Books We Can't Wait to Read This May
Fiction
All Adults Here by Emma Straub — May 5 (Riverhead)
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo - May 5 (Quill Tree)
Camino and Yahaira Rios are half-sisters who receive the devastating news that their father has tragically dies in a plane crash. Camino lives in the Dominican Republic and always looks forward to her father’s summer visit every summer. Yahaira, on the other hand, lives in Morningside Heights and last spoke to her father the previous summer when she found out about his other family on the island, For the first time, their lives overlap as they both grieve the loss of their father, learn about each other, and try to unravel their father’s secrets.
Lobizona by Romina Garber - May 5 (St. Martin’s Publishing Group)
Lobizona presents a world of mystery and fantasy with ties to Argentine folklore and Argentine heritage. Manuela Azul is an undocumented immigrant who is on the run from her father’s Argentine crime family. Her family in Miami is small and insulated until her surrogate grandmother is attacked and her mother is arrested by ICE. These events propel her into a search and investigation that uncovers her story.
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas — May 12 (Custom House)
Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire.
Pew by Catherine Lacey — May 12 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.
Boys of Alabama by Genevieve Hudson - May 19 (Liveright)
New to Alabama and the South, German-born Max quickly befriends the football team at his new school. He is surprised by the comradery of his new friends but feels like he is playing “dress-up.” He then meets Pan, the school “witch.” It is through his friendship with Pan that Max finally feels like himself and the two embark on all-consuming friendship. Set in the Southern Gothic genre, Hudson writes about queer love withing a landscape in which God, guns, and football rule and explores masculinity, religion, and immigration.
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones - May 19 (Gallery/Saga Press)
It’s never too early in the year for some horror. Stephen Graham Jones blends horror and a dramatic narrative in a novel that follows four American Indians as an event from their youth comes back into their lives and they find themselves haunted by an entity that is out for revenge.
Alligator & Other Stories by Dima Alzayat - May 29 (Two Dollar Radio)
In her debut collection, Dima Alzayat’s short stories tackle race, childhood, family, and sexism among other themes. Inserting true stories and real figures into her stories that are powerful and unforgettable. From the #MeToo movement, to Etan Patz’s kidnapping to the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple in Florida, Alzayat’s short stories are enough to remind the reader of the shortcomings and injustices in the world.
Nonfiction
Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett — May 5 (Celadon Books)
In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing — May 12 (W. W. Norton Company)
Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.
Brown Album: Essays on Exile and Identity by Porochista Khakpour - May 19 (Knopf)
Porochista Khakpour’s Brown Album is a collection of essays that traverses what it means to be Middle-Eastern and Iranian, an immigrant, and a refugee in the US. Khapour pulls from over ten years of work, chronicling her move to Los Angeles after fleeing from the Iranian Revolution and navigating her new life as she assimilated and rebelled against her life. She touches on her experience as an immigrant following 9/11 and the extremism and fear of the Middle East, as well as the election of Donald Trump.
Stray: A Memoir by Stephanie Danler - May 19 (Knopf)
Stephanie Danler - author of the much loved and celebrated novel Sweetbitter, returns to gift us with a memoir about her difficult past and her relationship with her parents. She confronts the past that she left ten years ago when she moved to New York City. While in New York City she sold her first book which should have made a positive change in her life and made her happy, but she knew something wasn’t right. She found herself back in Southern California where she came face to face with the trauma and heartbreak of her past as she searched for answers about her parents and herself. In Stray Danler exhumes her oast and in an honest and raw exploration shares with us her journey to finally find peace and happiness.
Poetry
White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino —May 5 (Sarabande)
Using a variety of lyric forms, Petrosino examines her genealogical and intellectual roots in Virginia while confronting its legacies of slavery and discrimination. These poems candidly tackle questions of identity, historical injustice, and suffering while suggesting the possibility of greater understanding through scientific innovation.
My Baby First Birthday by Jenny Zhang —May 12 (Tinhouse)
Innocence, accepting pain, womanhood, motherhood, patriarchy, capitalism, and whiteness are just a few of the themes that Jenny Zhang explores in her new poetry collection--My Baby First Birthday. Zhang explores love and who exactly is worthy of it. Within the poems of this collection, you find yourself angry with how women are treated, fetishized, and reduced to their body parts and trauma. As Ariana Reines--author of A Sand Book wrote in her review, “If everything feels stupid and wrong to you, congratulations--read this book.”
Be Straight with Me by Emily Dalton — May 19 (Andrews McMeel Publishing)
Be Straight with Me is an unforgettable memoir-in-verse about a love that blurs the boundaries of gender and sexuality—told from the perspective of a young, straight woman who finds herself in a serious relationship with her gay male best friend. With unabashed honesty and piercing emotional clarity, Emily Dalton brings to life this timely, true story about a nonconforming romance and its consequences.
About Karla Mendez
Karla Mendez is a writer and artist based in Florida. She is obsessed with buying books at a faster pace than she can read. An avid journal keeper, her favorite part of the day is watching the sun rise as she writes. She is always happy to discuss books and films - find her on Instagram at @kmmendez
