Anger Is My Middle Name
by
Lisbeth Zornig Andersen
Amazon, 03/01/2020
Born to a violently dysfunctional home in working-class Denmark, Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her three older brothers were bounced between foster care...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Actress
by
Anne Enright
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/03/2020
Katherine O'Dell is an Irish theater legend. As her daughter Norah retraces her mother's celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-...
more
Blackwood
by
Michael Farris Smith
Little Brown & Company, 03/03/2020
The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged, ...
more
City of Margins
by
William Boyle
Pegasus Books, 03/03/2020
In
City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There's Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop...
more
I've Been Wrong Before
by
Evan James
Atria Books, 03/03/2020
From the award-winning essay "Lover's Theme," in which Evan James explores the life of a drag queen in San Francisco, to his poignant story of coming ...
more
Long Range: A Joe Pickett Novel #20
by
C. J. Box
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/03/2020
When Joe Pickett is asked to join the rescue efforts for the victim of a startling grizzly attack, he reluctantly leaves his district behind. One ...
more
Only Mostly Devastated
by
Sophie Gonzales
Wednesday Books, 03/03/2020
Will Tavares is the dream summer fling―he's fun, affectionate, kind―but just when Ollie thinks he's found his Happily Ever After, summer ...
more
Please See Us
by
Caitlin Mullen
Gallery Books, 03/03/2020
Summer has come to Atlantic City but the boardwalk is empty of tourists, the casino lights have dimmed, and two Jane Does are laid out in the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Postcolonial Love Poem
by
Natalie Diaz
Graywolf Press, 03/03/2020
Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz's brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit
by
Eliese Colette Goldbach
Flatiron Books, 03/03/2020
Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill...To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
by
Kawai Strong Washburn
MCD, 03/03/2020
In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Temporary
by
Hilary Leichter
Coffee House Press, 03/03/2020
Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Exhibition of Persephone Q
by
Jessi Jezewska Stevens
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/03/2020
Now, instead of sleeping, Percy is spending her nights taking walks through her neighborhood, all the while fretting over her marriage, her impending ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Forgotten Home Child
by
Genevieve Graham
Simon & Schuster, 03/03/2020
2018
At ninety-seven years old, Winnifred Ellis knows she doesn't have much time left, and it is almost a relief to realize that once she is gone...
more
Historical Fiction
The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories
by
Sam Pink
Soft Skull Press, 03/03/2020
Braving the neon mountains to return with blue raspberry concentrate.
Tearing out sundae cone fangs from the mouths of snow beasts.
And so on.
...
more
The Lady of the Lake: Brighton Mystery #7
by
Peter Guttridge
Severn House, 03/03/2020
When Major Richard Rabbitt, owner of a large estate in Sussex, is found floating in a lake belonging to Nimue Grace, a charismatic former Hollywood ...
more
The Last Taxi Driver
by
Lee Durkee
Tin House Books, 03/03/2020
Written by a former cabbie,
The Last Taxi Driver is a darkly comic novel about a middle-aged hackie's daylong descent into madness, ...
more
The Midnight Lie
by
Marie Rutkoski
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/03/2020
Where Nirrim lives, crime abounds, a harsh tribunal rules, and society's pleasures are reserved for the High Kith. Life in the Ward is grim and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Night Watchman
by
Louise Erdrich
Harper, 03/03/2020
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
by
Katherine Stewart
Bloomsbury Publishing, 03/03/2020
For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
by
Josie Silver
Ballantine Books, 03/03/2020
Written with Josie Silver's trademark warmth and wit,
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs ...
more
These Ghosts Are Family
by
Maisy Card
Simon & Schuster, 03/03/2020
Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it's about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, Volume I: July 1937-May 1942
by
Richard B. Frank
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/03/2020
In 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean enclosed half the world's population, all save a fraction enduring under some ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Wicked As You Wish: A Hundred Names for Magic #1
by
Rin Chupeco
Sourcebooks, 03/03/2020
Many years ago, the magical Kingdom of Avalon was left desolate and encased in ice when the evil Snow Queen waged war on the powerful country. Its ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Writers & Lovers: A Novel
by
Lily King
Grove Press, 03/03/2020
Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel
Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant
New York Times ...
more
Literary Fiction
Fiebre Tropical
by
Juliana Delgado Lopera
Feminist Press, 03/04/2020
Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up in an evangelical church, replete with abstinent salsa dancers and baptisms for the dead. But there, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope
by
Patrice Caldwell
Penguin Young Readers Group, 03/10/2020
Evoking Beyoncé's
Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler's heirs, have woven worlds to create a stunning ...
more
And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
by
Stephanie Marie Thornton
Berkley Books, 03/10/2020
Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses ...
more
Historical Fiction
Before Familiar Woods
by
Ian Pisarcik
Crooked Lane Books, 03/10/2020
On the outskirts of a town too tired for its own happenings, the boys were found dead inside a tent. Three years later, their fathers have disappeared...more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Good Citizens Need Not Fear
by
Maria Reva
Doubleday, 03/10/2020
A bureaucratic glitch omits an entire building, along with its residents, from municipal records. So begins Reva's ingeniously intertwined narratives,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Short Stories
Debut Author
Hammer to Fall: Joe Wilderness #3
by
John Lawton
Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/10/2020
It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, his postings are ...
more
In Five Years
by
Rebecca Serle
Atria Books, 03/10/2020
Where do you see yourself in five years? When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her ...
more
Into the Abyss: A neuropsychiatrist's notes on troubled minds
by
Prof. Anthony David
Oneworld Publications, 03/10/2020
As a cognitive neuropsychiatrist, Anthony David brings together many fields of enquiry, from social and cognitive psychology to neurology. The key for...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Line of Sight
by
James Queally
Polis Books, 03/10/2020
He spends his days reluctantly keeping sideways cops out of the crosshairs of the Internal Affairs department. Until Keyonna Jackson, a social justice...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
New Waves
by
Kevin Nguyen
One World, 03/10/2020
Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company's sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Revolver Road: Harper McClain #3
by
Christi Daugherty
Minotaur Books, 03/10/2020
Even in the chill of February, no place touches Harper McClain's heart like Savannah. She should be walking beneath the historic city's towering oaks,...
more
The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress
by
Jennifer Steinhauer
Algonquin Books, 03/10/2020
In November 2018, the greatest number of women in American history entered Congress. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and "the Squad" to "the Badasses" ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Mirror & the Light: Wolf Hall Trilogy
by
Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt and Company, 03/10/2020
"If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?"
With
The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida
by
Clarissa Goenawan
Soho Press, 03/10/2020
University sophomore Miwako Sumida has hanged herself, leaving those closest to her reeling. In the months before her suicide, she was hiding away in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Three Brothers: Memories of My Family
by
Yan Lianke
Grove Press, 03/10/2020
In this heartfelt, intimate memoir, Yan Lianke brings the reader into his childhood home in Song County in Henan Province, painting a vivid portrait ...
more
When You Were Everything
by
Ashley Woodfolk
Delacorte Press, 03/10/2020
You can't rewrite the past, but you can always choose to start again.It's been twenty-seven days since Cleo and Layla's friendship imploded.
Nearly a ...
more
A Conspiracy of Bones: Temperance Brennan #19
by
Kathy Reichs
Scribner, 03/17/2020
It's sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares...
more
After Me Comes the Flood
by
Sarah Perry
Custom House, 03/17/2020
One hot summer's day, John Cole decides to shut his bookshop early, and possibly forever, and drives out of London to see his brother. When his car ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Darling Rose Gold
by
Stephanie Wrobel
Berkley Books, 03/17/2020
Mothers never forget. Daughters never forgive.
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Hearts of Oak
by
Eddie Robson
Tor Books, 03/17/2020
The buildings grow.
And the city expands.
And the people of the land are starting to behave abnormally.
Or perhaps they've always behaved that way, and ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing: Zofia Turbotynska Mystery #1
by
Maryla Szymiczkowa
Mariner Books, 03/17/2020
Cracow, 1893. Zofia Turbotyńska—professor's wife and socialite—is bored at home, with little to do but plan a charity auction ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis
by
Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, Beata Ernman
Penguin Books, 03/17/2020
When climate activist Greta Thunberg was eleven, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. ...
more
The Red Lotus
by
Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday, 03/17/2020
The first time Alexis saw Austin, it was a Saturday night. Not in a bar, but in the emergency room where Alexis sutured a bullet wound in Austin's arm...
more
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
by
Meena Kandasamy
Europa Editions, 03/17/2020
Based on the author's own experience of marriage, soon the newly-wed experiences extreme violence at her husband's hands and finds herself socially ...
more
House of Glass: The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family
by
Hadley Freeman
Simon & Schuster, 03/24/2020
Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother Sara lived in France just as Hitler started to gain power, but rarely did anyone in her family talk about it. Long...
more
Lakewood
by
Megan Giddings
Amistad, 03/24/2020
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Reads (The Great First Half 2020 Books)
When Lena Johnson's beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Like Flies from Afar
by
K. Ferrari
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/24/2020
A hardboiled noir thriller, a whodunit, a black comedy, and a filthy catalog of the excesses of wealth, this is a Jim Thompson novel for the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Marguerite
by
Marina Kemp
Viking, 03/24/2020
Marguerite Demers is twenty-five when she leaves Paris for the sleepy southern village of Saint Sulpice to take up a job as a live-in nurse. Her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Marrow and Bone
by
Walter Kempowski
New York Review Books, 03/24/2020
West Germany, 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall: Jonathan Fabrizius, a middle-aged erstwhile journalist, has a comfortable existence in ...
more
Running Out of Road: Buck Schatz #3
by
Daniel Friedman
Minotaur Books, 03/24/2020
Once, Detective Buck Schatz patrolled the city of Memphis, chasing down robbers and killers with a blackjack truncheon and a .357. But he's been ...
more
The City We Became
by
N. K. Jemisin
Orbit, 03/24/2020
Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six.
But every ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Empress of Salt and Fortune: The Singing Hills Cycle #1
by
Nghi Vo
Tor Books, 03/24/2020
A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Last Tourist: Milo Weaver #4
by
Olen Steinhauer
Minotaur Books, 03/24/2020
In Olen Steinhauer's bestseller
An American Spy, reluctant CIA agent Milo Weaver thought he had finally put "Tourists"―CIA-trained assassins&#...
more
The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family
by
Bettye Kearse
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 03/24/2020
For thousands of years, West African
griots (men) and
griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Tigers, Not Daughters
by
Samantha Mabry
Algonquin Young Readers, 03/24/2020
In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three ...
more
Wine Girl: The Obstacles, Humiliations, and Triumphs of America's Youngest Sommelier
by
Victoria James
Ecco, 03/24/2020
At just twenty-one, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country's youngest sommelier at...
more
Code Name Hélène
by
Ariel Lawhon
Doubleday, 03/31/2020
Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war,
Code Name Hélène is a spellbinding and moving...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Days of Distraction
by
Alexandra Chang
Ecco, 03/31/2020
The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why—she doesn't know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Flèche
by
Mary Jean Chan
Faber and Faber, 03/31/2020
Flèche (the French word for 'arrow') is an offensive technique commonly used in fencing, a sport of Mary Jean Chan's young adult years, when she ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife
by
Bart D. Ehrman
Simon & Schuster, 03/31/2020
What happens when we die? A recent Pew Research poll showed that 72% of Americans believe in a literal heaven, 58% in a literal hell. Most people who ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Hurricane Season
by
Fernanda Melchor
New Directions Publishing, 03/31/2020
The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse―by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals―propels the whole village ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
I Want You to Know We're Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir
by
Esther Safran Foer
Tim Duggan Books, 03/31/2020
Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Valentine
by
Elizabeth Wetmore
Harper, 03/31/2020
Mercy is hard in a place like this... It's February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town's men ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
White Shadow: Ingrid Barrøy #2
by
Roy Jacobsen
MacLehose Press, 04/02/2020
No one can be alone on an island...
But Ingrid is alone on Barry, the island that bears her name, while the war of her childhood has been replaced ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
A Bad Day for Sunshine: Sunshine Vicram Series #1
by
Darynda Jones
St. Martin's Press, 04/07/2020
Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, strong cups of coffee―and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del ...
more
A Tender Thing
by
Emily Neuberger
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 04/07/2020
Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Eleanor O'Hanlon always felt different. In love with musical theater from a young age, she memorized every show album ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Above Us the Milky Way
by
Fowzia Karimi
Deep Vellum Publishing, 04/07/2020
As a young family attempts to reconstruct their lives in a new and peaceful country, they are daily drawn back to the first land through remembrance ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
And Their Children After Them
by
Nicolas Mathieu
Other Press, 04/07/2020
August 1992. One afternoon during a heatwave in a desolate valley somewhere in eastern France, with its dormant blast furnaces and its lake, fourteen-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Broken
by
Don Winslow
William Morrow, 04/07/2020
In six intense short novels connected by the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt and redemption,
Broken is #1 ...
more
Choice Words: Writers on Abortion
by
Annie Finch
Haymarket Books, 04/07/2020
Twenty years in the making, the book spans continents and centuries. This collection magnifies the voices of people reclaiming the sole authorship of ...
more
Literary Fiction
Chosen Ones
by
Veronica Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 04/07/2020
Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug
by
Augustine Sedgewick
Penguin Press, 04/07/2020
Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world--one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
DMZ Colony
by
Don Mee Choi
Wave Books, 04/07/2020
Evincing the power of translation as a poetic device to navigate historical and linguistic borders, it explores Edward Said's notion of "the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Godshot
by
Chelsea Bieker
Catapult, 04/07/2020
In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret "assignments," to bring the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
One Fatal Flaw: A Daniel Pitt Novel
by
Anne Perry
Ballantine Books, 04/07/2020
When a desperate woman comes to Daniel Pitt seeking a lawyer for her boyfriend, Rob Adwell, Daniel is convinced of the young man's innocence. Adwell ...
more
Historical Fiction
Strike Me Down
by
Mindy Mejia
Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 04/07/2020
Nora Trier catches thieves. As a forensic accountant and partner in her downtown Minneapolis firm, she's unearthed millions in every corner of the ...
more
The Ancestor
by
Danielle Trussoni
William Morrow, 04/07/2020
It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta "Bert" Monte receives a letter addressed to "Countess Alberta Montebianco" at her Hudson Valley, New York...
more
The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel
by
Lisa Wingate
Ballantine Books, 04/07/2020
Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after ...
more
Literary Fiction
The Lost Orphan: A Novel
by
Stacey Halls
Mira, 04/07/2020
London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate newborn at the Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the daughter she has never ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Love Story of Missy Carmichael
by
Beth Morrey
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 04/07/2020
The world has changed around seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, aka Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as ...
more
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty
by
Susan Page
Twelve Books, 04/07/2020
Barbara Pierce Bush was one of the country's most popular and powerful figures, yet her full story has never been told.
The Matriarch tells the ...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Other Name: Septology I-II
by
Jon Fosse
Transit Books, 04/07/2020
The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his ...
more
The Pelton Papers
by
Mari Coates
She Writes Press, 04/07/2020
Born into a family ruined by scandal, Agnes becomes part of the lively New York art scene, finding early success in the famous Armory Show of 1913. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Silent Treatment
by
Abbie Greaves
William Morrow, 04/07/2020
A lifetime together.
Six months of silence.
One last chance. By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
We Didn't Ask for This
by
Adi Alsaid
Inkyard Press, 04/07/2020
Central International School's annual lock-in is legendary — and for six students, this year's lock-in is the answer to their dreams. The chance...
more
Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing, and Living the Truth of Your Life
by
Leslie Leyland Fields
NavPress, 04/07/2020
From its tiniest details to its most dramatic events, your story is a sacred gift, worthy of attention. But how do you find and tell that story?
In...
more
Biography/Memoir
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
by
William Shakespeare
Independently published, 04/08/2020
There include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by ...
more
Historical Fiction
Braised Pork
by
An Yu
Grove Press, 04/14/2020
One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead. One minute she was breakfasting with him...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Calder: The Conquest of Space: The Later Years: 1940-1976 (A Life of Calder)
by
Jed Perl
Knopf, 04/14/2020
The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder--known to all as Sandy--and his wife, Louisa, opened...
more
Five Little Indians: A Novel
by
Michelle Good
Harper Perennial, 04/14/2020
Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they ...
more
Literary Fiction
Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us
by
George Zaidan
Dutton, 04/14/2020
Ingredients offers the perspective of a chemist on the stuff we eat, drink, inhale, and smear on ourselves. Apart from the burning question of whether...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Miss Aluminum
by
Susanna Moore
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/14/2020
In 1963 after the death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Susanna Moore leaves her home in Hawai'i with no money, no belongings, and no prospects to ...
more
Simon the Fiddler
by
Paulette Jiles
William Morrow, 04/14/2020
In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power
by
Deirdre Mask
St. Martin's Press, 04/14/2020
An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals about class, race, power...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
The Big Finish
by
Brooke Fossey
Berkley Books, 04/14/2020
Meet Duffy, an old curmudgeon who lives in an assisted living home.
Meet Josie, a desperate young woman who climbs through his window.
Together, they'...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Book of Koli (The Rampart Trilogy, 1)
by
M. R. Carey
Orbit, 04/14/2020
Everything that lives hates us...
Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown ...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Coyotes of Carthage
by
Steven Wright
Ecco, 04/14/2020
Dre Ross has one more shot. Despite being a successful political consultant, his aggressive tactics have put him on thin ice with his boss, Mrs. Fitz,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Eighth Life
by
Nino Haratischvili
Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, 04/14/2020
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Thrillers
Three Tigers, One Mountain: A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan
by
Michael Booth
St. Martin's Griffin, 04/14/2020
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, "Two tigers cannot share the same mountain." However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Keepers of the Faith
by
Shaukat Ajmeri
Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd, 04/15/2020
When a section of the community rebels, it is summarily excommunicated, shunned by friends and family and denied religious rites. The peaceful ...
more
Literary Fiction
Creatures of Charm and Hunger: The Diabolist's Library
by
Molly Tanzer
Mariner Books, 04/21/2020
In the waning days of World War II, with Allied victory all but certain, desperate Nazi diabolists search for a demonic superweapon to turn the tide. ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Little Secrets: A Novel
by
Jennifer Hillier
Minotaur Books, 04/21/2020
All it takes to unravel a life is one little secret...
Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale ...
more
Outsmarting the Sociopath Next Door: How to Protect Yourself Against a Ruthless Manipulator
by
Martha StoutPh.D.
Harmony Books, 04/21/2020
While the best way to deal with a sociopath is to avoid him or her entirely, sometimes circumstance doesn't allow for that. What happens when the time...
more
Advice
Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In
by
Phuc Tran
Flatiron Books, 04/21/2020
In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
The King of Warsaw
by
Szczepan Twardoch
AmazonCrossing, 04/21/2020
It's 1937. Poland is about to catch fire.
In the boxing ring, Jakub Szapiro commands respect, revered as a hero by the Jewish community. Outside, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Moment of Tenderness
by
Madeleine L'Engle
Grand Central Publishing, 04/21/2020
This powerful collection of short stories traces an emotional arc inspired by Madeleine L'Engle's early life and career, from her lonely childhood in ...
more
Warhol
by
Blake Gopnik
Ecco, 04/21/2020
To this day, mention the name "Andy Warhol" to almost anyone and you'll hear about his famous images of soup cans and Marilyn Monroe. But though Pop ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
You Let Me In
by
Camilla Bruce
Tor Books, 04/21/2020
Cassandra Tipp is dead...or is she?
After all, the notorious recluse and eccentric bestselling novelist has always been prone to flights of fancy&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy
by
Lucy Score
Bloom Books, 04/22/2020
Dominic was staring at me like he couldn't decide whether he loathed me or wanted to French kiss me.
Dominic
I got her fired. Okay, so I'd had...
more
Romance
All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
by
George M. Johnson
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/28/2020
From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America
by
Laila Lalami
Pantheon Books, 04/28/2020
Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth—such as national origin, race, and gender—that once ...
more
In Our Midst
by
Nancy Jensen
Dzanc Books, 04/28/2020
Nina and Otto Aust, along with their teenage sons, feel the foundation of their American lives crumbling when, in the middle of the annual St. Nikolas...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Inge's War: A German Woman's Story of Family, Secrets, and Survival Under Hitler
by
Svenja O'Donnell
Viking, 04/28/2020
Growing up in Paris as the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
by
Nicole R. Fleetwood
Harvard University Press, 04/28/2020
More than two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. Incarceration not only separates the imprisoned from their families and ...
more
Our Riches
by
Kaouther Adimi (author), Chris Andrews (translator)
New Directions Publishing, 04/28/2020
Our Riches celebrates quixotic devotion and the love of books in the person of Edmond Charlot, who at the age of twenty founded Les Vraies Richesses (...
more
Mysteries
Queen Bee: A Novel
by
Dorothea Benton Frank
William Morrow, 04/28/2020
Beekeeper Holly McNee Jensen quietly lives in a world of her own on Sullivans Island, tending her hives and working at the local island library. Holly...
more
Literary Fiction
Sea Wife
by
Amity Gaige
Knopf, 04/28/2020
Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her anemic dissertation when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Swimming in the Dark
by
Tomasz Jedrowski
William Morrow, 04/28/2020
When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Take Me Apart
by
Sara Sligar
MCD, 04/28/2020
When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
The Knockout Queen
by
Rufi Thorpe
Knopf, 04/28/2020
Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore—beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her ...
more
The Sweeney Sisters
by
Lian Dolan
William Morrow, 04/28/2020
Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, Connecticut. But their mother's death from ...
more
This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home
by
Lauren Sandler
Random House, 04/28/2020
Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Good Marriage
by
Kimberly McCreight
Harper, 05/05/2020
Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they'd be easier to ...
more
Big Summer
by
Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books, 05/05/2020
Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and ...
more
Clap When You Land
by
Elizabeth Acevedo
Quill Tree Books, 05/05/2020
Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Death in the East: Wyndham & Banerjee Mysteries #4
by
Abir Mukherjee
Pegasus Crime, 05/05/2020
1905, London. As a young constable, Sam Wyndham is on his usual East London beat when he comes across an old flame, Bessie Drummond, attacked in the ...
more
Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking
by
Bill Buford
Knopf, 05/05/2020
Bill Buford turns his inimitable attention from Italian cuisine to the food of France. Baffled by the language, but convinced that he can master the ...
more
Exile Music
by
Jennifer Steil
Viking, 05/05/2020
As a young girl growing up in Vienna in the 1930s, Orly has an idyllic childhood filled with music. Her father plays the viola in the Philharmonic, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Felix Ever After
by
Kacen Callender
Balzer + Bray, 05/05/2020
Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he's painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it's like and why it seems so ...
more
Fracture
by
Andrés Neuman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/05/2020
An earthquake unnerves Tokyo on March 11, 2011, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster―and a tectonic stirring of the collective past. Mr. ...
more
Friend: A Novel from North Korea
by
Paek Nam-nyong
Columbia University Press, 05/05/2020
A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Goldilocks
by
Laura Lam
Orbit, 05/05/2020
Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hard Cash Valley
by
Brian Panowich
Minotaur Books, 05/05/2020
Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life ...
more
If It Bleeds
by
Stephen King
Scribner, 05/05/2020
The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, ...
more
Like Crazy: Life with My Mother and Her Invisible Friends
by
Dan Mathews
Atria Books, 05/05/2020
Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy, unhinged mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence at seventy-eight—so he flew her ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Network Effect: The Murderbot Diaries #5
by
Martha Wells
Tor Books, 05/05/2020
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you'll read this century.
I'm usually alone in my head, and that's where 90 ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sansei and Sensibility
by
Karen Tei Yamashita
Coffee House Press, 05/05/2020
In a California of the sixties and seventies, characters examine the contents of deceased relatives' freezers, tape-record high school locker-room ...
more
Shiner
by
Amy Jo Burns
Riverhead Books, 05/05/2020
An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Telephone: A Novel
by
Percival Everett
Graywolf Press, 05/05/2020
Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist. Expert in a very narrow area―the geological history of a cave forty-...
more
The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President--and Why It Failed
by
Brad Meltzer, John Mensch
Flatiron Books, 05/05/2020
Everyone knows the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, but few are aware of the original conspiracy to kill him four years earlier in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Catherine House: A Novel
by
Elisabeth Thomas
Custom House, 05/12/2020
Trust us, you belong here.A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Daughter of the Reich: A Novel
by
Louise Fein
William Morrow, 05/12/2020
She must choose between loyalty to her country or a love that could be her destruction…
As the dutiful daughter of a high-ranking Nazi ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
by
Tom Zoellner
Harvard University Press, 05/12/2020
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Someone We Know: A Novel
by
Shari Lapena
Penguin Books, 05/12/2020
Maybe you don't know your neighbors as well as you thought you did ...
"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too...
more
Thrillers
The Goodbye Man: A Colter Shaw Novel
by
Jeffery Deaver
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 05/12/2020
In the wilderness of Washington State, expert tracker Colter Shaw has located two young men accused of a terrible hate crime. But when his pursuit ...
more
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland's Most Unusual Museums
by
A.Kendra Greene
Penguin Books, 05/12/2020
Iceland is home to only 330,000 people but more than 265 museums and public collections, ranging from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping
by
Samantha Harvey
Grove Press, 05/12/2020
In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to ...
more
The Turn of the Key
by
Ruth Ware
Gallery Books, 05/12/2020
When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in ...
more
Thrillers
What Lies Between Us
by
John Marrs
Thomas & Mercer, 05/15/2020
They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not ...
more
Thrillers
Beach Read
by
Emily Henry
Berkley Books, 05/19/2020
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills ...
more
Romance
Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity
by
Porochista Khakpour
Vintage, 05/19/2020
Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an ...
more
Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State
by
Barton Gellman
Penguin Press, 05/19/2020
Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Drifts: A Novel
by
Kate Zambreno
Riverhead Books, 05/19/2020
Haunting and compulsively readable,
Drifts is an intimate portrait of reading, writing, and creative obsession. At work on a novel that is overdue, ...
more
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965
by
Jia Lynn Yang
W.W. Norton & Company, 05/19/2020
The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Rodham: A Novel
by
Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House, 05/19/2020
In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she's attending Yale Law School...
more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Sunday Girl: A Novel
by
Pip Drysdale
Sourcebooks Landmark, 05/19/2020
Taylor Bishop is hurt, angry, and wants to destroy Angus Hollingsworth in the way he destroyed her: 'Insidiously. Irreparably. Like a puzzle he'd ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
These Women: A Novel
by
Ivy Pochoda
Ecco, 05/19/2020
In West Adams, a rapidly changing part of South Los Angeles, they're referred to as "these women." These women on the corner … These women in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
Tropic of Violence
by
Nathacha Appanah
Graywolf Press, 05/19/2020
Marie, a nurse in Mayotte, a far-flung, tropical department of France in the Indian Ocean, adopts a baby abandoned at birth by his mother, a refugee ...
more
All My Mother's Lovers
by
Ilana Masad
Dutton, 05/26/2020
But when Maggie's mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Everything's Not Fine
by
Sarah Carlson
Turner, 05/26/2020
Rose's love of Frida Kahlo fuels her paint brush and her dreams to attend a prestigious art school. Painting is Rose's escape from her annoying ...
more
Thrillers
Fairest: A Memoir
by
Meredith Talusan
Viking, 05/26/2020
Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
Home Home
by
Lisa Allen-Agostini
Delacorte Press, 05/26/2020
Moving from Trinidad to Canada wasn't her idea. But after being hospitalized for depression, her mother sees it as the only option. Now, living with ...
more
Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World
by
Slavoj Zizek
Polity, 05/26/2020
We live in a moment when the greatest act of love is to stay distant from the object of your affection. When governments renowned for ruthless cuts in...
more
Biography/Memoir
The Black Flamingo
by
Dean Atta
Balzer + Bray, 05/26/2020
Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he's navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican—but never ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times
by
Anthony DePalma
Viking, 05/26/2020
Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. In his new book, Anthony ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Death of Jesus
by
J.M. Coetzee
Viking, 05/26/2020
In Estrella, David has grown to be a tall ten-year-old who is a natural at soccer, and loves kicking a ball around with his friends. His father Sim&#...
more
The Prisoner's Wife
by
Maggie Brookes
Berkley Books, 05/26/2020
In the dead of night, a Czech farm girl and a British soldier travel through the countryside. Izabela and prisoner of war Bill have secretly married ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
by
David Brooks
Random House, 05/26/2020
Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for...
more
Other
