I can be a bit of a simple person sometimes. I like reading about books, and about people reading about books, and even about people selling books. If you, too, like a good bookish book, Steph Auteri has assembled this list of great novels set in bookstores. And, Emily Martin makes the case for what she thinks may be the best book of the 21st century so far.
As for today’s new books, the nonfiction offerings include the biography A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune by Noliwe Rooks, and the memoir Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen by Jon M. Chu and Jeremy McCarter.
Continuing on to fiction—specifically sci-fi—Keanu Reeves did a big one with China Miéville with The Book of Elsewhere. In romance, Timothy Janovsky’s queer romp You Had Me at Happy Hour has sexy sommeliers, The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton has bird nerds beefing, and Chatham Greenfield’s Time and Time Again is a queer, YA, and Jewish romance with a time loop. Now, if you’re wanting YA but of the more quirky and weird variety, there’s Kelly Murashige’s The Lost Souls of Benzaiten, in which the protagonist prays to be turned into a vacuum cleaner.
In the books featured below, there’s a romantasy with a powerful woman, a quarter-life crisis, sexy jewel thieves, messy historical fiction, and more.
The Last One by Rachel Howzell Hall
This romantasy—the latest from the bestselling Howzell Hall—promises The Witcher plus N.K. Jemisin realness. In it, Kai is a young woman lost—she doesn’t know who she is or how she came to be in a strange land with strange beasts, but she does know that she needs to get out before things get worse. She also knows that she has abilities she doesn’t quite understand, and that receiving help from the town’s blacksmith can be as vexing as it can be exhilarating.
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Here, Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans, shares another tale illuminating the life of undocumented people living in the United States, this time in fiction form. The eponymous Catalina—she herself undocumented—goes to live with her undocumented grandparents following a tragedy. As she prepares to graduate from Harvard—after having gotten into certain bougie subcultures there—she’s faced with helping her grandparents, and the uncertainty of finding work after graduation as an undocumented person.
Linh Ly is Doing Just Fine by Thao Votang
This cover simply gives. It gives color and style, but also a mood. A mood that Votang handles with a point-blank kind of humor.
As you might have guessed, Linh Ly is not actually doing fine. She’s 27 and her mother has starting dating a coworker. Thing is, her mother doesn’t have the best record with men—as is evident by Linh Ly’s traumatic childhood. So, Linh decides to spy on her mother and follow her around on dates, which helps distract her from the absolute nothingness of her own dating life…and the shooting that happened at the university where Linh works.
Jewel Me Twice by Charish Reid
Five years ago, Celeste St. Pierre first met Magnus Larsson, and the two pro thieves hit it off. Together, they stole jewels, and tussled in the sheets. Now she’s running an antique store in Manhattan and has cut ties with Magnus ever since their last disastrous job together. But their mentor’s last wish, for the two of them to pull off one last, grand heist, throws the two back together. Each has a grudge against the other, but their journey thieving across Europe could change things.
The Modern Fairies by Clare Pollard
Let me share something from this book’s blurb that gagged me a bit:
“Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?“
A read!
Princesses and evil queens abound in the Baroness Marie D’Aulnoy’s literary salon in Paris during Louis XIV’s reign. There, a group of mostly women—and the recently widowed Charles Perrault—gather to tell what the hostess D’Aulnoy calls “comtes de fees,” or fairy tales. Meanwhile, D’Aulnoy’s life is its own kind of fairy tale, full of cruel twists, and when it gets revealed that there is a spy among her salon’s members after people get arrested for poisonings at Versailles, it becomes clear that telling stories comes with its own particular danger.
In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran
If you’re in the market for mythology-inspired fantasy, this novella by Ogundiran follows the acolyte Ashâke, who seems to be the only follower of the orisha who they won’t speak to. After watching her peers become full priests, she tries to summon an orisha in desperation, but instead summons a centuries-old cosmic war, with herself placed right at the center.
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!
This post originally appeared on bookriot.com.