It’s the middle of July already! What a July it’s been so far, much less what a 2024 it’s been. If you need to sit back and process it all for a bit in the background while you read something delightful, well, you’re in luck, for I have twenty-three fascinating new ones to recommend, all at out today.
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You’ll find innovative poetry collections by the indigenous writer M. S. RedCherries and the multi-genre JoAnna Novak, each well worth checking out. In fiction, we have new work from Halle Butler, Ruby Todd, Eugene Lim, Minsoo Kang, Alisa Alering, Meg Shaffer, and many others; you’ll also find a selection of new and classic stories by Brad Watson, with a foreword by Joy Williams. It’s an especially robust day for nonfiction, with many new memoirs, biographies, and explorations to consider. You’ll find an examination of Judy Blume’s life and work; a memoir by Hyeseung Song memorably described by David Henry Hwang as “a Portrait of the Artist as a Young AAPI Woman”; a collection of real-life tales from tree collectors; a look at the complexities of sharks and of being a Black woman in science; a provocative history of food and inequality in America, from the Trail of Tears to school lunches today; and much, much more.
Add some (or many!) of these to your to-be-read lists! It’ll be worth it.
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Halle Butler, Banal Nightmare
(Random House)
“In Butler’s world, everyone hates each other, every day is excruciating in its mundanity, every thought is the beginning of an Escherian journey round and round in hell, and somehow the whole thing is unbelievably funny. With the force of an episode of marijuana psychosis and the extreme detail of a hyperrealistic work of art, Banal Nightmare attempts transcendence through anxiety and dissociation, nailing a series of contemporary characters…to the wall.”
–Jia Tolentino
Ruby Todd, Bright Objects
(Simon & Schuster)
“Bright Objects is the story of a woman consumed by an unquellable obsession, reduced by solitude and incompleteness, caught in an unconscious embattled conspiracy of her own making. Ruby Todd writes of the strain of fearful events and discoveries, and the fatal inevitability of a sense of guilt when someone close to one is killed, all the while revealing to us the hidden realities that lie in wait for us.”
–Susanna Moore
Eugene Lim, Fog & Car
(Coffee House Press)
“Eugene Lim’s impressive debut novel…has the shape of a long turnpike that runs into an urban snarl of on and off ramps…[It’s] a supernatural tangle of a plot—souls are exchanged, coincidences multiply….Suiting the action to the word and the word to the action is no easy feat, but it is one that Lim has achieved with his first tragicomic novel.”
–The Brooklyn Rail
Rachelle Bergstein, The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us
(Atria / One Signal Publishers)
“The Genius of Judy interlaces biography, textual analysis, and cultural history so deftly and so entertainingly that you don’t even realize how much you’re learning while you enjoy it. A tour of Blume’s life, work, and various contexts as approachable, wise, humane, and honest as the master herself.”
–Isaac Butler
Hyeseung Song, Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl
(Simon & Schuster)
“A savagely beautiful memoir. Skillfully crafted and achingly heartfelt, Docile creates worlds through richly-observed details, told with a powerful narrative drive. Eloquent, often funny, and always unflinchingly honest, Song has created a Portrait of the Artist as a Young AAPI Woman which will be read and cherished for generations to come.”
–David Henry Hwang
Amy Stewart, The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession
(Random House)
“Amy Stewart brings us inside the hidden world of tree collecting in this delightfully offbeat book about a group of otherwise normal people as diverse as the specimens they collect. The Tree Collectors will take root in your consciousness and nurture your soul.”
–William Alexander
M. S. RedCherries, mother
(Penguin)
“mother is exquisite. Through these beautiful pieces of prose and poetry, m.s. RedCherries takes us on a journey back not just to the narrators’ birth family but to their cultural legacy. Part elegy and part rallying cry, while mother examines the systemic injustice done to indigenous people, this is more than just a meditation on generational wrongs….[A] testimony of empowerment in lush language that feels gorgeous and fresh.”
–Xochitl Gonzalez
Joanna Novak, Domestirexia: Poems
(Soft Skull)
“Mysterious and rich with allusions, the poems in Domestirexia feel physically embroidered, as if I could run my fingers over them and feel densely woven thread. This tactility has everything to do with how Novak writes desire, and also with her wildly inventive, knotty, rococo verse. I think of Sylvia Plath listening to Joanna Newsom while assembling a bouquet in Wonderland. This is an exquisite and rare collection of poetry that feels magically out of time.”
–Claire Donato
Brad Watson, There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
(Norton)
“Brad Watson’s remarkable talent truly shines in short fiction. It’s hard to know which element is strongest—his bold inventiveness for story or the deep compassion he brings to his characters. As I read these wonderful stories, I often stopped to reread sentences, stricken by awe at his glittering prose. For those people already familiar with Brad’s work, you are in for a wonderful treat. If you’re new to his work, I envy you for the many books ahead of you to revel in.”
–Chris Offutt
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, The Son of Man (trans. Frank Wynne)
(Grove Press)
“Del Amo follows up his memorable Animalia with another arresting French rural gothic….Del Amo’s signature florid style comes to life in Wynne’s consummate translation, and at the heart of the lurid plot is a sensitive depiction of a boy’s confusion. Once this gets its hooks in readers, it won’t let go.”
–Publishers Weekly
Katherine Brabon, Body Friend
(Bloomsbury)
“I’ve never read anything like Katherine Brabon’s Body Friend. This book is a gift, an examination of a life in pain that isn’t at all painful to read. Brabon’s fearless and clear-eyed exploration strips some power from pain and illuminates parts of the human experience that have yet to be written about-the virtue demanded from patients by the world and by ourselves, as well as the complexities of friendship.”
–Karen Havelin
Zara Chowdhary, The Lucky Ones
(Crown Publishing Group)
“Chowdhary’s timely debut memoir, The Lucky Ones, is a moving account of how she and her family survived more than twenty years of anti-Muslim violence in India….A harrowing survivor’s tale, an important history lesson, and a desperate warning from someone who has seen the tragic effects of ethnic violence.”
–TIME
Natalie Lampert, The Big Freeze: A Reporter’s Personal Journey Into the World of Egg Freezing and the Quest to Control Our Fertility
(Ballantine Books)
“Since reproductive freedom and choice cannot coexist with ignorance, The Big Freeze is a dream come true. The science, promise, emotion, commerce, culture, history, failings, future, personal, and political of the fertility industry: It’s all here in Lampert’s rigorous, generous, monumental work. I’m simply thrilled this book exists; no one even vaguely considering assisted reproduction should be without it.”
–Elisa Albert
Jasmin Graham, Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist
(Pantheon)
“Graham beautifully illustrates her profound connection with sharks and parallels their struggles with those faced by marginalized communities around the world. Graham powerfully underscores the importance of empathy, advocacy, and the recognition of shared experiences in collectively creating a more just and equitable world for all. It’s such a joy to witness Graham’s intelligence, charisma and tenacity shine brightly through her writing.”
–Danni Washington
Minsoo Kang, The Melancholy of Untold History
(William Morrow)
“Minsoo Kang’s first novel, The Melancholy of Untold History, is an enchanting and ingenious tale about storytellers and the nature of stories, awhirl with gods and myths and the lives of everyday people. Its clear prose and feast of narrative invention make it hard to put down. Highly recommended.”
–Jeffrey Ford
Bill Roorbach, Beep
(Algonquin)
“Roorbach masterfully imbues his simian narrator with a voice full of innocence and trepidation….[He] expertly balances the whimsical with the philosophical as Beep describes the world with a sense of wonder….An inspiring quest tale and imaginative bildungsroman that celebrates the natural world.”
–Booklist
Meg Shaffer, The Lost Story
(Ballantine Books)
“If our sad, brutal, cynical, cowardly, unkind, exhausting world is too much for you, if you’d like to dream instead of a parallel world where love and loyalty and friendship are the magic that transforms the least of us into genuine heroes, then Meg Shaffer’s The Lost Story is the book you’ve been waiting for. And here’s the real magic. When you return from that enchanted place to the world you wanted to escape from, you’ll find it’s changed. Why? Because you have.”
–Richard Russo
Kathleen Sheppard, Women in the Valley of Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age
(St. Martin’s Press)
“Sheppard joins Lynne Olson, author of Empress of the Nile, in spotlighting the important contributions of female Egyptologists in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries in this striking group biography. Many of the women were partnered romantically as well as professionally, making this a vital, lively read…in LGBTQ+ history as well as in women’s essential contributions to the excavation and preservation of ancient Egypt artifacts.”
–Booklist
Brandon Keim, Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World
(Norton)
“A love letter to nature….It shows us how humans are part of the tapestry that is life, and how we can join and support the community of other nonhuman persons….This is the kind of thinking that needs to be nurtured. It gives us inspiration to respect, to care, and to be connected.”
–Craig Foster
Michael Taylor, Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
(Liveright)
“In this stunning work of popular history, historian Michael Taylor shows how the discovery of dinosaurs triggered a domino effect that shook the foundations of Western culture. A most engrossing book of surprises and revelations.”
–Steve Brusatte
Alisa Alering, Smothermoss
(Tin House Books)
“At the heart of this story are two sisters, the mountain on which they live, and the persistent question as to which is more perilous, the natural world or the unnatural. Beautifully written, tense and absorbing, Smothermoss is an original story from a truly gifted storyteller.”
–Karen Joy Fowler
Andrea Freeman, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch
(Metropolitan Books)
“Ruin Their Crops on the Ground adds a critical yet overlooked dimension to the history of U.S. economic and racial oppression….Today, far from securing the nation’s health, the government enriches corporations by subsidizing unhealthy food production while saddling disenfranchised groups with nutrition-related diseases and blame for their supposedly bad choices. This eye-opening book will change your view of food and its contribution to America’s profound inequalities.”
–Dorothy Roberts
Deborah Stoll, Drop In: The Gender Rebels Who Changed the Face of Skateboarding
(Dey Street Books)
“This animated report from journalist Stoll (Unvarnished) explores how ‘female, queer, bi, and nonbinary humans’ have made skateboarding culture more inclusive. She traces how Marbie Miller, Alana Smith, Victoria Taylor, and Vanessa Torres became professional skaters and discusses the difficulties each has faced in a sport dominated by cis men….Stoll’s finely observed portraits will have readers rooting for the four skaters as they reshape the sport in their own image.”
–Publishers Weekly
