A History of Burning
by
Janika Oza
Grand Central Publishing, 05/02/2023
In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
A New History of the American South: A Ferris and Ferris Book
by
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
The University of North Carolina Press, 05/02/2023
For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have figured prominently in ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Blood of the Virgin
by
Sammy Harkham
Pantheon Books, 05/02/2023
Set primarily in Los Angeles in 1971,
Blood of the Virgin is the story of twenty-seven-year-old Seymour, an Iraqi Jewish immigrant film editor who ...
more
Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel
by
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Pantheon Books, 05/02/2023
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Cold Nights of Childhood
by
Tezer Özlü
Transit Books, 05/02/2023
The narrator of Tezer Özlü's novel is between lovers. She is in and out of psychiatric wards, where she is forced to undergo electroshock ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories
by
Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Scribner, 05/02/2023
Composed of several interconnected stories, each taking place in a year ending with the number six, ironically a number that in Chinese divination ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?: A Novel
by
Crystal Smith Paul
Henry Holt and Company, 05/02/2023
When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Don't Call Me Home: A Memoir
by
Alexandra Auder
Viking, 05/02/2023
Alexandra Auder's life began at the Chelsea Hotel—New York City's infamous bohemian hangout—when her mother, Viva, a longtime resident of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Gone to the Wolves: A Novel
by
John Wray
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/02/2023
Kip, Leslie, and Kira are outliers—even in the metal scene they love. In arch-conservative Gulf Coast Florida in the late 1980s, just listening ...
more
Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
by
Jeffrey Toobin
Simon & Schuster, 05/02/2023
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.
Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Honeybees and Distant Thunder: A Novel
by
Riku Onda
Pegasus Books, 05/02/2023
In a small coastal town just a stone's throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three ...
more
Hotel Cuba: A Novel
by
Aaron Hamburger
Harper Perennial, 05/02/2023
Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling...
more
Historical Fiction
Hula: A Novel
by
Jasmin Iolani Hakes
HarperVia, 05/02/2023
"There's no running away on an island. Soon enough, you end up where you started."
Hi'i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Imogen, Obviously
by
Becky Albertalli
Balzer + Bray, 05/02/2023
Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she's got the World's Greatest Ally title locked down.
She's never missed a Pride Alliance meeting...
more
Late Bloomers: A Novel
by
Deepa Varadarajan
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 05/02/2023
"I have a soft spot for underdogs. And late bloomers. You've told me a lot of things about yourself, so let me tell you something about me."
After ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Lost Places
by
Sarah Pinsker
Small Beer Press, 05/02/2023
A half-remembered children's TV show. A hotel that shouldn't exist. A mysterious ballad. A living flag. Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Sarah ...
more
Paper Names: A Novel
by
Susie Luo
Hanover Square Press, 05/02/2023
Set in New York and China over three decades,
Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There's ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Phantom Pain Wings
by
Kim Hyesoon
New Directions Publishing, 05/02/2023
An iconic figure in the emergence of feminist poetry in South Korea and now internationally renowned, Kim Hyesoon pushes the poetic envelope into the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
by
Camille T Dungy
Simon & Schuster, 05/02/2023
In
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the ...
more
Swamp Story: A Novel
by
Dave Barry
Simon & Schuster, 05/02/2023
Jesse Braddock is trapped in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a wannabe reality TV star who turned ...
more
The Covenant of Water
by
Abraham Verghese
Grove Press, 05/02/2023
The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller
Cutting for Stone, which has...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
by
Andy Clark
Pantheon Books, 05/02/2023
For as long as we've studied human cognition, we've believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what's really there&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
The Ferryman: A Novel
by
Justin Cronin
Ballantine Books, 05/02/2023
Founded by the mysterious genius known as the Designer, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Humble Lover
by
Edmund White
Bloomsbury USA, 05/02/2023
Aldwych West, an eighty-year-old modern-day aristocrat living alone in his Manhattan townhouse, is used to having what he wants. And when he sets eyes...
more
The Marriage Act: A Novel
by
John Marrs
Hanover Square Press, 05/02/2023
Britain. The near-future. A right-wing government believes it has the answer to society's ills—the Sanctity of Marriage Act, which actively ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Story of Art Without Men
by
Katy Hessel
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/02/2023
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
by
Ben Smith
Penguin Press, 05/02/2023
If attention is the new oil, Ben Smith's
Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the impact of climate change. The curtain opens...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Warrior Girl Unearthed
by
Angeline Boulley
Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 05/02/2023
Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever ...
more
We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind of]
by
Hannah Pittard
Henry Holt and Company, 05/02/2023
In this wryly humorous and innovative look at a marriage gone wrong, Hannah Pittard recalls a decade's worth of unforgettable conversations, beginning...
more
Where You See Yourself
by
Claire Forrest
Scholastic, 05/02/2023
Where You See Yourself combines an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, a swoon-worthy romance, and much-needed disability representation in this story ...
more
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
by
Jonny Steinberg
Knopf, 05/02/2023
One of the most celebrated political leaders of a century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone
by
Amy Key
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 05/09/2023
When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love—and Joni Mitchell's album
Blue was her inspiration. "Blue became ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Atalanta
by
Jennifer Saint
Flatiron Books, 05/09/2023
When Princess Atalanta is born, a daughter rather than the son her parents hoped for, she is left on a mountainside to die. But even then, she is a ...
more
If Tomorrow Doesn't Come
by
Jen St. Jude
Bloomsbury YA, 05/09/2023
Avery Byrne has secrets. She's queer; she's in love with her best friend, Cass; and she's suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. But on the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Like the Appearance of Horses
by
Andrew Krivak
Bellevue Literary Press, 05/09/2023
Rooted in the small, mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I,
Like the Appearance of ...more
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of
by
Héctor Tobar
MCD, 05/09/2023
"Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States.
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the...more
Pieces of Blue
by
Holly Goldberg Sloan
Flatiron Books, 05/09/2023
What good was thinking the future only held cloudy skies? Wasn't the reality that pieces of blue were always there, waiting to break through?
When ...
more
Playing It Safe: Electra McDonnell Novels #3
by
Ashley Weaver
Minotaur Books, 05/09/2023
As the Blitz continues to ravage London, Ellie McDonnell—formerly a safecracking thief, but currently determined to stay on the straight and ...
more
Retrospective: A Novel
by
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Riverhead Books, 05/09/2023
The Colombian film director, Sergio Cabrera, is in Barcelona for a retrospective of his work. It's a hard time for him: his father, famous actor ...
more
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
by
Elizabeth Winkler
Simon & Schuster, 05/09/2023
The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Eyes and the Impossible: (Newbery Medal Winner)
by
Dave Eggers
Knopf, 05/09/2023
Johannes, a free dog, lives in an urban park by the sea. His job is to be the Eyes—to see everything that happens within the park and report ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy
by
James Risen
Little Brown & Company, 05/09/2023
For decades now, America's national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did ...
more
When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
by
Ashlee Vance
Ecco, 05/09/2023
In
When the Heavens Went on Sale, Ashlee Vance illuminates our future and unveils the next big technology story of our time: welcome to the Wild West ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
All the Dead Lie Down
by
Kyrie McCauley
Katherine Tegan Books, 05/16/2023
The Sleeping House was very much awake ...
Days after a tragedy leaves Marin Blythe alone in the world, she receives a surprising invitation from ...
more
Berlin: A Novel
by
Bea Setton
Penguin Books, 05/16/2023
When Daphne arrives in Berlin, the last thing she expects is to run into more drama than she left behind. Of course, she knew she'd need to do the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Close to Home: A Novel
by
Michael Magee
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/16/2023
Sean's brother Anthony is a hard man. When they were kids their ma did her best to keep him out of trouble, but you can't say anything to Anto. Sean ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Cousins
by
Aurora Venturini
Soft Skull Press, 05/16/2023
At the age of eighty-five, Aurora Venturini stunned Argentine readers when her darkly funny and formally daring novel,
Cousins (
Las primas), won
P&#...more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home: Stories
by
Ana Castillo
HarperVia, 05/16/2023
The first person in her traditional Mexican American family to graduate from high school, Katia is entering adulthood at a time of turbulent change. ...
more
Short Stories
Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life
by
Kristen R. Ghodsee
Simon & Schuster, 05/16/2023
In the 6th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras—a man remembered today more for his theorem about right-angled triangles than for his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong
by
Vaudine England
Scribner, 05/16/2023
Hong Kong has always been many cities to many people: a seaport, a gateway to an empire, a place where fortunes can be dramatically made or lost, a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
From Here
by
Luma Mufleh
Nancy Paulsen Books, 05/16/2023
With no word for "gay" in Arabic, Luma may not have known what to call the feelings she had growing up in Jordan during the 1980s, but she knew well ...
more
Biography/Memoir
King: A Life
by
Jonathan Eig
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/16/2023
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's
King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin ...
more
Sidle Creek
by
Jolene McIlwain
Melville House, 05/16/2023
In
Sidle Creek, McIlwain skillfully interrogates the myths and stereotypes of the mining, mill, and farming towns where she grew up. With stories that...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
The Guest: A Novel
by
Emma Cline
Random House, 05/16/2023
"Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It ...more
The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul
by
Isabel Kershner
Knopf, 05/16/2023
Despite Israel's determined staying power in a hostile environment, its military might, and the innovation it fosters in businesses globally, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History
by
Serhii Plokhy
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/16/2023
Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war—and...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Three of Us
by
Ore Agbaje-Williams
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/16/2023
What if your two favorite people hated each other with a passion?
The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The World: A Family History of Humanity
by
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knopf, 05/16/2023
Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism
by
Brooke Kroeger
Knopf, 05/16/2023
Undaunted is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put in their way to do journalism's most valued work. From...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Uneducated: A Memoir of Flunking Out, Falling Apart, and Finding My Worth
by
Christopher Zara
Little Brown & Company, 05/16/2023
For Christopher Zara, this is the professional minefield he has had to navigate since the day he was kicked out of his New Jersey high school for ...
more
Yellowface: A Novel
by
R. F Kuang
William Morrow, 05/16/2023
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena's a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who ...
more
You: The Story: A Writer's Guide to Craft Through Memory
by
Ruta Sepetys
Viking, 05/16/2023
Life is story in motion. Each day, you add to your story, revise it, and view it from a different angle. You erase things. Tear pages out. And ...
more
Advice
An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created
by
Santi Elijah Holley
Mariner Books, 05/23/2023
They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Bad Summer People: A Novel
by
Emma Rosenblum
Flatiron Books, 05/23/2023
None of them would claim to be a particularly good person. But who among them is actually capable of murder?
Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
by
Elise Hu
Dutton, 05/23/2023
K-beauty has captured imaginations worldwide by promising a kind of mesmerizing perfection. Its skincare and makeup products—creams packaged to ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Forever Is Now
by
Mariama J. Lockington
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/23/2023
I'm safe here.
That's how Sadie feels, on a perfect summer day, wrapped in her girlfriend's arms. School is out, and even though she's been ...
more
I Didn't Do It
by
Jaime Lynn Hendricks
Scarlet, 05/23/2023
Murderpalooza, the premier thriller writers conference, is meant to be an exciting celebration of the genre and its preeminent writers. But when ...
more
The Late Americans: A Novel
by
Brandon Taylor
Riverhead Books, 05/23/2023
In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of...
more
The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives
by
Naoise Mac Sweeney
Dutton, 05/23/2023
In this groundbreaking, story-driven retelling of Western history, Naoíse Mac Sweeney debunks the myths and origin stories that underpin the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Will of the Many: Hierarchy #1
by
James Islington
Gallery Books, 05/23/2023
AUDI. VIDE. TACE.
The Catenan Republic—the Hierarchy—may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.
I tell them my name is...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Women We Buried, Women We Burned: A Memoir
by
Rachel Louise Snyder
Bloomsbury USA, 05/23/2023
For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives.
Women We Buried, Women ...more
Beware the Woman
by
Megan Abbott
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/30/2023
Honey, I just want you to have everything you ever wanted. That's what Jacy's mom always told her. And Jacy felt like she finally did. Newly married ...
more
Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night
by
Lisa Belkin
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/30/2023
Independence Day weekend, 1960: a young cop is murdered, shocking his close-knit community in Stamford, Connecticut. The killer remains at large, his ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Good Night, Irene: A Novel
by
Luis Alberto Urrea
Little Brown & Company, 05/30/2023
In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in ...
more
Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir In Archives
by
Amelia Possanza
Catapult, 05/30/2023
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer stories: she read them on landmark placards, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The House on Via Gemito
by
Domenico Starnone
Europa Editions, 05/30/2023
A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Peacock and the Sparrow: A Novel
by
I.S. Berry
Atria Books, 05/30/2023
Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he's ...
more
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Wishing Game: A Novel
by
Meg Shaffer
Ballantine Books, 05/30/2023
Make a wish...
Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it's like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Threads That Bind
by
Kika Hatzopoulou
Razorbill, 05/30/2023
Descendants of the Fates are always born in threes: one to weave, one to draw, and one to cut the threads that connect people to the things they love ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
When the Vibe Is Right
by
Sarah Dass
Balzer + Bray, 05/30/2023
There are two things Tess Crawford knows for sure:
- She's destined to be a great Trinidadian Carnival costume designer like her renowned uncle, ...
more
