April book preview: Obscene birds & cemeteries
Plus, why "the small press world is about to fall apart."
Sorry this is so late — I took a New England trip to see the eclipse!
In case you missed it, “the small press world is about to fall apart” this month thanks to the sudden collapse of Small Press Distribution, which more than 400 small presses relied on to fulfill online orders and ship books to retail outlets.
For Literary Hub, I spoke with independent presses about why this is a disaster, how much money they’re owed (up to $17,000!), and where they go from here.
Meanwhile, if you’re a video game enthusiast (or even if you just played literary PC games in the 1990s), my longform print feature on the reimagining-in-progress of 1997’s RIVEN: THE SEQUEL TO MYST is now online (without a paywall) at Game Informer.
And now, the reason you opened this email.
My 15 most-anticipated books of April 2024
The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim (William Morrow, April 2). A fascinating novel that looks back at an underreported tragedy in the history of South Korea.
The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso, translated by Leonard Mades (New Directions, April 2). Another premise I’ll let speak for itself: “The mute caretaker of the crumbling former abbey [is] hounded by a coven of ancient witches who are bent on transforming him, bit by bit, into the terrifying imbunche: a twisted monster with all of its orifices sewn up, buried alive in its own body.”
You Are Here edited by Ada Limón (Milkweed, April 2). Limón is a national treasure and all of her books are must-buys for me.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez (Algonquin, April 2). A woman literally builds a graveyard to bury her abandoned manuscript drafts in the Dominican Republic.
We Loved It All by Lydia Millet (Norton, April 2). Millet is a brilliant fiction writer, so I’m excited to read her first nonfiction book, an account of her “quarter century of wildlife and climate advocacy.”
A View From the Stars by Cixin Liu (Tor, April 2). I really enjoyed the Three-Body Problem trilogy (though admittedly more as thought experiments than novels), so I’m interested in these essays and short stories from Liu.
Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie (Orbit, April 2). Leckie’s Imperial Radch series was fun, and I keep meaning to read The Raven Tower. This short story collection has pieces set in both of those universes and others.
The Weight of Nature by Clayton Page Aldern (Dutton, April 9). A bracing look at how the climate crisis is affecting our brains (it’s definitely affecting mine!).
The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell (One Signal, April 9). This looks like a fascinating investigation of why, in the (dis)information age, we’re growing less and less rational.
A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke (Avid Reader, April 9). Read a few pages of this the other day and was really interested in the premise: it’s basically a 19th-century version of SPEED (1994), about a woman who wanders the earth because she’ll die if she stops moving.
We Are the Culture by Arionne Nettles (Lawrence Hill, April 16). Nettles is one of Chicago’s finest journalists, so I can’t wait to dig in to this history of the cultural impact of Black Chicago.
The Sky Was Ours by Joe Fassler (Penguin, April 23). A clever reimagining of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, set in 2005, about an upstate New York recluse building a pair of human wings.
A Body Made of Glass by Caroline Crampton (Ecco, April 23). A cultural history of hypochondria, written by a woman who has suffered from health anxiety ever since suffering through a scary diagnosis when she was a teenager.
Real Americans by Rachel Khong (Knopf, April 30). The author of Goodbye, Vitamin returns with a mutligenerational romantic dramedy / coming-of-age novel set in New York and coastal Washington State.
Exit Wounds by Ieva Jusionyte (UC Press, April TBD). An insightful look at how American guns wind up killing men, women, and children in Mexico, and why our insufficient gun laws cause chaos across our borders.
Forthcoming in The Frontlist
Behind the book with Crystal Hana Kim (The Stone Home) and Caroline Crampton (A Body Made of Glass)
May book preview