New Arrivals: The Best Recent Book Releases

This provocative book from the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Gulag dissects how 21st century autocracies are working together to destabilize American hegemony and “provides a trenchant account that indicates that Trump, for all his bluster about America First, is part of a global phenomenon--namely, the rise of an international kleptocracy that often works in tandem,” remarked Washington Monthly.

For his fiction debut, actor Keanu Reeves partnered with sci-fi writer China Mieville, author of Perdido Street Station, to bring to life the story of BRZRKR, a seemingly immortal warrior gifted with superhuman strength. Equal parts action-packed and existential, with surreal cameos from Freud and Marx, the New York Times praised its "genre-defying, protean strangeness."

The "laureate of upended lives," as The Guardian called her, richly imagined novel of family, power, and wealth that begins with a kidnapping in the 1980s.

George R.R. Martin called the bestselling fantasy master's return to fiction "a fresh and engrossing take on the Matter of Britain featuring a colorful cast of Round Table knights who don’t often get as much story time as they deserve. The creator of The Magicians has woven another spell.”

The Los Angeles Times was amazed by this "stunning and surreal debut novel" written by a Palestinian journalist born in Jerusalem. "Birkin-bag economics meets colorism and racism and feminism and more--it's beyond intersectionality."

A wealthy teen vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, setting off a panicked search in this literary suspense novel which NPR compared to the author's previous Long Bright River, but called this one "something weirder and stranger and unforgettable."

Two contract killers fall for each other after hooking up on a Paris-bound train, only to realize they've been ordered to kill each other in this cat-and-mouse caper filled with "exhilarating action, steamy romance, and enough twists to keep the pages flying. It's a blast," declared Publishers Weekly.

"The Heart in Winter is a western and a love story, which would make it a departure for Barry if it weren’t for the fact that all his novels have been departures," remarked the Washington Post of the acclaimed Irish novelist's fourth book, which follows two renegade lovers on the lam in 1890s America.

Oprah Daily adored the "funny, beleaguered, heartbreaking" heroine of this "compulsively readable novel" starring a Harvard archivist who returns to Coastal Maine, and winds up investigating her once-abandoned childhood hideaway.

In this politically charged sci-fi thriller "with remarkable world-building, Askaripour takes readers on a vast and winding adventure through a future split by hemispheres, visibility, and power," observed Elle, adding this to their "The Best New Books to Read in Summer 2024."