The Best New Book Releases Out July 9, 2024

It’s 500 years in the future, and society is cooked. It’s still terribly divided by class, but despite this, one young woman is very carefully carving out a life for herself that puts her above where society would have her. Sweetmint lives as a second-class citizen — an invisible woman — but has managed to land a prestigious apprenticeship. But then her older brother — who had disappeared a while back — is accused of murdering someone way above his social class. Now, she’ll set off to clear his name, navigating the changing politics and brutal class divisions.

Here, award-winning Barry writes his first America-set novel. It’s October in 1891, and winter is coming. But so is love to the hardened. In Butte, Montana, the locals subsist on the spoils of the copper mines and the debauchery it allows them. Among them is Degenerate No. 1, young Irish poet Tom Rourke. Tom’s life is mired in the muck of his surroundings when Polly Gillespie comes to town, and things start looking up. The two start an affair, but Polly is mine captain Long Anthony Harrington’s new bride, and when the two abscond out west, her self-flagellating zealot husband sends ruthless gunmen after them. Turns out they’ll need a little more than a stolen horse and money to make it to San Francisco.

Ever read a cozy murder mystery centered around school PTA meetings? Well, in It’s Elementary, Bryant serves up just that with Mavis Miller, who low-key gets suckered into joining the PTA at her 7-year-old daughter’s school. Surprisingly (it’s not a surprise), PTA president Trisha Holbrook wants her to head the school’s new DEI committee, but then the principal — who had pissed off the intimidating Trisha — doesn’t show up to work one day. And Mavis remembers how she saw Trisha moving huge trash bags and cleaning supplies out of her car the day before…

Hur, who has an extensive book-translating resumé, is looking ahead to where this whole AI thing might lead us. In this future world, cancer has basically been cured by replacing human body cells with nanites, or robot/android cells that leave their hosts virtually immortal. Meanwhile, there’s a literary researcher, Yonghun, who successfully teaches AI how to understand poetry, and creates a thinking machine called Panit. Well, Dr. Beeko, who controls the aforementioned nano technology, transfers Panit into an android body, and now, well, we’ve just got a whole lot of questions about what constitutes art and humanity.

I don’t read many political books, so maybe my saying this one feels so refreshing isn’t worth much — but it does. In it, Betches Media cofounder Sami Sag and former counsel to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Emily Amick combine political involvement and self-help. They show how becoming more civically engaged is a way to show yourself — and your community — love. Showing up and voting on your beliefs on how to make our democracy better and not giving in to the despair so many feel surrounding modern politics is a way to claim your place in your world. They address the apathy and doomscrolling that plagues current discussions about politics, offer tips on how people can become involved in ways that fit them, particularly (there’s a nice tie-in for the astrology girlies), advise on making action plans, give basic info, and even include some nice book club discussion questions.

Though it seems like every few years there’s a new weight-loss craze, I don’t remember the last time one was in everyone’s mouths like Ozempic. Even its name stands out — it sounds both futuristic and retro, like something out of sci-fi classic Metropolis, and Specter’s examination of it, and other diet culture trends, shows just how our obsession with thinness has warped our relationship with healthy eating and actual health. She uses both her experience as someone who has struggled with binge eating disorder and reporting to give context to our history and relationship with food.