New Arrivals: The Best Recent Book Releases

This richly immersive account explores how Baldwin’s intimate artistic partnerships shaped his life and work—from Harlem to Istanbul, Paris to the South of France. Based on newly uncovered archival material and original interviews, it is a "dynamic portrait that deepens our understanding of a complex artist," according to a starred review from Kirkus.

Susana M. Morris traces Butler’s life through the civil rights movement, Black feminism, and the rise of climate and gender politics—revealing how her fiction imagined radical futures with Black women at the center. Drawing on archival material and Butler’s own reflections, this is a study of a writer who could not stop asking dangerous questions.

Since its 1978 publication, The Stand has become a touchstone of apocalyptic fiction. Now, for the first time, King authorizes a return to that world in this original anthology featuring new stories by Tananarive Due, S. A. Cosby, Alma Katsu, Paul Tremblay, and others. Includes an introduction by King and contributions that expand the novel’s legacy of horror, survival, and uneasy hope.

2024 was the first year since 2002 without a Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic Slam win. Carlos Alcaraz claimed Wimbledon and Roland Garros; Jannik Sinner took the Australian and US Opens. Nathan, “the best tennis writer in America” (The Ringer), tracks the rivalry set to dominate the next decade. "Tennis players, fans of the sport, and anyone who enjoyed Netflix's Break Point will love this lovingly written, humorous, and well-researched exploration of the end of an era in tennis," writes Library Journal.

McKibben, founder of Third Act and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, outlines how solar energy is reshaping the global energy landscape. Tracing its rapid rise and the fossil fuel industry's resistance, he argues for a future built on shared power, scientific realism, and political urgency.

Anti-vaxxers, insurrectionists, overcompensating liberals, and white supremacists populate these lacerating stories narrated entirely by white characters. "Doten is a skilled satirist, and this collection matches the disorienting comic tenor of their previous novels, Trump Sky Alpha and The Infernal," observed Vulture.

Virginia, 1954: a woman wakes at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital with no memory of her past. Doctors say she’s delusional. Her visions say she must save humanity. Kirkus describes it as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets The Hunger Games.”

In the winter of 1952, the future Booker Prize–winning novelist, then a struggling writer and expectant mother, travels with her young son from England to a remote Mexican town in hopes of claiming a family inheritance. Over three months, she navigates a chaotic household of rivals, artists, and strangers with competing agendas. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, calls it “a masterful novel… a luminous exploration of a woman’s desperation and resilience.”

Emmy-winning writer Aisha Muharrar, whose credits include Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, and Hacks, makes her fiction debut with a novel that’s been landing on just about every summer reading list. Centered on two women brought together after the death of someone they both loved, it digs into the layered grief and quiet rivalry that follows. Oprah Daily calls it “warm” and “heartfelt… celebrating the joy of connections, especially those cut short.”

In a prestigious writing program, a student’s thesis draws on real events that match a professor couple’s private history, igniting gossip, suspicion, and the quiet dismantling of professional and personal alliances. The New York Times Book Review calls it a “sexy, engrossing book about the nature of attraction, ambition and loyalty.”