The Best New Book Releases Out October 3, 2023

The author of The Sympathizer writes of his life since he was 4 when he and his family fled their hometown, Ban Mê Thuột, and came to the U.S. After being split from his brother and parents for a time, he’s reunited with them in the suburbs of San José, where, years later, his parents are shot while working at their grocery store. It’s this experience, coupled with how he sees the Vietnam War being depicted later when he’s a teenager, that fosters a crisis of self in Nguyen. He feels American but not; killer but also the one being killed. With humor and insight, Nguyen explores his life, violence, the American Dream, and the lasting effects of colonization.

After Milk Fed, Broder is serving a trippy, existential, and emotional desert romp. A woman goes to a Best Western hotel looking to escape her grief — her father is in the ICU, and her husband is ill. With her anxiety and depression on 10, she’s hoping the little hotel stay will also help her to write her novel. When a receptionist suggests hiking on a nearby trail, everything gets turned upside down; on the trail, the unnamed narrator comes across a huge cactus with a portal that she goes through. Once on the other side, she goes on a mystical (and low-key funny) journey that has her contend with her grief and other messy emotions.

Say you’re a celebrated journalist and ultra-feminist girly who works for a magazine titled “Womxxxn.” Then, say the fiancé you love and who you’re set to marry in a month gets put on a list of abusers. That’s what happens to Black British writer Ola, and while she would normally be the first to believe and support a crowdsourced collection of names accusing powerful people of abusing their power, she’s having a hard time thinking her fiancé is guilty. But she doesn’t exactly fully believe him when he says he’s innocent, either. As the countdown to their wedding presses on, The List alternates between Ola and her fiancé Michale’s perspectives, fairly critiquing media’s rampant misogyny, insincere feminism, and internet culture overall. This is a page-turner of the sharpest variety.

Get ready for cosmic horror rendered in New York City’s crunchy, filthy underground magic scene. Thirtysomething Julie Crews is messed up. She’s struggling with a substance abuse problem and desperate to better establish herself as a freelance magician. Tired of her paranormal odd jobs not paying enough and looking to protect her crush, Sarah, from an abusive husband, she gets tangled up with a being that threatens the entire world. The urban setting and eldritch horrors help make the world here feel so interesting and darkly fun.

In this memoir/history mix, Clarren explores how her family fled antisemitism in Russia only to help perpetuate the oppression of the Lakota people once they got to the U.S. After her great-grandparents, the Sinkyins, left Russia, they arrived in South Dakota, where they were granted 160 acres of land. But this was land that had been taken from the Lakota by the U.S. government over the course of years and years of broken treaties. By becoming one group of white settlers the Lakota’s land had been repurposed to, Clarren’s family unknowingly contributed to the destruction of Indigenous culture and resources. As she grapples with that, she also thinks about what can be done now.

With The Blackwoods, award-winning YA author Colbert writes a story of a Black Hollywood family, familial love, and perseverance. It all started with Blossom Blackwood — affectionately known as Bebe to her great-granddaughters Hollis and Ardith now. Bebe started her tenure as a trailblazing Black actress in 1962 and went on to become a legend in the years that followed. Her death at 96 as the matriarch of the most famous Black family in the entertainment industry shakes up everything. Hollis, who doesn’t want fame, is thrust into it, and a family secret threatens the carefully constructed face Ardith shows the world. The narrative shifts — between present-day Hollis and Ardith and a past Blossom as she rose to fame — and shows how much in common the three have with each other.