Hello,
This week brings a dozen new books of note including Andrew J. Graff's debut Raft of Stars, which our members reviewed for our early-reader program First Impressions, and Half Life by Jillian Cantor, which imagines the life of pioneering scientist Marie Curie through two parallel timelines.
Enjoy!
Davina Morgan-Witts, Editor
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This Week's New and Notable Books
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There are too many books published each week for you to read about them all, let alone read them all. So we do the legwork for you, scouring the publishers' catalogs and the pre-publication reviews to pick out what we believe to be among the best and most interesting. For more about our process, see “Picking Books” and “Rating Books”.
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Raft of Stars
by Andrew J. Graff
Debut Author
On sale Mar 23 from Ecco
Genre: Novels. 304 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5
Members' Rating: 3.8/5
An instant classic for fans of Jane Smiley and Kitchens of the Great Midwest: when two hardscrabble young boys think they've committed a crime, they flee into the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Will the adults trying to find and protect them reach them before it's too late?
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Bruised
by Tanya Boteju
On sale Mar 23 from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: Novels (Young Adult). 336 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
Whip It meets We Are Okay in this vibrant coming-of-age story, about a teen girl navigates first love, identity, and grief when she immerses herself in the colorful, brutal, beautiful world of roller derby—from the acclaimed author of Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens.
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If You Kept a Record of Sins
by Andrea Bajani
On sale Mar 23 from Archipelago Books
Genre: Novels. 200 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5
Andrea Bajani's "beautiful, original, and deeply moving" (Michael Cunningham) novel, which Jhumpa Lahiri asserts "accumulates with the quiet urgency of a snowstorm."
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Meet Me in Paradise
by Libby Hubscher
Debut Author
On sale Mar 23 from Berkley Books
Genre: Novels. 352 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
Marin Cole has never:
Seen the ocean
Climbed a mountain
Taken a risk on love
....But if her sister's plan works, she just might do all three.
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Red Island House
by Andrea Lee
On sale Mar 23 from Scribner
Genre: Novels. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5
From National Book Award–nominated writer Andrea Lee comes a gorgeously evocative epic about love, clashing cultures, and identity, set in the tropical African island nation of Madagascar.
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There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job
by Kikuko Tsumura
Debut Author
On sale Mar 23 from Bloomsbury USA
Genre: Novels. 416 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
Convenience Store Woman meets The New Me in this strange, compelling, darkly funny tale of one woman's search for meaning in the modern workplace.
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Half Life
by Jillian Cantor
On sale Mar 23 from Harper Perennial
Genre: Historical Fiction. 416 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
The USA Today bestselling author of In Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she'd made a different choice.
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The Foreign Girls
by Sergio Olguín
On sale Mar 23 from Bitter Lemon Press
Genre: Thrillers. 346 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5
Two foreign girls are murdered after a high society party in Yacanto del Valle, northern Argentina.
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Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said
by Timothy Brennan
On sale Mar 23 from Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Genre: Biography/Memoir. 464 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5
The first comprehensive biography of the most influential, controversial, and celebrated Palestinian intellectual of the twentieth century.
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Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics
by Ronald Brownstein
On sale Mar 23 from Harper
Genre: History, Science & Current Affairs. 448 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
In this exceptional cultural history, Atlantic Senior Editor Ronald Brownstein - "one of America's best political journalists (the Economist) - tells the kaleidoscopic story of one monumental year that marked the city of Los Angeles' creative peak, a glittering moment when popular culture was ahead of politics in predicting what America would become.
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The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--and How We Can Fix It
by Dorothy A. Brown
Debut Author
On sale Mar 23 from Crown
Genre: History, Science & Current Affairs. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy.
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Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico
by Juan Villoro
On sale Mar 23 from Pantheon Books
Genre: Travel & Adventure. 368 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city.
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