Congratulations, the Best Is Over!: Essays by R. Eric Thomas In this new collection of laugh-out-loud funny essays, R. Eric Thomas picks up where his last memoir (Here For It, 2020) left off. Newly married and enjoying professional success, Thomas’ life is upended when his husband, a Presbyterian pastor, takes a job in Thomas’ hometown of Baltimore. He … Read more
The Book of (More) Delights: Essays by Ross Gay In this sequel to The Book of Delights (2019), Ross Gay is back with even more digressions about delight. This book is the result of Gay’s project to notice and record everyday moments of gratitude for one year, starting in August 2021. As the world opens back up after … Read more
Phoebe’s Diary by Phoebe Wahl Welcome to Bellingham. The year is 2006. Teenagers smoke weed, play pool at Kendrick’s and rent movies from Trek Video. Flirting happens via flip phone and Myspace. Irony and ballet flats are in. Phoebe is a sophomore who wears DIY skinny jeans, listens to the best indie bands and attends play … Read more
American Mermaid by Julia Langbein This splashy debut novel is part Hollywood satire, part girl-power eco-thriller. High school English teacher Penny moves to LA for the summer to adapt her bestselling novel into a movie. In Penny’s book, also called American Mermaid, protagonist Sylvia is an asexual engineer who discovers that her disability—she has chronic pain in her … Read more
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang “Bad Art Friend” meets psychological thriller in this pacy, satirical page-turner. June Hayward is a struggling author whose debut novel flopped. Her college friend, Athena Liu, is a bestselling author who just landed a Netflix deal. When Athena dies in an accident, June finds herself in possession of the secret manuscript for … Read more
Confidence by Rafael Frumkin Ezra Green is a smart, bored high schooler who winds up in juvie for selling fake drugs to his classmates. It’s there he meets Orson: charming, ambitious, opportunistic. They become friends, then roommates, then business partners—though Ezra never gives up hope that their relationship will become something deeper. Their series of petty … Read more
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton Katie loves her hometown of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. But growing up, she knows that one day she must leave to find work elsewhere. Over grayscale drawings of the island’s coastline, she tells us: “I learn that I can have opportunity or I can have home. … Read more
Small Game by Blair Braverman Writer and dogsledder Blair Braverman has faced down nature on dozens of real-life adventures. After she became violently ill on an episode Naked and Afraid she wondered: what would have happened if the crew wasn’t there to pull me out? Small Game is Braverman’s answer to that question. In her debut novel, adventure guide … Read more
Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen The Bachelor meets Bigfoot in this wacky page-turner. The cast and crew of reality dating show The Catch travel to a remote island in the San Juans to film an episode on location. The four remaining contestants all want very different outcomes from their time on the show, and it’s not necessarily … Read more
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso If Edith Wharton wrote Ethan Frome in 1986, it might look like Very Cold People. Also set in a fictional Massachusetts town, Sarah Manguso’s first novel is a pithy coming-of-age story with a bleak outlook. Ruthie doesn’t know why her non-WASP family lives in Waitsfield– they can’t afford it and they don’t fit in. … Read more