Once again, I'm looking at upcoming publication dates and appreciating that if nothing else, at least the future will bring more books. These new releases are all by authors I'm already a fan of, and I'm eager to read their latest novels.
→ ANY OTHER FAMILY by Eleanor Brown (July 12): Brown's two previous delightful novels were both about families and their challenges, a favorite subject of mine. I'm excited by the premise of the new book, which features a particularly challenging family configuration: a collection of parents who have separately adopted biological siblings but work to keep the children connected.
→ THE LAST WHITE MAN by Mohsin Hamid (August 2): I adored Hamid's brilliant last book, EXIT WEST, a speculative take on migration. In this one, white people are waking up to find their skin turned brown, and I'm so curious to see where this inventive author goes with that story.
→ NUMBER ONE FAN by Meg Elison (August 30): Elison is the author of both the post-apocalyptic Road to Nowhere trilogy and the very different FIND LAYLA, about a real world teen growing up in a horrific home environment. The new book is something different again, a psychological thriller involving an author who gets kidnapped by an obsessed reader.
→ THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell (September 27): Serpell's astounding debut, THE OLD DRIFT, was so epic and wide-ranging that it's inevitable the next novel tells a smaller story. In THE FURROWS, a girl's little brother goes missing, and for years she seems to see him everywhere, until she meets a man who may or may not be her lost brother.
→ BEST OF FRIENDS by Kamila Shamsie (September 27): In HOME FIRE, Shamsie crafted a tense, complex reframing of Antigone through well-developed point of view shifts. The new novel concerns a friendship, which is something I always like to see explored in fiction, and I'm hoping for another layered and nuanced story.
→ OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng (October 4): EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU and LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE are both outstanding novels about complicated family dynamics. Both are grounded in the real world, so I'm fascinated that Ng's next family story takes place in a dystopian future ruled by intolerance that sounds uncomfortably plausible right about now.
→ THE SPARE MAN by Mary Robinette Kowal (October 11): I've read and enjoyed all of Kowal's previous novels, which include a Regency-era magic series and an alternate history of the US space program. This time, Kowal is combining mystery, space travel, and the trappings of classic noir, and I'm expecting a fun adventure.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Andrew Simmons writes for The Millions about watching Station Eleven and teaching Hamlet to the class of 2022: "Hamlet has always been a vehicle for our existential vibrations, but the angst of my students has spiked. The class of 2022 negotiated the normal contortions of teenage growth on abnormally unstable ground—school closures, remote learning, masking, sickness."
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