November is here, and what a wild November it already seems it will be, particularly for those of us in the United States bracing for the aftermath of our presidential election, for there will almost certainly be chaos regardless of the victor. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been dreading this month.
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Still, there are some comforting constants to look forward to, as well, including the fact that there are remarkable and resonant new books to look forward to. In this list, you’ll find twenty-four books newly out in paperback this month, featuring a dazzling selection of writers new and established alike in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. If you missed them in hardcover or want to pick up an exciting new edition of a classic, you’ll want to check these out throughout the month.
It will be a November to be nervous in, perhaps, but one that will be made a bit more bearable—and even, with some optimistic luck, lovely—with some of these in our book piles.
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Gabrielle Korn, Yours for the Taking
(St. Martin’s Griffin)
“Gatekeeping girlboss insidiousness, climate injustice and ecological inequality, love in the time of perpetual apocalypse—Korn’s thrilling work of speculative fiction, about billionaire-funded bubbles designed to seal off select people from inhospitable living conditions, trains a big, queer black mirror on the sociopolitical iniquities of our time.”
–Electric Literature
Lexi Freiman, The Book of Ayn
(Catapult)
“A furious, jagged and radiant reckoning with the dangers of the manifesto, the mortifications of aging, the mercies and limitations of the comic posture, the job of the novelist and the indiscriminate desecration it demands.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables
(Penguin)
“Strikes the difficult balance of being both elegiac and comedic as it seeks to explore what it means to be alive during our complex moment in history. Like much of her work, Nunez’s latest seeks brief and blisteringly beautiful moments of connection, which burn ever brighter amid the haunting loneliness she crafts.”
–Chicago Review of Books
Roxane Gay, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People’s Business
(Harper Perennial)
“Insightful, witty and accessible prose….Gay has an ability to blend the personal and political in a way that feels simultaneously gentle and brutal….For 1,400 or so words you look at a cultural moment through Gay’s eyes and, by the end, you see the world differently.”
–The Guardian
Lauren Elkin, Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art
(Picador)
“Like her many subjects, Elkin is a stylish, determined provocateur…and also careful and diligent about demonstrating her arguments. It’s a very satisfying combination. She has a clear and elegant style reminiscent of other sharp and cool feminist academia thinkers, such as Sara Ahmed and Maggie Nelson….Art Monsters is not prescriptive or instructive—better, it’s exemplary. It describes a whole way to live, worthy of secret admiration.”
–The Washington Post
Dick Gregory, Christian Gregory (editor), The Essential Dick Gregory
(Amistad Press)
“A useful bookend to a public figure who wielded humor with vigor and an astuteness to the American condition perhaps matched only by Mark Twain.”
–The Washington Post
Ishion Hutchinson, School of Instructions: A Poem
(FSG)
“Hutchinson decolonizes the epic in this chronicle of West Indian soldiers….Interwoven with episodes from the life of a Jamaican schoolboy in the 1990s named Godspeed, these soldiers’ histories contribute a new chapter to the story of modern poetry.”
–The Washington Post
Celina Baljeet Basra, Happy
(Astra House)
“A zany comedy about human trafficking? This novel is genius…strange and superb…radiant and exhilarating….The achievement of Basra’s prose is that this arc neither exploits Happy nor the reader….We can claim that we respect the humanity of the dispossessed, the exploited or the systematically oppressed, but to recognize it in fiction, as Basra has, takes this level of depth and artfulness….Politically, it’s an essential novel, with an urgency that avoids the didactic.”
–The Telegraph
Katherine Howe, A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself
(Holt)
“This sweeping, ambitious novel secures Katherine Howe’s place as one of today’s best historical fiction writers. Combining a fast-paced, rollicking eighteenth-century story about a female pirate and a twentieth-century mystery set in academia, Howe touches on identity, ambition, history, class, and culture. Filled with unexpected twists and turns, A True Account is a wild ride. I loved this book.”
–Christina Baker Kline
Katherine Vaz, Above the Salt
(Flatiron)
“Since the publication of her first novel, Saudade, Katherine Vaz has stood out as a Portuguese American writer uniquely capable of expressing the inchoate longing of the Portuguese soul. Now, with Above the Salt, she becomes the pre-eminent voice of those of us who are part of the vast Portuguese diaspora with this visionary, immigrants’ tale told through her rueful, hallucinogenic prose.”
–Michael Rezendes
Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word
(Picador)
“The Painted Word is a masterpiece. No one in the art world…could fail to recognize its essential truth. I read it four times, each of them with mounting envy for Wolfe’s eye, ear, and surgical skill.”
–The Washington Post
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
(Picador)
“Crammed with inside [scoops] and racy incident…fast cars, booze, astro groupies, the envies and injuries of the military caste system….Wolfe lays it all out in brilliantly staged Op Lit scenes.”
–Time
Jean Strouse, Alice James: A Biography
(Picador)
“Strouse, in acquainting us with the younger sister of William and Henry James, has, as it were—and she is witty about Henry’s ineluctable ‘as it weres’—written a Jamesian novel, subtle, evasive, embroidered, splendid….Miss Strouse, who weaves instead of hammering home her delicate points is as expert in literary criticism as she is in recreating family life, medicine, psychology and education in nineteenth-century America.”
–The New York Times
Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive
(Grove Press)
“The Gone Girl-style thriller you were waiting for is here….[Hot Springs Drive] is a gripping psychological thriller that is both a character study and a twisting combination of lust and tension…filled with memorable prose and fascinating characters—men and women desperately searching for happiness in their lives and in each other—penned by a fearless writer with an enviable eye for detail.”
–The Washington Post
Deborah Willis, Girlfriend on Mars
(Norton)
“A deeply moving, deeply funny novel about love and loyalty in the midst of the paralyzing effects of eco-anxiety and the seductive toxicity of reality entertainment….Girlfriend on Mars is propulsive and surprising in the very best ways–Deborah Willis writes with a combination of pathos and humor that entrances and lights a way forward in this troubled time.”
–Suzette Mayr
Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River
(Vintage)
“Gripping….Examines the ripple effects of a crime in a small community—and paints a striking portrait of a woman devoted to healing and justice….Lawhon draws on the real Martha Ballard’s diary to construct her narrative, which contains a number of breathless twists and a large cast of hardscrabble characters….Lawhon’s novel is a riveting story of small-town justice and a fitting tribute to a quiet, determined heroine.”
–Shelf Awareness
Dina Nayeri, Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough
(Catapult)
“A groundbreaking book about persuasion and performance that asks unsettling questions about lies, truths, and the difference between being believed and being dismissed in…asylum interviews, emergency rooms, consulting jobs, and family life…The book is as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, human psychology, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another.”
–Arab News
Noah Whiteman, Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins—From Spices to Vices
(Little Brown)
“Through captivating storytelling, Noah Whiteman breathes life into the history of nature’s toxins, exploring the pleasures, comforts, and agonies that have shaped human evolution as it has intertwined with the evolution of these vital yet often overlooked organisms.”
–Beth Shapiro
H. W. Brand, The Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
(Vintage)
“The author writes with a sharp and absorbing style, turning what could be a fairly dry topic into a highly readable tale worthy of a cable miniseries with backstabbing characters, high drama, shady deals, and huge egos all clashing to determine the course of the new country. For anyone who thinks that gridlock and partisan machinations are a recent development, this book will quickly lay those misconceptions to rest.”
–New York Journal of Books
Paul Auster, Baumgartner
(Grove Press)
“The subject of lost loved ones and all that follows in the wake of such a loss is hardly unusual in contemporary literature, but Paul Auster’s Baumgartner is a worthy addition…a well-drawn portrait of a man wrestling with grief, and a sensitive character study that displays many of the qualities for which Auster’s been lauded….Baumgartner’s story is revealed in episodic fashion and with precise, observant, and sometimes touching detail….Poignant.”
–Shelf Awareness
Richard Kreitner, Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union
(Back Bay Books)
“If you thought disunion was an invention of the slave South and is long dead and buried, think again….Kreitner offers a powerful revisionist account of the troubled history of the American nation, showing how secessionist movements have made their appearance at numerous times, and in numerous parts of the country. They are again proliferating today—a reflection of our polarized politics and culture and our failure to make the existing Union benefit all Americans.”
–Eric Foner
Stuart A. Reid, The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
(Vintage)
“[The Lumumba Plot] is many things at once: a biography, a history of Congo’s chaotic independence, a dissection of the UN’s first big peacekeeping mission and a thriller about plots to kill Lumumba. There are villains of every stripe, from rogue Belgian pilots to shamelessly scheming UN officials and racist ambassadors. This is a tragic tale but also a rollicking read….Lumumba’s life might seem of a distant, dramatic era. Yet this story feels timely.”
–The Economist
Jesse David Fox, Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work
(Picador)
“Compendious, deeply considered, provoking, and rather dizzying…savvy, insidery, immersed, excited, with its own developing vocabulary….A bonus side effect of reading Comedy Book, of reading about all these comedians and their processes, was that I was cured, finally, of my sentimental attachment to the idea of the stand-up as truth-telling philosophe.”
–The Atlantic
Martyn Rady, The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe
(Basic Books)
“An astonishing book…an authoritative scholarly account….Anecdotes, colorful stories and quotations, as well as the constant presence of Rady’s wise and engaging voice make this a rare book….This is an unparalleled resource for anyone concerned about the future of Europe and the history of its nations
–Library Journal
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