September 23, 2025, 4:00am

Another week of hell in America. Dark times shade even darker, and yet through it all, in ways both uplifting and stupefying, life goes on. At the very least, be it for edification, or self-help, escapism, or grounding, books continue to be there for us.

And this week, we welcome a hefty selection of new titles: Patricia Lockwood’s much anticipated novel on her experience with long Covid (amongst much else, too zany and myriad to get into here), Mona Awad’s sequel to Bunny, a new Ian McEwan novel, and a long awaited Kiran Desai novel. In nonfiction, we welcome a definitive biography of Muriel Spark, Kamala Harris’s obligatory campaign recap, a look at the genre of true crime, and a cultural history of “societal collapse” (timely). Me, I’ll be diving into Lockwood, Desai, and the Spark biography, but I believe there will be something for everyone in this week’s stack.

Happy reading!

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Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You
(Riverhead)

“So singular … Her ability to tease out the absurdity of ordinary communication is magnificent, even infuriating … Lockwood manages to explicate the harried, nonsensical, grief-soaked timeline with acrobatic skill.”
—The New Republic

Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
(Hogarth)

“Not so much a novel as a marvel … Here is sweet validation of the idea that to create something truly transcendent — a work of art depicting love, family, nature and culture in all their fullness — might take time.”
—The New York Times

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know
(Knopf)

“A philosophically charged tour de force by one of the best living novelists in English.”
—Kirkus

Frances Wilson, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel
(FSG)

“Frances Wilson revels in her sublimely contrary subject … Wilson borrows Spark’s own mystical whimsy about the relationship between her life and her work.”
—The Atlantic

Mona Awad, We Love You, Bunny
(Marysue Rucci)

“[A] dark, twisted satire of academia and the cultlike world of writers.”
—The New York Times

Mark Mazower, On Antisemitism: A Word in History
(Penguin Press)

“Mazower soberly describes how and why the politics of anti-Semitism have metastasized in such maddening ways.”
—Harpers

Ken Follett, Circle of Days
(Grand Central)

“A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.”
—Kirkus

Sherah Bloor and Tayseer Abu Odeh, You Must Live: New Poetry From Palestine
(Copper Canyon Press)

“A light beam of a collection in our dark hours. These poets managed the seemingly impossible: to build life-affirming yet daring linguistic nodes among the rubble of our world and our world’s imagination.”
—Ocean Vuong

Jonathan Lethem, A Different Kind of Tension
(Ecco)

“A revelatory career-spanning collection of 30 fantastical and speculative stories … The repeating motifs—claustrophobia, desire, malevolent chaos—provide keys to understanding Lethem’s often elliptical tales.”
—Publishers Weekly

Kamala Harris, 107 Days
(Simon and Schuster)

“The diaristic organization permits her to give a play-by-play of those grueling 107 days, moving through events as they happened, issuing her rebuttals.”
—The New York Times

Jen Hatmaker, Awake
(Avid Reader Press)

“Reading Awake is like being offered a lifeline when you’ve drifted too far out to sea—it’s warm, witty, wise, and wide awake to what matters most. Jen Hatmaker is proof that we can change our own stories.”
—Lori Gottlieb

Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse
(Knopf)

“An invigorating look at big picture history across continents and millennia, and a survival manual to boot.”
—Kirkus

Abdi Nazemian, Exquisite Things
(HarperCollins

” powerful, epic love letter to queer longing, chosen family, and the ache of wanting to belong—in any era.”
—Daniel Aleman

Janice Hallett, The Killer Question
(Atria)

“Hallett continues to stretch the limits of the epistolary mystery in this playful tale of murder at a weekly trivia night … Hallett is at the top of her game. It’s a wickedly satisfying ride.”
—Publishers Weekly

Ilana Masad, Beings
(Bloomsbury)

“The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Ilana Masad excavates the juiciness of historical archives and the otherworldly mysteries of the everyday in her most brilliant work yet.”
—Ruth Madievsky

Lisa Olstein, Distinguished Office of Echoes
(Copper Canyon)

“Olstein’s profound and attentive poems reveal her formal dexterity and knack for spotting modernity’s absurdities.”
—Publishers Weekly

John J. Lennon, The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us
(Celadon)

“A haunting and innovative blend of memoir and true crime… There are no easy answers, but The Tragedy of True Crime offers a rich and nuanced look at a population that’s often made invisible and is sure to become a classic of the genre.”
—Booklist

Jeff Chang, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America
(Mariner)

“Thrives not just as an ode, or a tome of cultural appreciation, but also as a rich analysis of the history within, and the landscape upon which a cultural icon can be formed, can be shaped, can be beloved. This book is as celebratory as it is incisive, as it is, at times, heartbreaking. A massive achievement.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib

Dan Chaon, One of Us
(Henry Holt)

“Chaon dazzles with his vision of family, strangeness, and the tension between care and exploitation. This captivating adventure is not to be missed.”
—Publishers Weekly

Justin Gregg, Humanish: What Talking to Your Cat or Naming Your Car Reveals about the Uniquely Human Need to Humanize
(Little Brown)

“Filled with intriguing stories and astute explanations, this is a superb work of popular science.”
—Publishers Weekly

Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis
(Grand Central)

“Presley remains an endearing, conversational storyteller whose focus on the positive…rings true. It’s a heartfelt record of stepping into one’s own.”
—Publishers Weekly

Steven Pinker, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life
(Scribner)

“One of the most insightful books I’ve read about what makes us human and how we understand each other. It changed how I think about the interactions I have, and I bet it will do the same for you.”
—Bill Gates

H S Cross, Amanda
(Europa)

“About two lovers driven apart by secrets and brought together again by irrepressible need … A scintillating historical novel about the potential revival of a star-crossed love.”
—Foreword Reviews

Justin Smith-Ruiu, On Drugs: Psychedelics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Reality
(Liveright)

“An insightful work of philosophy supported by a surprisingly powerful memoiristic arc, Justin Smith-Ruiu’s new book works better than any psychedelic could to reopen the doors of perception and cast humanity’s long-standing hunger for mind-altering experiences in a new and thrilling light.”
—Kristen Roupenian