Buzz Books 2021: Spring/Summer

By Publishers Lunch

Buzz Books 2021 presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at the buzziest books due out this spring season. Such major bestselling authors as Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Lisa Scottoline, and Tia Williams are featured, along with literary greats Leila Slimani and Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Julie Murphy, of Dumplin’ fame, with her first adult novel; Marie Benedict’s book about J.P Morgan’s personal librarian; and Flynn Berry’s thriller about two sisters and the IRA.
Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors, and this edition is no exception. Amanda Dennis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Carolyn Ferrell, Gabriela Garcia, are among the literary standouts, while Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters, inspired by a true story, has already been optioned for film.
Our nonfiction selections include two World War II stories, one by Boys in the Boat author Daniel James Brown and a second by Mari K. Elder. Jennifer Gunter, M.D. of The Vagina Bible renown, returns with her Menopause Manifesto. Kat Chow, Erin French, and Danielle Henderson have written three very different memoirs, about a Chinese-American family, a restaurateur, and an unconventional Black childhood, respectively.
Finally, we present early looks at new work from up-and-coming young adult authors: Safia Elhillo (Home Is Not A Country), Graci Kim (The Last Fallen Star), and Alexandrea Weis (Have You Seen Me?).
Be sure to look out for Buzz Books 2021: Fall/Winter, coming in May.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishers Lunch
• Release date: Jan 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948586399

Book preview

Introduction

Buzz Books 2021 presents passionate readers with an insider’s look at the buzziest books due out this spring season. Such major bestselling authors as Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Lisa Scottoline, and Tia Williams are featured, along with literary greats Leila Slimani and Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Julie Murphy, of Dumplin’ fame, with her first adult novel; Marie Benedict’s book about J.P Morgan’s personal librarian; and Flynn Berry’s thriller about two sisters and the IRA.

Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors, and this edition is no exception. Amanda Dennis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Carolyn Ferrell, and Gabriela Garcia, are among the literary standouts, while Emma Stonex’s The Lamplighters, inspired by a true story, has already been optioned for film.

Our nonfiction selections include two World War II stories, one by Boys in the Boat author Daniel James Brown and a second by Mari K. Elder. Jennifer Gunter, M.D. of The Vagina Bible renown, returns with her Menopause Manifesto. Kat Chow, Erin French, and Danielle Henderson have written three very different memoirs, about a Chinese-American family, a restaurateur, and an unconventional Black childhood, respectively.

Finally, we present early looks at new work from up-and-coming young adult authors: Safia Elhillo (Home Is Not A Country), Graci Kim (The Last Fallen Star), and Alexandrea Weis (Have You Seen Me?).

Be sure to look out for Buzz Books 2021: Fall/Winter, coming in May.

Spring/Summer Season Preview

Fiction

This spring promises plenty of titles from notable authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Rachel Cusk, Jhumpa Lahiri, and more. Meanwhile, our sampler features new work from Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and bestseller Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, plus an excerpt from Kaitlyn Greenidge’s sophomore novel.

The Notables

Elliot Ackerman, Admiral James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (Penguin Press, 3/9)

Kevin Brockmeier, The Ghost Variations (Pantheon, 3/9)

Rachel Cusk, Second Place (FSG, 5/4)

Rivka Galchen, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch (FSG, 6/8)

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 3/2)

Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts (Knopf, 5/4)

Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular (Knopf, 4/6)

*Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed (Grove, 3/2) – The Pulitzer winner’s long-awaited follow-up to The Sympathizer.

Cynthia Ozick, Antiquities (Knopf, 4/13)

Helen Oyeyemi, Peaces (Riverhead, 4/6)

Francine Prose, The Vixen (Harper, 6/29)

Lionel Shriver, Should We Stay or Should We Go (Harper, 6/8)

Joan Silber, Secrets of Happiness (Counterpoint, 5/4)

*Leila Slimani, In the Country of Others (Penguin, 8/10)

Edward St. Aubyn, Double Blind (FSG, 6/1) – The author of the Patrick Melrose novels returns with a novel about three friends over the course of a transformative year.

*Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Good Company (Ecco, 5/4)

Paul Theroux, Under the Wave at Waimea (HMH, 4/13)

John Edgar Wideman, You Made Me Love You (Scribner, 4/6)

Highly Anticipated

Jonathan Ames, A Man Named Doll (Mulholland, 4/20)

*Kristen Arnett, With Teeth (Riverhead, 6/1) – Arnett’s sophomore novel, and follow-up to Mostly Dead Things, is about motherhood in a queer household.

Matt Bell, Appleseed (Custom House, 7/13)

*Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian (Berkley, 6/1)

*Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie (Algonquin, 3/30)

*Joshua Henkin, Morningside Heights (Pantheon, 6/15)

*Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby (Harper, 4/6)

Diane Johnson, Lorna Mott Comes Home (Knopf, 4/20)

John Oliver Killens, The Minister Primarily (Amistad, 7/27)

*Brian Malloy, After Francesco (Kensington, 5/25)

Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were (Random House, 3/9) – From the author of Oprah’s Book Club selection Behold the Dreamers.

*Julie Murphy, Meant to Be: If the Shoe Fits (Disney Hyperion, 8/3)

Michael Punke, Ridgeline (Holt, 7/13)

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising (Ballantine, 5/25)

Simon Rich, New Teeth (Little, Brown, 7/27)

Sunjeev Sahota, China Room (Viking, 7/13)

Marisa Silver, The Mysteries (Bloomsbury, 5/4)

Kathy Wang, Impostor Syndrome (Custom House, 6/15)

Emerging Voices

Hala Alyan, The Arsonists’ City (HMH, 3/9)

*Flynn Berry, Northern Spy (Viking, 3/2)

Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane (Custom House, 5/11)

Kira Jane Buxton, Feral Creatures (Grand Central, 8/24)

Michaela Carter, Leonora in the Morning Light (Avid Reader, 4/6)

Naima Coster, What’s Mine and Yours (Grand Central, 3/2)

Katie Crouch, Embassy Wife (FSG, 7/13)

Kate Hope Day, In the Quick (Random House, 3/2)

Will Dean, The Last Thing to Burn (Atria/Emily Bestler, 4/20)

Carol Edgarian, Vera (Scribner, 3/2) 3

Louis Edwards, Ramadan Ramsey (Amistad, 8/10)

Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser (Knopf, 4/20)

*Angela Jackson-Brown, When Stars Rain Down (Thomas Nelson, 4/13)

Andrea Lee, Red Island House (Scribner, 3/23)

Christine Mangan, Palace of the Drowned (Flatiron 6/1)

*Charles Martin, The Letter Keeper (Thomas, Nelson, 6/1)

Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves (Flatiron, 8/3)

Maria Kuznetsova, Something Unbelievable (Random House, 4/13)

David Laskin, What Sammy Knew (Penguin Books, 3/16)

Lincoln Michel, The Body Scout (Orbit, 8/10)

Paul Neilan, The Hollywood Spiral (Grand Central, 5/15)

Kristen Radtke, Seek You (Pantheon, 7/6)

Chris Power, A Lonely Man (FSG, 5/4)

Sam Riviere, Dead Souls (Catapult, 5/18)

Steven Rowley, The Guncle (Putnam, 5/25)

Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland (FSG, 5/4)

Natalie Standiford, Astrid Sees All (Atria, 4/6)

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Savage Tongues (HMH, 8/3)

*Willy Vlautin, The Night Always Comes (Harper, 4/6)

*Tia Williams, Seven Days in June (Grand Central, 6/8)

DEBUT

The upcoming season is packed with debuts. Our sampler features promising new voices like Gabriela Garcia, A. J. Gnuse, Sanjena Sathian, and Emma Stonex.

Ilona Bannister, When I Ran Away (Doubleday, 3/30)

Claire Boyles, Site Fidelity (Norton, 6/15)

*Gregory Brown, The Lowering Days (Harper, 3/2)

Greg Buchanan, Sixteen Horses (Flatiron, 7/20)

William di Canzio, Alec (FSG, 7/6)

Anna Caritj, Leda and the Swan (Riverhead, 5/4)

YZ Chin, Edge Case (Ecco, 8/10)

Mikaella Clements, Onjuli Datta, The View Was Exhausting (Grand Central, 6/6)

*Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot (Harper, 6/1)

Abigail Dean, Girl A (Viking, 2/2)

*Amanda Dennis, Her Here (Bellevue Literary Press, 3/9)

Nicolas DiDomizio, Burn It All Down (Little, Brown, 5/25)

*Carolyn Ferrell, Dear Miss Metropolitan (Holt, 7/6)

Jamie Figueroa, Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult, 3/2)

*Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt (Flatiron, 4/6) – Garcia’s debut spans generations, beginning in Cuba in the 19th century.

*Eileen Garvin, The Music of Bees (Dutton, 4/27)

*Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, Very Nice Box (HMH, 3/2)

*A. J. Gnuse, Girl in the Walls (Ecco, 5/11)

Forsyth Harmon, Justine (Tin House, 3/2)

Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water (Little, Brown, 6/6)

*Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace (Riverhead, 7/6)

R.J. Hoffmann, Other People’s Children (Simon & Schuster 4/6)

David Hoon Kim, Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost (FSG, 8/3)

Gabriel Krauze, Who They Was (Bloomsbury, 6/22)

Tracey Lange, We Are the Brennans (Celadon, 8/3)

Will Leitch, How Lucky (Haper, 5/11)

*Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper, 7/27)

Carole Johnstone, Mirrorland (Scribner, 4/20)

Tom Lin, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (Little, Brown, 6/1)

Claire Luchette, Agatha of Little Neon (FSG, 8/3)

Kelly McClorey, Nobody, Somebody, Anybody (Ecco, 7/6)

Ailsa McFarlane, Highway Blue (Hogarth, 5/18)

Beth Morgan, A Touch of Jen (Little, Brown, 7/13)

Maria Mutch, Molly Falls to Earth (Simon & Schuster 4/27)

*Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary (Park Row, 3/2)

Jackie Polzin, Brood (Doubleday, 3/9)

Rafe Posey, The Stars We Share (Pamela Dorman, 5/18)

Willa C. Richards, The Comfort of Monsters (Harper, 6/16)

Elias Rodriques, All the Water I’ve Seen Is Running (Norton, 6/22)

Jennifer Saint, Ariadne (Flatiron, 5/4)

Jill Santopolo, Everything After (Putnam, 3/9)

*Sanjena Sathian, Gold Diggers (Penguin Press, 4/6) – An Indian-American realist coming of age story.

Mira Sethi, Are You Enjoying? (Knopf, 4/20)

Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind (Hogarth, 3/2)

Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties: Stories (Ecco, 8/3)

Jen Spyra, Big Time (Random House, 3/16) 9

*Rebecca Starford, An Unlikely Spy (Ecco, 6/8)

*Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters (Viking, 3/16)

Chris Stuck, Give My Love to the Savages (Amistad, 7/6)

JoAnne Tompkins, What Comes After (Riverhead, 4/13)

*Nancy Tucker, The First Day of Spring (Riverhead, 5/18)

Laura Maylene Walter, Body of Stars (Dutton, 3/16)

Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev (Simon & Schuster, 4/20)

Jack Wang, We Two Alone (HarperVia, 6/1)

J.R. Ward, Lover Unveiled (Gallery, 4/20)

Phoebe Wynne, Madam (St. Martin’s, 5/18)

COMMERCIAL FICTION

This edition of Buzz Books includes titles by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Lisa Scottoline, and Shanora Williams. And this spring and summer look out for new releases from Stacey Abrams, Liv Constantine, Adrian McKinty, and Alafair Burke.

Jeff Abbott, An Ambush of Widows (Grand Central, 6/6)

Stacey Abrams, While Justice Sleeps (Doubleday, 5/11) – A thriller set within in the Supreme Court from the political leader.

Camille Aubray, The Godmothers (William Morrow, 6/15)

Linwood Barclay, Find You First (William Morrow, 5/4)

David Baldacci, David Baldacci Spring 2021 (Grand Central, 4/20)

Chris Bohjalian, Hour of the Witch (Doubleday, 4/20)

C. J. Box, Dark Sky (Putnam, 3/2)

Dale Brown, Arctic Storm Rising (William Morrow, 5/25)

Alafair Burke, Find Me (Harper, 8/3)

Jack Carr, The Devil’s Hand (Atria/Emily Bestler, 4/13)

Harlan Coben, Win (Grand Central, 3/16)

Ben Coes, The Island (St. Martin’s, 8/17)

Liv Constantine, The Stranger in the Mirror (Harper, 7/6)

Catherine Coulter, Vortex: An FBI Thriller (William Morrow, 8/10)

Clive Cussler, Graham Brown, Fast Ice (Putnam, 3/9)

Clive Cussler, Jack Du Brul, The Saboteurs (Putnam, 5/25)

Stephanie Dray, The Women of Chateau Lafayette (Berkley, 3/30)

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, The Girls Are All So Nice Here (Simon & Schuster, 3/9)

Donna Freitas The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano (Pamela Dorman/Viking, 4/6)

Janet Evanovich, Steve Hamilton, The Bounty (Atria, 3/23)

R. H. Herron, Hush Little Baby (Dutton, 5/11)

Elin Hilderbrand, Golden Girl (Little, Brown, 6/1)

Mike Lupica, Robert B. Parker’s Payback (Putnam, 5/4)

Jonas Jonasson, Sweet, Sweet Revenge LTD (HarperVia, 7/27)

Iris Johansen, The Bullet (Grand Central, 6/8)

Alma Katsu, Red Widow (Putnam, 3/23)

Mary Kubica, Local Woman Missing (Park Row, 5/4)

Caroline Kepnes, You Love Me (Random House 4/6)

*Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot (Celadon, 5/11)

Adrian McKinty, Untitled Adrian McKinty Novel (Mulholland, 7/1)

B. A. Paris, The Therapist (St. Martin’s, 7/13)

James Patterson, J. D. Barker (With), The Noise (Little, Brown, 8/16)

James Patterson, Bill Clinton, The President’s Daughter (Little, Brown, 6/7)

James Patterson, Maxine Paetro, 21st Birthday (Little, Brown, 5/3)

Gin Phillips, Family Law (Viking, 5/4)

Nora Roberts, Legacy (St. Martin’s, 5/25)

John Sandford, Ocean Prey (Putnam, 4/13)

*Lisa Scottoline, Eternal (Putnam, 3/23)

Daniel Silva, Untitled Silva Novel 2021 (Harper, 6/13)

Sister Souljah, Life After Death (Atria/Emily Bestler, 3/2)

Zoje Stage, Getaway (Mulholland, 8/17)

Jake Tapper, The Devil May Dance (Little, Brown, 5/11)

Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary (Ballantine, 5/4) – The bestselling author of The Martian returns with this story of a last-chance mission to space.

*Shanora Williams, The Perfect Ruin (Kensington, 6/29)

Ben H. Winters, The Quiet Boy (Mulholland, 5/18)

Stuart Woods, Double Jeopardy (Putnam, 3/23)

*Gareth Worthington, A Time for Monsters (Vesuvian Books, 5/18)

David Yoon, Version Zero (Putnam, 5/25)

NONFICTION

This season’s notable nonfiction offerings include Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker and Susan Page’s Madam Speaker, along with political memoirs from John Boehner, Tammy Duckworth, and Marie Yovanovitch. Celebrity memoirists this season include Jamie Foxx, Julianna Margulies, and Andrew McCarthy.

Biography & Memoir

Noe Alvarez, Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land (Catapult, 4/13)

Blake Bailey, Philip Roth: The Biography (Norton, 4/6)

Alison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength (HMH, 5/4)

Emily Rapp Black, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg (Notting Hill, 6/15)

Krys Malcolm Belc, The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (Counterpoint, 6/15)

Michelle Black, Sacrifice: A Gold Star Widow’s Fight for the Truth (Putnam, 5/4)

John Boehner, On the House: A Washington Memoir (St. Martin’s, 4/13)

Timothy Brennan, Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (FSG, 3/23)

Brian Broome, Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir (HMH, 5/18)

Stephen Budiansky, Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel (Norton, 5/11)

Lorenzo Carcaterra, Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family (Ballantine, 4/27)

James Carroll, The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost its Soul (Random House, 3/23)

*Kat Chow, Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir (Grand Central, 8/24)

Alex Christofi, Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life (Bloomsbury Continuum, 3/23)

Christopher Clarey, The Master: The Brilliant Career of Roger Federer (Twelve, 8/17)

Dr. Francois S. Clemmons, Officer Clemmons: A Memoir (Catapult, 5/4)

Julia Cooke, Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am (HMH, 3/2)

Jim Davidson, The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain’s Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again (St. Martin’s, 4/20)

Stephen Davis, Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story (Hachette, 6/15)

Anthony M. DeStefano, The Deadly Don: Vito Genovese, Mafia Boss (Citadel, 5/25)

Cheryl Diamond, Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood (Algonquin, 6/15)

Cate Doty, Mergers and Acquisitions: Or, Everything I Know About Love I Learned on the Wedding Pages (Putnam, 5/4)

Tammy Duckworth, Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir (Twelve, 3/30)

BB Easton, Sex/Life: 44 Chapters About 4 Men (Forever, 5/11)

Nate Ebner and Paul Daugherty, Finish Strong: A Father’s Code and a Son’s Path (Penguin, 5/11)

Kate Fagan, All the Colors Came Out: A Father, a Daughter, and a Lifetime of Lessons (Little, Brown, 5/18)

Audrey Clare Farley, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt (Grand Central, 4/20)

Melissa Febos, Girlhood (Bloomsbury, 3/30)

Tovah Feldshuh, Lilyville: Mother, Daughter, and Other Roles I’ve Played (Hachette, 4/13)

Jory Fleming with Winik Lyric, How to Be Human: An Autistic Man’s Guide to Life (S&S, 4/20)

Jamie Foxx, Act Like You Got Some Sense (Grand Central, 5/4)

Gina Frangello, Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason (Counterpoint, 4/6)

*Erin French, Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch (Celadon, 4/6)

Vince Granata, Everything Is Fine: A Memoir (Atria, 4/13)

Jason Heller, Extraterrestrial Summer: Growing Up With the Aliens (Melville, 7/13)

*Danielle Henderson, The Ugly Cry: A Memoir (Viking, 6/1)

Clinton Heylin, The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 (Little, Brown, 5/18)

James Tate Hill, Blind Man’s Bluff: A Memoir (Norton, 7/27)

Mazie K. Hirono, Heart of Fire: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story (Viking, 4/6)

Quiara Alegría Hudes, My Broken Language: A Memoir (One World, 4/6)

J. Nicole Jones, Low Country: A Memoir (Catapult, 4/13)

Menachem Kaiser, Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure (HMH, 3/16)

Rob Kenner, The Marathon Don’t Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsey Hussle (Atria, 3/23)

Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo (Dey Street, 3/23)

Jenny Lawson, Broken (in the best possible way) (HH, 4/6)

Daniel Barban Levin, Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir (Crown, 3/23)

Julianna Margulies, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life (Ballantine, 5/4)

Andrew McCarthy, Brat: An ‘80s Story (Grand Central, 5/11)

Ty McCormick, Beyond the Sand and Sea: One Family’s Quest for a Country to Call Home (St. Martin’s, 3/30)

Joshua Mohr, Model Citizen: A Memoir (MCD, 3/9)

Andrew Morton, Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters (Grand Central, 3/30)

Alexander Nemerov, Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York (Penguin, 3/23)

Mae Ngai, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (Norton, 8/24)

Elizabeth Nyamayaro, I Am a Girl from Africa (Scribner, 4/20)

Maryanne O’Hara, Little Matches: A Memoir of Grief and Light (HarperOne, 4/20)

Susan Page, Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power (Twelve, 4/6)

Nichole Perkins, Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be (Grand Central, 8/17)

Charles Person with Richard Rooker, Buses Are a Comin’: Memoir of a Freedom Rider (St. Martin’s, 4/27)

Larissa Pham, Pop Song: Adventures in Art & Intimacy (Catapult, 5/4)

Trent Preszler, Little and Often: A Memoir (William Morrow, 4/27)

Shugri Said Salh, The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert (Algonquin, 8/3)

Yusef Salaam, Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice (Grand Central, 5/18)

Fiona Sampson, Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Norton, 8/17)

Doree Shafrir, Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer (Ballantine, 6/29)

Adam Stern, Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training (HMH, 7/13)

Glenn Stout, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s Original Gangster Couple (HMH, 3/30)

J. Randy Taraborrelli, Grace & Steel: Dorothy, Barbara, Laura, and the Women of the Bush Dynasty (St. Martin’s, 3/2)

Richard Thompson, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975 (Algonquin, 4/6)

Karen Tumulty, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan (S&S, 4/13)

Sherry Turkle, The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir (Penguin, 3/2)

Stephen Walker, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human Being to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space (Harper, 4/13)

Edward White, The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense (Norton, 4/13)

Marie Yovanovitch, Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir (HMH, 5/4)

Business, Politics, and Current Events

Jarrett Adams, Justice for Sale: A Wrongful Conviction, a Broken System, and One Lawyer’s Fight for the Truth (Convergent, 4/27)

William M. Arkin with E.D. Cauchi, The Generals Have No Clothes: The Untold Story of Our Endless Wars (S&S, 4/13)

Michael Bender, Selling Trump: Fear and Loathing on the Trump Reelection Campaign (Twelve, 8/3)

Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell, The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion (Crown, 5/4)

Jackie Calmes, Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court (Twelve, 6/15)

Edward-Isaac Dovere, You Are Right to Be Concerned: Democrats in Crisis in the Trump Years (Viking, 4/20)

William Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life (Scribner, 4/20)

Ryan Lizza and Olivia Nuzzi, Untitled 2020 Campaign Book (Avid Reader, 3/9)

Robert Meyer and Dan Koeppel, Every Minute Is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege (Crown, 4/6)

Josh Rogin, Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century (HMH, 3/9)

Ben Schreckinger, The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty Years of Tragedy, Scandal, and Triumph (Twelve, 8/10)

Kim Scott, Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair (St. Martin’s, 3/16)

Andy Slavitt, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response (St. Martin’s, 3/16)

Essays, Criticism, & More

Jo Ann Beard, Festival Days (Little, Brown, 3/16)

Gail Crowther, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton (Gallery, 4/20)

Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature (S&S, 3/9)

Barrett Swanson, Lost In Summerland: Essays (Counterpoint, 5/18)

History & Crime

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today (Harper, 3/23)

Judy Batalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (William Morrow, 4/6)

Jean Becker, The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George H.W. Bush’s Post-Presidency (Twelve, 6/1)

Eric Berger, Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX (William Morrow, 3/2)

Laurence Bergreen, In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire (Custom House, 3/16)

Jon Billman, The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands (Grand Central, 7/6)

Michael Blanding, North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard’s Work (Hachette, 3/30)

Katie Booth, The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness (S&S, 4/6)

Paulina Bren, The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free (S&S, 3/2)

Marilyn Brookwood, The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children’s Intelligence (Liveright, 7/27)

*Daniel James Brown, Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II (Viking, 5/18)

Ronald Brownstein, Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics (Harper, 3/23)

Olivia Campbell, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine (Park Row, 3/2)

Linda Colley, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 3/2)

Daniel Combs, Until the World Shatters: Truth, Lies, and the Looting of Myanmar (Melville, 3/9)

Raphael Cormack, Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring ‘20s (Norton, 3/9)

Philip D’Anieri, The Appalachian Trail: A Biography (HMH, 6/8)

J. P. Daughton, In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism (Norton, 7/20)

Dan Davies, Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World (Scribner, 3/9)

Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (Little, Brown, 5/11)

Danielle Dreilinger, The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live (Liveright, 5/4)

Thomas Dyja, New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation (S&S, 3/16)

Katherine Dysktra, What Happened to Paula: On the Death of an American Girl (Norton, 6/15)

*Mari K. Eder, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line: Untold Stories of the Women Who Changed the Course of World War II (Sourcebooks, 8/3)

Scott Ellsworth, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice (Dutton, 5/18)

Nicole Eustace, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America (Liveright, 4/27)

*Caseen Gaines, Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way (Sourcebooks, 5/25)

Leah Garrett, X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II (HMH, 5/25)

Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth (Liveright, 5/4)

*Elon Green, Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York (Celadon, 3/9)

Jon Grinspan, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915 (Bloomsbury, 4/27)

Kyra Gurney, Nicholas Nehamas, Jay Weaver, and Jim Wyss, Dirty Gold: The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring (Public Affairs, 4/6)

Blaine Harden, Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West (Viking, 4/27)

Arthur Herman, The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World (HMH, 8/3)

Eliot Higgins, We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News (Bloomsbury, 3/2)

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (Liveright, 5/18)

Josh Ireland, Churchill & Son (Dutton, 3/30)

Dean Jobb, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer (Algonquin, 7/13)

Zachary Karabell, Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power (Penguin, 5/18)

Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetuated in the Name of Science (Little, Brown, 7/13)

Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe, A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe (Random House, 4/13)

Daniel Levin, Proof of Life: Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East (Algonquin, 5/18)

Robert S. Levine, The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (Norton, 8/24)

Damien Lewis, Churchill’s Band of Brothers: WWII’s most daring D-Day mission—and the hunt for vengeance on Hitler’s war criminals (Kensington, 4/27)

Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (Norton, 3/23)

Sean McMeekin, Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II (Basic, 4/20)

Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War (FSG, 4/20)

Emily Midorikawa, Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice (Counterpoint, 5/11)

Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw, Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls (Harper, 3/2)

Serhii Plokhy, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Norton, 4/13)

Maureen Quilligan, When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe (Liveright, 8/17)

Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan, The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer (Atria, 3/2)

Joshua D. Rothman, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic, 4/20)

Jan Jarboe Russell, Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Search for Freedom and Identity in New York’s Greenwich Village (Scribner, 3/30)

Julian Sancton, Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night (Crown, 5/4)

Marc Seifer, Tesla: Wizard at War: The Genius, the Particle Beam Weapon, and the Pursuit of Power (Citadel, 4/27)

Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown, 6/1)

Edward Slingerland, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization (Little, Brown, Spark, 6/1)

Kate Summerscale, The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story (Penguin, 4/27)

Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth (Free Press, 4/6)

Kim Todd, Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s Girl Stunt Reporters (Harper, 4/13)

Ronald C. White, Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President (Random House, 5/4)

Dorothy Wickenden, The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights (Scribner, 3/30)

Curtis Wilkie, When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer (Norton, 6/15)

Patrick Wyman, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World (Twelve, 7/20)

Robert B. Zoellick, America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy (Twelve, 8/3)

Science & Technology

Sam Apple, Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection (Liveright, 5/25)

Cynthia Barnett, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans (Norton, 7/6)

Neil DeGrasse Tyson with James Trefil, Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going (National Geographic, 3/2)

Jeremy DeSilva, First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human (Harper, 4/6)

Jon Dunn, The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds (Basic, 4/20)

Sara Dykman, Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration (Timber, 6/15)

Erika Engelhaupt, Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science (National Geographic, 3/2)

Sarah Everts, The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration (Norton, 7/13)

Heino Falcke, Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us (HarperOne, 5/4)

Tristan Gooley, The Secret World of Weather : How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop (The Experiment, 4/27)

*Dr. Jen Gunter, The Menopause Manifesto (Citadel, 5/25)

Jeff Hawkins, A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (Basic, 3/2)

Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (Scribner, 3/9)

Joseph Jebelli, A Brain Like No Other: The Extraordinary Story of How the Human Mind Evolved (Little, Brown, Spark, 3/1)

Steven Johnson, Unexpected Life: A Short History of Living Longer (Riverhead, 5/11)

Arik Kershenbaum, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens—and Ourselves (Penguin, 3/16)

Leidy Klotz, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less: The Untapped Science of Less (Flatiron, 4/13)

Andrew H. Knoll, A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (Custom House, 4/27)

Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (Crown, 4/6)

Chiara Marletto, The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey through the Land of Counterfactuals (Viking, 5/4)

Stephen C. Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries Revealing the Mind Behind the Universe (HarperOne, 3/30)

Michelle Nijhuis, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction (Norton, 3/9)

Victoria O’Keane, A Sense of Self: Memory, the Brain, and Who We Are (Norton, 5/25)

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type, 3/9)

Nathaniel Rich, Second Nature: Scenes from a World Remade (MCD, 4/6)

Miguel Sancho, More Than You Can Handle: A Rare Disease, A Family in Crisis, and the Cutting-Edge Medicine That Cured the Incurable (Avery, 3/2)

Charles Seife, Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity (Basic, 4/6)

Paul Sen, Einstein’s Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe (Scribner, 3/16)

Guido Tonelli, Erica Segre and Simon Carnell (Translated by), Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began (FSG, 4/13)

Abigail Tucker, Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct (Gallery, 4/27)

Scott Weidensaul, A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds (Norton, 3/9)

Carl Zimmer, Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive (Dutton, 3/9)

Social Issues

Isabel Allende, The Soul of a Woman (Ballantine, 3/2)

Brooke Baldwin, Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power (Harper, 4/6)

Gabrielle Bluestone, Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet—and Why We’re Following (Hanover Square, 4/6)

Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It (Crown, 3/23)

Emma Brown, To Raise a Boy: Classrooms, Locker Rooms, Bedrooms, and the Hidden Struggles of American Boyhood (Atria/One Signal, 3/2)

Craig Grossi, Second Chances: A Marine, His Dog, and Finding Redemption (William Morrow, 4/13)

*Theodore R. Johnson, When the Stars Begin to Fall: Race, Solidarity and the Future of America (Grove/Atlantic, 5/7)

Kimberly Jones, How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged (HH, 5/4)

Joe Keohane, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World (Random House, 4/27)

Julie Lythcott-Haims, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult (HH, 4/6)

Alec MacGillis, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America (FSG, 3/16)

Alan Maimon, Twilight in Hazard: An Appalachian Reckoning (Melville, 6/8)

Courtney E. Martin, Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School (Little, Brown, 7/6)

Michael Mechanic, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All (S&S, 4/13)

Josh Mitchell, The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe (S&S, 4/27)

Michael Moss, Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions (Random House, 3/2)

Kayleen Schaefer, But You’re Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood (Dutton, 3/2)

Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills (FSG, 4/6)

Chelsea Wald, Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet (Avid Reader, 4/6)

Part One: Fiction

Kristen Arnett, With Teeth (Riverhead)

SUMMARY

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best—driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school—while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess—and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

EXCERPT

Winter

The man took her son’s hand and walked casually toward the playground exit.

Sammie had left him on the swing set. He’d just learned to work the swing himself without her pushing, which was a relief, so she let him stay on for a few more minutes while she cleaned up and gathered their things. She’d said,

I’ll be right back

and

Keep pumping your legs, you’re doing great,

and then she’d walked down to the gate that led to the main exit, passing a woman with a double stroller bogged down in diaper bags and a kid so big that their legs hung down either side. It was stiflingly hot outside, even though it was already December, and the woman was huffing and puffing her way through the silty dirt with all that weight. She had on a pink visor with a palm tree and the word Orlando embroidered in cursive script. She was muttering something Sammie couldn’t make out—Many, many, it sounded like, or maybe Money, money. It sounded like crazy-person gibberish. Sammie hurried past so she wouldn’t end up getting involved.

There was a garbage can near her car, but it was rancid and overflowing already, so she wadded her son’s half-eaten lunch up tight in its paper bag and dropped it on the front seat. It was so scorching inside the car that she opened all the doors and stood outside for a minute to let the heat roil out, because Samson would start crying if he felt sticky, and she was too tired to deal with it. A cloud of gnats circled her head, thirsty for the sweat beading on her neck, and she swatted at them absentmindedly. She picked up her son’s bottle of overheated lemonade from the floor, grimacing at the chunks of backwash before dumping it out on the sun-soft asphalt and tossing it back on the seat. But it bounced and rolled off onto the floor, and her back hurt too much to pick it up, so she didn’t. Her back hurt because she’d spent the last three months picking up Samson and taking him to the bathroom every night after he wet himself. Four years old and still wetting the bed—but then every child was different, that’s what the doctor said. Sammie wasn’t sure she believed it.

So she left the bottle there and turned back around.

There was the man, walking away with her son.

Hey, she said, because no other words would come. Hey!

The man and Samson didn’t stop. They didn’t walk any faster, either. Just kept strolling toward the exit on the far side of the playground. Her son was holding the man’s hand as if he’d known him his whole life. The guy didn’t look all that weird. He was medium height, in his forties maybe, with thinning dark blond hair and a scruff of beard, wearing a gray polo tucked into dark blue jeans. White sneakers. Her son had on khaki shorts and his yellow T-shirt with Ruff and Tumble, the cartoon dalmatians, on the front. His hair was a real cloud of curls from the humidity; it was well past time for a haircut, but Samson had thrown a fit when she tried to take him.

Sammie jumped the fence. She didn’t know she was going to until she did—didn’t even know she even could, really; she wasn’t particularly athletic, and her body was small—but she vaulted it and landed directly on the other side. And then she ran. She kicked up a storm of mulch, and one of her sandals fell off, but she kept going.

Hey! she kept yelling, louder and louder, but neither the man nor her son looked back. Her son never looked when she called him, never responded to his name or to her commands. The man had led her son through the gate, and now they were walking through the parking lot, headed toward a big red truck.

She stopped yelling and ran faster.

He opened the passenger door. Samson just stood there beside him. She could see the man’s lips moving, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. Her son, quiet all day every day, looked up at the man and smiled. Actually smiled. Full-on toothy grin.

Sammie started screaming. Not just a scream—a prolonged siren shriek, rising at the end like the wail of an ambulance. Still nothing from the man. Nothing from her son. Could anyone hear her?

When she finally reached them, the man was buckling Samson into the front seat.

She pushed past him and yanked her son out. Then her back, already strained from running, seized up altogether. She crumpled and almost dropped him onto the asphalt, catching him by the arm just in time. She was wheezing. Out of breath. Her foot was bleeding, she saw now, and so was her left thigh from when she’d scratched it hurtling the chain-link fence.

You! she said. Took a breath. Took another breath. "You. My son. You."

The man put up his hands, as if to ward her off. Ward her off! Unreal. He was about to abscond with her kid in the middle of the afternoon and he was acting like she was the crazy one.

Then again, she probably looked crazy. She felt crazy. He didn’t look scared at all; in fact, he looked concerned. She studied his face, tanned and wrinkled around his deep-set eyes. He looked like the kind of guy who smiled a lot. He looked like someone’s nice neighbor.

I was just showing him my truck, he said. Kid said he liked trucks.

Samson was yanking at her hand to get away, and she gripped harder.

"Your truck. Your truck?"

I swear. The man smiled at her, revealing a line of very large bright teeth. Super white teeth, all even. Maybe not even real teeth. Too perfect for that face, with its crooked nose and scratchy beard and smile wrinkles.

I am calling the police, Sammie said. But where was her phone? Back in her car, along with her keys, along with all her stuff. Where was her shoe? Halfway across the playground.

Mom. Samson tugged her hand again, sweaty fingers wriggling. It’s got a CB radio.

She looked down at her kid, and he looked back at her with that same indifferent look he always had. No grin for Mom, even though she’d saved him from imminent danger. No thought at all to how her heart was hammering inside her chest. She could have a heart attack right there in the parking lot, and he’d just climb up into the truck over her downed corpse.

She looked down again at her bleeding foot. One of her toenails had ripped half off, the littlest one on her right foot, and she was standing in a small puddle of her own blood.

I am calling the cops, she repeated. I am calling them right now.

The man closed the passenger door. Then he skirted around the front of the truck and opened the driver’s side door.

Don’t you get in that truck, Sammie yelled.

Samson was squirming, and she could barely keep a grip on him. She stepped back, dragging her son out of the truck’s path.

Don’t you dare get in that truck! I am calling the cops, and you are going to stay right here!

The man didn’t listen, didn’t even look at her, just climbed in and started the engine. He was going to leave; he was going to drive away from this, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Help! she yelled.

Samson wriggled and nearly escaped, so she caught his T-shirt by the neck and gripped him there, too hard, she knew because he made a squeak and then stopped moving.

Someone help me! Child abduction!

There wasn’t anybody else in the parking lot. She looked around frantically and saw the woman who’d been pushing the stroller with the kid too big for it was setting out a picnic lunch. Only fifty feet away, maybe less, and still the woman didn’t acknowledge her screams for help.

She pulled Samson a few feet farther back, still worried the man might plow the truck straight into them. But he just eased the truck around Sammie and her son and pulled out of the lot.

It was a Dodge, a bright, glossy red Dodge. She strained to see the license plate and started repeating the numbers aloud: GN5 8V6, GN5 8V6, GN5 8V6.

Samson was on his feet but hanging limp, dragging like he weighed a thousand pounds, the way he always did when he was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do. She kept repeating the plate numbers as she struggled back to the playground, steering him in front of her with one hand clamped around his neck and a fistful of his T-shirt. There was something in the sole of her foot, glass maybe, and her toe was throbbing, and her back hurt so bad she couldn’t breathe. It felt like the truck had run her over.

Throughout all this, the mother with the stroller had been sitting calmly nearby, at a picnic table under a solitary oak tree. When they reached the fence, she called out to the woman to call 911. Then she sat down right where she stood and wept.

Ants, Samson said, rubbing at his neck. It had a wild red mark where Sammie had grabbed him, and his collar was all yanked out. His face was dirty. He could use a wet wipe.

The woman came over and handed her a cell phone. I didn’t know what to tell them, she whispered, as if the situation were some kind of embarrassing secret. Her own kid was still sitting in the stroller, Velcro shoes kicking so hard the bags on top nearly fell off.

Sammie wondered if the kid had some kind of problem that required them to be in a stroller well past the usual age.

Sammie took the phone and spat out the license plate number to the dispatcher before she forgot it. Then she backed up and tried to explain what had happened, calling it an attempted abduction. She described what the man looked like, what he’d been wearing. She told them about his too-perfect teeth. How his truck had a CB radio. She ran through everything she remembered, which wasn’t much. She could barely remember her own name. It had all happened so fast, sped by in a blur. Then, in a fit of embarrassment, she hung up—only to realize she hadn’t taken down any information. She didn’t know the dispatcher’s name; all she knew was that it was a woman. Or she thought it was a woman, anyway, with that high-pitched voice. And Sammie had hung up before giving them a number to contact her. How would they reach her? Was the callback number logged automatically? It was the stranger’s cell phone, not Sammie’s. Would she need to call back and start all over with someone new? Already the license plate number had flown from her brain.

She looked down at her son leaning against the fence.

Ants, he said again, and he kept saying it: Ants. Ants. Ants.

And then she felt them crawling up her legs.

Sammie leapt to her feet and dusted them off, then moved the both of them around the corner to a spot without any bugs. There were hundreds of dandelions peppering the grass, wild, fluffy things that stirred in the breeze, but her child just picked up an abandoned straw from a fast-food cup and started playing with it. She was going into shock, she could feel it. Her entire body was shutting down. She knew she should call her wife, tell her what happened, but all she had was this borrowed phone, and she couldn’t remember the number.

Why don’t I know my wife’s phone number? she wondered. What if there was an emergency?

Samson dug the straw into the ground and scooped some up, then blew into the other end. Dirt rained down onto Sammie’s head, sprinkled down her top. Then he did it again. Sammie just sat there, too exhausted to stop him. Finally, the other woman came over to get her phone. When she saw what Samson was doing, she took the straw away herself and tucked it in her pants pocket.

Don’t put things from the ground in your mouth, she said. That’s not nice.

As she walked away, Samson picked up a fistful of dirt. He held it over his mother’s head, slowly opened his fingers, and let the dirt land where it wanted.

Spring

Chapter 1

The doll looked like total shit. Sammie was about five seconds away from throwing it in the garbage.

It was a school project, which meant her son was supposed to be the one working on it, but Sammie had done nearly all of it herself. It wasn’t her fault; it was the teacher’s fault for giving the fourth graders a project so massive they couldn’t do it alone, and it was the school’s fault for going along with it. Of course she’d complained, but there was no getting out of it. The project was a requirement for every single fourth grader. Samson would complete it or take a zero for the project, which meant that his average—already a C—would tank to a fail. He might even have to repeat the grade over.

Samson, going through fourth grade again? No, thank you.

Sammie sat at the dining room table, surrounded by pieces of Styrofoam and craft glue, attempting to assemble a quarter-scale approximation of her son. Her son, who was supposed to be sitting at the table beside her, who’d said he had to go to the bathroom twenty minutes ago. She’d bet her entire salary (much less, she grudgingly admitted, now that she was working part time from home) that he was back in front of the television.

You better have diarrhea, she yelled. You better have the worst stomachache of your life.

She’d gone to the craft supply store after work to pick out some things they could use. Sammie was not a crafts kind of person. Sure, she’d had to do all this stuff growing up, but once she was an adult she would have been happy if she’d never seen a bottle of glue again. That was one thing about having a kid: all the stuff you thought you’d never have to think about—math, art, PE clothes that smell like dead feet—all came rushing back like nostalgic reruns.

Monika could have picked up some of the supplies, but she was out of town for the next two days. She traveled a lot for work, which had been fun before they’d had Samson, but increasingly it meant that Sammie was shouldering most of the mom duties on her own. Over the phone, Monika said Sammie should let Samson do it himself, as if that were an option.

He’ll never do it himself, Sammie said.

Monika told her it wouldn’t hurt to let him try. What Sammie wanted to say was You have no clue who your son is, but she’d tried that before and all it got her was Monika sleeping on the couch and Sammie sitting up in bed all night, furious. At least this way only one of them would be mad.

Samson, if you don’t get your butt back in here by the count of three, I’m gonna chuck this whole thing in the trash, Sammie yelled.

She loudly counted to three and waited for her son to appear. Waited three more seconds. Four more seconds. Two minutes later, he slunk back into the dining room wearing one of Monika’s oversize sleep shirts. Sammie could see his red Superman underwear through the thin white shirt.

Were you watching television? she asked.

He just shrugged. Samson never spoke unless he absolutely had to, at least not to Sammie. He didn’t really like talking to Monika, either, but that never seemed like a problem. If anything, Monika preferred it when he was quiet. She brought it up all the time when they went to dinner parties or hung out with friends: Our son is so well behaved, she’d say. He never talks back to us! But the subject didn’t come up that much these days, now that Monika was traveling all the time and Samson was having problems at school.

Sammie could have added that he never talked back because he was too busy doing just exactly the thing you’d asked him not to do, but that would have ruined the image Monika wanted them to promote: a happy, well-adjusted little family of three, gay, but otherwise just like anyone else.

That was a big thing for her wife. She wanted them to be normal. On their living room wall, she’d hung a glowing photo of the three of them at a fancy birthday dinner for Sammie. They were all dressed up: Sammie in a new lace dress and her hair done up in a twist, Monika wearing her best blazer over a crisp white shirt, their son sandwiched between them in a navy suit with a paisley clip-on bow tie. On the table in front of them was a giant birthday cake, candles aglow, and everyone was sporting toothy grins for the camera. What you couldn’t see was Monika’s hand clenched around Samson’s leg under the table, because he kept jabbing Sammie with the toe of his loafer. You couldn’t smell his stinky little foot, open to the air after he’d kicked off the other shoe. Anyone who came to the house—especially Monika’s coworkers, whom she was always eager to impress with their normalcy—commented on the sweetness of the picture. Two perfect gay moms and their handsome, smiling son. Monika would smile and tell them what a great time they’d had that night, but all Sammie could do was wince and recall, silently, that things weren’t always as idyllic as they seem.

Sammie looked out the far kitchen window and watched the sun sink behind the neighbor’s house. Birds called to one another, heading to bed for the night. Her son yawned and scratched at his neck.

According to everyone they’d consulted, their son was a problem only because he chose to be. He was a perfectly capable, fully functioning fourth grader who just needed an attitude adjustment. To Monika, that was a problem that would work itself out in time. To Sammie, it meant that her days were spent waiting for that to happen.

Here you go, Sammie said, pushing a mess of irregular-looking limbs across the table. They squealed as they scraped over the wood. Paint these.

Samson put his hands over his ears and made a face. I don’t like it.

The paint had dripped all over the place, even though she’d put down newspapers everywhere, especially on Monika’s grandmother’s antique dining table. Sammie ran another paper towel under the tap and tried to do some spot cleaning while her son half-heartedly glopped gold paint on his brush. He dunked it over and over in the paper plate, stirring it around before dragging it down something that should have been a thigh but looked more like an oversize turkey leg. Three stripes later, he huffed miserably and dropped the brush directly on the plate, sending a big splat of gold paint directly onto the wall behind his head.

Fuck! she yelled. Samson just sat there, staring at her. There was paint on the table, paint on Monika’s sleep shirt, paint everywhere. Big drops of gold, glimmering like coins.

She walked into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the sink. She drank it all, took a breath, then refilled the glass and drank that, too. The water tasted bad, kind of metallic. It was the pipes and the Florida aquifer—they had one of those filtration pitchers, but no one ever bothered to refill it, so it just sat in the fridge with a useless half inch of clean water in it. She ran both hands through her hair and then realized she had gold paint on her fingers.

This had all seemed easy enough when she’d been in the craft store. She was embarrassed to admit it, but the project seemed childish. The whole thing was way too easy for her, a former manager now reduced to running a household. And if she was being honest with herself, not even running it all that well. She’d never gone back to work full time after quitting her job to stay home with Samson, and the job she took on after he started school was only part-time work and full-time brain-numbing. She could do it all—copyediting, client emailing—in her sleep, and sometimes that’s exactly how she felt: like she was sleepwalking through her work and her life. So when the craft store employee came over and asked if she needed help, she’d turned them away, and she wasn’t all that nice about it, either.

How hard could it be? Styrofoam ball for a head, Styrofoam block for a torso, four foam dowels for legs and arms, two small blocks for hands and two for feet. She bought felt to make little clothes to match Samson’s own T-shirt and shorts, and yarn for his mop of curly dirty-blond hair. For his eyes, googly-eye stickers! Easy enough.

It was not easy.

She’d already cut her hand trying to carve the legs into shapes. She hadn’t thought to buy craft knives—why spend extra for something they’d never use again?—so she was using a kitchen knife, and it wasn’t as sharp as she expected, so she had to keep pushing till it slipped and stabbed dully into her palm.

When she’d measured Samson, to get a sense of his proportions, he’d wriggled so much that she’d struggled not to yell at him. These days her voice sounded like someone else’s, like someone she’d hate to have to listen to. It sounded a lot like her mother, which is something Monika had pointed out once when Sammie got mad at Samson for spilling a drink in a restaurant. Sammie didn’t say a word, just went out to the parking lot and cried. Monika never said it again, but she didn’t have to. Sammie knew exactly who she sounded like: Her mother, the woman who’d never understood her. Her mother, the least maternal being on the planet.

So she downed her second glass of water, tied back her paint-streaked hair, then opened the freezer and got out the makings of two sundaes—ice cream with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles and three maraschino cherries in each dish. She took another deep breath, then carried the sundaes into the dining room.

She was greeted by a gold-coated nightmare.

Sammie had bought four oversize bottles of gold paint, because she wasn’t sure how much the Styrofoam would absorb and she didn’t want to have to go back to the craft place for more. Samson had emptied all but one. It was dripping off the edge of the table, coating the chairs. It fell to the floor in flat, drippy splats. The newspapers she’d used to line the tabletop were crumpled into a big, slimy ball and tossed onto Monika’s favorite chair. The china cabinet, a wedding gift from another of Monika’s relatives, was streaked with wild gold handprints. The rest was streaked everywhere, slicked over every surface in the room. It was as if King Midas had come to life in her dining room and touched everything to golden shit.

The only thing the paint hadn’t touched was the doll, which was sitting in the corner, dismantled, and still a pristine Styrofoam white.

Samson had disappeared, but his footprints led from the dining room into the hallway. Sammie followed them down the hall to the living room, shaking so much she worried she might have a stroke. There sat her son, perched on the couch, absolutely coated in gold paint. It drenched his hair and dripped down his face, soaking through his nightshirt and leaving slick bands of gold along his neck.

Samson, she whispered.

He turned to look at her, and his eyes were shockingly bright in his face. The blues of them were almost electric. It looked like something, but at first her frazzled brain couldn’t place it, until finally it leaped from her mouth: Carrie.

That was it—the scene from Carrie when Sissy Spacek got the bucket of pig’s blood dumped on her head. Except this was molten gold, as if her son had been transformed into a golden statue.

You little shit, she said, wheezing out a giggle. There he sat, her monster. Ruiner of furniture and good moods. Able to wreck an entire evening with three containers of paint. And with that, the laughter just rolled out of her. It was uncontrollable, the kind that nearly bent her in half. Tears leaked from her eyes. Even her cheeks hurt. Samson just sat there, drops of paint landing in growing puddles on the hardwood floor, leaching into the rug under the coffee table.

She laughed until she thought she might throw up; even after she got herself under control enough to walk him upstairs to the guest bathroom, she was still suppressing it. She had him hop in the shower with his nightshirt on and pulled the shower curtain closed as the spray dripped liquid gold all over everything. She sat down on the toilet lid, held her face in her hands, and waited for the paint to slick off her boy’s face and body. What a weird thing to love another human, she thought. Her stomach trembled, still quaking from the giggles; even thinking about the mess she’d have to clean downstairs didn’t make her mad. It made her want to start laughing all over again. She bit her lip as she struggled to pull herself together.

Almost done? she asked, but of course there was no response from Samson.

She got him out and dried, then bustled him off to his room at the end of the hall. Luckily, the paint seemed to come off easy enough. It was waterproof, so it would probably wash off the walls, too. Worst case, she’d have to paint. And, anyway, she hated the color of their walls; Monika had picked it without even asking her, just came home one day with a giant bucket of the stuff. It’s nicer than the brand you mentioned, she’d told Sammie, which was basically her way of saying, I make the money in this house, so I’ll be making the decisions. This way Sammie had an excuse to choose something new. She could thank Samson for that.

Sammie went downstairs and opened a bottle of chilled white wine. Then she got to work cleaning up the mess. It took several rolls of paper towels and a couple gallons of hot water, and by the time she was done she was exhausted and well on her way to drunk.

The doll still sat in scattered pieces. She looked again at the measurements she’d taken of her son: Height, average for a fourth grader. Weight, average. He looked nothing like her, though she was the one who’d given birth to him. Their skin tones were wildly different: his was pink and rosy, while hers tended toward sallow. Her hair was brown and frizzy, hanging stick-straight to her mid back, nothing like his mop of curls. She and Monika had chosen an anonymous donor, so they had only a few vague facts about his biological father, but when Sammie looked at their son, all she saw was a tiny stranger who’d been dropped into their home.

Kids were aliens anyway, Sammie thought. No way to know what they were thinking, when their thoughts were the product of an unfinished brain still training itself to act human.

Sammie and Samson’s one similarity was in the eyes. Hers were dark brown and his were blue, but they both were set in their faces in a way that made them look eternally surprised, as if someone had come up behind them and shrieked.

The googly eyes felt appropriate. Maybe her one good idea at the craft store.

Sammie sawed away at the arms and legs, trying to approximate something human. She jabbed toothpicks into the ends, dabbing them with glue, and miraculously they held. Careful of her hands, she cut out little pieces of Styrofoam and made a nose and some ears. Whittled out a neck. She jabbed all these together, too. Then she took the last container of paint and shellacked the whole mess.

It didn’t look terrible. She found herself enjoying the work, actually, finishing off the wine while she cut some clothes out of felt and glued them onto the body.

The hair, she realized, was going to be the biggest challenge. There was a current school photo of Samson on top of the china cabinet. He wasn’t smiling