It’s just about that time of year, when another huge batch of big books will be released. Upcoming titles in the months to come include new books by Richard Powers, Louise Erdrich and Haruki Murakami. Meanwhile, here is an incomplete list of new fiction that was due to be released today, with links to debtorsprison's The Literate Lizard and blurbs from the publisher.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France.
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.
Brothers and Ghosts by Khuê Phạm
Kiều calls herself Kim because it’s easier for Europeans to pronounce. She knows little about her Vietnamese family’s history until she receives a Facebook message from her estranged uncle in America, telling her that her grandmother is dying.
Yoruba Boy Running by Biyi Bandele
A fictionalized retelling of African linguist and clergyman Samuel Ajayi Crowther's miraculous journey from slave to liberator.
Late September by Amy Mattes
Late September is an intimate queer coming-of-age tale exploring the nuances of love, trauma and mental health.
In the summer of 2000, Ines, a grief-stricken skateboarder beginning to explore her sexuality, leaves behind her sheltered hometown on a Greyhound bus bound for Montreal. In awe of the city’s vibrancy, and armed with a journal and a Discman, Ines sets out to find a new way, befriending April, a latex-loving goth who gets her a job as a cam-girl. In the midst of a bar fight Ines meets Max, a magnetic skateboarder, whom she quickly falls for.
Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton (a new edition)
From a childhood of poverty, yet joy and freedom, to the punishing grind of factory life and the idiocy of being sent blindly into war, Caliban Shrieks’ narrator takes readers on a lyrical tour of life as a young man born into the first days of the 20th century.
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (a new translation)
Effi Briest is only 17 when she is married off to Baron von Innstetten, travelling to live with him in a provincial town on the remote Baltic coast of Prussia. He is 20 years her senior, an ambitious bureaucrat uninterested in his young wife, and lively Effi becomes increasingly isolated, bored and anxious in her stifling surroundings.
May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert (Winner of the 2023 Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet)
Céline Wachowski, internationally renowned architect and accidental digital-culture icon, unveils her plans for the Webuy Complex, her first megaproject in Montreal, her hometown. But instead of the triumph she anticipates in finally bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is excoriated by critics, who accuse her of callously destroying the social fabric of neighborhoods, ushering in a new era of gentrification, and many even deadlier sins. When she is deposed as CEO of her firm, Céline must make sense of the charges against herself and the people in her elite circle.
A Good Indian Girl by Mansi Shah
One Italian Summer meets Balli Kaur Jaswal in this novel about a disgraced Indian-American divorcée who spends a summer in Italy, reconnecting with her passion for cooking and reckoning with cultural expectations to make the choice of a lifetime.
Life's more fun when you ditch the recipe.
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.
Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.
The Empress of Cooke County by Elizabeth Bass Parman
Thirty-eight-year-old Posey Jarvis is the self-appointed “empress” of rural Spark in Cooke County, Tennessee. She spends her days following every word about her idol and look-alike Jackie Kennedy, avoiding her stalwart husband Vern, and struggling to control her newly defiant daughter Callie Jane—all while sneaking nips of gin. When Posey unexpectedly inherits a derelict mansion from her quirky old aunt Milbrey, she finagles her way into hosting her high school’s twentieth reunion there. She cares nothing about seeing her classmates, but she cares deeply about seeing the love of her life, a man who dumped her nineteen years ago. Possums are nesting in the parlor and the stench of cat urine permeates the sunroom, but she must be ready for the big day, even if she has to do the work herself.
Eighteen-year-old Callie Jane finds herself accidentally engaged and is panicking about her fast-approaching wedding. She’s also had enough of her domineering mother. Even though she loves her father, the idea of working at his emporium for the rest of her life just makes her . . . so sad. She longs to escape from her mother, her job, her upcoming wedding, and the creepy Peeping Tom terrorizing the town. She dreams of leaving everything she’s ever known in her rearview mirror and starting over in California. But when her life has been mapped out for her from birth, how can she break free?
Colored Television by Danzy Senna
A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex
Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.
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