I can’t believe it’s the end of May already! The long, bright evenings make me feel like I have all the time in the world to dive into a new book. If you’re looking for a hammock companion, try one of these new Southern releases.
We Are Too Many
By Hannah Pittard
May 2, 2023
Henry Holt: “Clever and bold and radically honest to an unthinkable degree, We Are Too Many examines the ugly, unfiltered parts of the female experience, as well as the many (happier) possibilities in starting any life over after a major personal catastrophe.”
Gone to the Wolves
By John Wray
May 2, 2023
FSG: “In his most absorbing and ambitious novel yet, John Wray dives deep into the wild, funhouse world of heavy metal and death cults in the 1980s and ’90s. Gone to the Wolves lays bare the intensity, tumult, and thrill of friendship in adolescence — a time when music can often feel like life or death.”
Late Bloomers
By Deepa Varadarajan
May 2, 2023
Random House: “Charming, funny, and moving, Late Bloomers introduces a delightful new voice in fiction with the story of four individuals trying to understand how to be happy in their own lives — and as a family.”
The Sorrows of Others
By Ada Zhang
May 9, 2023
Public Space Books: “Ada Zhang writes with startling honesty and love about lives young and old, in a stunning debut that explores what happens when we leave home and what happens when we stay, and the selves we meet and shed in the process of becoming.”
Fever of Unknown Origin
By Campbell McGrath
May 9, 2023
Knopf: “With sublime wit and a Whitmanian eye, McGrath delivers a stunning collection of warnings, love letters, and praise songs for all that manages to weather the perennial pressures of time: frog ponds, stadium rubble, and the endless cycle of seasons, which usher us deeper into an era we cannot yet know.”
The Time Has Come
By Will Leitch
May 16, 2023
Harper: “The author of the Edgar-nominated and ALEX Award-winning How Lucky, blends suspense, humor, and compassion in a new novel about seven strangers and one very intense evening at a small-town Georgia pharmacy.”
The Great American Everything
By Scott Gloden
May 16, 2023
Hub City: “For fans of Amy Hempel and Rick Moody, these stories, spread over varied landscapes of the South from Memphis to New Orleans, contend with the ways in which the places we live dictate the way we trust and protect our own. Scott Gloden has assembled a precise and moving collection that considers what makes a family, however makeshift or impromptu its design.”
Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
By Leah Myers
May 16, 2023
W. W. Norton: “Leah Myers may be the last member of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in her family line, due to her tribe’s strict blood quantum laws. In this unflinching and intimate memoir, Myers excavates the stories of four generations of women in order to leave a record of her family. Crisp and powerful, Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of one woman’s identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family, and what it means to belong.”
Sidle Creek
By Jolene McIlwain
May 16, 2023
Melville House: “Set in the bruised, mined, and timbered hills of Appalachia in western Pennsylvania, Sidle Creek is a tender, truthful exploration of a small town and the people who live there, told by a brilliant new voice in fiction.”
Notes on Her Color
By Jennifer Neal
May 23, 2023
Catapult: “Florida kitsch swirls together with magical realism in this glittering debut novel about a young Black and Indigenous woman who learns to change the color of her skin. Following a young woman looking for a world beyond her family’s carefully-coded existence, Notes on Her Color is a lushly written and haunting tale that shows how love, in its best sense, can be a liberating force from destructive origins.”
Southern Review of Books 