It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for new books! Here are a few of the books out today you should add to your TBR. This is a very small percentage of the new releases this week. Make sure to stick around until the end for some more Book Riot resources for keeping up with new books.
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
This is definitely one of our most-anticipated books of the year. With a premise that involves top women gladiators fighting for their lives within a corrupt prison system, it’s easy to see why. The author of Friday Black tells the bloody story of Loretta Thurwar and “Hurricane Staxxx,” two women who are friends, lovers, and popular Chain-Gang All-Stars. As All-Stars, they’ve fought against other prisoners in lethal battles to win shortened sentences through a highly contested program that’s run through the controversial Criminal Action Penal Entertainment organization in a (not so) alternative United States. Loretta nears the day she’ll finally be free, but the burden of all she’s done — and still has to do — weighs heavily on her in this damning look at America’s prison industrial complex and culture of violence.
Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
All the Greek retelling girlies, gather ’round. Here’s another great entry to the female-figure-from-antiquity-reimagined trend. Clytemnestra is a Spartan princess who is forced to marry the tyrant Agamemnon. After he ends up sacrificing their daughter to the gods, our girl Clytemnestra plots her revenge, and readers are treated to a nuanced examination of motherhood, survival, and loss.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
With the deft skill of a poet, Dungy writes a memoir centered around her seven-year journey of trying to fight against the homogeny imposed on her lawn by the mostly white Colorado community she lives in. Dungy connects the need for diversity in agriculture to the need people have in social structures, while decrying the consequences of its absence. This offers a different perspective from the usual narrative that sees writers becoming more in touch with the natural world.
Jana Goes Wild by Farah Heron
In this second chance romance, Jana is set to attend a destination wedding in Tanzania, and ready for the reset it’s sure to provide. But then she funds out her ex, and child’s father, Anil will also be there, and suddenly her plans are ruined. Even though he’s a good father, she can’t forgive him for what he did years ago. To distract herself, and show that she’s not sweating him, she comes up with list to get her juices flowing. She’ll perform karaoke, do dance routines for strangers, and generally let her guard down. But that makes her more susceptible to her still-lingering attraction to Anil.
Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst
Mickey Hayward, a young Black writer, leaves a messy life in Maryland to work in New York as a media writer. As a Black woman in media, she isn’t exactly treated well, but she at least has a caring and supportive girlfriend at home. But then she gets fired, and she thinks the manifesto she writes as a result will expose the racism and sexism inherent to the industry and change it for the better. Except it doesn’t. It goes by barely noticed. It takes her moving back to Maryland in a fit of self doubt and a media scandal to give her the spotlight she wants. Question is if it’s really want she wants, after all.
We Don’t Swim Here by Vincent Tirado
After the banger that was Burn Down, Rise Up, Tirado is back with another haunting YA novel that centers a community affected by injustice. Bronwyn is stuck in the rural town of Hillwoods while her father gets her dying grandmother’s affairs in order. Despite having a cousin in the town who’s the same age, Bronwyn starts feeling increasingly isolated. She’d turn to swimming — a sport she hopes to compete in at an Olympic level one day — but everyone in town keeps warning her against it. Her cousin Anais tries to protect Bronwyn and herself from the darkness of Hillwoods, but both girls soon find out that the town’s lore is reality and is even connected to their family.
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!