May is here, and, with it, a bevy of new books to be excited about (and, difficult as it can be not to succumb to the Sisyphean rhythm of doomscrolling, new books are usually better places to turn our attention, if we can). Today, I’m focusing on exciting new paperbacks; if you missed them in hardcover, you’ve got another chance to enjoy them in these fresh editions. I’ve selected twenty-five to consider in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, all coming out over the course of this month, spanning a remarkable range of themes, topics, and sub-genres.
Stay safe, Dear Readers, and let these delightful new paperbacks be your literary companions this month.
*
Thomas Grattan, In Tongues
(Picador)
“In Tongues contains one of my favorite kinds of plots; the interlude that changed me forever. Thomas Grattan masterfully elucidates the life of an elegant hero—shattering friendships, sudden lovers, surprising moments of grace. Reading In Tongues felt like a deliciously banal and dangerous afternoon I never wanted to end. I love this beautiful, horny, honest, glamorous novel.”
–Marie-Helene Bertino
Zach Williams, Beautiful Days
(Vintage)
“Beautiful Days is one of the year’s best debuts…a glorious creepfest reminiscent of speculative collections by Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enríquez and other children of Lovecraft….Williams sees beyond newspaper headlines to a world cleaved apart by forces we’ve unleashed, blinkered by arrogance and greed….Beautiful Days is the spear tip of his potential. This writer’s got talent to burn.”
–Hamilton Cain
Yukiko Tominaga, See: Loss. See Also: Love.
(Scribner)
“Modulating warm, lucid, and subtle prose, Tominaga deftly holds the tension between exploring the complicated realities of grief and the possibilities that come from still being alive after loss. The story nimbly moves forward with the qualities of an emotional mystery, while sly humor and radiant prose shed light on grasshoppers, mothers and sons, surfing, and sex…an exquisite and poignant novel.”
–Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Carvell Wallace, Another Word for Love: A Memoir
(Picador)
“Carvell Wallace’s devastating book vibrates with a rare power—the kind of power that will help save lives. Because not only is it a brilliant evocation of the effects of marginalization on generation after generation, it is the story of how hope persists, and nourishes, despite what has come before. An unforgettable treatise on pain—and love. This book is a gift.”
–Hilton Als
Lawrence Ingrassia, A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery
(Holt)
“When two young doctors came across a family riddled with cancer for generations, they wondered why and began a decades long search for the answer. In A Fatal Inheritance, a riveting narrative of their quest, Lawrence Ingrassia intertwines a deeply personal and tearful story of unbearable family loss with an inspiring story of scientific discovery that revolutionized the understanding and treatment of cancer.”
–Walter Isaacson
Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
(Picador)
“Revelatory….[Hulls’] graphic memoir traces, with devastating emotional acuity, the line between the history of China under Mao Zedong—a stretch of nearly unfathomable death and political upheaval—and the ghosts of her family’s past that she eventually unearthed….a breathtaking portrait of this lineage of trauma. Enlivened by her hauntingly vivid drawings, in which the past is often a surrealist, spectral presence constantly intruding upon the present.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Spencer Reece, Acts: Poems
(FSG)
“Spencer Reece writes poems of deep searching—haunted, haunting meditations on what it feels like to be in and out of place. In this book absence and presence are never quite opposites, and a quest for the meanings of home nurtures a lyricism of rare and beautiful combinations: perplexity and wisdom, desirousness and patience, risk and restraint. Acts is–in the full sense of the word—a blessing.”
–Matthew Bevis
Gabriella Burnham, Wait
(One World)
“Wait is beautiful, heartfelt, and transcendent—a carefully crafted portrayal of motherhood, sisterhood, and friendship put to the ultimate test. I found myself caring deeply about these characters and wanting to know desperately what was going to happen to them next. Wait is also the best account of year-round Nantucket Island that I’ve ever read.”
–Nathaniel Philbrick
Édouard Louis, Change
(Picador)
“Change is a brilliant novel that, like its narrator, engages in the impossible task of trying to be two things at once—it even opens with two prologues. Though a work of fiction, Louis hand-stitches created scenes with memoiristic passages, even including actual photographs, all while reminding the reader that the author is revising his own past.”
–Stephen Patrick Bell
Renée Watson, Skin & Bones
(Little Brown)
“A compelling portrait of personal struggles, self-love, and the journey of healing; an indelible testament to the power of family, friendship, and community; a touching love letter to and trenchant critique of one of the whitest cities in America. It’s a dexterous and evocative gift of a novel.”
–Mitchell S. Jackson
Madeline Pendleton, I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: A Memoir
(Vintage)
“With punk optimism, cinematic storytelling, and a moral center undeterred by what ‘everyone else does,’ this book presents the life and death money scenarios real people face. Madeline covers class, college recruiting, home ownership, and workplace rights with a brilliant sense of community and warmth.”
–Gabe Dunn
Marina Gibson, Cast, Catch, Release: Finding Serenity and Purpose Through Fly Fishing
(Scribner)
“A well-wrought story of love, self-love, and fly fishing. Marina Gibson’s book illuminates the healing power of practicing something complicated while immersed, literally, in the natural world. A book for lovers of memoir and anyone who thrills to the catch.”
–Kristin Kimball
Questlove, Ben Greenman, Hip-Hop Is History
(Picador)
“Chronicles the first fifty years of hip-hop through insightful and passionate analysis that celebrates the big-named artists who popularized the style, as well as those lesser-known creatives who quietly influenced rap’s rise. Along the way, he offers personal recollections about how the relatively young music style has shaped his identity. A must-read for old school hip-hop heads and burgeoning fans alike.”
–Shannon Carlin
J. Nicole Jones, The Witches of Bellinas
(Catapult)
“The Witches of Bellinas is like the eerie technicolor lovechild of Midsommar and Rebecca. I loved being inside Tansy’s mind as she learns to decode the sun-soaked, menacing world of Bellinas—and as she learns to decode herself, too. Myth and magic, gender and power, desire and death all swirl together in this novel to make a heady brew
–Clare Beams
Kevin Kwan, Lies and Weddings
(Vintage)
“If you loved Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan’s latest won’t disappoint….Alliances are made and unmade. Fortunes are won and lost. Rich people, trying to get richer, outwit themselves. Poor girls, armed with only their stubborn integrity, stake a claim on happiness. And the laugh lines arrive punctually….Kwan has a gimlet eye.”
–The Washington Post
Eve J. Chung, Daughters of Shandong
(Berkley)
“One of those rare works of fiction that entertains, educates, and inspires. Harrowing, heartbreaking, and brilliantly paced, Daughters of Shandong is impossible to put down.”
–Jamie Ford
Francis S. Barry, Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy
(Steerforth)
“In the traditions of Blue Highways and Confederates in the Attic, Back Roads and Better Angels—by turns elegiac and hopeful—is required reading in a season when the clouds still have yet to lift from over our democracy.”
–Kevin Baker
Paige McClanahan, The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel
(Scribner)
“In this lively and rewarding book, Paige McClanahan wrestles with the complexities of twenty-first century tourism, deftly exploring the joys and the real-world consequences of world travel. I highly recommend The New Tourist.”
–Elizabeth Becker
John Kaag, American Bloods: The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation
(Picador)
“The adventuresome philosopher John Kaag…uncover[s] yet another hidden tale central to the history of American life and thought….In a taut and spell-binding narrative, Kaag traces the Blood family’s influence through generations by singling out individuals—revolutionary, ascetic, polygamist, mystic—and finding these ‘borderers’ always in close connection with the central thinkers and doers of their day: Emerson, Thoreau, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William James.”
–Megan Marshall
Abby Geni, The Body Farm: Stories
(Counterpoint)
“The characters in this collection—from a girl who believes her older sister is a selkie, to a woman who was bitten by a tiger shark and dares to dive again, to a family of women who worry the men who cross their paths are cursed by death, to a planetary geologist who understands the movements of the solar system better than the actions of her alcoholic husband—contend with both the vulnerability and the resiliency of the human body…an extraordinary collection.”
–Karin Lin-Greenberg
Kat Tang, Five-Star Stranger
(Scribner)
“A sly, sophisticated, and compulsively readable debut about a person who is paid to be invisible, to be anyone to everyone, and yet inadvertently finds himself. Five-Star Stranger is a satirical comedy that grapples with the modern-day anxieties of the online persona and gig economy, masterfully blended with a poignant, heartwarming story about human connection.”
–Weike Wang
Tessa Fontaine, The Red Grove
(Picador)
“This gorgeous, frightening novel maps the hidden roots that link mother to daughter, and sibling to sibling, and utopia to fear. A deft and enrapturing novel full of underground secrets, ready to spring.”
–Clare Beams
Shefali Luthra, Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
(Vintage)
“Indispensable….An impeccably researched, clearheaded and frankly terrifying assessment of just how grave the situation in post-Roe America is….Whatever your gender, race, religious background or political preferences, Luthra’s Undue Burden should be on your required reading list.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Vincent Deary, How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living
(Picador)
“Deary’s exhilarating new book mixes science, philosophy and memoir to argue that self-acceptance is our best defense against the stress of living….Deary’s writing is wise and compassionate, sometimes florid and always interesting—few writers could jump so nimbly between Proust and RuPaul, neuroscience and the occult….Deary’s is the rare book that helps you see the world a little differently.”
–Sophie McBain
Adrian Goldsworthy, Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry
(Basic Books)
“Epic history as it’s means to be written! A splendid book that tells the story of the great imperial riva’lry of the ancient world with narrative elan, scholarly authority, and a cast of extraordinary characters.”
–Simon Sebag Montefiore
Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favorite (trans. Michele Hutchison)
(Graywolf)
“Daring, immediate, and insistent, My Heavenly Favorite summons a profound imagining of abuse and its ramifications. This is fiction that balances darkness and purity, deceit and reality, depravity and lyricism. Rijneveld’s control of his vision is startling. A quaking, visceral novel that demands the reader look wickedness in the eye—not for shock alone, but to provoke a genuine examination of what it is to harm and transgress.”
–Rebecca Watson