Volume 268
Issue 40
10/04/2021
Fiction
Novels by award winners, fan-favorite authors, and promising newcomers invite readers to curl up with a good book.
Black Buck
Mateo Askaripour (HMH) $26
Everything changes for Darren, a young Black man who manages a Midtown Manhattan Starbucks, when he persuades a tech startup CEO to change his usual order. In an author’s note, Askaripour suggests the novel is meant to serve as a manual for aspiring Black salesmen, and the device is thrillingly sustained throughout, with lacerating asides to the reader on matters of race. Darren’s laugh-out-loud, wince-inducing, and gut-punching ride through corporate America takes him, and the reader, in unexpected directions.
Cathedral
Ben Hopkins (Europa) $28
British filmmaker Hopkins’s ambitious and satisfying debut uses a big story—the century-plus cathedral building project in Hagenburg in the Holy Roman Empire, now Lower Saxony—to tell an even bigger story, that of the rise of merchants and the corresponding decline of the church during the 13th century. Six hundred pages may sound long, but this deeply human take on a medieval city and its commerce and aspirations,
its violent battles and small
intimacies, never feels that way.
Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
Rivka Galchen (FSG) $27
In this voicey, offbeat, feminist take on 17th-century German witch trials, Katharina Kepler’s neighbor accuses the 74-year-old illiterate widow of poisoning her and convinces others that they, too, have been targeted by Katharina’s witchcraft. Galchen portrays her characters—who include Katharina’s three children and a kindly neighbor who help her fight to clear her name—as
complicated and full of wit as they face down the cruelties dealt to them.
Fight Night
Miriam Toews (Bloomsbury) $24
Women Talking author Toews is at the top of her game in this novel centered on three generations of women in a Toronto family: eight-year-old Swiv, expelled from school for fighting; Mooshie, Swiv’s pregnant mother, who’s prone to dramatic and sometimes violent mood swings; and Elvira, Mooshie’s larger-than-life mother. Framed as a long letter to Swiv’s absent father in the girl’s brisk, matter-of-fact voice, the novel is fierce and funny, and gives undeniable testimony to the life force of family.
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
(Doubleday) $28.95
Two-time Pulitzer winner Whitehead follows The Nickel Boys with a sizzling heist novel set in civil rights–era Harlem. When Ray Carney’s cousin Freddie—whose stolen goods Carney occasionally fences through his used furniture store—decides to rob the
historic Hotel Theresa, a lethal cast of underworld figures enter Carney’s life. Whitehead tells a cracking story, but the most impressive achievement is his loving depiction of a Harlem 60 years gone—“that rustling, keening thing of people and concrete”—which lands as detailed and vivid as Joyce’s Dublin.
The Lincoln Highway
Amor Towles (Viking) $30
Readers of Towles’s novels can expect to plunge into a different world, whether it’s the jazz clubs and high society of late 1930s New York (Rules of Civility) or a luxurious lockdown in the Metropol hotel (A Gentleman in Moscow). His new book, a magnificent comic road novel, follows the rowdy escapades of four boys in the 1950s and doubles as an old-fashioned narrative about farms, families, and accidental friendships.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Honorée Fannone Jeffers (Harper) $28.99
The first novel from poet Jeffers explores African American history though multiple generations of a family. Ailey Pearl Garfield, the youngest daughter of a Washington, D.C., physician and a Southern schoolteacher, reckons with ancestral trauma while growing up in the 1980s and ’90s. Throughout, historical sketches, which Jeffers calls “songs,” link Ailey to her ancestors: Creeks, enslaved Africans, and early Scot slave owners. This Oprah’s Book Club pick is ambitious and staggering.
Mr. Beethoven
Paul Griffiths (NYRB) $17.99
Starting with historical fact—in 1823, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston sought to commission Ludwig van Beethoven to write an
oratorio—Griffiths, a music critic and librettist, imagines that the composer not only accepted the commission but also traveled to the U.S. to oversee its first performance. In this alternate timeline, Beethoven learns sign language, develops a close friendship with a widow, and clashes with the fussy minister who writes the imaginary oratorio’s libretto. The author’s use of Beethoven’s letters and other primary sources gives his vivid story musical and historical authenticity.
Nightbitch
Rachel Yoder (Doubleday)
Screen rights to Yoder’s debut, in which an artist turned stay-at-home mom of a two-year-old believes she’s turning into a dog, were snapped up prepublication. Bursting with fury, loneliness, and vulgarity, the narrative revels in its deconstruction of the social script women and mothers are taught to follow, painstakingly exposing the cruel and downright ludicrous ways in which women are denied their personhood. When a healthy pour of mommy juice isn’t quite cutting it, this book offers a bracing shot of understanding.
No One Is Talking About This
Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead) $25
Earlier this year, it seemed that everyone was in fact talking about the first novel from Priestdaddy memoirist and viral poet Lockwood, whose unnamed narrator is herself a social media star thanks to a viral tweet. Her entire view of life is refracted through an online lens until a family crisis compels her offline. Packed with humor, bawdiness, and lyrical insight, this mighty novel screams with laughter just as it wallops with grief.
Oh William!
Elizabeth Strout (Random House) $27
Fans of Strout’s Lucy Barton novels—and they are legion—will be eager to dive into this third installment. It picks up after the death of Lucy’s second husband as she navigates her relationship with her unfaithful first husband, William, the father of her two grown daughters. Loneliness and betrayal, themes to which the Pulitzer winner has returned throughout her career, are ever present in this illuminating character-driven saga, and while Strout’s characters teem with angst and emotion, the author handles it all with a mastery of restraint.
The Sentence
Louise Erdrich (Harper) $28.99
Spanning Nov. 2, 2019–Nov. 2, 2020, Pulitzer winner Erdrich’s scintillating novel about a motley group of Native American booksellers haunted by the spirit of a customer is more than a gripping ghost story. The author also offers profound insights into the effects of the pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic racism, adding up to one of Erdrich’s most sprawling and illuminating works to date.
Mysteries & Thrillers
Heart-pounding plotlines and twisty whodunit puzzles are catnip for crime fiction fans.
All Her Little Secrets
Wanda M. Morris (Morrow) $16.99
Paging John Grisham fans: when corporate attorney Ellice Littlejohn finds her boss, with whom she’d been having an affair, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, she does the only sensible thing—she walks away. As the police investigate the death as a homicide, Ellice, the only Black attorney at her company, is promoted to her boss’s old position, and uncovers evidence of shady dealings.
The Apollo Murders
Chris Hadfield (Mulholland) $28
Retired Canadian astronaut Hadfield famously signed off as commander of the International Space Station in 2013 by recording the first music video in space: a revised rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that’s been viewed 50 million times. He’s since published a memoir, a book of photos taken from the ISS, and a children’s book. This, his first novel, reimagines the 1973 Apollo 18 moon mission, which was canceled in real life, as a top-secret operation aimed at thwarting a Soviet space station spying on the United States.
As the Wicked Watch
Tamron Hall (Morrow) $27.99
With this series launch, the Emmy-winning broadcast journalist introduces TV reporter Jordan Manning, who in 2007 Chicago sets out to learn the truth behind the murder of an African American girl. Amid Jordan’s quest to track down what she believes to be a serial killer, Hall brings insight and nuance to issues of journalism ethics and the police treatment of murder cases involving Black women.
The Bloodless Boy
Robert J. Lloyd (Melville House) $29.99
History buffs will appreciate Lloyd’s stunning debut, an engrossing whodunit that grew out of the author’s fascination with the diary of pioneering scientist Robert Hooke. In 1678 London, Hooke, the Curator of Experiments at the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge, and his assistant Harry Hunt are called to investigate when the body of a three-year-old boy, drained of all his blood, is found near the Fleet River, and to determine the possible connection to a plot against King Charles II.
Damascus Station
David McCloskey (Norton) $27.95
CIA case officer Sam Joseph recruits Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad as an asset, and the two embark on an illicit affair before heading to Damascus to track down those responsible for killing an American spy. McCloskey, a former CIA analyst, uses his insider knowledge to depict the brutality of the Assad regime, as well as the CIA’s occasional ineptitude, while detailing key mechanics of spycraft—think operating safe houses and avoiding tails.
Falling
T.J. Newman (Avid Reader) $28
In Newman’s buzzy debut—it was the one of the 10 bestselling books of the week when it launched—a terrorist demands an airline captain crash the commercial flight he’s piloting, or he’ll kill the captain’s wife and children. The author, a former flight attendant, told PW that the seeds of the novel came to her one night while working a red-eye.
Midnight, Water City
Chris McKinney (Soho Crime) $27.95
McKinney’s genre-bending trilogy kickoff is set in a 22nd-century underwater society with shades of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, aka the inspiration for Blade Runner. Scientist Akira Kimura, instrumental in averting global disaster 40 years earlier, is found dead and dismembered; her former head of security, who now serves on the police force and whose synesthesia leads him to see death as red and murder as green, investigates.
Repentance
Eloísa Díaz (Agora) $26.99
In 2001 Argentina, world-weary Buenos Aires police inspector Joaquín Alzada is eager to retire as soon as he and his wife can collect his pension from the depleted police coffers. Until then, he’s doing his best to keep himself and his idealistic young partner out of trouble in a dangerously charged landscape. The execution-style killing of a wealthy socialite forces Alzada to confront his involvement in one of the darkest periods of his country’s history, the so-called Dirty War of 20 years earlier.
Steel Fear
Brandon Webb and John David Mann (Bantam) $28
Former U.S. Navy SEAL Webb and Mann, his collaborator on Mastering Fear and other works of nonfiction, effortlessly transition into fiction with this nail-biter set aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is about to leave the Persian Gulf and return to the States. The suspicious apparent suicides of two crewmembers send Finn, a Navy SEAL who arrived on the vessel shortly before the first death, searching for a possible killer.
Windhall
Ava Barry (Pegasus Crime) $25.95
Golden-age Hollywood meets contemporary L.A. when an investigative journalist reopens a cold case murder mystery involving a legendary film director, the leading lady found dead at his home in 1948, and their final, long-lost film. Barry’s passion for Tinsel-
town—she worked as a script reader for Bold Films and Intrigue Entertainment, and as an editorial assistant for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story—shines through.
Romance
Racy Regencies, heartfelt historicals, zippy rom-coms, and more all wrap up with a happily ever after.
A Certain Appeal
Vanessa King (Putnam) $16
In King’s irresistible debut, executive assistant Liz Bennet—spoiler alert: this is a Pride and Prejudice riff—moonlights as a stage kitten at Meryton, an upscale Manhattan burlesque club. After she gets off on the wrong glitter-heeled foot with straitlaced wealth manager Will Darcy, the pair continue to cross paths professionally and socially, doing the enemies-to-lovers tango.
A Duke in Time
Janna MacGregor (St. Martin’s) $8.99
This Regency romp kicks off when Lord Meriwether Vareck does the same, and his widow, Kat, learns she’s one of three wives left behind. The first installment of the Widow Rules series sees the duped women band together as a family while Kat, a boutique owner, is blackmailed by a business rival, threatening her relationship with her polygamist husband’s older half brother.
The Ex Talk
Rachel Lynn Solomon (Berkley) $16
The fake dating trope gets a fresh spin with a pair of rival Seattle public radio cohosts who pose as former lovers and dole out relationship advice on air. Their banter and obvious chemistry helps the show take off, and real romance soon develops off-mic.
How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days
K.M. Jackson (Forever) $15.99
When 40-something Lu reads tabloid reports that her beloved Keanu Reeves is getting hitched in 90 days, it makes her question her devotion to the single life, and she hatches a plan to stop the wedding. Joining in her cross-country adventures is True, who was a friend of her late younger brother and who has nursed a crush on Lu for years. Even as Jackson probes heavy emotions, rom-com trappings keep things lighthearted and welcoming.
It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake
Claire Christian (Mira) $16.99
The title character, a plus-size, bisexual teacher, is back in the dating pool after the end of a nine-year relationship. Noni leaves Australia for a semester and heads to Europe, where a string of disappointing liaisons shifts her focus from romancing others to pleasing herself: she buys lingerie, eats without guilt, and poses in a nude photo shoot. When a fling turns serious, she considers whether her new ethos—eat, play—is compatible with love.
It’s Better This Way
Debbie Macomber (Ballantine) $27
Middle-aged divorcées Julia and Heath meet in their condo building’s exercise room and bond over dating mishaps, but as their connection blossoms, their adult children complicate matters. HEA mainstay Macomber tells a deeply emotional story of later-in-life love.
A Lot Like Adiós
Alexis Daria (Morrow) $15.99
This delightful take on the friends-to-lovers trope reunites childhood best friends Michelle and Gabe, who haven’t seen each other since the latter left the Bronx for college in California. Thirteen years on, work has brought Gabe back to N.Y.C., and the chemistry between the two is undeniable. Daria captures her protagonists’ intimacy as they come to better understand who they are as individuals, and who they could be together.
Love, Comment, Subscribe
Cathy Yardley (Montlake) $12.95
Ten years after high school graduation, Lily Wang is on the cusp of real success as a beauty influencer, and Tobin Bui, a onetime fellow member of their school’s “nerd herd,” is a big-time gaming streamer looking for new ways to please his fan base. The two reluctantly join forces in order to expand their audiences, and find that their off-screen partnership also has promise, making for a smart, sexy tale.
Payback’s a Witch
Lana Harper (Berkley) $16
After almost a decade away, Emmy returns to her magical hometown of Thistle Creek for the once-in-a-generation tournament that decides which of the four local witch families is the most powerful. Combining John Tucker Must Die with a helping of an adult Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and a dash of Charmed, this queer rom-com feels both vibrantly current and timelessly mystical.
A Reckless Match
Kate Bateman (St. Martin’s) $8.99
Bateman launches a Regency trilogy with this enemies-to-lovers romance centered on the feuding Montgomery and Davies families. Brimming with intrigue, passion, and humor, it’s tropey in the best of ways, with a palpable charge between the romantic leads—aspiring archaeologist Maddie Montgomery and former soldier Gryff Davies—and a good balance of darkness and light.
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Karelia Stetz-Waters (Forever) $15.99
When the owner of a sex toy shop in Portland, Ore., dies, she leaves the struggling business to Selena, her art-school dropout employee, and Cade, her buttoned-up niece, who runs the family’s New York art gallery. The two wildly different women must work together to save the shop from liquidation, and with their burgeoning relationship, they just might save each other, too.
Wild Rain
Beverly Jenkins (Avon) $7.99
Opposites attract in Jenkins’s second Reconstruction-era Women Who Dare romance, which finds reporter Garrett McCray traveling from Washington, D.C., to Paradise, Wyo., to profile Colton Lee, a physician, only to find himself captivated by Spring, the doctor’s rancher sister. The author has a sure touch with the racism of the era, not shying away from harsh realities but also not letting it derail the escapist romance, proving once again why she’s a giant of the genre.
Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
Speculative fiction transports readers to other worlds—or scares them silly (in a good way).
The Final Girl Support Group
Grady Hendrix (Berkley) $26
Hendrix follows 2020’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires with a wildly entertaining romp that plays with the trope of the “final girl,” or last woman standing in a slasher flick. Six massacre survivors attend weekly therapeutic support sessions to address their lasting trauma; when one of the group members goes missing, the others fear the worst.
The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales
Yoon Ha Lee (Andrews McMeel) $14.99
Locus Award winner Lee takes on the folktale form in a collection of 25 gorgeous, magical stories, each a tiny jewel of inclusive worldbuilding that taps into mythic themes to feel somehow both ancient and delightfully fresh. The result is breathtaking in its playful grace.
The Jasmine Throne
Tasha Suri (Orbit) $16.99
In this epic fantasy trilogy launch, a ruthless emperor imprisons his sister. She plots to secure her freedom while her maidservant, a powerful priestess who keeps her powers hidden, seeks to understand her own tragic past. The pair grow closer, balancing conflicting loyalties with their growing feelings for each other. The result is a fierce, heart-wrenching exploration of the value and danger of love in a world of politics and power.
The Kingdoms
Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury) $27
Joe Tournier remembers nothing before he stepped off a train in 1898 Londres, a city in an alternate England conquered by France during the Napoleonic Wars. A postcard from 1805 leads him on a time-bending journey that spans more than a century. Pulley’s latest genre-straddling feat masterfully combines history, speculative fiction, queer romance, and more into an un-put-downable whole.
Machinehood
S.B. Divya (Saga) $27
This near-future thriller centers on Welga Ramírez, a bodyguard with enhanced combat skills who makes her living protecting CEOs and celebrities. It’s much more exciting work than the other options available to humans: “babysitting” the bots that have taken over most skilled labor or scrounging for low-paying online gigs. When a job goes wrong, Welga faces off against a mysterious pro-AI terrorist group called The Machinehood. Divya keeps the pace rapid amid the thematic inquiries into economic inequality, workers’ rights, and the nature of intelligence.
A Master of Djinn
P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom) $27.99
With Clark’s stunning full-length debut, the Locus and Nebula winner returns to the bustling streets of his alternate 1912 Cairo, following the adventures of Fatma el-Sha’arawi, a special investigator with the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. Decades earlier, the prophet al-Jahiz eliminated the separation of magical and non-magical realms, forever altering the world. When members of a brotherhood dedicated to his legacy turn up murdered, seemingly by the returned prophet himself, Fatma sets out to uncover the truth.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones (Saga) $26.99
In this audacious extravaganza, 17-year-old Jade, who is of Blackfoot descent, draws on her deep knowledge of horror films to investigate a series of deaths in her gentrifying town. The author, whose many books include 2020’s acclaimed The Only Good Indians, expertly mixes the frightening and the funny in a no-holds-barred homage to classic horror tropes written under the heady influence of splatter films.
The Nature of Middle-earth
J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Carl F. Hostetter
(Mariner) $32
Tolkien completists will relish this volume, which collects the author’s final, previously unpublished writings on his fantasy world. Editor Hostetter is considered one of the world’s leading Tolkien experts; Tolkien’s son Christopher, who edited much of his father’s posthumous work, was involved in the creation of this volume before his death in 2020.
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir (Ballantine) $28.99
The latest from the author of The Martian is a suspenseful portrait of human ingenuity and resilience. A man awakens from a coma with no memories of his identity or how he came to be alone on a spaceship. In time, he realizes he’s been drafted into an international team of scientists working to avert impending catastrophe: the sun is losing heat, imperiling the future of humanity. Weir tosses in curveballs and judiciously uses humor to break the tension as the story builds to an unexpectedly moving ending.
The Queen of the Cicadas
V. Castro (Flame Tree) $24.95
Castro merges brutal realism and supernatural terror to create a fierce, memorable tale of Mexican folklore and horror. In 2018, Belinda attends a wedding at an imposing Victorian farmhouse in Texas. There, she meets Hector, the property’s owner, who recalls the tale of La Reina de Las Chicharras, an urban legend about a hate crime that occurred on the farm decades before. The narrative alternates between the present-day wedding and the truth of what happened all those years ago, telling an urgent story of the plight of migrant workers that’s visceral and disturbing in the best of ways.
Remote Control
Nnedi Okorafor (Tordotcom) $19.99
A girl known as “the adopted daughter of death” comes of age in the electrifying latest from Hugo, Locus, and Nebula winner Okorafor. In a near-future, technologically advanced Ghana, Sankofa discovers a glowing green seed, which, before her father sells it to the government, gives her the power to take away life. The child is initially unable to control the ability and accidentally kills her entire hometown, including her parents and brother. This tragedy sends her on a quest to understand her powers and recover the mystical seed.
The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry
C.M. Waggoner (Ace) $17
With this rollicking standalone fantasy featuring a scrappy but endearing heroine, Waggoner returns to the vibrant, Victorian England–inspired world of her debut, Unnatural Magic. Delly, a petty thief and talented fire witch, joins a misfit team of female bodyguards protecting a wealthy woman in the weeks before her marriage. In between a grisly murder, several extortions and explosions, and encounters with an extremely unsettling zombie mouse, Waggoner finds plenty of room for wry humor and a refreshingly wholesome relationship between Delly and a fellow bodyguard.
Shards of Earth
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit) $28
Clarke Award winner Tchaikovsky opens his Final Architecture series with a dazzling premise: a colossal, sentient entity known as an Architect rips Earth into a flower shape, scattering the remnants of humanity to colonize other planets. Tchaikovsky’s intricately constructed world is vast yet sturdy enough to cradle inventive science, unique aliens, and complex political machinations. With a mix of lively fight scenes, friendly banter, and high-stakes intrigue, this is space opera at its best.
