It’s just about the middle of May, and the world continues to be a phantasmagoric horror show unfolding at once too quickly and too slowly. But, through it all, and despite governmental attempts to silence artists and art institutions alike, there is still new, urgent, exciting art to discover.

And today is no exception in the world of books. Below, you’ll find twenty-seven new ones to consider in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (with a slight emphasis today on nonfiction.) You’ll find a remarkable selection indeed, with celebrated authors and intriguing new voices alike, spanning politics, literary biography, queer history, post-apocalyptic San Francisco, road trips, linguistics, axe murder, and much, much more.

Let some of these be your companions as the weather continues to brighten and warm, and, as always, stay safe, Dear Readers. I’ll see you all next week. In the meantime, rather than doomscrolling, spend a little time on letingt your to-be-read piles grow.

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Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness
(Penguin Press)

“The Emperor of Gladness is a poetic, dramatic and vivid story. Epic in its sweep, the novel also handles intimacy and love with delicacy and deep originality. Hai and Grazina are taken from the margins of American life by Ocean Vuong and, by dint of great sympathy and imaginative genius, placed at the very center of our world.”
–Colm Tóibín

Honor Jones, Sleep
(Riverhead)

“Sleep marks the arrival of an astonishing new voice in the world of literary fiction. Honor Jones writes with honesty and courage about life’s complications and contradictions. This novel is propulsive and funny and heartbreaking.”
–J. Courtney Sullivan

Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills
(Ecco)

“Wilson’s living narrative is a combination road novel, domestic drama and snapshot of rural America. Amid the seemingly carefree attitudes are profound questions. What would lead a man to abandon not just one family, but several? And what would it feel like to discover that the only family you’ve ever known is not the only family you have? Run for the Hills raises these questions and more with endearing aplomb…[a] colorful novel.”
–BookPage

Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain
(Haymarket)

“With her deep sense of the movement of history, her agile intellect, hope in the possibilities of action and nimble prose, Solnit continues to surprise and delight. This new collection of essays is a tonic in dark times.”
–Lisa Appiganesi

Richard Russo, Life and Art: Essays
(Knopf)

“Despite their brevity and transparency, Life and Art‘s insightful explorations offer more grist for contemplation than many longer and superficially more complex works.”
–Shelf Awareness

Prabal Gurung, Walk Like a Girl: A Memoir
(Viking)

“Walk Like a Girl is the story of an artist’s journey toward becoming, a story we do not know but must. A boy from Nepal fights violence, cruelty, and doubt, and through imagination, truth, and struggle, emerges as a designer of greater beauty, love, and power. Prabal Gurung went through a brilliant fire and came out refined, pure, and full of gold.”
–Min Jin Lee

Noor Hindi (editor), George Abraham (editor), Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry
(Haymarket)

“Heaven Looks Like Us is a book every classroom, every library, and every poet should celebrate. This necessary, urgent, and historic volume heralds a revolutionary poetics that remakes our necrotic world. In a time when Palestinian poets are silenced, beaten, tortured, and murdered for their truth telling, we have this liberatory chorus. This is poetry that makes us alive. This is a gift that dares to sing, dares to punch empire in the neck.”
–Cathy Linh Che

Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception
(Dutton)

“A complex and sobering work of dystopian science-fiction, infused with horror and set in the contemporary art scene, Immaculate Conception is as much about the blurred lines of friendship as it is the frayed boundaries between art and technology….Immaculate Conception asks sweeping questions about art, originality, and ownership, as well as trauma, co-dependency, and love. Huang’s latest is a hit.”
–ELLE

Susanna Kwan, Awake in the Floating City
(Pantheon Books)

“What book is like this? What post-apocalyptic vision dares be so gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm and caring and care-taking? Luminous, wise, Susanna Kwan’s story of a flooded future San Francisco expands the known world, making room within its unbearable devastation for beauty, compassion, and love. This book is a labor undertaken by an imagination able to mourn and celebrate in the same breath.”
–Meng Jin

Marisa Crane, A Sharp Endless Need
(The Dial Press)

“A Sharp Endless Need is the rare sports novel that both the most rabid fan and someone who’s never seen a game will love. Crane has crafted a novel filled with sweat and longing, striking a balance between tenderness, ecstasy, and wry humor that leaves no corner of the heart unexplored.”
–Jean Kyoung Frazier

Ron Chernow, Mark Twain
(Penguin Press)

“Chernow’s voluminous biography presents Twain with all his complications and flaws—disastrous financial decisions, his evolving views on race—in this account both of the man and of a nation torn apart by war and stitched painfully back together, all of it brightened by Twain’s signature humor and wisdom.”
–The New York Times Review

Chi-Ming Yang, Octavia E. Butler: H Is for Horse
(Oxford University Press)

“This brilliant, playful, and beautifully executed study is the first to focus upon Octavia Butler’s juvenilia, giving us a glimpse into the becoming of one of the most important science fiction writers of the twentieth century….[Yang] also makes a necessary intervention in the work of animal studies, returning us to the necessity of an interspecies perspective on living that has been active in Black Thought all along. In a word, this work is not to be missed.”
–Sharon P. Holland

Monica Macansantos, Returning to My Father’s Kitchen: Essays
(Curbstone Press)

“Returning to My Father’s Kitchen is about what is left behind–the ghosts, apparitions, and hauntings of people. This book is bold and sharply observed, giving voice to those lost in the margins of literature. Intimate and candid, any reader would feel solace in Macansantos’s company.”
–Grace Talusan

Brendan Slocumb, The Dark Maestro
(Doubleday)

“The Dark Maestro is my favorite kind of book—one that keeps you riveted in the moment, turning pages feverishly. But then, long after you’re done, the book creeps into your mind and lingers. Packed with a love of music, injected with the elements of the best kind of thrillers, and told through the prism of an unforgettable protagonist, The Dark Maestro is a tour de force and a book unlike any other. I loved it.”
–Alex Segura

Garrett Carr, The Boy from the Sea
(Knopf)

“The Boy from the Sea is a single-generation family saga as dazzlingly compact as it is comprehensively insightful, a love story in which the tenderness and forbearance are all the more moving for the eloquence with which the hardships and reticence are rendered, and a wryly penetrating meditation on what makes the Irish the Irish. This is as impressively wise and idiosyncratic a novel as I’ve read in years.”
–Jim Shepard

Adelaide Faith, Happiness Forever
(FSG)

“Happiness Forever explores what happens when we let ourselves be truly transformed by obsession and longing. Adelaide Faith’s writing is unrestrained and voyeuristic, resulting in a truly special book. Not only is this novel surprising and funny, it’s also poignant and philosophical in its exploration of what it means to watch and be watched. This is a book I won’t soon forget.”
–Chelsea Hodson

Rachel McCarthy James, Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder
(St. Martin’s Press)

“Put a handle on a blade and the possibilities are endless—for execution, political gain, military prowess, wanton violence. And now, in McCarthy James’s expert grip, for narrative thrills! As sharply honed as its subject matter, Whack Job will leave you wanting more.”
–Mary Roach

Caro De Robertis, So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer and Two-Spirit People of Color
(Algonquin)

“An utterly riveting view of LGBTQ+ life in America….In this scintillating oral history, novelist De Robertis weaves together the voices of twenty trans and gender nonconforming people of color in their 50s, 60s, and 70s in order to explore what it was like for their generation to come of age, as well as to record and memorialize the struggle for the right to free gender expression that these individuals pioneered.”
–Publishers Weekly

Brandy Schillace, The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story
(Norton)

“The Intermediaries is irrefutable proof that trans people have always existed, a story of liberation in the face of oppression–and a case study in how institutionalized hatred can grow alongside queer and trans joy.”
–Mya Byrne

Ricky Fayne, The Devil Three Times
(Little Brown)

“Lively, irreverent…Fayne beautifully evokes each character’s unique voice and essence in dialogue and description…Drawing broadly on spiritual traditions, folklore, and history, Fayne dramatically reimagines the origins of centuries of Black history and the quest for freedom in the Devil’s unexpected backstory.”
–Booklist

Hilary Plum, State Champ
(Bloomsbury)

“Revelatory….Perfect for fans of Henry Hoke’s Open Throat and Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot….Hilary Plum, through this funny and furious narrator, throws bold punches in defense of reproductive rights and celebrates the commitment of those who uphold them.”
–Shelf Awareness

Hawa Hassan, Setting a Place for Us: Recipes and Stories of Displacement, Resilience, and Community from Eight Countries Impacted by War
(Ten Speed Press)

“Displacement is not a choice—no one chooses to leave their lands. They’re kicked out from them, or they’ve run away from death and injustice. Even when displaced peoples are far from their homes, the one place to gather and find community is around the table. In Setting a Place for Us, Hawa beautifully pays tribute to these people, their stories, and the recipes that bring them together.”
–Kamal Mouzawak

John Conyers III, My Father’s House: An Ode to America’s Longest-Serving Black Congressman
(Amistad Press)

“It’s not an easy assignment to capture a legacy of this magnitude, but John Conyers III brilliantly contextualizes his father’s enormous, historical imprint with humanity and vulnerability. It is not so much a memoir as it is a love letter that allows us an intimate look into a cherished and tender relationship between father and son, and between a dedicated public servant and his city.”
–Jemele Hill

Michelle Young, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
(HarperOne)

“As a valiant and effective member of the French Resistance and a leading Monuments Officer in the postwar period, museum curator Rose Valland did more to combat the Nazis’ art plundering program and to remedy its devastating effects, than any figure of the time. Michelle Young’s deeply-researched biography breaks new ground and captures the drama of the curator’s life…a story that continues to inspire today.”
–Jonathan Petropoulos

M.D. Usher, Following Nature’s Lead: Ancient Ways of Living in a Dying World
(Princeton University Press)

“Following Nature’s Lead brings ancient Greek and Roman philosophy to bear on our contemporary global ecological crisis. With wry sagacity and genial erudition, Mark Usher reminds us that those…classics teach us humility in the face of Nature. Weaving meditations across the centuries from Lucretius to Bataille, this book makes clear we have much to learn about our new and uncertain predicament from ancient thinkers and their epigones. There is wisdom here, if we but heed it.”
–Roy Scranton

Laura Spinney, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
(Bloomsbury)

“This beautifully researched and written book is about far more than language; it is a history of the world in microcosm, drawing together a diversity of subjects from genetics and religion to warfare and boozing. I highly recommend this wholly absorbing book.”
–Douglas Preston

Alex Hanna, Emily M. Bender, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want
(Harper)

“With their expansive, interdisciplinary expertise, Bender and Hanna write with absolute authority and unapologetic clarity about all the ways AI companies wield and weaponize language—in their marketing hype and as training data for their monstrous AI models—to create a less rigorous, less verifiable, more unequal, and more BS-filled world….Come for the piercing observations; leave with the tools to slice your way through the absurdist narratives that prop up the AI industry and to hold it accountable.”
–Karen Hao