago Review of Books
Mona Awad, All’s Well
(Scribner, August 2)
“The Bard is all over this book, salted with Awad’s sharp, dark humor … In Awad’s assured if trippy tale, everything serves to strengthen the spell.”
–The Boston Globe
Wole Soyinka, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
(Vintage, August 2)
“It is Soyinka’s greatest novel, his revenge against the insanities of the nation’s ruling class and one of the most shocking chronicles of an African nation in the 21st century.”
–The Guardian
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Savage Tongues
(Mariner, August 2)
“Van der Vliet Oloomi reflects the co-existence of pain and pleasure in lush descriptions of the southern Spanish landscape which simultaneously evoke its post-Reconquista history of Jewish and Muslim suppression.”
–Asian Review of Books
Stephen King, Billy Summers
(Gallery Books, August 2)
“He may always be considered a horror novelist, but King is doing the best work of his later career when the ghosts are packed away and the monsters are all too human.”
–The Guardian
Claire Oshetsky, Chouette
(Ecco, August 2)
“Chouette is a sublime parable of mother-love which ferociously eviscerates society’s failure to accept nonconformity.”
–The Guardian
David Hoon Kim, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost
(Picador, August 2)
“Those willing to immerse themselves in its mysterious and forlorn landscapes will be amply rewarded by this startlingly original debut.”
–Financial Times
Anna Qu, Made in China
(Catapult, August 2)
“Qu honor[s] these complexities, tell us we were not meant to swallow our pain and survive in this world without support systems.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Rick Bragg, The Speckled Beauty
(Vintage, August 2)
“Sit down, pull up a chair (or pick a spot under your favorite tree) and smile as Rick Bragg spins his mesmerizing tales of life down South with characteristically wry humor and wisdom.”
–BookPage
Nawaaz Ahmed, Radiant Fugitives
(Counterpoint, August 2)
“Ahmed swings for the fences in this luminously intelligent, culturally magisterial debut.”
–Kirkus
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
(Anchor, August 9)
“Whitehead flexes his literary muscles further, extending the boundaries and expectations of crime writing.”
–The Guardian
Olivia Laing, Everybody
(W. W. Norton, August 9)
“In this multilayered and masterfully structured book, Laing obsessively examines the life of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (a protege of Freud), drawing connections to other intellectuals, ranging from the Marquis de Sade to Malcolm X, while including stories from her own life.”
–The Washington Post
Kal Penn, You Can’t Be Serious
(Gallery, August 9)
“Penn has a pleasing ability to be serious and funny at the same time. A story well worth hearing.”
–Kirkus
Mieko Kawakami, tr. Sam Bett and David Boyd, Heaven
(Europa, August 16)
“Heaven is a raw, painful, and tender portrait of adolescent misery, reminiscent of both Elena Ferrante’s fiction and Bo Burnham’s 2018 film Eighth Grade.”
–NPR
Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
(Algonquin, August 16)
“To catalogue delights and to delight in them at some length, as Gay does, shines a light on otherwise private, intimate moments, and the book that collects this catalogue has the feel of a devotional poem.”
–The New York Review of Books
Alice McDermott, What About the Baby?
(Picador, August 16)
“Her love of fiction and its craft is apparent, and her advice is at once encouraging and direct.”
–Publishers Weekly
Sabina Murray, The Human Zoo
(Grove Press, August 16)
“Sabina Murray’s novel The Human Zoo deftly interweaves a narrative of a woman’s search for identity, a historical, cultural, and political tale of Filipino society, and a tension-filled, action-packed story of life in contemporary Philippines under the regime of a dictator.”
–New York Journal of Books
Tracy K. Smith, Such Color
(Graywolf, August 16)
“Smith’s tone is often ecstatic, generation-spanning, and despite all past—and present—violence, calls to the future with an emphatic statement of resistance and eternal existence.”
–Chicago Review of Books
Frances Wilson, Burning Man
(Picador, August 16)
“This is a book that performs a rare and laudable task: of saving a writer, posthumously, from himself. We are all beneficiaries of Wilson’s articulate and persuasive advocacy.”
–Literary Review
Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
(Black Bay, August 23)
“Amid all the tension and the horror, Donner has an eye for stray bits of grim comedy.”
–The New York Times
Pat Barker, The Women of Troy
(Anchor, August 30)
“Unspoken but emphatic is Barker’s grim message to our own times: little has changed. Women victims of war still silently do what they must in order to survive.”
–The New York Review of Books