100 Books to Read for the Rest of 2016
Just as it is in the film industry, fall is the book world’s prestige season, and the next six months are crowded with luminous names, promising debuts, and actual Oscar winners. I limited myself to one hundred titles here because it’s an attractive round number and you have to draw the line somewhere, am I right? Celebrity memoirs from Bruce Springsteen, Trevor Noah, Lil Wayne, and Carrie Fisher are coming out, plus a Joan Rivers biography and a feminist manifesto co-authored by Gillian Andersen (originally scheduled for last spring). Heavy hitters like Fannie Flagg, Carl Hiaasen, Tana French, and John le Carré return for another round of royalty collections. Literary bigwigs (I wish they actually wore large wigs) Tom Wolfe, Joyce Carol Oates (of course), Michael Chabon, Emma Donoghue, Alan Moore, Jonathan Lethem, Francine Prose, T.C. Boyle, Ann Patchett, A.S. Byatt, Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano, and celebrity-adjacent Jonathan Safran Foer (with his first novel in over ten years) all have new work coming out.
JULY
Black Bread by Emili Teixidor, translated from Catalan by Peter Bush (Biblioasis)
The most famous work of Catalan writer Teixidor (who passed away in 2012), available in English for the first time, it was also made into an award-winning 2010 Catalan-language movie.
The Devourers by Indra Das (Del Rey: Ballantine)
A fantastical debut novel set in Kolkata, a professor encounters a captivating, centuries-old story he cannot resist, one peopled by a mysterious race of shapeshifters.
Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing by Marianne Boruch (Copper Canyon)
The tenth book of poetry from Boruch, winner of the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Purdue MFA faculty member, its poems range in time, space, and subject matter: conversing with Dickinson and confronting Katrina.
The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiziane, translated from Portuguese by David Brookshaw (Archipelago)
Mozambique’s first published woman novelist, Chiziane won the 2003 José Craveirinha Prize with this story about a wealthy Maputo woman who forces her husband to marry his four mistresses.
Good as Gone by Amy Gentry (Houghton Mifflin)
This debut “novel of suspense” (I love that phrase) follows a family confronted with a young woman claiming to be their missing daughter and sister, who was kidnapped from her bedroom at age thirteen.
The Heart of the Leopard Children by Wilfried N’Sondé, translated from French by Karen Lindo (Indiana Univ.: Global African Voices)
Winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor, Congolese-born and French-raised writer N’Sondé tells the story of a nameless young man, living in poverty outside of Paris, who emigrated from the Congo as a child. A first novel.
Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn (Lightright)
This much buzzed-about (and deservedly so) debut explores a drought-plagued Jamaica town and the opulent resort next door, sex work and sexuality, work and family and sacrifice. Clear-eyed and compassionate.
How to Be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky (Doubleday)
Beloved New York magazine advice columnist, Havrilesky (aka Polly) offers up a collection of mostly new letters. Refreshing and funny and empathetic and fucking useful, as per usual.
The Kingdom by Fuminori Nakamura (Soho Crime)
A professional blackmailer posing as a sex worker who loves the anonymity of her work finds herself caught up with a monstrous crime lord who seems to know all her secrets.
Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf)
A first book from Iranian-American poet Sharif, it uses and transforms language pulled from the U.S. Department of Defense in a loose narrative about her family’s losses in the aftermath of war.
Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton (Penguin Pr.)
A debut novel about the end of the bayside world John Steinbeck detailed in Cannery Row and the creation of the world-famous Monterey Bay aquarium.
Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell (Penguin)
Feted Chilean writer Zambra (finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, and a NYPL Cullman Center fellow) presents a novel (his fourth) in the form of a standardized test.
Pond by Claire Louise Bennett (Riverhead)
A debut from Ireland, this novel—the story of an unnamed woman living on the coast going about her daily life—is beautiful and brief.
Problems by Jade Sharma (Coffee House)
The first book published by Coffee House’s Emily Books imprint, Sharma’s wry and unflinching novel about addiction, self-loathing, and being a woman of color in contemporary New York City.
The Race by Nina Allan (Titan)
A second novel from award-winning sci fi veteran (and prolific short-story writer) Allan, this details an ecologically fraught future and a kidnapped child.
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar (Random)
Libyan writer Matar, a finalist for the Man Booker and National Book Critics Circle Award, returns to his native country after the fall of Gaddafi looking for his father, who was kidnapped from exile and imprisoned 22 earlier.
Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (Morrow)
New York-based writer and Singapore native Lu-Lien Tan has whipped up a smart, frothy look at four Singapore women in their late twenties on the hunt for wealthy white men and the intersection of class and gender and racial politics.
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (Mulholland: Little, Brown)
Though Winters has been covered in frustrating ways by mainstream white media outlets (hello New York Times), his novel—set in an alternate U.S. where slavery remains legal and a black bounty hunter searches for runaway slaves—may reward a fresh look.
AUGUST
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (Amistad)
National Book Award winner Woodson’s first novel for adults in over two decades is as lyrical and lovely as Brown Girl Dreaming, but with a broader, more mature scope. This doesn’t feel so much like a departure as an expansion of Woodson’s vision: an ode to 1970s Bushwick and its denizens.
Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe (Houghton Harcourt)
A debut novel that follows an Irish and then American family from the potato famine to post-9/11 Brooklyn.
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue (Random)
New York City-based Cameroonian novelist Mbue sets her debut novel in Harlem, where a Cameroonian immigrant lands a job chauffeuring a Lehman Brothers executive right before the company’s precipitous fall.
Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid by Giuseppe Catozzella, translated from Italian by Anne Milano Appel (Penguin)
Based on the true story of Olympic Somali runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who died while traveling on a boat from Libya to Italy.
The Family Interrupted by Eloy Urroz, translated from Spanish by Ezra Fitz (Dalkey Archive)
Mexican-American novelist Urroz (one of the authors of the 1996 “Crack Manifesto”) balances two narratives, that of early-20th-century poet Luis Cernuda and a present-day filmmaker.
The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
A 21st century response to James Baldwin’s 1963 The Fire Next Time, National Book Award-winner Ward collects essays, memoir, and poetry to engage with race in contemporary America. Its list of contributors is stellar: do not miss this.
A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi (Morrow)
Bestselling Afghan-American novelist Hashimi (The Pearl That Broke Its Shell) tells the story of an Afghan woman accused of murdering her husband and the women—all of whom have violated some social more—who join her in her village’s small jail.
How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee (Viking)
In her debut novel, Lee, winner of the Rome Prize, brings together a Chinese-American teenager, a student from a prominent North Korean family, and a smuggler into an ad-hoc family in a small Chinese town across the river from North Korea.
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong (Ecco: HarperCollins)
Atlantic science writer Yong tackles the simultaneously microscopic and multitudinous world of microbes. They are everywhere! They keep us alive!
Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott (Univ. of Kentucky)
A funny, moving, and frequently astonishing collection of short stories by Bowie State professor Scott set in Cross River, a fictional Maryland town founded by a successful slave rebellion.
Known and Strange Things: Essays by Teju Cole (Random House)
PEN/Hemingway Award-winning Nigerian-American novelist (Open City), photographer, and retired master of Twitter, Cole’s third book is a collection of essays that touch on politics, travel, history, literature, and Instagram.
The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (Del Rey: Ballantine)
With Nazis, André Breton, wartime France, and the forces of hell, “weird fiction” master Miéville’s latest novel gives new meaning to the phrase “exquisite corpse.”
Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (FSG)
Another one-named Icelander (like his sometimes collaborator Bjork), Sjón tells the story of a young man in a Reykjavik wracked by the 1918 Spanish flu who faces homophobia in a society where queerness is almost unimaginable.
The Obelisk by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
The second book in a trilogy that began with New York Times-notable The Fifth Season, Jemisin’s latest continues to combine horror, science fiction, and fantasy in her signature sophisticated, and utterly gripping, style.
Patient HM: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich (Random)
Dittrich—the grandson of the surgeon whose novel procedure unwittingly resulted in the permanent amnesia that made Henry Molaison (better known as Patient HM) famous—harnesses memoir, biography, history, and science journalism to tell the story of his family and of the field neurology.
The Problem with Me: And Other Essays About Making Trouble in China Today by Han Han, translated from Chinese by Alice Xin Liu and Joel Martinsen (S & S)
Best-selling author, notorious blogger, and professional race car driver (!), Han writes about democracy, poetry, and fatherhood in an essay collection that offers English-language readers a vital look at China today.
Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World’s Most Famous Human Fossils by Lydia Pyne (Viking)
The story of human evolution (and the history of its discovery) is told through seven iconic individuals who found international fame millennia after their death, from the Flores “hobbit” to Lucy.
The Subsidiary by Matias Celedon, translated from Spanish by Samuel Rutter (Melville House)
From Chilean author Celedon, this novel is a story of corporate horror told in stamps (yes).
When Watched by Leopoldine Core (Penguin)
Nineteen stories intertwining identity and sexuality set in and around New York from one of the 2015 Whiting Award winners.
SEPTEMBER
A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev (Kensington)
After his wife was murdered for discovering a ring of illegal organ traders in Mumbai, a doctor leaves Doctors Without Borders for a post on cruise ship and discovers the woman who received his wife’s heart in a transplant.
The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier edited by Cathi Hanauer (Morrow)
Editor Hanauer revisits her bestselling 2002 anthology, The Bitch in the House, with nine of the original contributors and sixteen new ones to reflect on women’s lives today.
Blackacre by Monica Youn (Graywolf)
National Book Award finalist (and lawyer) Youn returns with her third book of poetry, meditating on the common law term “blackacre,” which signifies a fictitious estate, and her own struggle to conceive a child.
Darling Days: A Memoir by iO Tillett Wright (Ecco: HarperCollins)
Photographer (and “40 Shades of Gay” TED Talker) iO explores gender and identity against the backdrop of a 1980s New York childhood.
Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs by Robert Kanigel (Knopf)
In the year of Jacobs’ centenary, Kanigel (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) tells the story of the writer and woman who stopped expressways, saved neighborhoods, and revolutionized urban planning.
The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies (Houghton Harcourt)
A novel about Chinese Americans that spans more than a century and four protagonists—three of which are historical figures: Ah Ling, a valet credited with the idea to hire Chinese immigrants to build America’s railroads; Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese film star; and Vincent Chin, a football player murdered in 1982 Detroit for “looking Japanese.”
Hidden Figures: The Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (Morrow)
A labor shortage caused by World War II brought these math geniuses from their positions teaching in segregated schools to the halls of NASA, where they served as the “human computers” that put rockets, and then people, into space. Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monae are slated to appear in the movie adaptation!
I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual by Luvvie Ajayi (Holt Paperbacks)
The first book from popular blogger Ayaji (awesomelyluvvie.com), its essays tackle everything from Shonda Rhimes to sharing casket selfies on Facebook.
Incarnations: India in Fifty Lives by Sunil Khilnani (FSG)
Khilnani, director of the India Institute at Kings College London, writes a history of India through 50 unflinching biographies from the Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi, with plenty more in between.
On Heights and Hunger by Josh MacIvor Andersen (Outpost19)
A memoir of brotherhood and Christianity and a childhood spent in the treetops of Tennessee by Northern Michigan University professor MacIvor-Andersen.
The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas (Coffee House)
In this debut novel, an expat, a bureaucrat, and a playwright try to rekindle their childhood friendship in a tumultuous Ecuador.
Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated from Spanish by Anne McLean (Riverhead)
Winner of the 2014 IMPAC Award, Vásquez returns with a story about a legendary political cartoonist who must grapple with both his resurfaced past and his present position.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (Liveright: Norton)
Critic Franklin locates Jackson within a continuum of the American Gothic and amongst America’s literary giants, with fresh insights into both her fiction and her often conflicted personal life.
Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family by Daniel Bergner (Lee Boudreaux: Little, Brown)
“The Blind Side but for opera” isn’t the most exciting of taglines, but this story of bass baritone Ryan Speedo Green’s journey from an impoverished childhood to the Metropolitan Opera transcends its predecessor’s often treacly worldview.
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy (Graywolf)
Longlisted for the 2015 Man Book Prize, this painterly novel weaves together four stories of six travelers in the fictional town and pilgrimage site of Jarmuli.
Time Travel by James Gleick (Pantheon)
A cultural and scientific look at time travel: TIMELESS.
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear and Why by Sady Doyle (Melville House)
From Mary Wollstonecraft to Hillary Clinton, Tiger Beatdown-founder Doyle writes her first book about unruly women.
Treyf: My Quest for Identity in a Forbidden World by Elissa Altman (New American Library)
James Beard Award-winner Altman writes about a childhood of contradictions in 1970s Queens, full of both traditional observance (Saturday services, bat mitzvahs) and forbidden consumption (pork ribs, shrimp).
Two She-Bears by Shalev Meir translated from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman (Schocken)
Best-selling Israeli novelist Meir tells the story of a murder and two suicides from 1930 and their present-day repercussions in a small rural community.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
A blockbuster new novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist and MacArthur genius Whitehead that imagines the Underground Railroad as a literal railroad underneath the ground.
We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation by Jeff Chang (Picador)
Music journalist Chang writes about the tension between diversity lip service and the reality of resegregation in contemporary America.
OCTOBER
American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C White, Jr (Random)
This necessary and large-scale reevaluation of one of America’s greatest—and most underappreciated—presidents is this year’s perfect dad book.
The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine (Atlantic Monthly)
Set in course of a single evening and peopled by such characters as Satan, Death, and fourteen saints, a Yemeni poet reflects on his life in a psych clinic waiting room, from a childhood spent in an Egyptian brothel and an adulthood in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis.
Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson (FSG)
A biography of Oglala Lakota spiritual leader Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa), whose life spanned the battle of Little Big Horn and the massacre of Wounded Knee and whose words have been read by millions.
The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin (Pantheon)
Jin, director of Creative Writing at Boston University, writes a story about a Chinese expatriate who battles his novelist ex-wife (and her allies in the Chinese government) in the journalistic investigation of his career.
Cakewalk by Rita Mae Brown (Bantam)
Brown, author of the landmark Rubyfruit Jungle, returns to the cozy world of Runnymede, where she set her “Six of One” series. Gently queer.
Ghost Songs: A Memoir by Regina McBride (Tin House)
Eighteen-year-old McBride sees the ghosts of her parents (both of whom committed suicide) at night, and so embarks on a journey from New York to New Mexico to Ireland.
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (Hogarth: Crown)
Another entry in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, Atwood reimagines The Tempest as a failed theater director teaching a course at a local prison.
I’ll Tell You in Person by Chloe Caldwell (Coffee House)
The second book from Coffee House’s Emily Books imprint, this essay collection tackles the work of adulthood: heroin and yoga, T.J. Maxx and chocolate, bodies and minds and “careers.”
Incensed by Ed Lin (Soho Crime)
Sent by his gangster uncle to chaperone his teenaged cousin to Taipei, Jing-nan discovers the spoiled 16-year-old Mei-ling is hiding a secret that could destroy her and tear their family apart.
Iza’s Ballad by Magda Szabó, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes (NYRB)
A newly widowed woman is urged by her daughter to give up life (and the family house) in Hungary’s countryside and to join her in Budapest.
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio (Tim Duggan: Crown)
In this debut novel, a Cuban family (minus their idealistic, ideologue patriarch) flees Cuban during the Mariel Boatlift for chilly and strange Hartford, Connecticut.
The Mothers by Britt Bennett (Riverhead)
A stunning book (and not just because it’s truly gorgeous cover) by debut novelist Bennett, it centers around a congregation in contemporary Southern California where the lives of three wounded teenagers intertwine and overlap, set against the chorus of church mothers who watch and wait and comment on the drama as it unfolds.
Nicotine by Nell Zink (Ecco)
Zink, whose debut Wallcreeper (as well as its path to publication) blew a lot of people’s minds, writes her third novel about a disaffected youngest half-sibling who inherits her father’s childhood New Jersey home, now occupied by smoking squatters who call the place ”Nicotine.”
Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith (Anchor)
A Booker shortlisted novelist, Smith has produced a collection of short fiction both about public libraries and defending them.
Reel by Tobias Carroll (Rare Bird)
Stalwart Vol.1 Brooklyn managing editor Carroll is known for his precise, nearly perfect, surreal short fiction. This, his first novel, concerns itself with the two lives of people who first met at a Seattle punk show.
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (Little, Brown)
Author of the bestselling Where’d You Go Bernadette and a prolific screenwriter whose credits include Arrested Development (I will never get tired of this fun fact), Semple returns with a novel set during a single day of Eleanor Flood’s life that turns out to be momentous.
The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang (Houghton Harcourt)
A cross-country road trip gone haywire, Chang debuts with a funny, feeling novel about an immigrant family (and its patriarch) who must choose between old and new, a clean slate and solidarity.
Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother’s Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South by Beth Macy (Little, Brown)
If you let it, this story of two black albino brothers who were kidnapped in 1899 for circus display will suck you into a Wikipedia spiral that may not end for days. (For investigative journalist Macy, the research took decades.)
Walk Through Walls: Becoming Marina Abramović by Marina Abramović (Crown Archetype)
The iconic performance artist’s memoir details a strict childhood in the former Yugoslavia under Tito and a rollercoaster relationship, both romantic and artistic, with her ex-partner of twelve years, Ulay.
NOVEMBER
Absolutely on Music: Conversations by Haruki Murakami with Seiji Ozawa (Knopf)
Readers of Japanese novelist Murakami know the importance of music in his writing. Here, with friend and acclaimed conductor Ozawa, they talk Brahms, Beethoven, Bernstein, and Gould, in recorded conversations that took place over two years.
And Then We Became by Devorah Major (City Lights)
A fifth book of poems from former San Francisco poet laureate major, this collection asks questions of culture, ethnicity, and gender.
After Atlas by Emma Newman (Roc)
A science fiction mystery standalone set in the universe Newman first outlined in Planetfall follows a detective searching for clues to the murder of his father, who also happens to be a cult leader.
The Beach at Night by Elena Ferrante, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, & with illustrations by Mara Cerri (Europa)
Weird, spooky, and apparently for kids, the latest-in-English work from the justly celebrated Ferrante is told from the point of view of a doll abandoned on a beach overnight.
Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets by Charles Wohlforth & Amanda R. Hendrix (Pantheon)
As private companies, rather than governments, pick up the pace in space exploration, science writer Wohlforth and NASA planetary scientist Hendrix focus on the current obstacles (political, scientific, and otherwise) that space travel faces.
Experimental Animals by Thalia Field (Solid Objects)
A professor in Brown’s MFA program, Field offers up an experimental novel grounded in France’s Second Empire (and about historical vivisector Claude Bernard and his wife), her primary source research an integral part of the book’s fabric.
Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao (Coffee House)
Vietnamese-American poet Nao goes mythical in her first novel about the grief parents feel when they lose a child. Expect jellyfish.
How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (Knopf)
In the companion book to his 2012 Academy Award-nominated documentary of the same name, France (who has covered AIDS since its emergence, and who lost a partner to the syndrome in 1992) recounts the founding of ACT UP, TAG, the underground drug market now made famous by Dallas Buyers Club, the introduction of AZT, and the diverse array of activists who accomplished so much.
Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I Thought I Needed to Know about Life I Learned from Watching ’80s Movies by Jason Diamond (William Morrow)
Vol. 1 Brooklyn founder and Rolling Stone editor Diamond is about as charming a tour guide as readers could ask for to the world of John Hughes as well as Diamond’s own life as a Hughes obsessive.
Swing Time by Zadie Smith (Penguin Pr.)
*alarm emoji* *alarm emoji* *alarm emoji* Two biracial dancers raised in the same poor London neighborhood grow apart as adulthood (and the 1990s) sets in: one becomes a professional dancer, the other a personal assistant.
They Can’t Kill Us All: The Story of #blacklivesmatter by Wesley Lowery (Little, Brown)
Washington Post journalist Lowery writes what is one of the first books of the Black Lives Matter movement with a combination of journalism, memoir, and history.
Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marias, translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Knopf)
Lauded and prolific Spanish novelist Marias offers a story set in 1980, of a recent graduate sucked into the glamorous but hermetic orbit of a once-successful film director and his “voluptuous wife.”
Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur: St Martin’s)
One of Japan’s bestselling mystery novelists, Higashino here details a 1973 murder and its aftermath, from the investigator who—two decades later—still hasn’t given up, to the teenaged son of the victim and teenaged daughter of the main suspect.
What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars by David Wood (Little, Brown)
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wood contemplates not just Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but something he calls moral injury in the wake of nearly two decades of active warfare.
Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File by John Edgar Wideman (Scribner)
Wideman, who has written extensively about his own family’s complicated history with violence, race, and the justice system (Fatheralong, Brothers and Keepers), turns to an under-examined figured in the historic, and heartbreaking, story of Emmett Till: that of Till’s father, who was executed by the army in 1945.
DECEMBER
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt (S & S)
A collection of essays about art and feminism (see: Picasso, De Kooning, Koons, Sontag), the mind and body (see: Western philosophy), and neurology (see: hysteria, suicide).
Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov, translated from Russian by Alexander Boguslawski (Columbia Univ.)
Often compared to Finnegans Wake, this 1980 novel by Sokolov, who could call Nabokov a fan, is dense, complex, and language-focused. Its bold new translation comes from Rollins College professor Boguslawksi, who has previously translated two other Sokolov novels.
The Boy Who Escaped Paradise by J.M. Lee, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Pegasus)
Korean novelist Lee details the journey of a North Korean math savant imprisoned first in his native country and, after an escape and a search through East Asia’s criminal underworld for his friend, is then arrested on suspicion of murder in New York City.
Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir by Michael Anthony (Pulp)
Author of Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor writes a new memoir about the profound difficulties in coming home from war.
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel (Viking)
Veteran science writer Sobel turns her attention to the women (another set of “human computers”) of the Harvard College Observatory beginning in the 19th century. The photographic plates (the “glass universe” of the title) they studied yielded discoveries and systems of organization still in use today.
Moshi-Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Counterpoint)
This novel of ghosts and grieving (and food and family) by cult writer Yoshimoto was first published in Japan in 2010.
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith (FSG)
Are octopuses smarter than us? (They certainly are softer.) CUNY professor and philosopher of science Godfrey Smith, whose underwater videos of attacking octopuses have drawn considerable attention, considers this question.
Splintegrate by Deborah Teramis Christian (Tor)
A standalone novel set in the same world as Christian’s popular Mainline, this follows a celebrity dominatrix who is altered by a devious imperial power to betray one of her clients.