July 8, 2025, 4:58am

July 4th has passed, and, as we enter the post-holiday rush, it’s worth remembering that, as always, there are new books to look forwards to, despite the difficult chaos of the world. Below, you’ll find twenty new options to consider in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, each a worthy literary companion in a time when we could all use some more companionship.

You’ll find Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante’s Paradiso, capping her celebrated work of translating The Divine Comedy; a revealing look at the strange and toxic cult of America’s Next Top Model; a new Henry-Jamesian novel from Gary Shytengart; striking debuts from Lawrence Burney, Samuel Hawley, Charlotte Runcie, and others; a mailman’s moving memoir; stunning true tales of love amidst literal shipwreck; and much, much more.

Stay safe, as always, and enjoy these new offerings.

*

Gary Shytengart, Vera, or Faith
(Random House)

“With echoes of Henry James’s ‘What Maisie Knew,’ Shteyngart returns with a poignant and biting novel told through the eyes of a precocious child, Vera. As the bonds of her blended Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP family fray, Vera strives to keep them together.”
–The Boston Globe

Charlotte Runcie, Bring the House Down
(Doubleday)

“An astounding debut about the fraught relationship between artist and critic, truth and publicity, men and women. Bring the House Down reminds us how unwise it is to make easy judgments about people or art—which does not stop me from giving Charlotte Runcie five big stars.”
–Nathan Hill

Samuel Hawley, Daikon
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

“In Samuel Hawley’s spellbinding debut novel, history and possibility collide. The result is a gripping, propulsive journey into the nuclear heart of what might have been. The year is 1945, and Japan’s defeat is at hand. But what if they had the atomic bomb? And what if we, by mistake, had given it to them? Daikon ponders whether what’s best in humanity is found only in its darkest moments. And whether love can transcend death and war. The result is a breathtaking chain reaction that unleashes the true power of the novel.”
–Adam Johnson

Lawrence Burney, No Sense in Wishing: Essays
(Atria)

“[A]mong the most profound and dazzling debuts I’ve ever read. Lawrence Burney writes at once like a rusty-knuckled Southern gardener and a skilled Northern conjurer of the nth degree…provocative, yet firmly rooted in the exciting fringes of traditions yet to be named. No Sense in Wishing might actually do more for understanding how Baltimore, Maryland is, and what is actually happening in that beautifully black Northern Southern city. I’m absolutely shook at how good the book-making here is.”
–Kiese Laymon

Sarah Hartshorne, You Wanna Be on Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model
(Crown)

“Juicy, nostalgic, entertaining, and disturbing, You Wanna Be on Top? is the America’s Next Top Model exposé I didn’t know I needed. For any adolescent of the mid-aughts, this book is required reading.”
–Amanda Montell

Sophie Elmhirst, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
(Riverhead)

“Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances?….So brilliantly depicted.”
–Elle

Dante Aleghieri, Paradiso (trans. Mary Jo Bang)
(Graywolf)

“Bang has recognized that the Comedy is a living poem, contemporaneous with all poetry that has followed it. Having translated it into a language alive to the very moment in which it is meant to be read, Bang has done the impossible: she has revitalized that which is eternal.”
–Shane McCrae

Henri Cole, The Other Love: Poems
(FSG)

“These are hopeful and gilded poems, managing to suggest the rich life of the mind but never abandoning the body. . . . [The Other Love] reveals a new edge to Cole’s voice—composed, taut with nerves, but tempered with wisdom….These are exemplary lyrics of witness.”
–Publishers Weekly

Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn
(Melville House)

“An Irish teen grapples with her identity in this queer coming-of-age story…the book is at its most charming as Howarth explores the complex bonds of female friendship between Lucy and her crew, and ultimately Lucy and Susannah’s love story is absolutely gripping. A romantic, funny, and painful exploration of the cost of being true to yourself.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Hattie Williams, Bitter Sweet
(Ballantine Books)

“The power dynamic between artist and consumer of art blurs in this unsettling account of a young publicist who meets her idol—a much older author. The lines of consent, control, and even reality shift. Like our main character we know this can’t end well—but we also can’t pull away from the impending implosion. This is beautifully crafted, with aftershocks of conscience that will leave you processing for hours with others who’ve read it.”
–Jodi Picoult

Helen Schulman, Fools for Love: Stories
(Knopf)

“Without attempting to be a novel in stories, the collection is free to go off on wild tangents, such as a story narrated by an evil baby, Lucien H., and a tale of forbidden love with a married Orthodox rabbi in Paris. In multiple stories, people come back from the dead, and everywhere, there are sentences to make you laugh….Never underestimate the power of a good short story to lift your spirits.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Stephen Starring Grant, Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
(Simon & Schuster)

“People like to make fun of the Postal Service for being late with deliveries. Well, this book could not be more timely. I needed this reminder that Americans can commit to the greater good, that public servants can be heroes, and that our crazy-quilt culture is a strength, not a weakness. Thank you, Mr. Mailman.”
–A. J. Jacobs

Sam Kelly, Human History on Drugs: An Utterly Scandalous but Entirely Truthful Look at History Under the Influence
(Plume)

“[A] nonstop, eye-popping panorama of famous and influential individuals who each changed the world, or their perception of it, through their use of drugs….Besides serving up a multitude of entertaining stories, Kelly provides genuine food for thought about the medical and spiritual applications of psychedelics. Brimming with enthusiasm for history’s nooks and crannies, this charms.”
–Publishers Weekly

Calvin Duncan, Sophie Cull, The Jailhouse Lawyer
(Penguin Press)

“A superbly written, compelling memoir chronicling Calvin Duncan’s remarkable life—an innocent man incarcerated at the infamous Angola State Prison who became a self-taught, brilliant jailhouse lawyer. Although the word ‘hero’ is greatly overused in today’s society, in my mind, Calvin Duncan is a hero in the truest sense of that word. I urge all who are in need of inspiration to please read this riveting account of an indomitable spirit in the face of ongoing stiff resistance.”
–Jim McCloskey

Christopher J. Yates, The Rabbit Club
(Hanover Square Press)

“Yates’ winking yarn is both homage and parody of the dark academia genre…Literary references abound, ranging from Shakespeare to Dickens to Nirvana and most notably the overarching motifs of Alice in Wonderland. Secret societies, mysterious documents, and cryptic backstories all add to the richly detailed university setting…Yates is clearly having fun, and readers will too.”
–Booklist

Lidija Hilje, Slanting Towards the Sea
(Simon & Schuster)

“Illuminating prose and gripping storytelling. A love letter to Croatia and to anyone who dares to dream.”
–Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Matt Richtel, How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence
(Mariner Books)

“A timely and essential consideration of the science of adolescence…The compassion of Richtel’s book equals the rigor of his research….Should be on all library shelves alongside Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling The Anxious Generation.”
–Library Journal

Tracy Slater, Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp
(Chicago Review Press)

“As a Jewish Japanese American whose own family experienced the trauma of incarceration, I am profoundly moved by Tracy Slater’s meticulous research and storytelling, which illuminate the resilience, activism, and moral courage of the Yoneda family. This book fills a long-overdue gap in the historical narrative, giving voice to a mixed-race experience often overlooked in discussions of World War II and Japanese American incarceration…an indispensable addition to the conversation about identity, belonging, and the intersections of race and history in America.”
–Alex Chester-Iwata

Madeline Potter, The Roma: A Traveling History
(Harper)

“By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, this book takes us on a journey through centuries of Romani history and culture. Madeline Potter celebrates the resilience and beauty of the Roma, while bearing witness to the trauma of fairly relentless persecution. In the face of modern far-right politics, The Roma feels urgent and necessary.”
–Tabitha Stanmore

Iain McGregor, The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It
(Scribner)

“The atomic bombing that obliterated Hiroshima has not lacked for attention from historians and other writers. But Iain MacGregor’s gripping book vastly expands the cast of characters: politicians and scientists in Japan and the United States; military men on both sides, from generals to pilots and air crews; victims on the ground both dead and alive; writers and journalists covering the story—all portrayed vividly as the story dramatically unfolds.”
–William Taubman