We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. Find more October titles at our Great Second-Half Preview, and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments!
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan: Six years after her quirkily brilliant novel-in-stories A Visit from the Goon Squad won the Pulitzer, Egan is back with a noirish historical novel set in wartime Brooklyn. At the Brooklyn Naval Yard, Anna Kerrigan becomes the nation’s first female diver, repairing ships that will help America win World War II. Through a chance encounter, she meets nightclub owner Dexter Styles, who she hopes can help her solve the riddle of her father’s disappearance years before. Longlisted for the National Book Award. (Michael)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado: Machado is a talented essayist; particularly notable are her pieces for The New Yorker, including “O Adjunct! My Adjunct!,” one of the finest examinations of the adjunct crisis in America. Her fiction deals with more surreal fears, with sharply-drawn pieces like “Horror Story” in Granta: “It started so small: a mysteriously clogged drain; a crack in the bedroom window.” Stories like “The Husband Stitch” are marvels of language and experimentation. This fiction debut is a longlister for the National Book Award. (Nick R.).
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides: Surprisingly, this is Eugenides’s first collection of short fiction—a debut of sorts from an author best known for his novels, especially his sprawling, Pulitzer Prize-winning saga, Middlesex. The stories in this collection span Eugenides’s 25-year career, and many were originally published in The New Yorker, including the story “Baster,” which was adapted into the 2010 romantic comedy The Switch. (Hannah)
Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien: After the massive success of Man Booker Prize shortlisted Do Not Say We Have Nothing, the world has realized that Thien is one of the most gifted and powerful novelists writing today. Her previous novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, set in Cambodia during the regime of the Khmer Rouge and in present day Montreal, explores the aftermath of war. It was published in Canada 2011 and will now be released in the U.S. for the first time. Welcome to the party. (Claire)
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A collection of new and previously published essays on the Obama years, from the writer whose access to and insights about the former president were beautifully documented in The Atlantic essay “My President Was Black.” The new collection includes an interview with Obama. (Lydia)
A Field Guide to the North American Family by Garth Risk Hallberg: A decade after it first appeared, Hallberg’s debut illustrated novella is being reissued in a newly designed edition. It arrives two years after Hallberg, a contributing editor at The Millions, published his breathtaking first novel, City on Fire. Field Guide consists of 63 interlinked vignettes with accompanying photographs and annotations, which probe the inner workings of two families in the New York suburbs. The book’s subtitle would have delighted John James Audubon: “Concerning chiefly the Hungates and Harrisons, with accounts of their habits, nesting, dispersion, etc., and full descriptions of the plumage of both adult and young, with a taxonomic survey of several aspects of family life.” Taxonomic is the perfect word for this gorgeously executed little marvel. (Bill)
A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Men and Women Fighting Extremism in Africa by Alexis Okeowo: New Yorker staff writer Okeowo explores the lives of people feeling–and struggling against–the complex and ongoing effects of extremism, in stories taking place mostly in Uganda, Mauritania, Nigeria, and Somalia. Read a fantastic excerpt from the book, about young women playing basketball in Somalia, here at The New Yorker. In a starred review, Kirkus calls the book “reportage at its finest.” (Lydia)
The King Is Always Above the People by Daniel Alarcón: Award-winning writer Alarcón returns with a new short story collection that features a wide range of memorable characters. Longlisted for the National Book Award, The King Is Always Above the People examines immigration, Latin American families, Los Angeles, and much more. Alarcón has received much critical acclaim for his previous books and his most recent novel, At Night We Walk in Circles, was a finalist for the 2014 Pen-Faulkner Award. (Zoë)
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon: A debut work of speculative fiction features a spaceship with a white supremacist cult at the helm, making a generations-long trip to a new world via the labor of a group of enslaved black people living belowdeck. Publishers Weekly called it “worldbuilding by poetry” and “stunning” in a starred review (Lydia).
Catapult by Emily Fridlund: Fridlund’s 2017 novel History of Wolves was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (our review). With Catapult, a collection selected by Ben Marcus for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, Fridlund gives us what Kirkus calls “bracing, often brilliant stories” to “deliver a shock to the routine narratives we tell.” (Lydia)
Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn: The master of grim family scenes pens the latest in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, retelling King Lear for a modern audience. St. Aubyn’s Lear, a Scottish media mogul who is losing his marbles, has been shut up in an expensive facility by his scheming daughters, and breaks loose to wander the moors. Lear, says Publishers Weekly, is the “perfect vehicle for what this author does best, which is to expose repellent, privileged people and their hollow dynasties in stellar prose.” (Lydia)
Ferocity by Nicola Lagioia (translated by Antony Shugaar): Ferocity is the latest from Europa Editions, which also publishes Elena Ferrante (as well as gems like Treasure Island!!! and The Elegance of Hedgehog). Pitched as Gillian Flynn meets Jonathan Franzen, Ferocity won the 2015 Strega Prize, Italy’s preeminent fiction prize, and concerns a dead woman, her brother who’s set on figuring out what happened to her, and Southern Italy in the 1980s. Sign me up. (Edan)
