A History of What Comes Next | Sylvain Neuvel | $32.99 | Penguin Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a sci-fi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir. Blend a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1940s rocketry with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence and the result is A History of What Comes Next.
The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer | Joël Dicker | $32.99 | Hachette Love a good twisty-turney mystery? Swiss author Dicker writes them well. I first discovered his novels when he wrote The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair and became an instant fan. Stephanie Mailer did not disappoint my fandom, and I flew through this small-town mystery at a break-neck pace. This is a literary mystery with great tone, developed characters and several red herrings to throw you off course. This is a snuggle down enjoyment read if ever there were one. Enjoy! - Dean
INTERNATIONAL FICTION
Fake Accounts | Lauren Oyler | $29.99 | Harper Collins A semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman who discovers her boyfriend gaslights as an alt-right conspiracy theorist online, written by the literary world’s most acerbic book reviewer. This is an extremely clever, funny, metatextual novel about social media, identity politics, and deciding how to spend a life. - Maddy
The Prophets | Robert Jones Jr. | $32.99 | Hachette The Prophets is an outstanding novel delivering tender, close-up intimacy and a great sweep of history. Jones’ short, lyric-driven chapters struck me as instructive and redemptive attempts at healing historical wounds. Through these characters and their stories, The Prophets calls, across time, on queer warriors, woman kings, root women and boys in love to paint a long queer Black history. - Jimmy A literary wonder with deep resounding heart. Isaiah and Samuel work on a plantation together and spend their evenings curled into one another. The buzz is real and warranted and kicks 2021 off with a bang! - Dean
NEW IN THE NOOK
Dropbear | Evelyn Araluen | $24.99 | University of Queensland Press Poetry, essay, satire, history, identity, decoloniality, sovereignty - Dharugborn Bundjalung writer Araluen has tackled a lot in her debut collection - and it’s brilliant! Through its unique genre, vivid emotion and intertextuality, this collection will disrupt your thinking and grasp your attention. - Steph
We Want It All | Edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel | $49.99 | Nightboat Books In this exuberant and daring anthology, trans writers explore how poetry can be a way to inhabit revolutionary practice, imagining poetry as a resource by which the community might stand “against capital and empire,” using language to reimagine collective struggle. - Jimmy
On Love and Tyranny | Ann Heberlein | $44.99 | House of Anansi Press Arendt’s incisive and intellectually generous political theory – perhaps most famously, her conception of the ‘banality of evil’ – was influenced by her experience as a German Jew during WW2. Heberlein’s biography asks what Arendt’s life and work might continue to tell us today. - Maddy
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