Contemporary & Literary Fiction | Historical Fiction | Romance | Thrillers & Mysteries | Horror & Gothic Fiction | Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Magical Realism | Young Adult | Nonfiction
Contemporary & Literary Fiction
Cinema Love
Jiaming Tang
For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City’s Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these two share an unusual past. In rural Fuzhou, before they emigrated, they frequented the Workers’ Cinema: a theater where gay men cruised for love. While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Dutton
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Loneliness & Company
Charlee Dyroff
Lee knows she’s the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there’s no doubt she’ll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. So when, upon graduating, Lee is instead assigned to an unknown company in the dead city of New York, her life goals are completely upended. In this new role, Lee’s task is to gather enough research to train an AI how to be a friend. She begins online and by studying the social circle of her clueless, outgoing roommate Veronika. But when the company reveals it’s part of a classified government mission to solve loneliness-an emotion erased from society’s lexicon decades ago-Lee’s determination to prove herself kicks into overdrive, and she begins chasing bolder and more dangerous experiences to provide data for the AI.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
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The Ministry of Time
Kaliene Bradley
Part time travel romance, part spy thriller and 100% multi-faceted joyride: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilaratingly original debut novel by Kaliane Bradley. In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
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How to Read a Book
Monica Wood
From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories. How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Mariner Books
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América del Norte
Nicolás Medina Mora
Moving between New York City, Mexico City, and Iowa City, a young member of the Mexican elite sees his life splinter in a centuries-spanning debut that blends the Latin American traditions of Roberto Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor with the autofiction of US writers like Ben Lerner and Teju Cole.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Soho
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Whale Fall
Elizabeth O’Connor
A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community. With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person’s ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O’Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Pantheon
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Women and Children First
Alina Grabowski
A gripping literary puzzle that unwinds the private lives of ten women as they confront tragedy in a small Massachusetts town. Told through the eyes of ten local women, Grabowski’s Women and Children First is an exquisite portrait of grief and a powerful reminder of life’s interconnectedness. Touching on womanhood, class, and sexuality, ambition, disappointment, and tragedy, this novel is a stunning rendering of love and loss, and a bracing lesson from a phenomenal new literary talent that no one walks this earth alone.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: SJP Lit/Zando
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All Fours
Miranda July
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Riverhead
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Blue Ruin
Hari Kunzru
Once, Jay was an artist. After graduating from art school in London, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career taking shape before him. That was not to happen. Now, undocumented in the United States, having survived Covid, he lives out of his car and barely makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. One day, as Jay attempts to make a delivery at a house surrounded by acres of woods, he is confronted by his destructive past: Alice, a former lover from his art school days, and the friend she left him for. Recognizing Jay’s dire circumstances, Alice invites him to stay on their property—where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well—setting in motion a reckoning that has been decades in the making. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time, delivering an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Knopf
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Liquid, Fragile, Perishable
Carolyn Kuebler
Liquid, Fragile, Perishable unspools via a chorus of unforgettable voices: an old-school Christian beekeeping family and newly transplanted New Yorkers; a trio of teenage girls and a deeply rooted family of ne’er-do-wells; and one woman who just wants to live alone in the woods. The shifting set of relations among the citizens of this community encompasses teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, poverty—and a cavalcade of thwarted dreams, young love in bloom, and poignant missed connections. This powerful debut is a subtle and beautiful story about the interlocking relationships among the residents of a small town out of Sherwood Anderson or Thornton Wilder—but with a very contemporary set of problems … By turns sexy, shocking, and wistful, this coruscating debut conveys the hopes, the sadness, and the secrets of a whole great world. Told in a vivid style of complete distinction, the novel has a magic and a momentum all its own, giving a look into the aching, silent heart of America.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Melville House
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Oye
Melissa Mogollon
A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on. Structured as a series of one-sided phone calls from our spunky, sarcastic narrator, Luciana, to her older sister, Mari, this wildly inventive debut “jump-starts your heart in the same way it piques your ear” (Xochitl Gonzalez). As the baby of her large Colombian American family, Luciana is usually relegated to the sidelines. But now she finds herself as the only voice of reason in the face of an unexpected crisis: A hurricane is heading straight for Miami, and her eccentric grandmother, Abue, is refusing to evacuate.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Hogarth
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We Were the Universe
Kimberly King Parsons
A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light (long-listed for the National Book Award).
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Knopf
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Wives Like Us
Plum Sykes
Take a grand English country house, one (heartbroken) American divorcee, three rich wives, two tycoons, a pair of miniature sausage dogs and one (bereaved) butler; put them all into the blender and out comes the impossibly funny Wives Like Us, the new novel from the best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes and Party Girls Die In Pearls, Plum Sykes.
Publication Date: May 14
Publisher: Harper
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Perfume & Pain
Steven Rowley
A controversial LA author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet and celebrity-obsessed world. With notes of Southern California citrus and sultry smokiness, Perfume and Pain is a satirical romp through Hollywood and lesbian melodrama.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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Historical Fiction
Daughters of Shandong
Eve J. Chung
A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story. old in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Berkley
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The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
Helen Simonson
A timeless comedy of manners—refreshing as a summer breeze and bracing as the British seaside—about a generation of young women facing the seismic changes brought on by war and dreaming of the boundless possibilities of their future, from the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: The Dial Press
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Long Island
Colm Toibin
From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work twenty years later.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Scribner
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The Stolen Child
Ann Hood
For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands―and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising place: the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman. Determined to find the baby and the artist, hopeless romantic Jenny and curmudgeonly Nick must reckon with regret, betrayal, and the lives they’ve left behind. With characteristic warmth and verve, Ann Hood captures a world of possibility and romance through the eyes of a young woman learning to claim her place in it. The Stolen Child is an engaging, timeless novel of secrets, love lost and found, and the nature of forgiveness.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: W.W. Norton
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This Strange Eventful History
Claire Messud
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state―separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace. Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: W.W. Norton
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The Wealth of Shadows
Graham Moore
An ordinary man joins a secret mission to bring down the Nazi war machine by crashing their economy in this thrilling novel based on a true story, from the Academy Award–winning screenwriter of The Imitation Gameand bestselling author of The Last Days of Night.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Random House
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The Safekeep
Yael Van Der Wouden
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
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Romance
You Should Be So Lucky
Cat Sebastian
An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.
Publication Date: May 7
Publisher: Avon
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Love at First Book
Jenn McKinlay
When a librarian moves to a quaint Irish village where her favorite novelist lives, the last thing she expects is to fall for the author’s prickly son… until their story becomes one for the books, from the New York Timesbestselling author of Summer Reading.
Publication Date: May 14
Publisher: Berkley
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The Paradise Problem
Christina Lauren
Christina Lauren, the instant New York Times bestselling and “reigning romance queens”, returns with a delicious new romance between the buttoned-up heir of a grocery chain and his free-spirited artist ex as they fake their relationship in order to receive a massive inheritance. Anna Green thought she was marrying Liam “West” Weston for access to subsidized family housing while at UCLA. She also thought she’d signed divorce papers when the graduation caps were tossed, and they both went on their merry ways. Three years later, West is a Stanford professor uninterested in joining the family business. He is interested, however, in his one-hundred-million-dollar inheritance. There’s just one catch. Due to an antiquated clause in his grandfather’s will, Liam won’t see a penny until he’s been happily married for five years.
Publication Date: May 14
Publisher: Gallery Books
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I Hope This Finds You Well
Natalie Sue
In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes along with it.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: William Morrow
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Savor It
Tarah DeWitt
Sage Byrd has lived in the coastal town of Spunes, Oregon (not to be confused with Forks, Washington) her entire life. She’s learned to love her small world, with the misfit animals on her hobby farm, and her friendships with the town’s inhabitants. But when her 5-year relationship ends and her ex, town-golden-boy Ian, suddenly gets engaged, Sage needs a win―something that will convince everyone to stop pitying her all the time, and to put Ian in his place. The Festival of Spunes, the town’s annual summer competition, would be the perfect opportunity. She just needs a partner.
Publication Date: May 21
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
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Lies and Weddings
Kevin Kwan
From the iconic internationally bestselling author of the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy: A forbidden affair erupts volcanically amid a decadent tropical wedding in this outrageous comedy of manners from the iconic author of Crazy Rich Asians. Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister’s wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who’s-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.
Publication Date: May 21
Publisher: Doubleday
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Summer Fridays
Suzanne Rindell
You’ve Got Mail for a new generation, set in the days of AOL and instant messenger banter, about a freshly engaged editorial assistant who winds up spending her “summer Fridays” with the person she least expects. Summer Fridays is a witty and emotional love letter to New York City that also captures the feeling of being young and starting out, uncertain what to do on your summer Friday. It’s also perfect for readers who remember when “going online” meant tying up the phone line, and the timeless thrill of seeing a certain someone’s name in your inbox.
Publication Date: May 21
Publisher: Dutton
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Thrillers & Mysteries
The Five Year Lie
Sarina Bowen
Bestselling romance author Sarina Bowen’s debut thriller, about one woman’s search for the truth after receiving a text from her deceased ex. On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty’s phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it’s been several years since she learned he died. For fans of Laura Dave and Julie Clark, but with a heart-stopping romance that only Sarina Bowen can execute, The Five Year Lie is a page-turning, spine-tingling thriller that will have you guessing until the very end.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Harper
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Hunted
Abir Mukherjee
In London, the police storm Heathrow Airport to bring in a father for questioning about his missing daughter. In Florida, a mother makes a connection between her son and the bomber, fearing he has been radicalized. And in Oregon, an unknown organization’s conspiracy to bring America to its knees unfolds…On the run from the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to stop a catastrophe that will derail the country’s future forever. But can they find their kids before it’s too late?
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Mullholland Books
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The Return of Ellie Black
Emiko Jean
Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared years earlier, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state—but Ellie’s reappearance leaves Chelsey with more questions than answers.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
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The Lady Waiting
Magdalena Zyzak
The White Lotus meets The Talented Mr. Ripley in this high-spirited novel of a stolen Vermeer, a Polish transplant in LA, and the charismatic couple who seduce her into a misguided international heist. Careening from the canyons of LA to the canals of Venice, The Lady Waiting is a page-turning caper, a cavalcade of twenty-first-century sins—rapacious capitalism, shameless fraud, and atrocious behavior—and a showcase for three of the biggest and most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Riverhead
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The Last Time She Saw Him
Kate White
A woman is left reeling when her former fiancé appears to take his own life, and she becomes desperate to prove it was actually murder—in the latest psychological thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kate White.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Harper
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Think Twice
Harlan Coben
Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave a eulogy at the funeral of his client, renowned basketball coach Greg Downing. Myron and Greg had history: initially as deeply personal rivals, and later as unexpected business associates. Myron made peace and moved on – until now, when twofederal agents walked into his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is. According to the agents, Greg is still alive—and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
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One Perfect Couple
Ruth Ware
Harkening to Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension and ingenious thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them—from Ruth Ware, the New York Times bestselling author who “is turning out to be as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime” (The Washington Post).
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
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When We Were Silent
Fiona McPhillips
An outsider threatens to expose the secrets at an elite private school in this suspenseful debut novel for readers of My Dark Vanessa and Dare Me. Powerful and compelling, When We Were Silent is an unputdownable, thrilling story of exploitation, privilege, and retribution.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Flatiron
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Long Time Gone
Charlie Donlea
When DNA results reveal a disturbing connection to the mysterious disappearance of a famous baby nearly three decades ago, a woman’s search for answers draws her to an ominous small town in Nevada and a dangerous web of corruption, power, and lies in this engrossing, propulsive new novel from the internationally bestselling author of Twenty Years Later.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Kensington
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Knife River
Justine Champine
When Jess was thirteen, her mother went for a walk and never returned. Jess and her older sister, Liz, never found out what happened. Instead, they did what they hoped their mother had done: survive. As soon as she was old enough, Jess fled their small town of Knife River, wandering from girlfriend to girlfriend like a ghost in her own life, aimless in her attempts to outrun grief and confusion. But one morning, fifteen years after their mother’s disappearance, she gets the call she’s been bracing for: Her mother’s remains have been found. A compelling story of family, home, and the bond between sisters that asks: Who do you believe when you can’t even trust yourself?
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: The Dial Press
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The Switch
Lily Samson
Two couples. One twisted game of love and obsession. A dark domestic thriller about the dangerous secrets that come to light when a wild fantasy turns sinister. . . When young couple Elena and Adam are offered the chance to house-sit in their dream neighborhood for a few months, they jump at the opportunity. Soon Elena crosses paths with the beautiful and enigmatic artist Sophia and her husband, Finn, and she and Adam are pulled into their orbit. Sophia is everything Elena isn’t—glamorous, alluring, successful—and Finn exerts a mysterious pull on Elena that she can’t seem to shake. Elena’s infatuation with Finn grows stronger by the day, and when Sophia proposes a thrilling game to her new friend—to swap partners in secret—Elena quickly agrees.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
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Horror & Gothic Fiction
The Z Word
Lindsay King Miller
Chaotic bisexual Wendy is trying to find her place in the queer community of San Lazaro, Arizona, after a bad breakup—which is particularly difficult because her ex is hooking up with some of her friends. And when the people around them start turning into violent, terrifying mindless husks, well, that makes things harder. Especially since the infection seems to be spreading. Now, Wendy and her friends and frenemies—drag queen Logan, silver fox Beau, sword lesbian Aurelia and her wife Sam, mysterious pizza delivery stoner Sunshine, and, oh yeah, Wendy’s ex-girlfriend Leah—have to team up to stay alive, save Pride, and track the zombie outbreak to its shocking source. Hopefully without killing each other first. The Z Word is a propulsive, funny, emotional horror debut about a found family coming together to fight corporate greed, political corruption, gay drama, and zombies.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Quirk Books
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The House That Horror Built
Christina Henry
A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets in the captivating new novel from the national bestselling author of Good Girls Don’t Die and Horseman. Harry Adams has always loved horror movies, so it’s not a total coincidence that she took the job cleaning house for movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding graystone Chicago mansion, Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes, as well as glittering awards from his career making films that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Berkley
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Woodworm
Layla Martinez
The house breathes. The house contains bodies and secrets. The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes. In this lush translation by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, Layla Martinez’s eerie debut novel is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun. Described by Mariana Enriquez as “a house of women and shadows, built from poetry and revenge,” this vision of a broken family in our unjust world places power in the hands of the eccentric, the radical, and the desperate.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Two Lines Press
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Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Magical Realism
Five Broken Blades
Mai Corland
The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the god king Joon. He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold. And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hit man seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance. They can agree on murder. They can agree on treachery. But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Red Tower Books
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The Silverblood Promise: The Last Legacy
James Logan
Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and―thanks to a duel that ended badly―the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His days consist of cheap wine, rigged card games, and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away. When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father’s death. His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow. For in Saphrona, everything has a price―and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Tor Books
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Their Divine Fires
Wendy Chen
A captivating and intimate debut novel interwoven with folktale and myth, Wendy Chen’s Their Divine Firestells the story of the love affairs of three generations of Chinese women across one hundred years of revolutions both political and personal.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Algonquin Books
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When Among Crows
Veronica Roth
When Among Crows is swift and striking, drawing from the deep well of Slavic folklore and asking if redemption and atonement can be found in embracing what we most fear. Pain is Dymitr’s calling. His family is one in a long line of hunters who sacrifice their souls to slay monsters. Now he’s tasked with a deadly mission: find the legendary witch Baba Jaga. To reach her, Dymitr must ally with the ones he’s sworn to kill. Pain is Ala’s inheritance. A fear-eating zmora with little left to lose, Ala awaits death from the curse she carries. When Dymitr offers her a cure in exchange for her help, she has no choice but to agree. Together they must fight against time and the wrath of the Chicago underworld. But Dymitr’s secrets―and his true motives―may be the thing that actually destroys them.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Tor Books
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Heavenbreaker
Sara Wolf
Bravery isn’t what you do. It’s what you endure. The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back. He didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother―on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish. Now there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them. Even if it means riding Heavenbreaker―one of the few enormous machines left over from the War―and jousting against the fiercest nobles in the system. Each win means another one of my enemies dies. And here, in the cold terror of space, the machine and I move as one, intent on destroying each adversary―even if it’s someone I care about. Even if it’s someone I’m falling for. Only I’m not alone. Not anymore. Because there’s something in the machine with me. Something horrifying. Something…more. And it won’t be stopped.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Red Tower Books
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A House Like An Accordion
Audrey Burges
A woman searches for her missing father in order to reconcile the many strange and fantastical secrets of her past before she loses herself completely in this deeply profound and magical novel by Audrey Burges. When Keryth wakes up one morning with her hand completely gone, she is frantic. But she quickly realizes two things: If she is disappearing, it’s because her father, an artist with the otherworldly ability to literally capture life in his art, is drawing her. And if he’s drawing her, that means he’s still alive. But where has he been for the past twenty-five years, and why is he doing the one thing he always warned her not to?
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Ace
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The Last Murder at the End of the World
Stuart Turton
From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution. Solve the murder to save what’s left of the world. Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they’re told by the scientists. Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
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Short Stories & Essays
Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances
Lucas Mann
Lucas Mann turns his attention, tenderness, self-reflection, and humor to contemporary fatherhood. He looks closely at all the joys, frustrations, subtleties, and contradictions within an experience that often goes under-discussed. At once intimate and expansive, Mann chronicles his own life with his young daughter, but also looks outward to the cultural and political baggage that surrounds and permeates these everyday experiences. Moving through memoir, lyric essay, literary analysis, and pop culture criticism, Attachments treats the subject of fatherhood with the depth, curiosity, and vivid emotion that it deserves.
Publication date: May 6
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
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The Body Farm: Stories
Abby Geni
The long-awaited new book from the critically acclaimed author of The Lightkeepers and The Wildlands: an intense and insightful collection that celebrates the horrors and joys of inhabiting our bodies. These eleven stories display Abby Geni’s great capacity to take us into the lives and experiences of others to scrutinize the physical self: birth, childhood, transition, mental health, trauma, aging, illness, love, sex, and death.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Counterpoint
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Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
Vanessa Angelica Villarreal
A brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture—from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones—to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by migration and colonialism. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Tiny Reparations
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My First Book
Honor Levy
Walking the wire between imagination and confession, My First Book marks the arrival of an electric new talent. Honor Levy’s uniquely riveting voice emerges from the chaos of coming of age in Generation Z. Never far from a digital interface, her characters grapple with formative political, existential, and romantic experiences in a web-drenched society on the brink of collapse. Inventive, ambitious, and frequently surreal, the stories of My First Book are a mirrorball onto the world as it is.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Penguin Press
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You Like It Darker: Stories
Stephen King
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Scribner
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Memoirs & Biographies
Love Is a Burning Thing
Nina St. Pierre
A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother: a woman who lived her life in pursuit of the divine, and who started two big fires, decades apart. In Love Is a Burning Thing, Nina interrogates what happens to those undiagnosed and unseen. This is a transfixing, moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship that also examines mental health, stigma, poverty, and gender—and the role that spirituality plays within each. Nina’s writing skirts the mystical, untangles it, and ultimately illuminates it with brilliance.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Dutton
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Zhou Enlai
Chen Jian
The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People’s Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss―Chairman Mao.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Belknap Press
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Another Word for Love
Carvell Wallace
Wallace is an award-winning journalist who has built his career writing unforgettable profiles, bringing a provocative and engaged sensitivity to his subjects. Now he turns the focus on himself, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it―making sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world. With courage, vulnerability, and a remarkable expansiveness of spirit―not to mention an unrivaled, thrilling, and stylistic storytelling verve―in a world that can feel stacked against it, Another Word for Love makes an irresistible case for life, for healing, for the fullness of our humanity, and, of course, for love itself.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: MCD
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The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd Shit
Julian Randall
The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is a braided story of Julian Randall’s return from the cliff edge of a harrowing depression and his determination to retrace the hustle of a white-passing grandfather to the Mississippi town from which he was driven amid threats of tar and feather. Alternatively wry, lyrical, and heartfelt, Randall transforms pop culture moments into deeply personal explorations of grief, family, and the American way. He envisions his fight to stay alive through a striking medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future. Pulsing with life, sharp, and wickedly funny, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is Randall’s journey to get his ghost story back.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Bold Type Books
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Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from? In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band” in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Ecco
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A Walk in the Park: The True Story of A Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Kevin Fedarko
From the author of the beloved bestseller The Emerald Mile comes a rollicking and poignant account of the epic misadventure of two friends, zero preparation, and one dream: a 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: Scribner
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Joyful Recollections of Trauma
Paul Scheer
From award-winning actor and comedian Paul Scheer, a candid and hilarious memoir-in-essays on coming to terms with childhood trauma and finding the joy in embracing your authentic self. Blending the confident, affable voice that has won him a dedicated following with a refreshing level of candor, Joyful Recollections of Trauma chronicles Paul’s often shocking, admittedly tumultuous childhood and how the experiences of his youth have reverberated throughout his life. In his comedy, Paul has always been unafraid to “go there,” to play naïve, cringeworthy characters, imbuing them with disarming charm and humanity. That daring openness is on display in the pages of this memoir, but in true Paul fashion, it is also surprising, eye-opening, and side-splitting.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: HarperOne
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Nonfiction
Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
Sathnam Sanghera
Bestselling author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera explores the global legacy of the British Empire, and the ways it continues to influence economics, politics, and culture around the world. Economic, legal and political systems across the world continue to function along the lines originally drawn by the British Empire, and cultural, sexual, psychological, linguistic, demographic, and educational norms originally established by imperial Britons continue to shape our lives. British Empire may have peaked a century ago, and it may have been mostly dismantled by 1997, but in this major new work, Sathnam Sanghera ultimately shows how the largest empire in world history still exerts influence over planet Earth in all sorts of silent and unsilent ways.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: PublicAffairs
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The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
Zoë Schlanger
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.
Publication date: May 7
Publisher: Harper
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The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No
Carl Elliott
Shocking cases of abusive medical research and the whistleblowers who spoke out against them, sometimes at the expense of their careers. Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For many years he fought for an external inquiry into a psychiatric research study at his own university in which an especially vulnerable patient lost his life. His experience frames the six stories in this book of medical research in which patients were deceived into participating in experimental programs they did not understand, many of which had astonishing and well-concealed mortality rates. Beginning with the public health worker who exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and ending with the four physicians who in 2016 blew the whistle on lethal synthetic trachea transplants at the Karolinska Institute, Elliott tells the extraordinary stories of insiders who spoke out against such abuses, and often paid a terrible price for doing the right thing.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: W.W. Norton
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A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery
Lawrence Ingrassia
Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller. Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s―when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come―to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.
Publication date: May 14
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.
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Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
Shefali Luthra
An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom. On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives. A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures.
Publication date: May 21
Publisher: Doubleday
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Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment & Horror on the Early Frontier
Robert G. Parkinson
An acclaimed historian captures the true nature of imperialism in early America, demonstrating how the frontier shaped the nation. We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skillfully on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as the European colonization of Africa, which Conrad knew firsthand and fictionalized in his masterwork.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: W.W. Norton
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Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich Off America’s Poor
Anne Kim
A devastating investigation into the “corporate poverty complex”—the myriad businesses that profit from the poor. In Poverty for Profit, veteran journalist Anne Kim investigates the multiple industries that infiltrate almost every aspect of the lives of the poor—health care, housing, criminal justice, and nutrition. She explains how these businesses are aided by public policies such as the wholesale privatization of government services and the political influence these industries wield over lawmakers and regulators. Supported by original investigative reporting on the lesser-known players profiting from the antipoverty industry, Poverty for Profit adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of how structural inequality and structural racism function today.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: The New Press
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Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle
Michael Andor Brodeur
From a Washington Post critic and self-described meathead: a witty, incisive, poignant exploration of male body image, from the history of the gym to the politics of superheroes to the world of manfluencers. In excavating this complex topic, Brodeur uses the male body as his guide: its role in cultures from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to Walt Whitman’s essays on manly health, from the rise of Muscular Christianity in 19th-century America to the swollen superheroes and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of Brodeur’s childhood. Interweaving history, cultural criticism, memoir, and reportage, laced with an irrepressible wit, Brodeur takes us into the unique culture centered around men’s bodies, probing its limitations and the promise beyond: how men can love themselves while rejecting the aggression, objectification, and misogyny that have for so long accompanied the quest to become swole.
Publication date: May 28
Publisher: Harper
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