Books We Can’t Wait To Read In April 2021
Fiction
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams - April 6 (Ballantine Books)
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means “slave girl,” she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.
Other People's Children by R.J. Hoffmann (Simon & Schuster)
In Other People's Children, three mothers make excruciating choices to protect their families and their dreams--choices that put them at decided odds against one another. You will root for each one of them and wonder just how far you'd go in the same situation. This riveting debut is a thoughtful exploration of love and family, and a heart-pounding page-turner you'll find impossible to put down.
Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins - April 6 (Harper)
Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.
Engrossing, unique, and page-turning, Caul Baby illuminates the search for familial connection, the enduring power of tradition, and the dark corners of the human heart.
Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson - April 6 (William Morrow)
Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of.
Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window—an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears. Later that day though, she spies the old woman again, just minutes before Bree’s infant son vanishes. It happened so quickly—Bree looked away only for a second. There is a note left in his place, warning her that she is being is being watched; if she wants her baby back, she must not call the police or deviate in any way from the instructions that will follow.
To get her baby back, Bree must complete one small—but critical—task. It seems harmless enough, but her action comes with a devastating price.
The Last Exiles by Ann Shin - April 6 (Park Row)
Jin and Suja meet and fall in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She is a young journalist from a prominent family, while he is from a small village of little means. Outside the school, North Korea has fallen under great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, miles away, Suja has begun to feel the tenuousness of her privilege when she learns that Jin has disappeared. Risking everything, and defying her family, Suja sets out to find him, embarking on a dangerous journey that leads her into a dark criminal underbelly and tests their love and will to survive.
What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins - April 13 (Riverhead Books)
In misty, coastal Washington State, Isaac lives alone with his dog, grieving the recent death of his teenage son, Daniel. Next door, Lorrie, a working single mother, struggles with a heinous act committed by her own teenage son. Separated by only a silvery stretch of trees, the two parents are emotionally stranded, isolated by their great losses—until an unfamiliar sixteen-year-old girl shows up, bridges the gap, and changes everything.
Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley - April 20 (Algonquin Books)
Entertaining, sharply funny, and dazzlingly accomplished, Hot Stew confronts questions about wealth and inheritance, gender and power, and the things women must do to survive in an unjust world.
The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin - April 27 (Dutton)
Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days. Until she meets Jake--a troubled, paraplegic teenager, and Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work
As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees--and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves.
Nonfiction
I'm in Seattle, Where Are You?: A Memoir by Mortada Gzar - April 1 (Amazon Crossing)
As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself.
Low Country: A Memoir by J. Nicole Jones - April 13 (Catapult)
J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness.
After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake. And through the lens of her own family's catastrophes and triumphs, Jones pays homage to the landscapes and legends of her childhood home, a region haunted by its history
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner - April 20 (Knopf)
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Paris Without Her: A Memoir by Gregory Curtis - April 20 (Knopf)
At the age of sixty-six, after thirty-five years of marriage, Gregory Curtis finds himself a widower. Tracy--with whom he fell in love the first time he saw her--has succumbed to a long battle with cancer. Paralyzed by grief, agonized by social interaction, Curtis turns to watching magic lessons on DVD--"a pathetic, almost comical substitute" for his evenings with Tracy.
To break the spell, he returns to the place he had the "best and happiest times" of his life. As he navigates the storied city and contemplates his new future, Curtis relives his days in Paris with Tracy, piecing together the portrait of a woman, a marriage, parenthood, and his life's great love through the memories of six unforgettable trips to the City of Lights.
Poetry
Pelted By Flowers: Poems by Kali Lightfoot - April 2 (CavanKerry Press)
Kali Lightfoot’s kindergarten teacher told her parents that Kali had “a well-developed sense of beauty and can skip with both feet.” This proved prophetic for a life that has included a number of careers and passions—Lightfoot has earned a master's degree in physical education, worked as an executive and a teacher, served as a wilderness ranger, managed educational travel, and provided body-oriented psychotherapy. After gaining her sobriety and coming out as queer, Lightfoot returned to poetry at the age of sixty-five, earning her MFA at age seventy. In a debut collection of poems that favor a narrative style but also experiment successfully with poetic forms, Lightfoot writes in a voice that is by turns wistful, comedic, and grave. After a long career, she has come late and happily to a life in poetry.
Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat by Khalisa Rae - April 13 (Red Hen Press)
What happens when a Midwestern girl migrates to a haunted Southern town, whose river is a graveyard, whose streets bear the names of Southern slave owners?
Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day. This debut poetry collection summons multiple hauntings—ghosts of matriarchs that came before, those that were slain, and those that continue to speak to us, but also those horrors women of color strive to put to rest. Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat examines the haunting feeling of facing past demons while grappling with sexism, racism, and bigotry. They are all present: ancestral ghosts, societal ghosts, and spiritual, internal hauntings. This book calls out for women to speak their truth in hopes of settling the ghosts or at least being at peace with them.
Catcalling by Lee Soho - April 13 (Open Letter)
Lee Soho’s debut collection of poems is an experimental lyric bildungsroman that confronts dynamics of abuse as it challenges poetic form. Catcalling exposes and ridicules the violences that the speaker-protagonist Kyungjin encounters as she navigates a patriarchal world. Divided in to five formally distinct sections―ranging from lyric to prose poems to experimental mash-ups to concrete forms―the book begins in Kyungjin’s childhood home as she recounts the haunting claustrophobia of verbal and psychological abuse, and follows her into the world as an emerging female poet navigating pervasive sexism in the era of Korea’s own movement against sexual violence and the global #MeToo movement.
