August Preview: The Millions Anticipated (This Month)
August 1
Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki [F]
The latest from Lepucki (a Millions alumn!) is a quintessentially California novel, spanning the dense forests of Santa Cruz and the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Centering on Ursa, who can (sort of) time travel and is drawn early on into an all-women cult (I’m listening), Time’s Mouth wrestles with memory, inheritance, and whether we can ever be extricated from our past. —SMS
Mobility by Lydia Kiesling [F]
The sophomore novel by Kiesling (another Millions alum!) is a story of class, power, and climate change, as well as American complicity and inertia. Kiesling is one of the best writers working today, and the Namwali Serpell calls this latest book a “deeply engrossing and politically astute tale,” so this one is especially hotly anticipated over at Millions HQ (by which I mean me). —SMS
The Lookback Window by Kyle Dillon Hertz [F]
Dylan has long kept the formative trauma of his teenage years—being sex trafficked at the hands of a troubled young man—buried, hiding his secret even from his new husband, Moans. But with the passage of the Child Victims Act, Dylan revisits his painful past in order to seek justice and move forward. With little more than memory to go on, will Dylan find justice on his own terms? Or will the search just traumatize him further? Robert Jones, Jr. praises Hertz’s debut as possessing a “fierce and psychedelic honesty reminiscent of Joan Didion‘s best work.” —LA
Walk the Darkness Down by Daniel Magariel [F]
Following the death of her daughter Angie, Marlene copes with her grief by frequenting the Villas, a dilapidated district where sex workers convene at night. There, she meets Josie, a prostitute who becomes her says Mageriel’s novel “rages like a beautiful tempest,” and counts herself as an admirer of Magariel’s “fine writing.” —LA
