March 31, 2023, 7:47am
As April rolls around and scattered showers might keep us indoors (or nudge us to a sheltered spot outdoors), it’s a great time to revisit the books we had been meaning to read. Whether you choose to read indoors or out—and I support both—a list of some intriguing books that will be released in paperback this month!
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Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Take My Hand
(Berkeley Books)
“Dolen Perkins-Valdez excels at mining the lives of nuanced, yet known, characters to convey the undying toll of slavery.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Soon Wiley, When We Fell Apart
(Dutton)
“Wiley is a master of structure and pacing, with a gift for ending chapters at their most gripping moments, which gives this quiet, mournful novel the page-turning quality of a thriller. Yet what makes When We Fell Apart such a must-read is its portrayal of the extraordinary pressure faced by young people in Korea to conform and perform.”
–The Washington Post
Randa Jarrar, Love Is An Ex-Country
(Catapult)
“Jarrar is a propulsive writer and the pieces amassed here are chaotic and exuberant, defiant and introspective….Together, [these essays’] effect is impressionistic but forceful, retracing the biography of a body whose identity and dignity have often been contested: Palestinian, fat, desirous and desired, once a site of violence and grief, now a site of pleasure and pride.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Reema Patel, Such Big Dreams
(Ballantine)
“Debut novelist Patel vividly portrays the many strata of Mumbai, from the streets to the slums to the upper echelons, through the eyes of a young woman seeking control of her own future.”
–Booklist
Louisa Lim, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong
(Riverhead)
“Bring[s] to light the remarkable resilience of Hong Kongers…[and] shows the vibrancy, volatility, attempted erasure, and resistance of the people.”
–Shondaland
Rebecca Solnit (editor) and Thelma Young Lutunatabua (editor), Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
(Haymarket Books)
“A powerful anthology of dispatches from the front lines of the struggle over the future of the planet, by some of the most important activist voices of our time. That such a collection could be assembled is itself a cause for hope.”
–Amitav Ghosh
Chelsea Bieker, Heartbroke
(Catapult)
“In nearly all the stories, the mother-child relationship is the beating heart, a heart that is shot through with the poison of poverty, substance abuse, and disenfranchisement. But that Bieker finds such humor and poetry in that heart is a testament to both her skill and her tender affection for her wayward characters. Larger than life and darker than hell.”
–Kirkus Reviews
William Brewer, The Red Book
(Knopf)
“In its aesthetics and ontology, The Red Arrow is a throwback to the pre-alt-lit tradition of autofiction as cunningly mutilated truth….The Red Arrow is beautiful, ambitious, whip-smart, and achingly sad.”
–Bookforum
Ben McGrath, Riverman
(Vintage)
“If the missing-person element provides the current that sweeps Riverman forward, the book amounts to much more: a portrait of forgotten American byways and the eccentric characters who populate them, a cursory history of river travel in America and, not least, an effort to solve the riddle of Conant himself—not only his whereabouts but also his elusive and irresistible nature. As a chronicle of perseverance and inchoate questing, this quietly profound book belongs on the shelf next to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.”
–The New York Times
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling
(Knopf)
“At a time when structural imbalances of capital, heath, gender, and race deepen divides, the young American Leila Mottley’s debut novel is a searing testament to the liberated spirit and explosive ingenuity of such storytelling . . . What makes Nightcrawling scarring and unforgettable as a novel is Mottley’s ability to change our language about and perception of the repressed and confined. She does this by entering the mind, body, and soul of Kiara, one of the toughest and kindest young heroines of our time.”
–The Guardian
Ama Asantewa Diaka, Woman, Eat Me Whole: Poems
(Ecco)
“In Ama Asantewa Diaka’s collection, Woman, Eat Me Whole, the great invention is in her manner of reconfiguring the metaphysical into a deeply African, even Ghanaian reckoning with the body of the woman—it is thick with blood, flesh, and ferocious intelligence….Diaka’s meditations—revealing, complicated and elegant—take the most endearing and engaging risks, even as she produces verse of urgent and timely relevance. Her poetic presence in the world excites me greatly.”
–Kwame Dawes
Julia Glass, Vigil Harbor
(Anchor)
“In finely detailed yet translucent descriptions of Vigil Harbor, an old coastal Massachusetts town, Glass summons a near-future ravaged by environmental devastation and ‘political extremes’.”
–Booklist
Aamina Ahmad, The Return of Faraz Ali
(Riverhead)
“Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers, no matter how monstrous or self-interested or defeated they become….It extends through generations and transformations of place, all the way to a devastating final chapter, fully human, fully engaged with what makes us human.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Jennifer Close, Marrying the Ketchups
(Vintage)
“Close…drops readers smack into Oak Park, a leafy Chicago suburb, and lets them hear the hiss of fryers hitting hot oil and catch an ice-cold Old Style sliding across the bar….Close lets each character’s unique personality shine.”
–Booklist
Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief
(Tiny Reparations Books)
“A tender and tenacious art-heist story wrapped around an intimate cultural history of extraction, Portrait of a Thief is a novel that names the unsutured wounds left by the violence of immigration, xenophobia, and diasporic longing in the lives of its Asian American characters, a story of the comradery of resistance and a testament to righteous grievance.”
–Vulture
Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start (and How to Stop Them)
(Crown Publishing)
“Required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Steve Toltz, Here Goes Nothing
(Melville House)
“…a moving meditation on all that is wrong with our world today and an innovative take on the afterlife.”
–The Irish Times
Michael P. Branch, On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer
(Pegasus)
“In this charming travelogue, Branch recounts his tracking down of various jackalope tall tales and the roots of such hoaxes and our fascination with them. He ends with the amazing true story of the discovery of the role of a virus in actual naturally occurring ‘horned rabbits,’ and how this led to the creation of the vaccine for human papillomavirus.”
–Booklist
Lisa Hsiao Chen, Activities of Daily Living
(Norton)
“Like the work of writer Rachel Cusk, who brought new thinking to what constitutes a novel, Activities of Daily Living takes chances with the form to strong effect.”
–San Franciso Chronicle
Colm Toibin, Vinegar Hill: Poems
(Beacon Press)
“A meditative probe into the language of ordinary days.”
–The New York Times