Happy Tuesday! We are well on our way to summer now, and there are tons of amazing new books to bring with us! I’ve highlighted a few of the week’s best below, and on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some great new releases, such as Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and Grace.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by The Girls by Emma Cline.
The Girls is the story of Evie, a woman who is haunted by the summer of 1969, when she was a lonely fourteen-year-old growing up in Northern California. One day she sees a girl at a park, a girl with a gang of other girls who seem free and alive. She is mesmerized by them, Suzanne in particular. She is quickly drawn into their soon-to-be infamous cult and meets the man who is its charismatic leader. As her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl’s life when everything can go wrong.
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Barkskins is a glorious, epic, 700+ page story spanning three hundred years, that follows two immigrants in “New France” and their descendants as they travel the world and make use (and steal and ruin) each country’s resources. This is a brutal, often darkly comic, environmental saga by a master writer, and I loved it. (I will admit that being an established Proulx fan may have increased my enjoyment of this novel. Because 700+ PAGES WHUT. But it is her first in over a decade, and so I was wildly excited to read it!)
Backlist bump: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
The first in an exciting new trilogy! Captain Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain, has a chance to redeem herself by recapturing a star fortress taken by heretics. Her best hope of winning is the undead tactician Shuos Jedao, who has never lost a battle. But sometimes he loses his mind, like in his last life, when he killed his own army. Cheris must figure out how much she can trust Jedao before the whole siege – and her life – is lost. YAY SPACE OPERA!
Backlist bump: Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
Death and Mr. Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis
I think any book that you read on the beach qualifies as a beach read, so why not an 800-page Dickensian novel about Dickens? (Wait is that meta?) Based on the story of The Pickwick Papers and the beginning of the career of Charles Dickens, this is a delightful novel, full of history and fun – and it’s now in paperback! It will charm your pants off.
Backlist bump: Drood by Dan Simmons
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me. If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’! (OMG I am OBSESSED with Litsy.)
Stay rad!
Liberty