Literairyland: April 23-29, 2024

This week's hot 🔥 new books, writer birthdays, and more

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This week’s email includes 19 hot 🔥 new books.

Table of Contents

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This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth

Logline: SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER... Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Extinction by Douglas Preston

Logline: With Extinction, #1 New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston has written a page-turning thriller in the Michael Crichton mode that explores the possible and unintended dangers of the very real efforts to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other long-extinct animals.

Publisher: Forge

Science Fiction

Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho

Logline: Becky Chambers meets Firefly in this big-hearted Korean space opera debut about a disgraced space pilot struggling to find her place while fighting to protect the people she loves.

Publisher: Zando - Hillman Grad Books

Fantasy

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

Logline: A loyal warrior in a crisis of faith must fight to regain her place and begin her life again while questioning the events of her past. This gripping novel from a Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus Award-winning debut author is a complex, action-packed exploration of the costs of zealous faith, ceaseless conflicts, and unquestioning obedience.

Publisher: Tachyon Publications

Romance

Funny Story by Emily Henry

Logline: A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Publisher: Berkley Books

Literary

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

Logline: A dazzling, heartfelt adventure through the food, art, and fashion scenes of 1980s Paris--from the New York Times bestselling author of Save Me the Plums and Delicious!

Publisher: Random House

Reboot by Justin Taylor

Logline: A raucous and wickedly smart satire of Hollywood, toxic fandom, and our chronically online culture, following a washed-up actor on his quest to revive the cult TV show that catapulted him to teenage fame.

Publisher: Pantheon Books

Lucky by Jane Smiley

Logline: From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, a soaring, soulful novel about a folk musician who rises to fame across our changing times.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Nonfiction

Memoir

The Complications: On Going Insane in America by Emmett Rensin

Logline: An unflinching, rare account of living with severe mental illness that is also a bold commentary on how we misunderstand this often debilitating disease.

Publisher: HarperOne

By the Time You Read This: The Space Between Cheslie's Smile and Mental Illness by Cheslie Kryst and April Simpkins

Logline: By the Time You Read This is the story former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst was about to publish before her tragic suicide. Her mother, April, wraps up the narrative by exploring the mental illness and depression that took her daughter's life.

Publisher: Forefront Books

Reviews:
No available reviews

Biography

The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page

Logline: The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time—Barbara Walters—a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

American Flygirl by Susan Tate Ankeny

Logline: One of WWII's most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot's license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies.

Publisher: Citadel Press

Reviews:
No available reviews

Essays

I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays by Nell Irvin Painter

Logline: From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it.

Publisher: Doubleday Books

History

Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals by Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik

Logline: A compassionate, sweeping history of the transformation in American attitudes toward animals by the best-selling authors of Rabid.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi by Elon Anna Labba, translated by Fiona Graham

Logline: The deep and personal story—told through history, poetry, and images—of the forced displacement of the Sámi people from their homeland in northern Norway and Sweden and its reverberations today.

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Entertainment

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O'Hea

Logline: Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before by ordering Judi Dench's Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent - one legendary actress' inspiring, moving and brilliant journey through the plays of William Shakespeare.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Nature

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Logline: A gorgeous, witty account of birding, nature, and the beauty around us that hides in plain sight, written and illustrated by the best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club - With a foreword by David Allen Sibley.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Business

The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli

Logline: From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon's endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary.

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Poetry

Black Bell by Alison C. Rollins

Logline: Sweeping from the eighteenth century to futurist fabulations, Black Bell harmonizes poetry with performance art practices in an investigation of fugitivity.

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

Bookish Trivia 🤔

This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events

April 23

  • Coleman Barks

  • J.P. Donleavy

  • James Anthony Froude

  • Pierre Labrie

  • Edwin Markham

  • Ngaio Marsh

  • Paul McAuley

  • William Shakespeare

April 24

  • Sue Grafton

  • Karan Mahajan

  • Carl Spitteler

  • Robert Penn Warren

April 25

  • Robinson Crusoe is published (1719)

  • Leopoldo Alas

  • Melvin Burgess

  • James Fenton

  • Maud Hart Lovelace

  • Emma Straub

  • Corín Tellado

April 26

  • Vicente Aleixandre

  • A.E. Housman

  • Bernard Malamud

  • Marilyn Nelson

  • Natasha Trethewey

  • A.E. Van Vogt

  • Morris West

April 27

  • Cecil Day-Lewis

  • Ruth Glick

  • Helen Hodgman

  • Patricia Lockwood

  • Edwin Morgan

  • Jean Valentine

April 28

  • Roberto Bolaño

  • Johan Borgen

  • Carolyn Cassady

  • Lois Duncan

  • Na Hye-sok

  • Christian Jacq

  • Karl Kraus

  • Harper Lee

  • Sam Merwin, Jr.

  • Terry Pratchett

  • Ian Rankin

April 29

  • Edward Blishen

  • Elmer Kelton

  • Walter Kempowski

  • Rod McKuen

  • Arvo Mets

  • Rafael Sabatini

  • Robert J. Sawyer

  • Edward Rowland Sill

  • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

  • Jill Paton Walsh

  • Jack Williamson

See you next week!

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