Emily Temple Book Recommendations & Book Mentions
This list consists of recommendations or mentions of books spotted in media, social media accounts, podcasts or other public websites.
Emily Temple on X
Emily Temple is an editor at Lit Hub. managing editor at @lithub. debut novel THE LIGHTNESS out now from @wmmorrowbooks (us) + @boroughpress (uk). not today, satan.

Organ Meats
K-Ming Chang
[Organ Meats] gets even weirder than what we’ve come to expect from [Chang], taking readers down a surreal path of myth and magic and girls who are dogs who are girls in gorgeous, lyrical prose.
Paperback, 2023
$18.00$9.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Blackouts
Justin Torres
A strange dream-like, reality-like patchwork... This is a book about erasure and time, about storytelling and art and science, and also, if you'll forgive me, about love. I couldn't put it down.
Hardcover, 2023
$30.00$15.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Ilium
Lea Carpenter
At last Lea Carpenter is back (after 2018’s Red, White, Blue) with another sideways approach to the international spy novel—in this one, a young woman is swept off her feet by a much older suitor, but after they’re married, he asks her for a “favor”…never a good thing.
Hardcover, 2024
$27.00$13.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The Lightness
Emily Temple
Meeting @jcgrenn's book club was one of the best and most fun things I did for The Lightness—for anyone who wants to have a very good time talking about books, or just a few new friends, I highly recommend. https://t.co/nORVQxPM9G
Paperback, 2021
$16.99$8.49 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Sonic Life: A Memoir
Thurston Moore
Wanna look cool this fall (and/or fill the Just Kids-sized hole in your literary heart)? Pick up the memoir from Moore, founding member of Sonic Youth, which tells the story of his rise from small-town music fan to rock legend—and which by the way comes with a blurb from Colson Whitehead.
Hardcover, 2023
$35.00$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Our City That Year
Geetanjali Shree
Our City That Year, originally published in Hindi 25 years ago, sounds nonetheless very timely: a book about violence and uncertainty driven by religious difference, about a city imploding while its intellectuals wring their hands and drive themselves to distraction.
Paperback, 2025
$22.99$11.49 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The Nude
C. Michelle Lindley
This debut novel is set on a Greek island off the southern coast, where an art historian is seeking a sculpture: the nude…What trip to the Mediterranean would be complete without a sensual and provocative examination of your own role in global systems of capital and ownership?
Hardcover, 2024
$27.99$13.99 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Hell Bent
Leigh Bardugo
I loved Leigh Bardugo’s first Alex Stern book, Ninth House—basically the perfect book for adults who miss the fantasy novels of their youth. Anyway, the literary fiction world does sequels now, and I’m here for it. Time to go back to the most terrifying version of Yale you’ve ever imagined.
Paperback, Mass Market, 2024
$10.99$5.49 + Free shipping50% off your first book
We Do Not Part
Han Kang
It may be the new year, but it’s still midwinter, the perfect time to disappear into this snowy new novel from our newly minted Nobel Laureate: a dream-narrative of history, remembrance, and friendship rendered in her complex, lyrical prose.
Hardcover, 2025
$28.00$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Tread of Angels
Rebecca Roanhorse
In this tough-as-nails novella ... Roanhorse plays with the notion of purity and original sin... Rebecca Roanhorse is known for her incredible worldbuilding, diverse inspirations, and complex reinterpretations of tropes, and all her talents are perfectly on display in her latest.
Paperback, 2023
$14.99$7.49 + Free shipping50% off your first book