New Arrivals: The Best Recent Book Releases

In what is being billed as "Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi," from Nebula and Locus award winner, R.F. Kuang, two rival graduate students team up to save their professor's soul from the grips of Hell. Literally.

In the latest from the author of Boy, Snow, Bird, a woman navigates the chaos of living as seven distinct selves—one for each day of the week. When something disturbs their fragile balance, the boundaries between personalities begin to blur. “A comedy about the masks we wear, if you will, as well as an existential mystery," wrote The Guardian. “The denouement, when it finally comes, is so gloriously absurd, you can’t help but salute.”

A couple looks back on the course of their two-year affair, one shaped by obsession, secrecy, and the silence of what goes unsaid. Age, desire, and consequence weigh heavily as passion gives way to fracture. The Boston Globe calls the novel “a conclusive demonstration of why [McBride] is one of the most thrilling contemporary English-language writers.”

Each Wednesday for a year, a ten-year-old girl and her grandfather visit a Parisian museum to savor fifty-two masterpieces before she loses her sight. Spanning five centuries of art history, this tender debut is as moving as The Elegance of the Hedgehog and as effortlessly charming as The Little Paris Bookshop.

After a breakup, Dayna helps launch a hype house in a crumbling mansion—where a tarot reader has gone missing. As two women probe the disappearance, they uncover a strange web of ambition and secrecy. Town & Country calls the latest from the author of the satire Self Care and the Attention Economy newsletter “an incisive social satire… a funny, dark look at the new creator economy.”

For the first time, Miriam Toews turns to her own life in nonfiction. Prompted by a question she can’t quite answer—why write?—she traces the connections between grief, memory, and the impulse to tell stories. "Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past," writes The Los Angeles Times. "It's bracing, candid reading."

Tracing Nkrumah’s rise from colonial Ghana to Harlem and London’s Black intellectual circles, French shows how one leader helped ignite a global wave of decolonization. Publishers Weekly calls it “a towering achievement… [that] recasts the 20th century as a long struggle for liberation.”

From pickleball feats to futuristic robots, the latest edition is packed with surprises. Eight new Icons are honored this year—including music legend Dolly Parton, recognized for her 11 record titles and decades of influence. With chapters on science, sports, kids’ achievements, and the limits of human potential, this 70th anniversary edition proves record breaking is for everyone, everywhere.

In World War II, a girl is trapped in the “time space,” a vast library that stores human memories. While agents burn the books they want erased, she works to save them, until a relationship with a CIA agent changes the course of her life. "Gelfuso seamlessly blends elements of romance and fantasy into the twisty quest narrative, and packs excitement into every page," praised Publishers Weekly. "It's a delight."

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.