Buzz Books 2020: Spring/Summer

By Publishers Lunch

As booksellers gather for the annual Winter Institute convention, where they get to meet the season’s big authors and hope to cart home pre-publication review copies, Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with some of the same insider’s look at 44 books on the way. As booksellers gather for the annual Winter Institute convention, where they get to meet the season’s big authors and hope to cart home pre-publication review copies, Buzz Books 2020 presents passionate readers with some of the same insider’s look at 44 books on the way. [Note our previously standalone young adult edition is now folded in to this edition, along with adult fiction and nonfiction.]
Our “digital convention” features such major authors as bestsellers Brit Bennett, Sue Monk Kidd, and David Nicholls, along with Veronica Roth, of Divergent fame, with her first adult novel. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Amy Engel, Debra Jo Immergut, Anna Solomon, and Ellen Marie Wiseman.
Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors. A legal thriller by Erica Katz has already been optioned by Netflix, and novels by Naoise Dolan and Kate Reed Petty were sold at auction. Kawai Strong Washburn has literary bona fides, as does Raven Leilani, Benjamin Nugent, and Ilana Masad.
Our nonfiction selections range from comedian Mike Birbiglia’s account of becoming a father to transgender activist and author Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Good Boy: My Life In Seven Dogs. Benjamin Taylor shares his friendship with Philip Roth in Here We Are.
Finally, we present early looks at new work from four up-and-coming young adult authors: Laura Bates, Brandy Colbert, Kim Johnson, and Court Stevens.
And be sure to look for the next Buzz Books 2020: Fall/Winter in May, just in time for Book Expo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishers Lunch
• Release date: Jan 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781948586313

Book preview

2020SpringSummerCover_LargeRGB.jpg

BUZZ BOOKS® 2020

Spring/Summer

Contents

Introduction

The Spring/Summer 2020 Publishing Preview

Buzz Books Authors Appearing at Winter Institute

Part One: Fiction

Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark (Little, Brown and Company)

Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead)

J’nell Ciesielski, The Socialite (Thomas Nelson)

Julie Clark, The Last Flight (Sourcebooks Landmark)

Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead)

Amy Engel, The Familiar Dark (Dutton)

Susan Forest, Flights of Marigold (Laksa Media)

Debra Jo Immergut, You Again (Ecco)

Elizabeth Kay, Seven Lies (Pamela Dorman Books)

Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings (Viking)

Sam Lansky, Broken People (Hanover Square Press)

Amy Meyerson, The Imperfects (Park Row)

David Nicholls, Sweet Sorrow (Mariner/HMH)

David Rawlings, Where the Road Bends (Thomas Nelson)

Katherine Reay, Of Literature and Lattes (Thomas Nelson)

Veronica Roth, Chosen Ones (John Joseph Adams Books)

Anbara Salam, Belladonna (Berkley)

Anna Solomon, The Book of V (Henry Holt)

Ellen Marie Wiseman, The Orphan Collector (Kensington)

Tom Young, Silver Wings, Iron Cross (Kensington)

Part Two: Debut

Lee Conell, The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press)

Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times (Ecco)

Erica Katz, The Boys’ Club (Harper)

Raven Leilani, Luster (Farrar Straus and Giroux)

Ilana Masad, All My Mother’s Lovers (Dutton)

Jenny Mccartney, The Ghost Factory (Fourth Estate)

Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations (Flatiron)

Benjamin Nugent, Fraternity (Farrar Straus and Giroux)

Kate Reed Petty, True Story (Viking)

Katherine St. John, The Lion’s Den (Grand Central)

Lysley Tenorio, The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco)

Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors (MCD/FSG)

Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine (Harper)

Part Three: Nonfiction

Mike Birbiglia, The New One (Grand Central)

Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs (Celadon)

Rosayra Pablo Cruz and Julie Schwietert Collazo, The Book Of Rosy (HarperOne)

Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park: A Memoir (Celadon)

Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels (Ecco)

Benjamin Taylor, Here We Are (Penguin Books)

Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk (HarperOne)

Part Four: Young Adult

Laura Bates, The Burning (Sourcebooks Fire)

Brandy Colbert, The Voting Booth (Hyperion)

Kim Johnson, This Is My America (Random House BFYR)

Court Stevens, The June Boys (Thomas Nelson)

Credits

Copyright

Introduction

For book-lovers looking to discover their next great read, Buzz Books 2020: Spring/Summer is a treasure-trove of what readers value the most: substantial excerpts from a curated selection of dozens of the most highly-touted books scheduled for publication this spring and summer. Think of it as a compilation of 44 great singles, or a special issue of your favorite literary magazine—if only they could land these top authors all at once.

As booksellers gather for the annual Winter Institute convention, where they get to meet the season’s big authors and hope to cart home pre-publication review copies, Buzz Books 2020 exclusively presents passionate readers with some of the same insider’s look at big books on the way.

Our digital convention features such major authors as bestsellers Brit Bennett, Sue Monk Kidd, and David Nicholls, along with Veronica Roth, of Divergent fame, with her first adult novel. Other sure to be popular titles are by Amy Engel, Debra Jo Immergut, Anna Solomon, and Ellen Marie Wiseman.

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors of each season and this volume is no exception. A legal thriller by Erica Katz has already been optioned by Netflix, and novels by Naoise Dolan and Kate Reed Petty were sold at auction. Kawai Strong Washburn has literary bona fides, as do Raven Leilani, Benjamin Nugent, and Ilana Masad.

Our nonfiction selections range from comedian and actor Mike Birbiglia’s account of becoming a father, which he also performed on Broadway, to transgender activist and author Jennifer Finney Boylan’s self-explanatory Good Boy: My Life In Seven Dogs, while Benjamin Taylor shares his friendship with Philip Roth in Here We Are. And Patrik Svensson manages to make eels fascinating in his book about the mysterious creatures.

Finally, we present early looks at new work from four up-and-coming young adult authors: Laura Bates, Brandy Colbert, Kim Johnson, and Court Stevens.

If these 44 great samples aren’t enough to fill your fall reading lists, we start with an extensive report on the entire spring/summer publishing season, with more than 600 notable forthcoming books that you will find promoted in the months ahead.

Start reading some of the best future books right now, and please feel free to share your excitement about these new books. Readers have spread the word through online reviews, and you can invite your friends and book group companions to download their own free copy of this ebook from any major ebookstore.

We are honored to help readers discover great new books and to assist the participating authors and publishers in reaching out to new audiences with these pre-publication excerpts.

The Spring/Summer 2020 Publishing Preview

It’s another exciting season of new books ahead. Readers will find their way to many of the books previewed here and others yet to be discovered. To help you sift through the many thousands of planned spring and summer titles, we’ve selected what we think are among the most noteworthy literary, commercial, and breakout titles for adults, separated into four key categories.

You’ll be able to sample many of the highlighted titles right now in Buzz Books 2020: Spring/Summer; they are noted with an asterisk. And please remember: because we prepare this preview many months in advance, titles, content, and publication dates are all subject to change.

Fiction

Highlights of the upcoming season include new titles from James McBride, Emma Straub, Richard Ford, and Anne Tyler. Plus, Emily St. John Mandel returns with her follow-up to Station Eleven, and Ottessa Moshfegh with her follow-up to My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

The Notables

Elliot Ackerman, Red Dress in Black and White (Knopf, 5/26)

Sebastian Barry, A Thousand Moons (Viking, 4/21)

N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became (Orbit, 3/24)

*Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead, 7/14)

Percival Everett, Telephone (Graywolf, 5/5)

Richard Ford, Sorry for Your Trouble (Ecco, 5/12)

Madeleine L’Engle, The Moment of Tenderness (Grand Central, 4/21)—A collection of stories, some of them previously unpublished, written just before the publication of A Wrinkle in Time.

Margot Livesey, The Boy in the Field (Harper, 8/11)

Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel (Knopf, 3/24)—A new novel from the author of Station Eleven.

Eimear McBride, Strange Hotel (FSG, 5/5)

James McBride, Deacon King Kong (Riverhead, 3/3)

Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands (Penguin Press, 4/12)

Joyce Carol Oates, Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. (Ecco, 6/9)

Lionel Shriver, The Motion of the Body Through Space (Harper, 5/5)

Scott Spencer, An Ocean Without a Shore (Ecco, 6/16)

Emma Straub, All Adults Here (Riverhead, 5/5)

Anne Tyler, Redhead by the Side of the Road (Knopf, 4/7)

Edmund White, A Saint from Texas (Bloomsbury, 8/4)

Highly Anticipated

Louis Begley, The New Life of Hugo Gardner (Nan A. Talese, 3/17)

*Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead, 6/2)—The sophomore novel from the author of The Mothers.

Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet (FSG, 6/2)

Diane Cook, The New Wilderness (Harper, 8/11)

Sarah Gerard, True Love (Harper, 7/7)

Gail Godwin, Old Lovegood Girls (Bloomsbury, 5/5)

Emily Gould, Perfect Tunes (Avid Reader, 4/14)

Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women (MCD/FSG, 6/16)

Catherine Lacey, Pew (FSG, 5/12)

Adam Levin, Bubblegum (Doubleday, 4/14)

Daphne Merkin, Twenty-Two Minutes of Unconditional Love (FSG, 7/7)

Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible (Norton, 5/12)

Christopher Moore, Shakespeare for Squirrels (William Morrow, 5/19)

Ivy Pochoda, These Women (Ecco, 5/19)

*Anna Solomon, The Book of V. (Holt, 5/5)

Lynn Steger Strong, Want (Holt, 7/7)

Graham Swift, Here We Are (Knopf, 4/21)

Héctor Tobar, The Last Great Road Bum (MDC, 6/2)

Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (FSG, 6/9)

Karolina Waclawiak, Life Events (FSG, 5/19)

Callan Wink, August (Random House, 3/31)

Emerging Voices

*Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark (Little, Brown, 3/24)

Nathacha Appanah, Tropic of Violence (Graywolf, 5/19)

Matthew Baker, Why Visit America (Holt, 6/16)

Andrea Bartz, The Herd (Ballantine, 3/24)

Ishmael Beah, Little Family (Riverhead, 4/28)

Christopher Beha, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts (Tin House, 5/5)

Amy Jo Burns, Shiner (Riverhead, 5/12)

*J’nell Ciesielski, The Socialite (Thomas Nelson, 4/14)

*Julie Clark, The Last Flight (Sourcebooks, 6/2)

Iris Martin Cohen, Last Call on Decatur Street (Park Row, 8/11)

Leesa Cross-Smith, So We Can Glow: Stories (Grand Central, 3/10)

Christina Dalcher, Master Class (Berkley, 4/21)

*Amy Engel, The Familiar Dark (Dutton, 3/31)

Lucy Foley, The Guest List (William Morrow, 5/5)

Carlos Fonseca, translated by Megan McDowell, Natural History (FSG, 7/14)

*Susan Forest, Flights of Marigold (Laksa Media Group, 8/11)

Leah Franqui, Mother Land (William Morrow, 7/14)

Matt Gallagher, Empire City (Atria, 4/28)

Nicola Maye Goldberg, Nothing Can Hurt You (Bloomsbury, 6/23)

Ursula Hegi, The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls (Flatiron, 6/9)

*Debra Jo Immergut, You Again (Ecco, 7/1)

Jonas Hassen Khemiri, translated by Alice Menzies, The Family Clause (FSG, 6/9)

Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, Hex (Viking, 3/31)

*Sam Lansky, Broken People (Hanover Square, 6/9)

Mary Pauline Lowry, The Roxy Letters (Simon & Schuster, 4/7)

Andrew Martin, Cool for America (FSG, 7/7)

Daniel Mason, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth: Stories (Little, Brown, 5/5)

*Amy Meyerson, The Imperfects (Park Row, 5/5)

Andrés Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia, Fracture (FSG, 5/5)

Matthew Norman, Last Couple Standing (Ballantine, 3/17)

Brian Platzer, The Body Politic (Atria, 3/3)

Alice Randall, Black Bottom Saints (Amistad, 6/23)

*David Rawlings, Where the Road Bends (Thomas Nelson, 6/2)

*Katherine Reay, Of Literature and Lattes (Thomas Nelson, 5/12)

Kathy Reichs, A Conspiracy of Bones (Scribner, 3/17)

Daniel Riley, Barcelona Days (Little, Brown, 6/23)

*Anbara Salam, Belladonna (Berkley, 6/9)

Rebecca Serle, In Five Years (Atria, 3/3)

Michael Farris Smith, Blackwood (Little, Brown, 3/3)

Zoje Stage, Wonderland (Mulholland, 6/16)

Rufi Thorpe, The Knockout Queen (Knopf, 4/28)

Delphine de Vigan, The Loyalties (Little, Brown, 7/21)

Lisa Wingate, The Book of Lost Friends (Ballantine, 4/7)

*Ellen Marie Wiseman, The Orphan Collector (Kensington, 7/28)

A. B. Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman, The Tunnel (HMH, 8/4)

*Tom Young, Silver Wings, Iron Cross (Kensington, 5/26)

Debut

Our sampler excerpts promising work from new talent including Lee Conell, Naoise Dolan, Erica Katz, Benjamin Nugent, and more. Other debut authors of note in the coming season include C Pam Zhang and Genevieve Hudson.

Susan Allott, The Silence (William Morrow, 4/22)

Carlos Manuel Álvarez, The Fallen (Graywolf, 6/2)

Afia Atakora, Conjure Women (Random House, 3/17)

Quan Barry, We Ride Upon Sticks (Pantheon, 3/3)

Emily Beyda, The Body Double (Doubleday, 3/3)

L. Annette Binder, The Vanishing Sky (Bloomsbury, 6/9)

Tommy Butler, Before You Go (Harper, 8/11)

Megan Campisi, Sin Eater (Atria, 4/7)

Maisy Card, These Ghosts Are Family (Simon & Schuster, 3/3)

Brian Castleberry, Nine Shiny Objects (Custom House, 6/3)

Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face (Ballantine, 4/21)

Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction (Ecco, 3/31)

Diana Clarke, Thin Girls (Harper, 6/9)

*Lee Conell, The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press, 6/2)

Polly Crosby, The Book of Hidden Wonder (Park Row, 7/7)

Cherie Dimaline, Empire of Wild (William Morrow, 7/28)

Nancy Wayson Dinan, Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here (Bloomsbury, 5/19)

*Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times (Ecco, 6/2)

Katie M. Flynn, The Companions (Gallery/Scout Press, 3/3)

John Fram, The Bright Lands (Hanover Square, 7/7)

Ryan Gattis, The System (MCD/FSG, 7/14)

Brady Hammes, The Resolutions (Ballantine, 5/5)

Leah Hampton, F*ckface: And Other Stories (Holt, 5/19)

Laura Hankin, Happy and You Know It (Berkley, 5/19)

Rachel Harrison, The Return (Berkley, 3/24)

Jane Healey, The Animals at Lockwood Manor (HMH, 3/10)

Arlene Heyman, Artifact (Bloomsbury, 7/7)

Jennifer Hofmann, The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures (Little, Brown, 8/11)

Genevieve Hudson, Boys of Alabama (Liveright, 5/19)

Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society (St. Martin’s, 5/26)

*Erica Katz, The Boys’ Club (Harper, 8/4)

Marina Kemp, Marguerite (Viking, 3/24)

Alex Landragin, Crossings (St. Martin’s, 7/28)

Celia Laskey, Under the Rainbow (Riverhead, 3/3)

*Raven Leilani, Luster (FSG, 8/4)

Odie Lindsey, Some Go Home (Norton, 7/21)

*Ilana Masad, All My Mother’s Lovers (Dutton, 5/26)

*Jenny McCartney, The Ghost Factory (Harper360, 6/30)

*Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations (Flatiron, 8/25)

Kate Milliken, Kept Animals (Scribner, 4/21)

Francesca Momplaisir, My Mother’s House (Knopf, 5/12)

Beth Morrey, The Love Story of Missy Carmichael (Putnam, 4/7)

Caitlin Mullen, Please See Us (Gallery, 3/3)

Emily Neuberger, A Tender Thing (Putnam, 4/7)

Kevin Nguyen, New Waves (One World, 3/10)

*Benjamin Nugent, Fraternity: Stories (FSG, 7/7)

Alex Pavesi, Eight Detectives (Holt, 8/4)

*Kate Reed Petty, True Story (Viking, 6/6)

Khurrum Rahman, East of Hounslow (Harper360, 7/28)

Maria Reva, Good Citizens Need Not Fear (Doubleday, 3/10)

Stephanie Scott, What’s Left of Me Is Yours (Doubleday, 4/21)

Stephanie Soileau, Last One Out Shut Off the Lights (Little, Brown, 7/7)

Won-pyung Sohn, translated by Joosun Lee, Almond (HarperVia, 5/19)

*Katherine St. John, The Lion’s Den (Grand Central, 5/5)

Shubhangi Swarup, Latitudes of Longing (One World, 5/5)

Emily Temple, The Lightness (William Morrow, 6/16)

*Lysley Tenorio, The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco, 7/7)

Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife (Little, Brown, 4/21)

Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House (Custom House, 5/12)

*Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors (MCD/FSG, 3/31)

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts (Ecco, 8/1)

Catherine Adel West, Saving Ruby King (Park Row, 6/16)

*Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine (Harper, 4/1)

Steven Wright, The Coyotes of Carthage (Ecco, 4/1)

Stephanie Wrobel, Darling Rose Gold (Berkley, 3/17)

C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead, 4/7)

Commercial

Spring is full of books from big names with new work from Elin Hilderbrand, Jeff Abbott, Liv Constantine, and more. You can read titles from Sue Monk Kid, Elizabeth Kay, and Veronica Roth’s first novel for adults in our sampler.

Jeff Abbott, Never Ask Me (Grand Central, 7/14)

Jussi Adler-Olsen, translated by William Frost, Victim 2117: A Department Q Novel (Dutton, 3/3)

Mary Kay Andrews, Hello, Summer (St. Martin’s, 5/5)

David Baldacci, Untitled Memory Man Book 6 (Grand Central, 4/21)

Jessica Barry, Don’t Turn Around (Harper, 6/16)

Lauren Beukes, Afterland (Mulholland, 7/28)

Sara Blaedel, The Third Sister (Grand Central, 4/7)

C. J. Box, Long Range (Putnam, 3/3)

Barbara Taylor Bradford, In the Lion’s Den: A House of Falconer Novel (St. Martin’s, 5/26)

Jamie Brenner, Summer Longing (Little, Brown, 5/5)

Dale Brown, Eagle Station (William Morrow, 5/26)

Michele Campbell, The Wife Who Knew Too Much (St. Martin’s, 6/9)

Jack Carr, Savage Son (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 4/14)

Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods (Grand Central, 3/17)

Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, The Heir Affair (Grand Central, 6/16)

Liv Constantine, The Wife Stalker (Harper, 5/19)

Clive Cussler and Graham Brown, Journey of the Pharaohs (Putnam, 3/10)

Clive Cussler and Robin Burcell, Untitled Fargo 12 (Putnam, 5/26)

Jeffery Deaver, The Goodbye Man (Putnam, 5/12)

Barbara Delinsky, A Week at the Shore (St. Martin’s, 5/19)

Michael Elias, You Can Go Home Now (Harper, 6/23)

Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich, The Bounty (Putnam, 5/12)

Glen Erik Hamilton, A Dangerous Breed (William Morrow, 7/14)

Sophie Hannah, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery (William Morrow, 8/4)

Elin Hilderbrand, 28 Summers (Little, Brown, 7/16)

Kay Hooper, Hidden Salem (Berkley, 4/7)

Nicholas Irving with A. J. Tata, Reaper: Drone Strike (St. Martin’s, 5/12)

J.A. Jance, Credible Threat (Gallery, 3/10)

Iris Johansen, The Persuasion (Grand Central, 6/2)

Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians (Gallery/Saga Press, 4/7)

*Elizabeth Kay, Seven Lies (Pamela Dorman, 6/16)

*Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings (Viking, 4/28)

Joe R. Lansdale, More Better Deals (Mulholland, 7/21)

Christina Lauren, The Honey-Don’t List (Gallery, 3/24)

T. M. Logan, The Vacation (St. Martin’s, 7/21)

Kimberly McCreight, A Good Marriage (Harper, 5/5)

Sean McFate, High Treason (William Morrow, 6/9)

John McMahon, The Evil Men Do (Putnam, 3/3)

Terry McMillan, It’s Not All Downhill From Here (Ballantine, 3/31)

Mindy Mejia, Strike Me Down (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 4/7)

Denise Mina, The Less Dead (Mullholland, 6/2)

*David Nicholls, Sweet Sorrow (HMH, 5/20)

B. A. Paris, The Dilemma (St. Martin’s, 6/30)

James Patterson with Brendan DuBois, The Summer House (Little, Brown, 6/8)

James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, The 20th Victim (Little, Brown, 5/4)

James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts, 1st Case (Little, Brown, 7/27)

Nora Roberts, Hideaway (St. Martin’s, 5/26)

*Veronica Roth, Chosen Ones (John Joseph Adams/HMH, 4/7)—The first adult novel by the author of the Divergent series.

John Sandford, Masked Prey (Putnam, 4/21)

Daniel Silva, Untitled (Harper, 7/14)

Karin Slaughter, The Silent Wife (William Morrow, 7/28)

Alexander McCall Smith, The Talented Mr. Varg: A Detective Varg Novel (Pantheon, 4/14)

Danielle Steel, The Numbers Game (Delacorte, 3/3)

Danielle Steel, The Wedding Dress (Delacorte, 4/28)

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Hollow Ones (Grand Central 6/2)

Scott Turow, The Last Trial (Grand Central, 5/19)

J.R. Ward, The Sinner (Gallery, 3/24)

Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop (William Morrow, 7/7)

Beatriz Williams, Her Last Flight (William Morrow, 6/30)

Stuart Woods, Hit List (Putnam, 3/24)

Nonfiction

Books concerned with saving American democracy from an assortment of threats dominate this season’s nonfiction, alongside a number of books about members of Congress and other political leaders. These include autobiographies from the late Elijah Cummings, Ilhan Omar, and Linda Sarsour; and biographies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell.

Notable memoirs dropping this season include those of Chelsea Manning, Glennon Doyle, Oliver Stone, and Sandra Tsing-Loh. History buffs will enjoy new offerings from Erik Larson, Mike Davis, and Robert Zoellick.

Politics & Current Events

Eric Alterman, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—And Why Trump Is Worse (Basic, 6/16)

Ami Ayalon with Anthony David, Friendly Fire: How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy and Its Hope for the Future (Steerforth, 4/21)

Molly Ball, Pelosi (Holt, 5/5)

Glenn Beck, Arguing with Socialists (Threshold, 3/24)

Jordan Blashek and Christopher Haugh, Union: A Republican, a Democrat, and a Search for Common Ground (Little, Brown, 5/5)

Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump (Harper, 5/19)

Michael D’Antonio, The Hunting of Hillary: The Forty-Year Campaign to Destroy Hillary Clinton (Thomas Dunne, 5/19)

Seyward Darby, The Shieldmaidens: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism (Little, Brown, 6/2)

Alina Das, No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants (Bold Type, 4/14)

Lawrence Douglas, Will Trump Go?: And What We Will Do When He Won’t (Twelve, 7/28)

Dinesh D’Souza, The United States of Socialism (All Points, 6/2)

Erik Edstrom, Un-American: A Soldier’s Reckoning of Our Longest War (Bloomsbury, 5/19)

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care? (PublicAffairs, 6/16)

Eric Eyre, Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic (Scribner, 3/31)

Alan Feuer, El Jefe: The Stalking of Chapo Guzmán (Flatiron, 5/19)

Thomas Frank, The People, No: The War on Populism and the Fight for Democracy (Metropolitan, 6/23)

Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, At Any Cost: The Inside Story of the Rise—and Reckoning—of Facebook (Harper, 8/25)

David Frum, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (Harper, 5/5)

Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (Penguin, 5/19)

David Giffels, Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America (Hachette, 8/25)

Newt Gingrich, Re-electing Trump: Four More Years to Make America Great Again (Center Street, 6/23)

Chris Hamby, Soul Full of Coal Dust: The True Story of an Epic Battle for Justice (Little, Brown, 6/16)

Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (PublicAffairs, 4/28)

Tom Homan, Crisis at Our Border: The Real Story on Immigration from a Former ICE Director (Center Street, 3/31)

Matt Jones with Chris Tomlin, Mitch, Please!: How Mitch McConnell Sold Out Kentucky (and America too) (S&S, 3/17)

Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show (Dutton, 3/31)

Shaun King, Make Change: How to Fight Injustice, Dismantle Systemic Oppression, and Own Our Future (HMH, 4/21)

David Litt, Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn’t, and Why Fixing It Is Easier Than You Think (Ecco, 6/16)

Lynda Lopez, AOC: The Fearless Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and What It Means for America (St. Martin’s, 6/2)

Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (PublicAffairs, 4/21)

Zerlina Maxwell, The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide (Hachette, 5/26)

Suzanne Nossel, Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All (Dey Street, 5/5)

David Plouffe, A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump (Viking, 3/3)

Eric A. Posner, The Demagogue’s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy from the Founders to Trump (All Points, 7/7)

Sarah Posner, Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump (RH, 5/26)

Elizabeth Shackelford, The Dissent Channel: An American Diplomat in a Dishonest Age (PublicAffairs, 5/12)

Michael Signer, Cry Havoc: Charlottesville and American Democracy Under Siege (Public Affairs, 3/10)

Jacob Soboroff, Separated (Morrow, 6/23)

Jennifer Steinhauer, The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress (Algonquin, 3/10)

Angela Stent, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest (Twelve, 7/28)

Zephyr Teachout, Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money (All Points, 5/19)

Chris Whipple, The Spymasters: How the CIA’s Directors Shape History and the Future (Scribner, 4/28)

Social Issues

Calvin Baker, A More Perfect Reunion: Race, Integration, and the Future of America (Bold Type, 6/30)

Robert Bryce, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations (PublicAffairs, 3/10)

Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles, Outraged: Why Everyone Is Shouting and No One Is Talking (Bloomsbury, 7/14)

Eugenia Cheng, x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender (Basic, 8/25)

Lisa Selin Davis, Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different (Hachette, 5/5)

Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (Avid Reader, 2/25)

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (Crown, 4/21)

Jessica Goudeau, After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America (Viking, 4/28)

Sylvia A. Harvey, The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family (Bold Type, 4/7)

Joe Holley, Sutherland Springs: God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town (Hachette, 3/17)

Lyz Lenz, Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women (Bold Type, 8/11)

Lisa Levenstein, They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties (Basic, 6/16)

Lisa Napoli, Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News (Abrams, 5/12)

Capricia Penavic Marshall, Protocol: Why Diplomacy Matters and How to Make It Work for You (Ecco, 6/23)

Chris Murphy, The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy (RH, 4/21)

Jennifer Palmieri, She Proclaims: Our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World (Grand Central, 3/10)

Eduardo Porter, American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise (Knopf, 3/17)

Lauren Sandler, This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home (RH, 4/28)

Linda Scott, The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Women’s Empowerment (FSG, 5/5)

Lizzie Skurnick, Pretty Bitches: On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used to Undermine Women (Seal, 3/3)

Gene Sperling, Economic Dignity: The Measure of What Matters Most (Penguin, 4/28)

Nikita Stewart, Troop 6000: The Girl Scout Troop That Began in a Shelter and Inspired the World (Ballantine, 5/19)

John Washington, The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US Mexico Border (Verso, 5/5)

*Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (HarperOne, 5/12)

Science & Technology

Emily Anthes, The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness (Scientific American/FSG, 6/23)

Mario Alejandro Ariza, Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe (Bold Type, 6/9)

Paul Dye, Shuttle, Houston: My Life in the Center Seat of Mission Control (Hachette, 7/14)

Chrisophe Galfard, How to Understand E=Mc2 (Quercus, 6/9)

Kate Greene, Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth (St. Martin’s, 7/14)

Paul Halpern, Synchronicity: The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect (Basic, 8/18)

David Lindley, The Dream Universe: How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way (Doubleday, 3/17)

Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet (Basic, 8/4)

Richard Masland, We Know It When We See It: What the Neurobiology of Vision Tells Us About How We Think (Basic, 3/10)

Hannah Mumby, Elephants: Birth, Life, and Death in the World of the Giants (Harper, 5/12)

Ina Park, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures into the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs (Flatiron, 7/28)

Kermit Pattison, Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind (Morrow, 6/16)

Bethany Saltman, Strange Situation: A Mother’s Journey into the Science of Attachment (Ballantine, 4/21)

Sonia Shah, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move (Bloomsbury, 6/2)

Neil Shubin, Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA (Pantheon, 3/17)

*Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World (Ecco, 4/8)

History and Crime

James H. Barron, The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulous and the Untold Story of Watergate (Melville, 5/19)

Amos Barshad, No One Man Should Have All That Power: How Rasputins Manipulate the World (Abrams, 4/21)

Neal Bascomb, Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler’s Best (HMH, 3/17)

Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (Morrow, 6/23)

Susan Berfield, The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 5/5)

Monica Black, A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post–WWII Germany (Metropolitan, 6/23)

Rutger Bregman, Humankind : A Hopeful History (Little, Brown, 5/19)

John Burton, The Black Arts: How Opposition Research Weaponized the Truth and Changed Politics Forever (Little, Brown, 7/7)

Eric Cervini, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America (FSG, 6/2)

Philip Coggan, More: The History of the World Economy from the Iron Age to the Information Age (Economist, 3/24)

Adam Cohen, Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America (Penguin, 2/25)

Nancy F. Cott, Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home Between the Wars (Basic, 3/17)

Robert Dallek, American Politics and Presidents: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump (Harper, 5/26)

David Davis, Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans from World War II Invented Wheelchair Sports, Fought for Disability Rights, and Inspired a Nation (Center Street, 8/25)

Mike Davis and Jonathan Wiener, Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (Verso, 4/14)

Eric Jay Dolin, A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes (Liveright, 6/9)

Sam Farran and Benjamin Buchholz, The Tightening Dark: An American Hostage in Yemen (Da Capo, 6/9)

Pam Fessler, Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice (Liveright, 7/14)

Peter Fritzsche, Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich (Basic Books, 3/17)

Jessica Garrison, The Devil’s Harvest: A Ruthless Killer, a Terrorized Community, and the Search for Justice in California’s Central Valley (Hachette, 5/5)

Jonathan Gill, Hollywood Double Agent: The True Tale of Boris Morros, Film Producer Turned Cold War Spy (Abrams, 4/7)

John Glatt, The Perfect Father: The True Story of Chris Watts, His All-American Family, and a Shocking Murder (St. Martin’s, 7/21)

Dan Gretton, I You We Them: Walking into the World of the Desk Killer (FSG, 5/5)

Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began (Scribner, 4/14)

Miles Harvey, The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch (Little, Brown, 5/12)

David Hill, The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice (FSG, 7/7)

Michael Hiltzik, Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America (HMH, 5/12)

Adam Hochschild, Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes (HMH, 3/3)

Florian Huber, Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945 (Little, Brown Spark, 3/10)

Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History’s First Global Manhunt (Riverhead, 5/12)

Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States (Basic, 4/14)

Peniel E. Joseph, The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Basic, 4/7)

Bettye Kearse, The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family (HMH, 3/24)

David King, Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome (Norton, 8/4)

Gerard Koeppel, Not a Gentleman’s Work: The Untold Story of a Gruesome Murder at Sea and the Long Road to Truth (Da Capo, 6/16)

Richard Kreitner, Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union (Little, Brown, 5/12)

Katherine Sharp Landdeck, The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (Crown, 4/21)

Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (Crown, 2/25)

Daniel Lee, The S.S. Officer’s Armchair: Uncovering the Hidden Life of a Nazi (Hachette, 6/16)

Brad Meltzer with Josh Mensch, The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President—and Why It Failed (Flatiron, 5/5)

Matthew Van Meter, Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South (Little, Brown, 5/19)

Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (St. Martin’s, 8/11)

Alan Mikhail, God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 8/18)

Jon Mooallem, This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together (RH, 3/24)

Wendy Moore, No Man’s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain’s Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I (Basic, 4/28)

Annalee Newitz, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age (Norton, 7/7)

Norman Ohler, The Bohemians: The Lovers Who Led Germany’s Resistance Against the Nazis (HMH, 7/14)

Steve Olson, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age (Norton, 6/28)

Idanna Pucci, The Lady of Sing Sing: An American Countess, an Italian Immigrant, and Their Epic Battle for Justice in New York’s Gilded Age (Tiller, 3/10)

Peter Ross Range, The Unfathomable Ascent: How Hitler Came to Power (Little, Brown 5/12)

David Reynolds, Island Stories: An Unconventional History of Britain (Basic, 3/24)

Michael Schuman, Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World (PublicAffairs, 6/9)

Thomas A. Schwartz, Henry Kissinger and American Power (Hill and Wang, 8/18)

Augustine Sedgewick, Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug (Penguin, 4/7)

James Shapiro, Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Penguin, 3/10)

Haley Shapley, Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes (Gallery, 4/7)

Debora L. Spar, The Virgin and the Plow: How Technology Shapes the Way We Work, Mate, Marry, and Love (FSG, 8/18)

Paul Starobin, A Most Wicked Conspiracy: The Last Great Swindle of the Gilded Age (PublicAffairs, 5/5)

Stephan Talty, The Good Assassin: How a Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down the Butcher of Latvia (HMH, 4/21)

Larry Tye, Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy (HMH, 5/5)

Liam Vaughan, Flash Crash: A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt, and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History (Doubleday, 5/12)

Declan Walsh, The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State (Norton, 7/14)

Tim Weiner, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020 (Holt, 6/2)

Michael Wood, The Story of China: The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream (St. Martin’s, 6/9)

Andrew Whitby, The Sum of the People: How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age (Basic, 3/31)

Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg, I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad (St. Martin’s, 7/21)

Jia Lynn Yang, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 (Norton, 5/19)

Julian E. Zelizer, Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party (Penguin, 4/28)

Robert Zoellick, America in the World: A Definitive History of U.S. Foreign Policy and Diplomacy (Twelve, 8/4)

Essays, Criticism, & More

Molly McCully Brown, Places I’ve Taken My Body: Essays (Persea, 6/2)

David Carr, edited by Jill Rooney Carr, Final Draft: The Collected Work of David Carr (HMH, 4/7)

Jason Diamond, The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs (Coffeehouse, August)

Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself: Essays (Grand Central, 3/24)

Michael Gorra, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (Liveright, 8/25)

Viv Groskop, Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature (Abrams, 6/9)

Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley, Coming to Age: Growing Older with Poetry (Little, Brown 4/14)

Wendy Lesser, Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery (FSG, 5/5)

Emma Smith, This Is Shakespeare (Pantheon, 4/21)

Biography & Memoir

Eric Alperin with Deborah Stoll, Unvarnished: A Gimlet-eyed Look at Life Behind the Bar (Harper Wave, 6/23)

Sara Faith Alterman, Let’s Never Talk About This Again (Grand Central, 6/9)

Annye C. Anderson, with Preston Lauterback, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson (Da Capo, 6/9)

Darran Anderson, Inventory: A Memoir (FSG, 8/4)

Kendra Atleework, Miracle Country: A Memoir (Algonquin, 6/16)

David Attenborough, Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young David Attenborough (PublicAffairs/Two Roads, 6/2)

Bernard Bailyn, Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades (Norton, 4/14)

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III (Doubleday, 5/12)

Edward Ball, Life of a Klansman: A Family History with White Supremacy (FSG, 6/2)

Robert D. Ballard with Christopher Drew, Bob Ballard: An Explorer’s Life (National Geographic, 5/11)

Erica Bauermeister, House Lessons: Renovating a Life (Sasquatch, 3/24)

Madison Smartt Bell, Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone (Doubleday, 3/17)

*Mike Birbiglia, The New One (Grand Central, 5/5)

Betsy Bonner, The Book of Atlantis Black (Tin House, 8/4)

*Jennifer Finney Boylan, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs (Celadon, 4/21)

Richard Bradford, Orwell: A Man of Our Time (Bloomsbury Carvel, 5/12)

David Chang with Gabe Ulla, Eat a Peach: A Memoir (Clarkson Potter, 4/21)

Rachel Cohen, Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels (FSG, 5/12)

Arshay Cooper, A Most Beautiful Thing: A Memoir (Flatiron, 7/14)

Oliver Craske, Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar (Da Capo, 4/7)

Lacy Crawford, Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 7/14)

*Rosayra Pablo Cruz, Julie Schwietert Collazo, The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at the Border (HarperOne, 6/2)

Elijah Cummings, We’re Better Than This (Harper, 6/2)

Douglas Michael Day, Bone Frog: A Memoir About What Happens After a Miracle (Twelve, 6/9)

John Chick Donohue and J. T. Molloy, The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Morrow, 5/12)

Glennon Doyle, Untamed (Dial, 3/10)

Nick Flynn, This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire: A Memoir (Norton, 8/25)

Esther Safran Foer, I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir (Tim Duggan, 3/31)

Chris Frantz, Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina (St. Martin’s, 5/12)

Hadley Freeman, House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family (S&S, 3/24)

Jen Gotch, The Upside of Being Down: How Mental Health Struggles Led to My Greatest Successes in Work and Life (Gallery, 3/24)

Catherine Gray, The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary (PublicAffairs/Aster, 3/3)

Jim Gray, Gray Matters (Morrow, 6/9)

André Gregory and Todd London, This Is Not My Memoir (FSG, 5/5)

Jean Guerrero, Untitled (Morrow, 5/19)

Alex Halberstadt, Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning (RH, 3/10)

Rana El Kaliouby with Carol Colman, Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology (Currency, 4/21)

Kapka Kassabova, To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace (Graywolf, 8/4)

Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter (Amistad, 4/28)

Ted Jackson, You Ought to Do a Story About Me: Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption (Dey Street, 8/25)

Jeezy with Benjamin Meadows-Ingram, Jeezy: An Autobiography (Dey Street, 6/30)

Morgan Jerkins, Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots (Harper, 5/12)

Betsey Johnson with Mark Vitulano, Betsey: A Memoir (Viking, 4/7)

*Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park: A Memoir (Celadon, 5/5)

Caroline Kennedy, 10 Things I Love About America (Grand Central, 4/14)

Rob Kenner, The Marathon Don’t Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle (Atria, 3/24)

Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family (Doubleday, 4/7)

Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: A Memoir (Dey Street, 6/16)

Iris Krasnow, Camp Girls: Fireside Lessons on Friendship, Courage, and Loyalty (Grand Central, 4/7)

Laila Lalami, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America (Pantheon, 5/12)

Mark Lanegan, Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir (Da Capo, 4/28)

Heather Lende, Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics (Algonquin, 6/30)

Selenis Leyva and Marizol Leyva, My Sister: How One Sibling’s Transition Changed Us Both (PublicAffairs/Bold Type, 3/24)

Ruthie Lindsey, There I Am: The Journey from Hopelessness to Healing—A Memoir (Gallery, 4/21)

John Loughery and Blythe Randolph, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century (S&S, 3/3)

Momus, Niche: A Memoir in Pastiche (FSG, 7/14)

David Nott, War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line (Abrams, 3/3)

Maya Shanbhag Lang, What We Carry: A Memoir (Dial, 4/28)

Sandra Tsing Loh, The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem (Norton, 6/2)

Loretta Lynn, Me & Patsy, Kickin’ Up Dust (Grand Central, 4/7)

Deborah Madison, An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables (Knopf, 5/5)

Chelsea Manning, Untitled Memoir (FSG, 7/21)

Tim McGrath, James Monroe: A Life (Dutto n, 5/5)

Marisa Meltzer, This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World— and Me (Little, Brown, 4/14)

Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (S&S, 4/14)

Wayetu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, the Women: A Memoir (Graywolf, June)

Claire Nelson, Things I Learned from Falling (PublicAffairs/Aster, 3/5)

Jim Newton, Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown (Little, Brown, 5/12)

Ilhan Omar, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman (Dey Street, 6/16)

Jon Pessah, Yogi: A Life (Little, Brown, 3/24)

Marc Petitjean, translated by Adriana Hunter, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris (Other Press, 4/28)

Sarah Ramey, The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir (Doubleday, 3/17)

Seamas O’Reilly, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 6/9)

Paul Rees, The Ox: The Authorized Biography of The Who’s John Entwistle (Da Capo, 4/7)

P. B. Rengason, Untitled Memoir (Morrow, 5/5)

Brad Ricca, Olive the Lionheart: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman’s Journey to the Heart of Africa (St. Martin’s, 8/11)

Katie Roiphe, The Power Notebooks (Free Press, 3/3)

Linda Sarsour, We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance (S&S, 3/3)

Casey Schwartz, Attention: A Love Story: A Search for Attention in the Age of Distraction (Pantheon, 4/7)

Dionne Searcey, In Pursuit of Disobedient Women: A Memoir of Love, Rebellion, and Family, Far Away (Ballantine, 3/10)

Bakari Sellers, My Vanishing Country: A Memoir (Amistad, 5/19)

Fanny Singer, Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories (Knopf, 3/31)

Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir (Viking, 3/10)

Barry Sonnenfeld, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker (Hachette, 3/10)

Oliver Stone, Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game (HMH, 6/21)

Leslie Gray Streeter, Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like Journey in the Title (Little, Brown, 3/10)

Rebekah Taussig, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body (HarperOne, 8/25)

Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (Ecco, 7/28)

Tony Wagner, Learning by Heart: An Unconventional Education (Viking, 4/7)

Clarissa Ward, On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist (Penguin, 4/14)

Ted Widmer, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington (S&S, 4/7)

A.N. Wilson, The Mystery of Charles Dickens (Harper, 8/4)

Irwin Winkler, A Life in Movies: Stories from 50 years in Hollywood (Abrams, 3/10)

Rebecca Winn, One Hundred Daffodils: Finding Beauty, Grace, and Meaning When Things Fall Apart (Grand Central, 3/24)

Molly Wizenberg, The Fixed Stars (Abrams, 5/12)

Alisson Wood, Being Lolita: A Memoir (Flatiron, 8/4)

Ian Zack, Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest (Beacon, 4/14)

Alan Zweibel, Laugh Lines: Forty Years Trying to Make Funny People Funnier (Abrams, 4/7)

Buzz Books Authors Appearing at Winter Institute

Jessica Anthony

Julie Clark

Brandy Colbert

Jennifer Finney Boylan

Sam Lansky

Charlotte McConaghy

Amy Meyerson

David Nicholls

Anna Solomon

Kawai Strong Washburn

Elizabeth Wetmore

Part One: Fiction

Jessica Anthony, Enter the Aardvark (Little, Brown and Company)

SUMMARY

Early one morning on a hot day in August, millennial Congress-bro Alexander Paine Wilson (R) is planning his reelection campaign when a mysterious FedEx delivery arrives on his doorstep. Inside is a gigantic taxidermied aardvark. What does it mean? To find out, this outrageous, edge-of-your-seat novel hurtles between present day Washington, DC, where Wilson tries to get rid of the unsightly beast before it destroys his career, and Victorian England, where we meet the aardvark’s taxidermist and the naturalist who hunted her, and learn the secret that binds them all.

EXCERPT

Chapter 1

It is August. Congress is in recess. You are not in recess. You are running a reelection campaign for the First Congressional District in Virginia. Your opponent’s name is Nancy Beavers, and you have made up your mind that from here on out there will be no more days off. If you are going to lose your job, it is not going to be to a woman. Not a woman named Nancy. Not a woman named Nancy. Fucking. Beavers.

So you had no intention of taking today off, but today there’s a heat wave. Grids are out all over the city. Your grid is one of the ones that is out.

The A/C is not working. The internet is not working. The TV is not working. Nothing is working. You are not working.

You are reposed upon a Victorian sofa the color of canaries that your assistant purchased for you three days ago at a street antique fair for $1900, flipping through the book Images of Greatness: An Intimate Look at the Presidency of Ronald Reagan until you find what you’re looking for: a photograph of the Gipper reclined upon a canary-yellow velvet Victorian sofa.

Important-looking papers cross his chest.

You have looked at this photograph many times—it is the reason why you purchased this sofa, and now that you have it, you are lying on the exact same sofa in the exact same position as Ronald Wilson Reagan.

You turn the page.

There is Dutch, the Gipper, on his ranch, riding a horse chased by piebald foxhounds, the paunch of his stomach outlining a lightweight denim cowboy shirt, and you bought that exact same shirt at the exact same antique fair, and how the flaps of his tan riding pants do crest the tops of his riding boots, you think, and consider sending your assistant to return to the fair to seek out those boots, when the doorbell rings.

Your doorbell is not a buzzer, it’s something more ancient. Like from the Eighties. You wonder who it could be because no one ever comes to your door. Everyone always comes to your office. Then you wonder how the doorbell is working when nothing else is. The doorbell, you realize, is not attached to the grid.

This freaks you out.

It could be Rutledge or Olioke, you think, the two congressmen who stay with you during the week in the extra rooms of your townhouse near the Capitol while Congress is in session, but that’s highly unlikely: Representative William Billy Rutledge (D) is back on his farm with his wife and five sons. He left two days ago and won’t be back ’til September. Representative Solomon Sammy Olioke (R) is at some cottage with his wife and five daughters. Some crappy cottage by some crappy lake, and Olioke leaves his crap everywhere in your townhouse, he’s crappy at governing, he’s from Rhode Island, he’s been reelected four times, so even though he’s a Republican, you kind of hate Olioke.

The doorbell rings again.

You have no wife, no children. You, like Representative Rutledge, are young, white and handsome, however you are a bachelor. You are fine with this. This was the hallmark of your first campaign (this and abortion). It’s how people know you. But now that you are facing reelection, your aides are not fine with this: your Favorability Rating is currently holding steady at 52%, which, although good, is not as good as it could be, and as of late your aides have been telling you to Find A Wife.

If you Find A Wife, they say, your Favorability Rating will improve, because although you are neck and neck with Nancy Fucking Beavers, a middle-aged woman with an ass like two neighborly cast-iron skillets who wears these unbelievable pantsuits—Nancy Fucking Beavers is not fucking single. She has fucking children. Your platform is Bachelor and her platform is Children, and you are trying to wrap your brain matter around the fact that many people who should constitute your electorate will actually trust Nancy Fucking Beavers more than they trust you simply because she has children, roundly discarding the fact that her only experience in government is losing a local mayoral campaign by a hair, when the doorbell rings a third time.

You go upstairs. You put on your bathrobe.

Your bathrobe is navy blue with red piping and cost $398. It is monogrammed APW in Chancery on the breast pocket and is Egyptian cotton from Bill Blass, Ronald Reagan’s favorite designer. There is a picture of Reagan wearing the bathrobe in Images of Greatness, from when he got shot, and you always feel pretty good wearing the bathrobe, which is why, even though it’s so hot out, you put on the bathrobe.

You wear an oxford underneath. Like Reagan. Even after he got shot, he wore an oxford underneath.

You are less of a man than Ronald Reagan, you know this, but no one will ever be able to say about you that your goals were not lofty, you think, as you return downstairs and open the door.

1875

Sir Richard Ostlet, a fifty-year-old, richly mustachioed zoological naturalist, is in the Karoo beds of southern Africa, an area that will one day be known as Namibia, searching for strange mammals to bring home to Britain, and these particular mammals, the aardvarks, despite the fact that they have lived for several thousand millennia before Sir Ostlet, to him, fit the bill.

They look like some kind of joke, Ostlet thinks, like some kind of accident, part rabbit, part pig, or even part kangaroo, but in reality, the aardvark is none of these things; nor is it strange to the two African hunters working for Ostlet who kill these beasts regularly, for sport and/or meat, and who are, at this moment, presenting him with three high-quality specimens rooted out from their long, sandy tunnels last night.

Of the three specimens, one immediately stands out to Ostlet. Marvelously humpbacked, profoundly clawed, she is the oldest and therefore largest of the three, and reminds the naturalist of something but he cannot say what. For whatever it is, it’s neither the hypotrichous skin, yellow-pink, nor the four earth colored limbs—plantigrade at the front, digitigrade at the back—and it’s not the round, wrinkled scalp common to Ungulata and other hooved mammals, nor the ears, folded like silk, nor the stretched piggy snout with its coarse whiskers that cluster the nostrils, bridge the nose and even sprout from the cheeks—it’s something in the eyes, he thinks, which are soft, long-lashed, making her expression flirtatious yet noble, like an intelligent dog, and as the others leave Ostlet to dine in a nearby tent, he continues to stare at the dead aardvark, surprising himself when he sees in the face a kind of melancholy, he hasn’t felt this sad in years, and the burden is so sudden, so heavy, his first instinct is to share it, to split it with someone.

But there is no one there with whom to split it.

For Ostlet cannot say to his assistant enter the melancholy, like a reckoning or enter the malaise, like a frozen groundswell, and so: a plan is formed. This aardvark is selected. The carcass will be preserved for the boat back to England, and the skin, skeleton, notes and all sketches, will be delivered to Sir Ostlet’s close friend, the taxidermist Mr. Titus Downing of Royal Leamington Spa, the only man in the world, Sir Ostlet believes, who might actually be able to do the aardvark justice.

The aardvark will make it to Leamington Spa.

Sir Ostlet will not.

Late that night, the man, who is newly married to a slim, pretty botanist named Rebecca, and who, mere months ago, signed a lease on a lovely new flat on the lovely Gloucester Walk between Holland and Hyde, two of the loveliest parks in London; the man who participates in all the social field clubs such as the Midland Union, the Yorkshire Naturalists Union, the prestigious Cotteswold Club, which serves its members seedcakes and champagne; the man who, up to this moment, has been considered by all he knows to be wholly openhearted, privileged with a preternaturally optimistic disposition, one he has enjoyed since his youth, will find himself awake in the dark tent in Africa, driven out of his dreams.

Richard Ostlet will rise from his cot and root through his small wooden cabinet of gear, which is five rows of cork-lined drawers, each papered and stuffed with the accoutrements général of any naturalist: the chalk tins and marking pins, the white gum erasers, round prickly sponges, lidded glass jars, brown bottles of chloroform, and above all, numerous white lumps of camphor, which are necessary for the preservation of the specimens; and this is an irony Sir Ostlet does not consider as he removes the camphor lumps from their drawers, grabs a bottle of whiskey, and, one by one, ingests them, pill-like, to his death.

***

The man at the door is wearing a purple and black FedEx uniform. He is carrying a FedEx clipboard and behind him, a white FedEx truck hums in the heat. It’s FedEx.

Representative Wilson? he says.

Yes, you say.

Sign here, he says.

The man is an average height, a bit on the round side maybe, and sports a long brown beard, these funny-looking thick eyeglasses, and you will swear that these are the only details about him you are able to recall when you are seated in front of a congressional committee for your impeachment hearing—but that has not happened yet. That will not happen for another six weeks. Right now your only concern is the very large cardboard box with your name on it, which is standing, upright, behind the FedEx man. There is no return address.

What is it, you say. Who’s it from.

The FedEx man does not answer. He checkmarks the clipboard, walks quickly back to the delivery truck and climbs into the driver’s seat. He drives away.

In the playground across the street where local children go to scream, a chubby black boy stands alone, apart from the others. He is not screaming. He is watching you. He wants to see what’s in the box, and you can hardly blame him: the box is, after all, like, really big. It takes up your whole stoop.

You try and lift it. You cannot lift it.

The boy watches as you try and lift it.

How the hell did the FedEx man carry this thing to your stoop by himself, you wonder, and decide that you need to work out more. Stop eating carbs.

Your assistant, Barb Newberg, eats carbs all the time, but she doesn’t like to eat carbs by herself, so she hauls into your office endless plastic bins of Panera. Oily danish and muffins. Barb and her carbs. Like so many middle-aged women you know, Barb Newberg confuses kindness and gluttony, and it’s really time for a new secretary you think as you examine the box, which is certainly big and certainly heavy and all blank but for the taped seams, your name and your address in Foggy Bottom, which is 2486 Asher Place in the fine and fair city of Washington, DC.

You stop for a second and consider: maybe you shouldn’t bring something inside the house without knowing its makeup or origin (the post-9/11 Amerithrax scare when you were an intern has never quite left you), and that is why, standing out here in your bathrobe on the landing of Asher Place Townhouses across the street from the city playground with a chubby black boy staring at you now very intently on one of the hottest days of the year, you leave the box on your stoop, hustle inside to the kitchen and rummage the drawers until you find what you’re looking for: a knife, and it is a small, rust-dotted paring knife belonging to Olioke, which you carry in one hand as you return to the box.

You pare the seam. You look inside as the boy, unsupervised, crosses the street and walks up behind you.

"What’s that," he says.

The boy climbs up your stoop uninvited and watches respectfully as you stab two messy slits into each side. His patience, he thinks, will be rewarded. It’s only fair.

But life isn’t fair.

By slipping your hands through the slits, you create makeshift handles, and, in this manner, sort of tug the giant box inside, into your living room, ignoring the look on the boy’s face as you gently close the door on him, in silence.

You open the box and immediately recall from fifth grade a picture book called Mammals of Africa: how in the book there was a beast that looked like an anteater; how when the teacher called on you, you talked so confidently about the anteater and were mortified when the teacher scolded you when you were finished talking for not getting it right—it was no anteater because anteaters were in South America, she said, and your class had been studying Africa, and she held up the book and pointed at the title Mammals of Africa—and the teacher, Ms. Sline, who had spent one year living in London with her fiancé before he left her, who still spoke with a fake British accent and even, occasionally, adopted dumb British slang into her speech, barely opened her mouth when she said the word to you, and when she asked you to spell it, you spelled it like you heard it, and that is how the other children came to calling you Odd Fuck all year—but it is not solely because of this memory that you know the gigantic taxidermied beast in your living room is an aardvark; you know it’s an aardvark because that is what Greg Tampico told you the first time he finished sucking your cock.

***

The address for Titus Downing’s taxidermy shop is 24 Victoria Terrace in Royal Leamington Spa, and it’s the one on the corner, directly across from the All Saints Church, unmissable for the twelve heads of adult white-tailed deer buck, full-antlered, that hang outside the shop where perhaps a long awning should be.

Titus Downing: slim, forty and wan, is one of England’s premier taxidermists, the only taxidermist, in fact, who has received a royal warrant from Queen Victoria. In 1875, Downing is enjoying a bit of local fame, for he has recently stuffed, shaped and mounted the skin of a nearly two-ton African giraffe which has been purchased by Leicester’s New Walk Museum and now greets museumgoers in its Grand Hallway. A reporter at the Evening Standard enthused, This giraffe is so lifelike that upon Viewing, one expects the giraffe’s legs to nimbly walk off their mount! and traveled by train, via Birmingham, from Leicester to Leamington, demanding to know Downing’s secret: how was it possible to make a dead thing look so truly alive? "It is like magic," he said, and Titus Downing, who believes the art of the taxidermist is not all that different from the art of the magician, replied thusly:

You are asking me how to create beauty. The secret lies only in displaying beauty truthfully to life. The beauty must be recognized for its own sake, even by the unscientific. This is the case I advocate, and the end I have in view, and it was the best way Downing could explain to the man that taxidermy is not about death, it’s about life. It’s rebirth, it’s religion, and every carcass that falls into Downing’s hands is actually reborn; it is Christ beckoning Lazarus to come out, out of his cave.

It began over two decades ago, in 1851, when the young Titus Downing attended the Great Exhibition in London. He paid no attention to the intricate glasswork of the grand Crystal Palace or the largesse of the Koh-i-Noor diamond or Brady’s daguerreotypes or the tempest prognosticator with its storm-sniffing leeches; Downing’s gaze was fixed solely upon forty-two-year-old Charles Darwin, there to explain the work of every taxidermist on display. Darwin had practiced the art of taxidermy on the Beagle but learned it at Edinburgh from John Edmonstone, a freed Guyanese slave who made his own living this way: teaching taxidermy.

The Guyanese, Darwin said, predominantly Hindu and Jain, knew the art of rebirth better than anyone. The atman or jiva, they believe, the immortal life-essence of each living being, is intrinsically pure, everlasting, and ever since knowing this, Titus Downing has been at practice, re-creating the appearance of a creature’s moving skin to awaken its precise jiva, and although he is not the first British taxidermist to stuff a giraffe, because the giraffe Downing has stuffed so honestly bears its jiva, he agreeably intuits that the reporter at the Evening Standard and so many others, they may well be correct: he is uniquely skilled (perhaps, even, the best at his craft), so it is not in the least bit surprising to Titus Downing that his talent has reached a state of refinement never before reached by the Great Exhibitors, nor by Darwin, nor even, perhaps, by the freed Guyanese slave.

Yet Downing himself is not rich. He is not even that popular. This is because his work, he believes, is widely misunderstood.

Women in particular, though many men too, upon hearing his profession, enjoy regaling him with stories about the Sussex shop of the wealthy Mr. Walter Potter and his Museum of Curiosities, and Titus Downing of Leamington Spa has no time for people who think that he does what Walter Potter is doing.

Walter Potter—the very name casts a spoil upon the tongue!—Walter Potter, who anthropomorphizes any number of little beasts into obscene human tableaux: gerbils sipping tea, rabbits at cards, kittens wearing miniature wedding gowns, all of which the public adores?

Walter Potter is the reason why the public’s attention matters not to Titus Downing.

Downing’s method, if one can call it a method, is supplication. It’s prayer. For only by exercising total humility, he believes, can one fully invoke the desires of another. To understand how a creature moves, you have to know what a creature wants, and it is in this way that Downing is able to envision the skin he manipulates: to see the purpose of the mid-set jaw of the squirrel, to so accurately position the rolling harmp of the wolf’s haunch, the split-beak shock of the long-tailed tit—but it is in Big Game that Downing truly shines, and right