July 15, 2025, 4:59am

It’s just about the middle of summer in a summer characterized by utter chaos, but I come bearing something rare in this era: good tidings. That is, the good news that new books are out today. Below, you’ll find twenty-three just-published offerings to consider in fiction and nonfiction, which span a remarkable gamut of topics, themes, and genres.

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There are many exciting fiction debuts, including novels from Lisa Smith, Natalie Guerrero, Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, and Morgan Ryan, featuring WWII witches, multigenerational Caribbean families, and more. You’ll likewise see anticipated work from up-and-coming and established authors, including Kashana Cauley and Hannah Pittard.

And in nonfiction, there are explorations of Amelia Earthart’s much-mythologized life and career; a look at how the game Monopoly was used for espionage during World War II; a fresh t@ke on how social media is #changing English ;); lyrical essays from Katherine Larson on kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of repairing and lacquering over broken pottery; a deep dive into the phenomenon of headaches; and more.

I hope you’ll find joy, curiosity, surprise, and comfort in these in a time when all of these—minus surprise—seem in short supply. Add these to your to-be-read piles!

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Hannah Pittard, If You Love It, Let It Kill You
(Holt)

“Hannah Pittard’s If You Love It, Let It Kill You is a masterclass in autofiction: incisive, hilarious, heartbreaking, and mercilessly candid. This novel, its narrator makes clear, is ‘neither a comedy nor a tragedy but something much worse: real life.’ If You Love It, Let It Kill You is Pittard’s most impressive and innovative book yet.”
–Maggie Smith

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, The Other Wife
(Riverhead)

“Tender, wise, and thoroughly compelling, The Other Wife teems with the complicated pleasures and desolations of longing. Jackie Thomas-Kennedy knows a great deal about the life-shaping strength of desire.”
–R. O. Kwon

Natalie Guerrero, My Train Leaves at Three
(One World)

“The balance between ambition and authenticity swirls throughout Guerrero’s coming-of-age debut as Xiomara strives to break out and become a star while grappling with the loss of her sister. The book is set against the lively backdrop of Washington Heights, which feels as much of a character as any of the people in the book. It’s as equally soft and sweet as it is biting. Guerrero’s writing is fully charged from the jump.”
–Debutiful

Katherine Larson, Wedding of the Foxes: Essays
(Milkweed)

“Lyric, gritty, vulnerable, tender, formally smart, powerfully quiet, the book finds in twilight and shadow depths nuanced feeling and reflection. Poet and biologist Katherine Larson finds herself in this ‘age of grief and extinction’ building a home for herself inside Japanese literature. Among her inspirations are Tanizaki and Godzilla, along with Bachelard, Ponge, and Sontag…a brilliant book and one to treasure in a time of extremity.”
–Alison Hawthorne Deming

Mari Andrew, How to Be a Living Thing: Meditations on Intuitive Oysters, Hopeful Doves, and Being Human in the World
(Penguin Life)

“A beautiful book on bringing out the better angels of our nature. By carefully observing the animal kingdom, Mari Andrew brilliantly illuminates how we can get in closer touch with our humanity.”
–Adam Grant

Simon Boas, A Beginner’s Guide to Dying
(Vintage)

“Simon Boas was a gifted storyteller with a rare ability to find humor and humanity in life’s most profound moments. A Beginner’s Guide to Dying showcases his wit, warmth, and wisdom, offering a deeply moving and unexpectedly funny meditation on mortality. I read this manuscript in a single afternoon, laughing and crying in equal measure, and knew I had to bring it to readers. His voice is one that lingers—both a celebration of life and a guide to its inevitable end.”
–Julie McFadden

Kashana Cauley, The Payback
(Atria Books)

“In an Afrofuturist world of barbaric debt police and an absurd heist to bring it all down, The Payback is a delightfully dark comedy of three coworkers-turned-conspirators hell-bent on revenge. This trio of Robin Hoods taking matters into their own hands out of grief and desperation will have you alternating between raucous laughs and fear for their safety. California strip malls, 80s fashion, punk and hacker culture, all combine in a tenacious cocktail of sweet justice.”
–Xochitl Gonzalez

Lisa Smith, Jamaica Road
(Knopf)

“Young love, enduring friendship and the complexity and vibrancy of multi-generational Caribbean families set in 1980s London, this moving coming-of-age novel tackles contemporary issues of race, class and belonging. Smith’s evocative prose had me thinking about Connie and Daphne long after I closed the book. An impressive debut from an exciting new voice.”
–Diana McCaulay

Kyung-Ran Jo, Blowfish (trans. Chi-Young Kim)
(Astra House)

“Kyung-Ran Jo’s Blowfish, rendered into English with poised and perceptive grace by Chi-Young Kim…invites readers into a profound exploration of the elusive contours of identity, the lingering ache of trauma, and the fragile, often unspoken language of human connection….With each precisely chosen phrase and carefully rendered scene, Jo crafts a world that is both hauntingly beautiful and profoundly unsettling…will linger in the quiet yet unsettling corners of the mind.”
–Tony Huang

Adam Aleksic, Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language
(Knopf)

“Packed with fascinating facts, of-the-moment observations, and a sparkling voice, Algospeak is a gift to any word nerd. Deftly covering everything from emoji etymologies and trendbait to Taylor Swift fanilects, incel slang, and the true origins of ‘cool’ words, Adam Aleksic is the wise, yet accessible internet linguistics oracle we need.”
–Amanda Montell

Jennifer Dasal, The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris
(Bloomsbury)

“In this vivid story of Belle Époque Paris, the art historian Dasal shines a light on a legendary female boardinghouse for expats, the American Girls’ Club in Paris. From 1893, ‘the Club’ played host to a generation of independent young artists – complete with cameos from Emmeline Pankhurst and Gertrude Stein.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Ben Weissenbach, North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska
(Grand Central Publishing)

“North to the Future is packed with fascinating and eccentric adventurer/scientists, hair-raising wildlife encounters and haunting landscapes—all in the tradition of his teacher, John McPhee. But Weissenbach offers a contrasting dimension unique to a writer of his era: how all this reality feels to a twenty-something raised on the airless virtual world of the 4’x2′ screen. The book thus carries a double warning: of a threatened external environment and an internal one, too.”
–John Colapinto

Issa Quincy, Absence
(Two Dollar Radio)

“Through its archive of narratives nestled within narratives, this exquisite novel creates a beguiling soundscape of echoes and murmurs that reverberates in the mind long after the reading. In lucid, captivating prose, Issa Quincy constructs a palimpsest composed of the fractals and losses that define the numberless strata of the past. Recalling the novels of W. G. Sebald and the films of Chris Marker, Absence is a mournful and luminous meditation on the work of remembering.”
–Christine Lai

Sonoko Machida, The Convenience Store by the Sea (trans. Bruno Navasky)
(Putnam)

“Machida’s novel weaves together individual stories to form a detailed, lush picture of relationships and their fuel, notably the care taken with the food and beverages sold by the convenience store…a timely, lovely, and much-needed escape into a world of care for and consideration of others. Machida’s comforting and cozy read should resonate with fans of TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea.”
–Library Journal

Mark Kurlansky, Cheesecake
(Bloomsbury)

“Vibrant, funny, and at times bittersweet….Longtime New Yorkers may feel wistful for a bygone neighborhood so lovingly rendered…and others will enjoy this glimpse of a small town within a metropolis. Mark Kurlansky lends his considerable skills to this loving tribute to Manhattan’s Upper West Side during the booming 1980s.”
–Shelf Awareness

Laura Poppick, Strata: Stories from Deep Time
(Norton)

“Strata, like its subject, is deep and richly layered with stories–of the planet, and of the people doggedly trying to decipher the tales locked within its rocks. It left me with a profound appreciation of our world, and the sheer amount of history upon which we stand.”
–Ed Yong

Laurie Gwen Shapiro, The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon
(Viking)

“Laurie Gwen Shapiro has dug deep into the archives, and emerged with an exhilarating tale of the adventurous life of Amelia Earhart and the remarkable relationship that helped to forge her legend. Yet Shapiro goes even further–stripping away the myths and revealing something far more profound and intricate and true. The Aviator and the Showman is one terrific book.”
–David Grann

Philip E. Orbanes, Monopoly X: How Top-Secret World War II Operations Used the Game of Monopoly to Help Allied POWs Escape, Conceal Spies, and Send Secret Codes
(Harper)

“In Monopoly X, Phil Orbanes weaves together a fascinating story about Monopoly’s previously unknown role in World War II. With skill befitting the best novelists, Orbanes takes the reader on a ride through the twists and turns of great spy fiction—only the story he’s telling is true.”
–Steve Dubnik

Kerry Cullen, House of Beth
(Simon & Schuster)

“[P]erfectly captures that tenuous moment in your twenties when your adult life doesn’t yet have a solid foundation. Cassie…decides to walk away from New York City and her job in publishing, only to end up in a marriage, a ghost story, and a new life so strange that it matches the strangeness she has always carried inside her. A lovely story about how even though unraveling a life can be dangerous, there are possibilities in the heart of that darkness.”
–Ann Napolitano

Morgan Ryan, A Resistance of Witches
(Viking)

“Morgan Ryan’s historical fantasy debut is World War II meets A Discovery of Witches…I raced through this one—A Resistance of Witches is a witchy war-time delight!”
–Kate Quinn

Tom Zeller Jr., The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief
(Mariner Books)

“For a condition that affects fifty million Americans, migraine is surprisingly poorly understood and, as a research topic, grievously underfunded. By turns personal (cluster headache! God almighty!) and journalistic, The Headache explores the mysterious nature of headache pain and, equally mysterious, the whims of federal funding and the biases that underlie the condition’s neglect. Zeller writes with intelligence, compassion, equanimity, and wit. Required reading.”
–Mary Roach

Richard Mabey, The Accidental Garden: Gardens, Wilderness, and the Space in Between
(NYRB)

“These are wide-ranging debates that cover the gender-fluid nature of plants, decolonization, migration, native/nonnative, reparations for nature through the lens of the wood, the lawn, the pond and the flowerbed. I felt like I’d spent a great afternoon, lying in the dappled shade of a garden tree, listening to Mabey muse on a life with plants.”
–Gardens Illustrated

Tanya Talaga, The Knowing: How Indigenous Oppression Continues to Echo Today
(Hanover Square Press)

“The story of one woman gone missing becomes the story of all the children who never came home. Tanya Talaga fearlessly takes on Canadian History and presents it through the lens of indigenous experience….In a time when denialists are finding their whitewashed story on the bestseller lists, Talaga provides an antidote…beautiful, often heartbreaking prose…a handbook for reaching beneath the myths of Canadian history.”
–Michelle Good