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Damn it feels good to be a reader! You will be happy to hear that there are several big titles out today that might get your bookish heart racing. There’s Intermezzo, the new Sally Rooney; Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk returns with The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story; Jeff VanderMeer is adding a surprise fourth book to his Southern Reach trilogy, called Absolution; and the author of If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio, is back with Graveyard Shift, a suspenseful novella.
You will see those books all over the place in the coming weeks, but today I am going to talk about my selections! There’s a collection of imaginative stories about faeries; a young girl searching for the truth about her family; and a searing historical crime book about the murder of Emmett Till.
As for this week’s other new releases, I am hoping to get my hands on Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot by Preeti Chhibber, A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg, The Road Is Good by Uzo Aduba, and I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Patricia and I talked about some great recent books, including The Lovers by Rebekah Faubion, Tiny Threads by Lilliam Rivera, and A Sky Full of Dragons by Tiffany McDaniel and Ayesha L. Rubio.
Faeries Never Lie: Tales to Revel In (Untold Legends #3) edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie Parker
I love this series! After all, you get a variety of imaginative, amazing stories from a whole bunch of awesome authors in one place. The first collection was about vampires, the second was about mermaids, and now we have faeries! (But not a story about a vampire mermaid faerie — someone get on that.) In Faeries Never Lie, there’s a faerie boarding school, a faerie tale set in the Tang Dynasty, recurring faeries dreams, trickster faeries, runaway faeries, and more. The incredible authors who have put their own spin on faeries include Nafiza Azad, Holly Black, Dhonielle Clayton, Chloe Gong, Kwame Mbalia, Ryan La Sala, L.L. McKinney, and Anna-Marie McLemore!
Backlist bump: Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite (Untold Legends Book 1) edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie Parker
Pick the Lock by A.S. King
I know I sound like a broken record, but A.S. King is one of the best authors writing books for kids working today. But you don’t have to take my word for it: Her books for both middle grade and young adult readers have won a bazillion awards and nominations. Her newest young adult novel is about a powerful, surrealist tale of one family and secrets. Jane’s mother lives in pneumatic tubes inside their Victorian mansion when she’s not on the road touring with her band. It’s because Jane’s domineering father insists that she stay in them, and that the rest of the family obey his strict rules about her mother when she is home. But Jane wants to be close to her mother, to hear about her experiences in the world, and to learn from her. She’s writing a punk rock opera, which she hopes will bring them closer. When Jane begins watching the cache of security tapes of footage taken inside the house for many years, she starts to understand things about her family that she didn’t realize. Pick the Lock is a story of domestic violence and child abuse, told in the unusual, heartbreaking way that only King can.
Backlist bump: Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
Part history book, part memoir, The Barn explores one of the most notorious racially motivated killings in United States history. In 1955 in Mississippi, a 14-year-old Black teen, Emmett Till, was tortured and murdered for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The two men arrested for the killing were (unsurprisingly) acquitted, and the truth about what happened was never really explained. Wright Thompson, who grew up 23 miles from where Till died, went his whole childhood never even hearing the name Emmett Till. When he got to college and learned of the story, he began to wonder how no one in his town ever mentioned it. In digging deeper, he uncovered the true story of the killing, where it actually happened, and (again, unsurprisingly) how there were many more people who were involved than just the two men who were arrested. It’s not shocking that justice for the young Black teen wasn’t given, or that the crime was covered up and mostly forgotten. And Thompson does a remarkable job bringing the horrible true details to light, by exploring the backgrounds of the killers, the history of Mississippi, and its place in the world. It is not an easy read, but it is an important one.
Backlist bump: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
This week, I am reading Heir by Sabaa Tahir and I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying: A Memoir by Youngmi Mayer. Outside of books, I started watching The Closer and I checked out the first episode of the new Matlock, which has potential. (There were so many character actors from shows and movies I loved when I was young, and Jason Ritter looks so much like his father now, that I wanted to cry the whole time.) And in earworms, the song stuck in my head this week is “Just Another Day” by Jon Secada.
Here is your weekly cat picture: I have been really sick the last few weeks and sleep has been hard to come by. The other morning, Farrokh bit me really hard on the head just after I had finally fallen asleep. And this is him asking me for a French fry a few hours later. The nerve! I mean, yes, he got one, because look at that face. But geesh!
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” — William Styron
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