Books We Can't Wait to Read This March
Spring is almost here! And what better way to celebrate this restorative season than with a brand new list of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Here are 15 titles we can’t wait to dive into this month.
Fiction
Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth — March 3 (Graywolf Press)
In this comical-political novel, two auditors for the U.S. egg industry goes rogue and steals an entire egg farm's worth of animals. Whirling with an assortment of voices, Barn 8 delves into the minds of these two rogues, hundreds of activists, a forest ranger, a security guard, and into the thoughts of hens and what they think happens when they die. Deb Olin Unferth writes an unforgettable novel about something that needs to change in the industry and the world.
Deacon King Kong by James McBride — March 3 (Penguin Random House)
From the author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water comes James McBride’s newest novel about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting. In September 1969, the Five Ends Baptist Church deacon pulls a gun out and in front of everyone, shoots the project’s drug dealer. McBride enters the minds of everyone who was involved from the victim, to the police, and to the neighbors. Deacon King Kong is a novel that will validate there’s forgiveness, love, and faith in everyone.
The Exhibition of Persephone Q by Jessi Jezewska Stevens — March 3 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
As part of the Wall Street Journal and Vogue’s most anticipated releases of 2020, The Exhibition of Persephone Q takes place in post 9/11 Manhattan in this dark and witty satire about how easy it is to lose ourselves and identity in the modern age when you’re alienated from your family, home, and the city where you live that is in a sinister state of constant change.
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich — March 3 (Harper Collins)
National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich brings this new fictional novel that is based on her grandfather who worked as a night watchman and fought against Native dispossession in the U.S. The novel follows characters Thomas Wazhashk, a night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, Patrice, a high school class valedictorian working at the jewel bearing plant, a Chippewa boxer named Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach as they learn to fight and cope against the new emancipation bill that is on its way to the United States Congress while also trying to find themselves in this new era where their identities are being attacked.
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey — March 3 (Riverhead Books)
Big Burr, Kansas is labeled as “the most homophobic town in the US” and a group of queer social activists decides to send in a task force to broaden the hearts and minds of the town by living and working in the community for two years, in Celia Laskey’s Under the Rainbow. From characters who are uprooted and forced into a new life to characters who are grieving the loss of a child and to those who believe the newcomers are interfering with life in Big Burr, tensions are high but it’s easy to forget that humanity is more alike than not.
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell — March 10 (Harper Collins)
Entertainment Weekly’s breakout author to watch in 2020 Kate Elizabeth Russell is on the most anticipated books this year for over a dozen groups including The New York Times, Bustle, and USA Today with her debut release of My Dark Vanessa. Alternating between her past and present, My Dark Vanessa is a dark thought-provoking novel that covers trauma, consent, repercussions, and victimhood.
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel — March 24 ( Penguin Random House)
From the award-winning author of Station Eleven comes a new exhilarating novel that takes readers through a wide array of landscapes of luxury, underground clubs, and campgrounds for the near-homeless. Set at the intersection of two seemingly different events, a Ponzi scheme and the disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea, Emily St. John Mandel captivates greed, love, delusion, and all the ways in which we search for meaning in our lives in this beautifully mysterious novel.
Lakewood by Megan Giddings — March 24 (Harper Collins)
In this startling debut novel about class and race, Lakewood conjures a terrifying world of medical experimentation and how far some people are willing to go for the sake of their family. When a new job seems too good to be true, Lena Johnson discovers that the secret program she’s involved in can change the world and the cost comes from the sacrifices of the black subjects like Lena.
Nonfiction
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall — March 3 (Viking Press)
In this unforgettable collection of essays, Mikki Kendall argues that the modern feminist movement is failing to address all women but rather is increasing the privilege of the few. She makes a call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement and to stop oppressing not just others, but ourselves.
Thin Places: Essay from In Between by Jordan Kisner — March 3 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
When Jordan Kisner was a child, she was saved by Jesus Christ at summer camp, much to the confusion of her nonreligious family. In this perceptive and provocative essay collection, she shares her personal and reportorial investigation into America’s search for meaning. Her celebrated essay “Thin Places” (Best American Essays 2016), about an experimental neurosurgery developed to treat severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, asks how putting the neural touchpoint of the soul on a pacemaker may collide science and psychology with philosophical questions about illness, the limits of the self, and spiritual transformation. How should she understand the appearance of her own obsessive-compulsive disorder at the very age she lost her faith?
Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir by Rebecca Solnit — March 10 (Penguin Random House)
In this argumentative memoir, Rebecca Solnit reminisces about what it was like as a writer and feminist in 1980s San Francisco where there was a constant state of gender violence and exclusion of women throughout society and culture. Solnit refuses to stay silent in a society that is trying to silence her and argues that women are not just impacted by their own personal experiences, but by a society who uses violence against women who pervade.
Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby — March 31 (Penguin Random House)
Samantha Irby releases a new smart, edgy, hilarious, and raunchy essay collection about her new life in a small town. Irby is forty and uncomfortable in her own skin. She’s left her job as a receptionist a veterinary clinic, left Chicago and now lives in a house with a garden and her wife in the middle of a Red state where she makes mason jar salads. Wow, No Thank You is an unflinching and relatable ideal of what it’s like to get older and leave an old life for a new one.
Poetry
I Hope You Stay by Courtney Peppernell — March 3 (Andrew McMeel Publishing)
After her bestselling series Pillow Thoughts, Courtney Peppernell returns with a new and empowering collection of poetry covering topics from heartbreak to finding new love and is a reminder that hope can heal pain.
Postcolonial Love Poem: Poems by Natalie Diaz — March 3 (Graywolf Press)
In this highly anticipated follow up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem against erasure and the wounds inflicted by America onto indigenous people, Latinx, black, and brown. In these words, a future is being built and Natalie Diaz is choosing to love and create and believe in the goodness of humanity.
A fire like you by Upile Chisala — March 10 (Andrew McMeel Publishing)
A beautiful collection of poetry commemorating the moments of triumph and despair in our lives and how they can be used as opportunities for growth. In Upile Chisala’s third book, a fire like you, she explores her identity and experiences as a black Malawian woman and the universal message of self-love.
About Chelsea Wolfe
Chelsea Wolfe is a writer and mother from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has a bachelor’s in Creative Writing & English and is currently working towards her master’s. Chelsea is an avid reader of mainly YA and Adult fiction, she writes book reviews on her site and keeps track of her reading through Goodreads. She’s written articles and stories for several sites and posts most of her work on Instagram, Wattpad and her lifestyle blog, Coffee, Children & Chaos.