With summer approaching, we’re gearing up for beach reading, long-car-ride reading, plane reading, reading at night on the couch, reading at night in bed under the light of the table lamp, weekday reading, weekend reading… you get it. With all that reading, thankfully we have so many great new books to look forward to!
Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself in 1930’s Denver after her older brother is run out of town. She begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland and bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion. This is the highly anticipated debut novel of Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina.
Publication date: June 7
More than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez
More than You’ll Ever Know is an evocative drama about a woman caught leading a double life after one husband murders the other, and the true-crime writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story. Told through alternating timelines, Katie Gutierrez’s debut novel is a gripping mystery and a wrenching family drama. Presenting a window into the hearts of two very different women, it explores the many conflicting demands of marriage and motherhood, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.
Publication date: June 7
Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks returns with a new book that braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history. It tells the story of one of the greatest racehorses of all time and his beloved companion and groom Jarret, an enslaved boy. In 2019, art historian Theo and Smithsonian scientist Jess study the horse’s bones and uncover the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
Publication date: June 14
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
Casey, a recently widowed actress, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. She passes the time watching a glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. Later, it becomes clear that the couple’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When the wife suddenly vanishes, Casey immediately suspects the husband of foul play. What she doesn’t realize is that there’s more to the story than meets the eye — and that shocking secrets can lurk beneath the most placid of surfaces.
Publication date: June 21
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carolotta
From the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Delicious Foods, this novel follows a trans woman’s re-entry into life on the outside after more than 20 years in a men’s prison. Carlotta tries to reconcile with her son and reunite with a family reluctant to accept her while complying with near-impossible parole restrictions and trying to stay out of jail. This entertaining story offers a cast of unforgettable characters and challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people even after they’ve been freed.
Publication date: June 28
Night of the Living Rez: Stories by Morgan Talty
Set in a Native community in Maine, this short story collection examines the consequences and merits of inheritance. In twelve stories, author Morgan Talty — with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight — breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. One of LitHub’s most anticipated books of the year, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, survive, and persevere after tragedy.
Publication date: July 5
Crying in the Bathroom by Erika Sánchez
This memoir-in-essays is by Erika Sánchez, whose novel I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was a finalist for the National Book Award. In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest, Crying in the Bathroom is Sánchez at her best — a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.
Publication date: July 12
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garica
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of 19th century Mexico. According to Booklist’s starred review, the novel “paints a vivid picture that is as alluring as it is unsettling, filled with action, romance, and monsters. However, it is Moreno-Garcia’s ability to mesh the unease of the scientifically created beasts with the real-life terrors of a life on the margins and the horror of colonialism that elevates this story. Readers will fall into this tale immediately, enchanted.”
Publication date: July 19
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid
In this novel, Man Booker Prize finalist Mohsin Hamid reimagines Kafka’s iconic story The Metamorphosis. A white man named Anders wakes up one morning with brown skin and others across the story’s predominately white world also wake up in new incarnations. While some see this as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted, many feel profound loss and unease. As Anders’ romance with an old friend deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth and an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
Publication date: August 2
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford
Dorothy Moy is a former poet laureate who channels her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her daughter exhibits similar behavior and remembers things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has come to haunt her. She seeks help with an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma and connects with past generations of women in her family. Dorothy attempts to break the cycle of pain and abandonment to find peace for her daughter and gain the love that she’s been waiting for, knowing she may pay the ultimate price.
Publication date: August 2
This is the next novel from Emma Donoghue, the bestselling author of Room (adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Brie Larson). In 7th century Ireland, a scholar and priest has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking a young and an older monk, he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?
Publication date: August 23
Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature comes a multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of East Africa. Ilyas was stolen as a boy by German colonial troops and later returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza returns home scarred from the war and meets Afiya. As they all live, work, and fall in love, their fates are knotted together and the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.
Publication date: August 23
The Two Lives of Sara by Catherine Adel West
With a charismatic cast of characters, The Two Lives of Sara is an emotional story of hope, resilience, and unexpected love. Young mother Sara finds refuge at a boardinghouse in 1960’s Memphis, Tennessee. Black literature and music provide the stories and soundtrack for these turbulent and hopeful times, and Sara finds herself drawn in by conversations of education, politics, and a brighter tomorrow with a local schoolteacher. Romance blooms between them, but secrets threaten their newfound happiness, leading Sara to make decisions that will reshape their lives.
Publication date: September 6
Legendary author Stephen King returns with a dark, fantasy thriller titled Fairy Tale. The book follows 17-year-old Charlie, who is burdened by an unhappy life. His mother passed away when he was a child and his father is an alcoholic. Charlie meets a dog Radar and her reclusive owner, Mr. Bowditch, who lives in a big house on top of a hill. After Mr. Bowditch dies, Charlie inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war and the stakes could not be higher — for that world or ours.
Publication date: September 6
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
This poignant novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown is from New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Lucy by the Sea captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities it inspires. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart — the pain of a beloved daughter’s suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love.
Publication date: September 20
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
This dystopian novel follows a 12-year-old who lives with his librarian father and goes on an adventure to find his mother (who left when he was 9) after he receives a mysterious letter. Our Missing Hearts explores the ways supposedly civilized communities can pretend to ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. This is the third novel from Celeste Ng, the bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere.
Publication date: October 4
by Mariya Khan