This season’s noteworthy offerings feature time loops, psychoactive booze, the Big Bang, and a hermit on a mission from God.
The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit
Evan Rail. Melville House, Oct. 15 ($32, ISBN 978-1-68589-154-1)
After absinthe was banned across most of Europe in the early 20th century, collectors raced to scoop up the remaining bottles of the liquor. Journalist Rail tells the story of a con man who tried to profit from the craze.
The Afterlife Is Letting Go
Brandon Shimoda. City Lights, Dec. 10 ($17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-87286-929-5)
Interweaving historical research, survivor interviews, and travelogue, Shimoda traces the legacy of Japanese internment during WWII.
Beautiful Dreamers
Minrose Gwin. Hub City, Aug. 27 ($28, ISBN 979-8-88574-036-4)
In this novel set in the 1950s, a divorced mother moves back to her Mississippi hometown with her daughter to live with her childhood friend, a gay man active in the civil rights movement. A new arrival to the small town threatens to spoil their domestic tranquility.
Before the Mango Ripens
Afabwaje Kurian. Dzanc, Sept. 24 ($27.95, ISBN 978-1-950539-99-4)
Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad Kurian debuts with a story about three Nigerians—a housemaid, a doctor, and a translator—and the arrival of American missionaries to their community in the 1970s.
Black River
Nilanjana Roy. Pushkin Vertigo, Sept. 24 ($17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-78227-944-0)
A horrific murder in an Indian village inflames religious tensions in this state-of-the-nation mystery featuring sub-inspector Ombir Singh.
Canoes
Maylis de Karengal, trans. by Jessica Moore. Archipelago, Oct. 15 ($19 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-953861-96-2)
De Karengal follows up her acclaimed novel Eastbound with a story collection headlined by the eponymous novella, in which a Parisian family adapts to life in a small Colorado town.
The Cold Case Foundation: How a Team of Experts Solves Murders and Missing Persons Cases
Gregory M. Cooper and Thomas McHoes. Prometheus, Dec. 10 ($28.95, ISBN 978-1-4930-8464-7)
A retired FBI profiler and a dedicated band of expert volunteers from the Cold Case Foundation delve into unsolved cases in this true crime account.
Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality
Lyta Gold. Soft Skull, Oct. 29 ($27, ISBN 978-1-59376-770-9)
Spanning from 19th-century debates over Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary to an analysis of Gamergate, this work of cultural criticism from essayist Gold explores the power dynamics at play in debates around fictional works.
Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes
Jon Macy. Street Noise, Oct. 8 ($24.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-951491-33-8)
This graphic biography of Djuna Barnes, best known for her modernist masterpiece Nightwood, plunges readers into the artistic milieu of 1920s Paris.
Fathers and Fugitives
S.J. Naudé, trans. by Michiel Heyns. Europa, Sept. 10 ($27, ISBN 979-8-88966-039-2)
A London man returns to his home country of South Africa to care for his ailing father, whose will stipulates that his son will only receive his considerable inheritance if he reconnects with a playmate from his youth.
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom
Johanna Hedva. Zando, Sept. 3 ($28, ISBN 978-1-63893-116-4)
Writer, artist, and musician Hedva upends notions of disability and ableism in these daring essays examining the relationship between sickness and capitalism.
Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall
Christophe Lebold. ECW, Sept. 5 ($29.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-77041-744-1)
This study of Leonard Cohen from Lebold, a University of Strasbourg professor specializing in literature, performance studies, and rock music who struck up a friendship with Cohen late in the singer’s life, elucidates the work of the Canadian master.
Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit
Josh Noel. Chicago Review, Sept. 3 ($19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-914091-67-7)
Noel tells the heady tale of this Chicago staple, a liqueur whose distinctive taste humorist John Hodgman once described as a blend of “pencil shavings and heartbreak.”
The Naming of the Birds
Paraic O’Donnell. Tin House, Jan. 7 ($28.95, ISBN 978-1-963108-03-3)
Featuring Insp. Henry Cutter and Sergeant Gideon Bliss from The House on Vesper Sands, O’Donnell’s latest Victorian-era mystery sees the pair trying to solve the murders of a string of powerful Londoners.
On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1
Solvej Balle, trans. by Barbara Haveland. New Directions, Nov. 19 ($15.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-8112-3725-3)
The first volume of this Danish septology begins as an antiquarian book dealer becomes stuck in a time loop, waking up on November 18 each morning. The narrator puzzles over her eerie predicament and newfound knowledge that “behind all that we ordinarily regard as certain lie improbable exceptions, sudden cracks and inconceivable breaches of the usual laws.”
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
Wim Carton and Andreas Malm. Verso, Oct. 1 ($29.95, ISBN 978-1-80429-398-0)
Sustainability researcher Carton and How to Blow Up a Pipeline author Malm rail against society’s complacent attitude toward climate change, continued investment in fossil fuels, and plans to solve the climate crisis through geoengineering.
Two-Step Devil
Jamie Quatro. Grove, Sept. 10 ($27, ISBN 978-0-8021-6313-4)
Quatro’s third book, which PW calls “daring and disturbing,” deals with the charged relationship between an Alabama hermit named the Prophet and the 14-year-old girl he rescues from a sex trafficker and whom he believes is a messenger sent by God.
The Unmothers
Leslie J. Anderson. Quirk, Aug. 6 ($18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68369-429-8)
In what PW calls “a truly unsettling gothic horror story,” a reporter investigates accounts of a horse giving birth to a human baby in an isolated village.
Us from Nothing: A Poetic History
Geoff Bouvier. Black Lawrence, Sept. 3 ($19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-62557-071-0)
From the Big Bang to an imagined future, Bouvier’s prose poems depict the story of humanity on an epic scale reminiscent of William Blake or William Carlos Williams.
Why We Sing: A Celebration of Song
Julia Hollander. Atlantic, Sept. 17 ($17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83895-365-2)
In this wide-ranging consideration of the human voice, music therapist Hollander delivers a “stirring” tribute that “affirms singing’s myriad and sometimes surprising upsides,” according to PW.
