The weather is finally turning, and the dark days of winter are over. Earlier this week I was able to sit outside, get some sun, and indulge in some great books — though it’s back to cloudy days in DC for now, it’s a spell of good things to come. Enjoy our picks for the best books to dig into during spring, spanning essay collections, urgent novels, and dazzling stories.
Harriet Tubman: Live In Concert, Bob the Drag Queen (March 25)
RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, comedian, and recent The Traitors star debuts with her first novel, where Harriet Tubman returns from the dead with a wish to record an album about her life with the help of Darnell, a gay music producer whose career blew up in his face. Its conversations on Blackness and queerness show Bob is just as talented and funny on the page as she is on the mic.
The Agonies, Ben Faulkner (March 25)
A hypnotic debut that pulls from Albert Camus and J.D. Salinger, The Agonies is a character study of an unstable young man for whom “the trials of youth become a torrential odyssey of dislocation and disorientation” as he moves towards a dastardly act of violence.
Trauma Plot: A Life, Jamie Hood (March 25)
Written as a send-up to our culture’s obsession with ‘trauma porn,’ or the insatiable hunger for bad stories and perfect victims, Jamie Hood reckons with three decades of sexual violence. Pulling from artists like David Lynch and Ovid, she asks what we ask of survivors, and if that can change.
Paradise Logic, Sophie Kemp (March 25)
The Pitchfork writer and Columbia professor makes her debut in Paradise Logic, a bizarre, brilliant novel where Brooklynite Reality Kahn embarks on the quest to become the greatest girlfriend of all time to an apathetic guy. “When you are age twenty-three… every terrible thing you do puts you one inch closer to the gods,” she writes. Boldly funny and interesting.
Counting Backwards, Binnie Kirshenbaum (March 25)
The author of the hilarious and bizarre Rabbits for Food, about a woman’s humorous outlook at being trapped in a psych ward, comes Counting Backwards. A man diagnosed with Lewy body dementia lives his final years with his wife in New York City, showing the best of Binnie Kirshenbaum’s mordant, cutting comedy.
Barbara, Joni Murphy (March 25)
In her atmospheric and thoughtful follow-up to 2020’s Talking Animals, Joni Murphy crafts Barbara, a starlet living in the wake of her father’s involvement in the Manhattan Project. As her career blossoms and her star rised, she reflects on her life as an artist who values the work above all else.
Tilt, Emma Pattee (March 25)
Annie is nine months pregnant, shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest. The only option is to walk across the wreckage of Portland to try and find her husband, encountering kindness and desperation and a range of responses to dealing with tragedy along the way.
Hey You Assholes, Kyle Seibel (March 25)
The prolific short story writer’s first book, the beautifully-titled Hey You Assholes, concerns itself with the misfits of society, described as the “lovechild of George Saunders and Seinfeld.” Seibel’s stories are bold, funny, bizarre, and this should be a treat.
Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age, Leah Sottile (March 25)
The journalist Leah Sottile’s newest investigation turns itself to New Age promises — from innocuous artifacts like tarot and crystals to worldwide movements like Love Has Won. They’re able to mutate and shapeshift into dangerous ideologies, enfolding antisemitism, nationalism, and science denial; required reading for anyone interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic seriously rocked a lot of Americans’ brains.
Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory, Iddo Geffen (April 1)
Recipient of the 2023 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for his debut Jerusalem Beach, Iddo Geffen returns with a satire of corporate culture, this time in a disruptive family business. Eli Lilienblum capitalizes on his mother’s invention that can turn sand into rain, but when the whole world finds out, he’s left wondering who to trust amongst the possible shareholders.
The Snares, Rav Grewal-Kök (April 1)
In a thrilling debut that grapples with identity and conformity, Neel Chima is recruited to join a new federal intelligence agency with overwhelming power and little restrictions. Set in the last years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Neel is tasked with surveilling possible terrorism suspects, but is disheartened when most of the men look like his Sikh family, and the cost of his own morality mounts after a devastating misfire.
A/S/L, Jeanne Thornton (April 1)
Jeanne Thornton’s newest novel A/S/L blends literature with technology as it introduces three friends who meet online in 1998 to craft the game Saga of the Sorceress. Years later, they all end up in New York City, unbeknownst to them, but their unfinished game keeps knocking at their minds.
Sky Daddy, Kate Folk (April 8)
From the author of the ambitious and delightful short story collection Out There, Kate Folk’s debut novel Sky Daddy, where Linda, a woman sexually obsessed with planes, upends her life to move towards her true desire, which is dying in a catastrophic plane crash. A warm and bonkers look at female obsession, shame, and desire from one of our best writers.
Mỹ Documents, Kevin Nguyen (April 8)
From an editor at The Verge, Kevin Nguyen’s second novel is the timely and satirical Mỹ Documents, a speculative tale of Vietnamese assimilation and ambition. When Jen and Duncan are forced into near-future internment camps, their sibling, Ursula, a journalist, uses their information to her advantage to skyrocket her career, even at the cost of her own family.
Exit Zero, Marie-Helene Bertino (April 22)
Author Spotlight alum follows up her brilliant breakthrough Beautyland with Exit Zero, her first short story collection in a decade. Described as “haunting” and “delightfully strange,” Bertino’s way of looking at the world continues to dazzle.
What’s Left: Three Ways Through the Planetary Crisis, Malcolm Harris (April 15)
Historian and scholar Malcolm Harris returns with a diagnosis of our planet — we’re headed towards doom via rampant consumerism and government negligence. Laying out three intricate but plausible solutions, that through capitalism, socialism, or communism, Harris shows that the best mindset is not pessimism but public action, now: “That’s what’s left, and that’s worth doing,” he writes. Galvanizing, well-researched and realistic.
Friends of the Museum, Heather McGowan (April 15)
Spend a day in the turmoil of a prestigious New York museum as Diane Schwebe, its director, fends off its lawyer and an assorted crew of workers, including a line cook, curator, and costume designer, each of whom pulls at her. In the vein of The White Lotus, after the museum’s annual gala, someone will be dead by the break of day.
Atavists, Lydia Millet (April 22)
In this linked story collection from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet goes into the depths of American psyches in a fractured, post-pandemic world. From futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists, Millet’s rendering of contemporary thought is astute and brilliant.
Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, Sophie Gilbert (April 29)
The Atlantic staff writer investigates our culture’s obsession with misogyny, violence, and vulnerability, coming from and manipulating women themselves. Notable chapters include the Riot Grrrl movement of the nineties, reality television catfights, girlbosses, and the peril of the confessional female auteur. Sophie Gilbert’s debut is intelligent and enlightening.
Fireweed, Lauren Haddad (April 29)
When Beth, a white woman, goes missing in the rural town of Prince George, Canada, the community explodes into action — protests, searches, billboards. But when Rachelle, an Indigenous woman with two kids, mysteriously vanishes, it goes unnoticed. The difference plagues Jenny Hayes, a housewife who embarks on a misguided and complicated search for Rachelle. Fireweed is a thorny and bold debut with all the makings of a thriller.
Awakened, A.E. Osworth (April 29)
The author of We Are Watching Eliza Bright — my personal favorite book of 2021 — returns with Awakened, a fantasy-tinted novel acting as a response to JK Rowling’s increasingly unfortunate viewpoints. Four trans witches who have separate powers (being able to understand any language, unlimited travel, etc) band together to try and halt a malicious AI that threatens to tear apart their coven written in Osworth’s heartfelt, clever style.
The Sleepers, Matthew Gasda (May 6)
In the new novel from playwright Matthew Gasda (“Dimes Square,” “Doomers”), four New Yorkers come against the version of themselves they’d prefer to be. The Sleepers is filled with leftists, academics, actors, and cinematographers who all exemplify what happens when hypocrisy infiltrates our identities.
The Manor of Dreams, Christina Li (May 6)
The YA author’s first adult novel is a gothic horror mystery where Vivian Yi, the first Chinese woman to win an Oscar, is suddenly dead. Her children are shocked when her gorgeous California estate is left to a separate family instead, and when both groups move into the manor, they find that Vivian’s memory isn’t the only thing that haunts them.
GULF, Mo Ogrodnik (May 6)
In GULF, the prismatic debut from filmmaker and professor Mo Ogrodnik, five different women find their lives intertwined — a young Saudi mother trapped in a climate-controlled box of a home, a Filipina woman haunted by the toll a flood took on her family, a Syrian woman in an arranged marriage to a jihadist, and a white museum creator who reckons with her involvement as she meets an Ethiopian teen whose dreams have ended in the Arabian Gulf.
Happiness Forever, Adelaide Faith (May 13)
Sylvie has the terrible problem of being in love with her therapist. Her day job as a veterinary nurse and her little brain-damaged dog Curtains don’t offer relief, but one day she meets Chloe, who understands her completely. As her therapist threatens to cut off their sessions, she has to figure out a new way of independent living.
Love In Exile, Shon Faye (May 13)
After her landmark book The Transgender Issue, the trans writer Shon Faye discusses love in all its forms, beginning with the love she thought she didn’t deserve as a child. Now a collective rather than individual issue, love has been politicized, capitalized upon, and debated, and Love In Exile is an attempt to bridge the gap in our minds and return to a more pure version of it.
Project Mind Control: Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA, and the Tragedy of MKULTRA, John Lisle (May 20)
Historian and author John Lisle, PhD, visits the CIA’s MKULTRA scam last century, headed by chemist Sidney Gottleib to oversee a slew of deadly experiments on unwitting strangers for the purpose of psychological torture and mind control. Uncovering the depositions right from the perpetrators and the victims themselves, Project Mind Control shines light on an embarrassing and terrifying aspect of U.S. history.
Aggregated Discontent: Confessions of the Last Normal Woman, Harron Walker (May 20)
Culture critic and pop culture journalist Harron Walker’s first essay collection interrogates womanhood, cis and trans, as someone figuring themselves out on the internet in the early 2010s. Mixing memoir, journalism, fanfiction, criticism and more, it’s sure to be an entertaining and smart debut.
The Stalker, Paula Bomer (May 27)
Billed as an ‘Untalented Mister Ripley’ and ‘Dumb American Psycho,’ The Stalker follows a charming young man with endless confidence that preys on women in 90s New York. Convinced of his own intelligence and somehow able to squirm into any position or status he desires, he inflicts damage on women in Paula Bomer’s “portrait of a sociopath as a young loser.”
Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan (May 27)
The up-and-coming trans author of Bellies returns with Disappoint Me, where Max, a poet and tech worker, decides to switch up her life by pivoting to heteronormativity. She finds good company in Vincent, a lawyer, who has his own baggage of his own; a whirlwind and explosive trip to Thailand and a mother who isn’t sure about her son dating a transgender woman.
Freelance, Kevin M. Kearney (May 31)
A satire about our queasy relationships to labor, artificial intelligence, and parasocial relationships, Freelance’s nineteen-year-old protagonist Simon McNamara is in love with a cigarette-smoking camgirl while driving for HYPR, an infamously shoddy rideshare app. But HYPR’s AI starts speaking to Simon directly, promising financial success and telling him to tune out protests from the public against the company’s near-abusive policies, and he has to decide if this is more than just a shitty, temporary first job.
