Happy Pub Day to THE WOMEN COULD FLY, & a bunch of upcoming & recent releases
In case your to-read list was feeling a little lonely (lol), here are some new books I'm excited about
First and foremost: Happy pub day to The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings (which I previously praised here)!
In honor of New Title Tuesday and Giddings’ pub day, I wanted to highlight some other recent and upcoming releases that have caught my eye and made me want to empty my bank account (or at least run up my holds list at the library). So anyway, support your local library and/or local indies, and/or maybe make use of Bookshop.org, and/or maybe preorder some of the future releases or add them to your to-read lists if they catch your eye ;)
Note: starred descriptions below are taken directly from a New York Times article titled “Globetrotting: Your sneak preview of books in translation coming out in 2022” by The New York Times, last updated April 28, 2022, which can be found here.
All other quoted descriptions are taken from publisher websites.
Also out today and recently out (as of last week)
Also out today (August 9, 2022)
Mother in the Dark by Kayla Maiuri - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Several of the writers I follow have been buzzing about this debut: “A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters.” Also, Maiuri has a pretty cool bookish TikTok, which you can find here.
A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang - Novel (Literary Fiction)
A book that has been on several of the books-to-look-out-for-in-2022 lists I’ve perused, and it sounds excellent: “An epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post–Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one’s dreams and the lives we leave behind.”
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi (translated by David Boyd and Lucy North) - Novel (Literary Fiction)
*In this absurdist novel, Ms. Shibata, tired of mistreatment at work, pretends to be pregnant. Soon the lie absorbs everything.
Recently out (as of August 2, 2022)
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Another book that I first heard about because other writers I’ve loved were excited for it: “From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself—a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America.”
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid - Novel (Literary Fiction)
I’ve read several Hamid novels now, and they’re always intriguing and thought-provoking: “From the New York Times-bestselling author of Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change. One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him.”
Coming in the next month or two
Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai (translated by John Batki), available August 16, 2022 - Novel (Literary Fiction)
*A novel written in entirely one sentence narrated by an obsessive librarian named Herman Melvill (no e).
A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts by Wang Yin (translated by Andrea Lingenfelter), available August 16, 2022 - Poetry
* Poetry that hinges on the encounter between the physical and the spiritual, in the first bilingual collection of the acclaimed Chinese poet’s work to be published in English.
Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince, available August 23, 2022 - Nonfiction
I honestly can’t remember where I got this one from–most likely a books-to-look-out-for list–but it wound up on my to-read list for good reason: “An urgent investigation of the most underreported, seismic consequence of climate change: how it will force us to change where—and how—we live.”
The Invention of Green Colonialism by Guillaume Blanc (translated by Helen Morrison), available August 29, 2022 - Nonfiction
*Using previously unpublished historical materials, a historian argues that the “Africa” imagined by the West is a fallacy and that attempts by the West to “save” it amount to a new form of colonialism. (Note: Looks a bit more like a textbook than a *book* book, so more expensive and not as available maybe?)
Marshland by Otohiko Kaga (translated by Albert Novick), available August 30, 2022 - Novel (Literary Fiction)
*An epic novel following a couple wrongly imprisoned for a deadly train bombing over the course of three decades.
Publisher’s Website (currently down?)
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, available September 6, 2022 - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Another find from some list somewhere, I imagine, but with ringing endorsements from Ann Patchett and Marlon James, and sounding excellent: “A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller.”
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen, Available September 13, 2022 - Poetry
I’ve followed Chen Chen on Twitter for years now, and he’s always incisive with deft threads and silliness and joy. “What happens when everything falls away, when those you call on in times of need are themselves calling out for rescue? In his highly anticipated second collection, Chen Chen continues his investigation of family, both blood and chosen, examining what one inherits and what one invents, as a queer Asian American living through an era of Trump, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The Keeper: Soccer, Me, and the Law that Changed Women’s Lives by Kelcey Ervick, available September 20, 2022 - Graphic Memoir
Kelcey is so cool. She taught a one-week workshop when I was in grad school, and her work is always interesting and innovative, hybrid, hard to pin down. She also has an excellent substack called the Habit of Art that you should check out, where she has been chronicling her journey as an artist as well as a writer:
RE: Keeper: “A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.”
Bonus 2022 Rec:
In Stories We Thunder by V. Ruiz, forthcoming in 2022 - Poetry
I had the honor of publishing a micro prose piece by V. Ruiz back in my New South fiction editor days (which you can check out here) and am VERY excited that their first full-length poetry collection is on the horizon. I’m not sure if there’s an official release date set at this point, but I already preordered it from Sundress Publications (which you can do as well, if you feel so inclined, at the link below). Blurbs from incredible Atlanta-based poet Ilya Kaminsky and *newly minted Poet Laureate of the U.S. Ada Limón*! I mean…
“In Stories We Thunder, depicts the difficult and hopeful work of healing. Here, a bilingual mother writes letters of advice to their hija, balancing forgiveness and self-preservation in the face of the enormous obstacles of their world: sexual assault, racism, and drug addiction.”
The Way Far Away (2023 Books)
Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias, expected release date February 14, 2023 - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Another one where I can’t remember exactly whence the recommendation, but it wound up on my to-read list, and it sounds great: “In John Manuel Arias’s lush and lyrical debut, a Costa Rican family wrestles with the aftermath of neocolonialism, a deadly secret, and an all-consuming fire.”
Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America by Will Sommer, expected release date February 21, 2023 - Nonfiction
I have an unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories and QAnon especially, and have been waiting for this book for like a year already, so I’m very excited to see a release date finally. In the meantime, I have been keeping up with Sommer’s Fever Dreams podcast from The Daily Beast:
Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear by Erica Berry, expected release date February 21, 2023 - Nonfiction
Basically, if (friend from undergrad and excellent, successful writer) Isle McElroy mentions a book, I immediately add it to my To-Read list on Goodreads. Though it does not appear to be available to preorder yet, it did just have its cover reveal, and it looks amazing.
Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine, expected release date June, 2023 - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Another Isle McElroy mention. This has only just been announced and doesn’t even have a site via the publisher yet, nor a cover, but the description in Publisher’s Weekly was enough: “The novel, Fine’s third (after last year’s well-received The Upstairs House), is set at an 18th-century all-girls orphanage in Venice known for producing world-class musicians. Flatiron said the story is told as a gothic fairy tale and ‘follows two students and the dangerous wager and boundless desire that draws them together.’”
Fine’s website, for your perusal
Speaking of which, Bonus Rec: People Collide by Isle McElroy, forthcoming in 2023.
(Last I heard, People Collide is coming “in 2023,” so that’s as precise as I can be)
Cheers and happy reading!