The Best New Book Releases Out April 22, 2025

These linked new stories by the award-winning author follow families, loners, and lovers, all as they wrestle with the alienation that comes with different generations and social classes. The “-ists” here are everything from insurrectionists to cosmetologists—there’s a bodybuilder who is living the life an incel wished they were; a woman who thinks her young son-in-law likes to watch older people do the nasty; and a suburban dad whose desire to host refugees in the tiny house in his backyard borders on obsession.

Jerkins’ (Caul Baby) latest has this vital duality. It’s about the lasting consequences of slavery, just as it is about the power of love. It’s 1865, and Harrison has been discharged from the Union Army as a free man, so he tries to reunite with his love, Tirzah. His plans get rearranged, though, after he settles with another woman after a tragedy. Then there’s Tirzah, who teaches at the Freedman’s School. She sees an ad in the paper looking for her and knows it’s Harrison looking for her, but the state of the world, despite her new freedom, means reuniting with him is full of risk. Jerkins’ narrative sweeps over generations, and 150 years later, in 2019 Harlem, Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party, and he gives her a crumbling, aged love letter. The question of whether their connection was some sort of cosmic reconciliation, started generations ago, arises.

Here, Henry is giving us writers-turned-lovers like she has before, but with a twist. The writers in question are Alice Scott, the sunshiney writer hungry for that big break, and Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning grouch. The two are on an island called Little Crescent because they’re both vying to write the biography of the legendary Margaret Ives—an 80-something-year-old heiress and former tabloid princess who hasn’t been seen in years. The twist comes in the form of them both being given a one-month trial period for Margaret to see who she likes best to write her story. Thing is, she’s not actually telling them everything, and depending who’s telling her story, it could appear to be a tragedy or an homage to love. What’s more, the developing tension between the two writers is turning into its own narrative.

This is a queer love story unlike any I’ve ever come across. There’s Hollis, who lives in a dead-end kind of blue-collar town, and who only seems to enjoy himself when he’s with his popular girl best friends…or fighting. But his tendency to throw hands isn’t his only problem—once he meets a stranger named Walt, he ends up making a deal at the crossroads. Now, he’s losing control of his body and mind to Walt, a ghost with a violent past who has some scores to settle. The two of them eventually start working together to achieve Walt’s goal, but then they grow closer. The resulting bond becomes romantic, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how awkward it is to low-key be in love with the ghost who’s possessing you.

This chronicles the very deliberate effort to destroy First Nations communities and cultures by way of cultural genocide. From the mid-1800s to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Indigenous American children were stolen from their families and forced to go to boarding schools that were sponsored by the US government—and which had virtually no regulation. At the schools, they were abused and discouraged from engaging in their traditions and culture through violence. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember explores the long-term ramifications of attending these loveless institutions, detailing how her mother, having attended one, set the stage for a fraught mother-daughter dynamic.