Best New Books to Read: July 2015 Releases
Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto
The women in the isolated African village of Kulumani are being stalked by lionesses. To solve the problem, the village hires an outsider whose relationship with a village women raises issues that are perhaps more threatening than the lions. Mia Couto is one of the major writers of Portuguese-speaking Africa and the winner of the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. (FSG)
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson
We all read and still remember Shirley Jackson’s chilling short story “The Lottery” when we were kids. This collection comprises more than 50 unpublished works from Jackson’s papers at the Library of Congress, and is coedited by two of her children. (Random)
My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
Backman’s new novel features a seven-year-old named Elsa whose grandmother has just died, leaving a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged. Elsa is tasked with delivering these letters, and in the course of doing so she meets an odd assortment of characters and has her eyes opened to the fairytale world her grandmother described. (Atria)
Neverwhere: The Author’s Preferred Edition by Neil Gaiman
London businessman Richard Mayhew falls through a crack in reality to the Neverwhere, a shadowy place under siege by a malevolent force that Richard must help defeat if he wants to return to London Above. First released in 1997, this is the debut novel that launched Gaiman’s career. Now, the author has reworked and reconciled its various versions to this preferred text. (William Morrow)
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
Chu’s debut, The Lives of Tao, was an award-winning bestseller, and his new novel is getting great advance reviews. It’s the future, and humans have fled the toxic Earth to live in space. Convicts (chronmen) are sent to Earth’s past to scavenge for valuable resources. On his final trip before retiring, James Griffin-Mars meets a doomed female scientist and breaks the time-traveling rules, altering the timeline. (Tor)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
Natasha Pulley’s debut novel masquerades as a mystery, set as it is in Sherlock’s Victorian England with the unsolved bombings of the Irish Republican faction, Clan na Gael. But at its center is a different story entirely, one of a humble Japanese watchmaker and the mysterious ways in which the world seems to move around him. (Bloomsbury)
- Just Kids by Patti Smith (Illustrated Edition) - February 1, 2020
- We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer - September 20, 2019
- Fall, or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson - June 18, 2019
