New Fiction Roundup – September 2021

After a hiatus, we resume our monthly rundown of new fiction, with an exciting slate of September titles including new work from Anthony Doerr, Colson Whitehead, Sally Rooney, Ruth Ozeki, and many more.

9/7: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney – Two friends, one a famous novelist and the other an editorial assistant, exchange emails musing about romantic escapades, political upheaval, and cultural reflections. By the author of 2019 breakout Normal People. A Peak Pick!

9/7: The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All by Josh Ritter – Musician and songwriter Ritter returns with the story of 99-year-old Weldon Appelgate and his free-wheeling life, beginning with the last days of the lumberjacks in tiny Cordelia, Idaho, and encompassing tales of murder, disaster, bootlegging and more.

New fiction roundup, March 2020

New Nonfiction Roundup – March 2020

New Nonfiction Roundup – February 2020

The shortest month of the year is filled with page-turning narrative nonfiction, new perspectives on history, revealing memoirs and politics, politics, politics. Happy reading!

Peak Picks.
Floret Farm’s a Year in Flowers celebrates the beauty of flower arranging from Washington’s family farm of the same name. Poet Cathy Hong Park unpacks the complexities of Asian American identity in Minor Feelings. And advice columnist Daniel Mallory Ortberg merges literary essays with memoir about his transgender journey in Something That May Shock & Discredit You.

Politics.
Craig Fehrman explores the lives of presidents through their own books in Author in Chief while Ben Cohen chronicles the highest court’s rightward swing in Supreme Inequality. Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne gives progressives and moderates hope this election year in Code Red and former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer offers Democrats a playbook to win in 2020 in Untrumping America. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat offers prescriptions for what ails us in The Decadent Society. In Dark Towers, David Enrich exposes the links between Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump, and Jill Wine-Banks looks back at her role as a special prosecutor during Nixon’s obstruction of justice trial in Watergate Girl.

New Fiction Roundup, February 2020

Coming-of-age stories, a life lived out-of-order, baseball in a dystopian United States, queer librarian spies on horseback, and a dedicated Victorian detective – February has some gems waiting for you to discover!

2/4: Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham – A family saga follows one family over two decades in Nigeria, as each sibling searches for agency, love, and meaning in a society rife with hypocrisy but also endless life.

2/4: Everywhere You Don’t Belong by Gabriel Bump – In this coming of age novel, Claude McKay Love leaves the South Side of Chicago for college, only to discover that there is no safe haven for a young Black man in today’s America.

2/4: The Resisters by Gish Jen –In a near-future world ruthlessly divided between the employed and unemployed, a once-professional couple gives birth to an athletically gifted child whose transition from an underground baseball league to the Olympics challenges the very foundations of their divided society. A Peak Pick!

2/4: Things in Jars by Jess Kidd – In Victorian London, a female sleuth is pulled into the macabre world of fanatical anatomists and crooked surgeons while investigating the kidnapping of an extraordinary child.

 2/4: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey – The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.