June 27, 2023, 5:10am
It’s the 27th, which means that June, joltingly, is nearing its end. But with a new week comes a new slew of exciting fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (and, just as excitingly, books that bend the borders of genre). Below, you’ll find a wide selection of books out today (and one out the day before), including new multi-genre work from Ben Okri; powerful explorations of art, life, and criminality; memoirs about personal transformation; highly anticipated novels and new translations; studies of American radicalism; medical history that speaks to us today; and more. I hope you’ll add one (or many more) of these to your to-be-read lists!
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Thao Thai, Banyan Moon
(Mariner)
“A riveting mother-daughter tale spanning two different timelines, and anchored by the magnetic pull of a Gothic home known as the Banyan House, Banyan Moon is author Thao Thai’s beautiful debut.”
–Elle
Caroline O’Donoghue, The Rachel Incident
(Knopf)
“Caroline O’Donoghue, where have you been all my life? The Rachel Incident is a transportive joy, a superhighway to young friendship. Big-hearted, witty and expertly crafted—I want to live inside this book.”
–Sloane Crosley
Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession
(Knopf)
“The tale of a strong candidate for the title of ‘most prolific art thief ever….’ Finkel’s play-by-play of each theft has the pacing and atmosphere of a good suspense tale…. Finkel’s extensive research, survey of art history, and hours of interviews with his subject combine for a compelling read.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Tara Isabella Burton, Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians
(PublicAffairs)
“Self-Made takes the reader on an incredible journey that begins in the Renaissance and ends with the Kardashians, Donald Trump, and Silicon Valley’s extropians, tracing the peculiarly modern phenomenon of people who make themselves the objects of their life’s work. It is both revelatory and a warning about the ways that focus on the self distorts our individual lives and the broader society.”
–Francis Fukuyama
Mihret Sibhat, The History of a Difficult Child
(Viking)
“Selam, Mihret Sibhat’s ferociously witty young narrator, depicts her family’s religious and political struggles in Ethiopia in extraordinarily rich and original prose. The History of a Difficult Child is deeply moving as well as hilarious. This is a one-of-a-kind must-read debut.”
–Patricia Hampl
Ana Menéndez, The Apartment
(Counterpoint)
“One apartment on Miami Beach becomes a microcosm of seven decades of ordinary, extraordinary lives…. Vividly drawn characters and finely crafted prose enhance these interwoven tales. In Apartment 2B, the walls do talk, and their tales reveal their tenants’ minds and hearts.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Heidi Julavits, Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years
(Hogarth)
“An absolute stunner: frank, funny, self-aware, constantly surprising…one of the most insightful representations I’ve read of what it feels like to be alive these days…. Heidi Julavits’s work keeps growing in scope and ambition, asking the biggest questions, about love and fear and how best to make life meaningful, and answering with an inspiring level of courage, humor, and stylistic bravado.”
–George Saunders
David Neiwert, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy
(Melville House Publishing)
“Over the last two decades, David Neiwert has been one of our finest analysts of the American far right, paying sustained, serious and careful attention to the seemingly fringe movements of conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists. Now it turns out these movements are not so fringe after all but have helped elect Donald Trump as president. This crisply written book, grounded in his solid reporting, tells the whole sordid story with clarity and force.”
–Jeet Heer
Veronica Raimo, Lost on Me (trans. Leah Janeczko)
(Grove Press, Black Cat)
“Filled with humor and neuroses…. Raimo weaves together a series of nonlinear vignettes with a deft hand, connecting seemingly disparate moments through themes of longing, loneliness, identity, and, perhaps most profoundly, the concept of memory itself…. A witty and complex portrait of a woman becoming herself.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Alden Wicker, To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick—And How We Can Fight Back
(Putnam)
“[Wicker’s] mastery of her chosen subject is impressive, while it is her ability to not only enlighten readers regarding the obvious… but also to drive home the seriousness of her research that makes this a crucial book…. To Dye For should be widely read and has the potential of being a game changer in an increasingly scrutinized industry.”
–Booklist
Beth Raymer, Fireworks Every Night
(Random House)
“Fireworks Every Night is electric—a wild, raw, heartbreaking ride through Florida swamps and midwestern living rooms, mother-daughter relationships, and the discovery of self. Its honest, elegant look at money, identity, and desire in America powers a story that refuses to relent until the very end. Every sentence absolutely glimmers.”
–Kayla Rae Whittaker
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Negative Money: Poems
(Soft Skull)
“Lillian-Yvonne Bertram has written one stunner after another, experimenting with the page like a word alchemist. Their brilliant new collection reminds me of a poetic rumble between Terrance Hayes and Harryette Mullen. If you haven’t read them yet, Negative Money is your opportunity to fix that, and, as Jimi Hendrix said, pick up on it.”
–Adrian Matejka
Thea Glassman, Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television
(Running Press Adult)
“Glassman, entertainment editor at the website SheKnows, debuts with a fun, nostalgic look at how classic teen TV shows have influenced modern television…. Glassman offers enough tantalizing, behind-the-scenes scoop to keep readers hooked, peeling back the curtain on writers’ processes, casting decisions, and on-set gossip. This look at teen TV classics will delight anyone who loves to ‘did you know’ their friends while rewatching a favorite.”
–Publishers Weekly
Mark O’Connell, A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder
(Doubleday)
“A Thread of Violence is nourished by a powerful moral intelligence and an enormous curiosity. Mark O’Connell circles the inner life of the murderer Malcolm Macarthur with subtlety and forensic care. As he seeks, in many interviews, to explore Macarthur’s motives and sense of self, he becomes not only a great listener but a superb questioner, creating a narrative that is complex and disturbing as well as intriguing and compelling.”
—Colm Toíbín
Ben Okri, Tiger Work: Stories, Essays, and Poems About Climate Change
(Other Press)
“A collection that conveys an urgent message about humans’ ‘suicidal relationship with the earth’…. An artist’s ardent plea for change.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Derek Owusu, That Reminds Me
(And Other Stories)
“A dreamy, impressionistic offering of reassembled fragments of memories emerging through the misty beauty of a deliciously individualistic poetic sensibility with flashes of Twi and UK London Ebonics to further remind us of what has been missing from British poetry…. I can’t tell you how impressed I was and how much I enjoyed reading this stunning book.”
–Bernardine Evaristo
Wesley Lowery, American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress
(Mariner Books)
“American Whitelash offers a livid account of the hydra-like capacity of white-supremacist ideas not just to survive but to flourish…. It’s an infuriating, radicalizing read…. A good primer on the unhealthy state of the nation as we enter election season.”
–The Washington Post
Boo Trundle, The Daughter Ship
(Pantheon Books)
“Trundle’s book is as cheekily humorous as it is deadly serious, a chaotic performance art piece wearing a novel as a disguise…. A wildly strange reading experience that disorients and exhilarates in equal measure.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Jennifer Vanderbes, Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims
(Random House)
“A devastating and hard-to-put-down exposé of the thalidomide tragedy…. Meticulously researched and emotionally powerful, Vanderbes’s book uncovers layers of corporate negligence, government in action, greed, and deception, shedding light on the terrible consequences. Wonder Drug is not only a page-turner but also a much-needed call for accountability and justice—an essential addition to our understanding of medical history.”
—Megan O’Rourke
Brandon Shimoda, Hydra Medusa
(Nightboat Books)
“Hydra Medusa is stunning. Written partly by dream, partly by death, and wholly by a clarity born of deep spiritual and political reckoning, it traverses the ethics of being conventionally alive and inextricably bound to the dead. This is the continuation of a work by a poet who gets out of the way for poetry, who steps fully into it and vanishes.”
–Solmaz Sharif
Victoria Kielland, My Men (trans. Damion Searls)
(Astra House)
“Kielland’s dense, lyrical novel offers both insight and opacity…. Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls’ translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Itamar Vieira Junior, Crooked Plow (trans. Johnny Lorenz)
(Verso)
“A tour de force of injustice, tragedy, affection and human dignity reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Vieira Júnior’s book garnered top literary prizes in Portugal and Brazil. Its author has drawn comparisons to Jorge Amado, the giant of Brazilian letters who introduced the magic and plight of Afro-Brazilians to the world.”
–Americas Quarterly
Maia Toll, Letting Magic In: A Memoir of Becoming
(Running Press)
“At last! A memoir for those of us who sense that there is far more to our existence than what’s immediately before us… a wide-open place of wonder and mystery, of synchronicity and interconnection. Maia Toll chronicles her first steps into this world, which we can follow like a roadmap until we, too, emerge as mystics in our own right.”
–Barbara Becker
Carolyn Mackler, The Wife App
(Simon & Schuster)
“Carolyn Mackler’s delightful new novel is sexy but it’s not about sex. Think of all the other services wives perform without getting paid and you’ll get some of what this Wife App is all about. The Wife App is fresh, funny, empowering, and totally satisfying.”
–Judy Blume
David Bindman, “Race Is Everything”: Art and Human Difference
(Reaktion Books)
“In this wonderful book Bindman brilliantly explores the ways in which visual art has represented the very idea of racial hierarchy. Linking ‘scientific’ ideas with the works and lives of artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this lucid, lavishly illustrated text ranges from high art to popular racist imagery, and highlights resisters such as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois.”
–Stephen Lukes