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If you’re curious about what your fellow readers are getting into over on Libby and Goodreads, here are looks at the most read books on Goodreads last week, and the most checked out books on Libby this past month. There’s also some interesting data on audiobook listeners (“…more than half of Americans age 18 and older–51%– have listened to an audiobook”).
As for new books out this week, there is the bookish Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading by Bijal Shah, and the sapphic historical romance A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell.
The new books below have “toxic lesbian vampires,” The Godfather-inspired Southern noir, a historical and personal look at land ownership in Hawai’i, and more.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
I’ve seen my colleague, Editor Danika Ellis, refer to this as “toxic lesbian vampires,” which is enough to sell me on anything, honestly. With its time-spanning narrative, it promises a triptych of sapphic love, rage, and revenge. A young girl in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada makes a damning choice to escape the fate of women; in 1827 London, a privileged woman is sent away after engaging in forbidden love; and in 2019 Boston, a one-night stand sets a girl on the hunt for revenge. Schwab bends genres to tell a story of immortality and hunger.
King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby
The king of Southern noir is back—this time with a book inspired by The Godfather. Roman Carruthers travels home after his father gets in a car accident, only to find things in shambles. His younger brother Dante owes dangerous men money, and his sister Neveah is barely holding the family business—a crematorium—together. Then he finds out that his dad’s accident wasn’t really accidental but the result of Dante’s foolishness. Real mobsters are out and about, and Roman has to use his talent for numbers to pull his family out of a hole. Meanwhile, his sister sets out to try to find out what happened to their mother, who disappeared many years ago.
Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i by Sara Kehaulani Goo
Here, award-winning journalist Sara Kehaulani Goo mixes memoir with collective colonial history to tell the story of how her family fought to keep their ancestral Native Hawaiian lands. These lands—60 acres that stretched from mountain to sea—were given to her family in 1848 by King Kamehameha III, and were just the latest to be looked at by billionaire hotel and retreat owners. Kehaulani Goo peels back the layers the history of lost Hawaiian lands and colonial consumption to carry out her kuleana, or the responsibility she has for stewardship that has been passed down generations.
The Great Mann by Kyra Davis Lurie
I feel like The Great Gatsby, with its stripping down of the upper castes and the American DreamTM, is such ripe retelling fodder for BIPOC authors. In The Great Mann, characters, names, and the setting are all rearranged in an interesting way that adapts the story to Black Americans. It’s 1945 in L.A., and a young army vet, Charlie Trammell, is invited by his cousin Marguerite to the Black and bougie Sugar Hill area. He’s soon swept up by all the possibilities—a dazzling romance, a promising insurance career, and even a life without Jim Crow have all suddenly become a reality. Then there’s James “Reaper” Mann, and his extravagant parties that have the who’s who of Black entertainment. Charlie becomes fascinated with Reaper, and as their bond grows deeper, the white people in the area grow more resentful. They start a landmark court case that might reshape things forever.
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen by Shokoofeh Azar
Shokoofeh Azar, International Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, has granted us a grand family saga that spans 50 years in modern Iran. The many layers of The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen include revolution, politics, love affairs, loss, and all the family complications you can think of—and it starts off extra mysterious. One night, long ago, 12 children became lost inside a mysterious palace. It’s their stories that unfold against a backdrop of a changing Iran.
A Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennant
Okay, this is going to be my next favorite cozy British mystery. I can feel it. My feeling starts with the Murder She Wrote comparison, and carries through to the retired nurse/current gardener/renowned cake maker Jamaican British woman, Miss Hortense, who is already an amateur sleuth when we meet her. But our future favorite amateur detective isn’t without her own dirt. When an unidentified man is found dead in the home of a person from a community of Black investors, it’s Miss Hortense’s past that threatens to be unearthed.
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!
The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.
It’s Pride Month, and while we celebrate queer literature here all year long, we go especially rainbow bold in June. This week, we’re excited to take a look at the favorite queer books of beloved queer authors.
Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
It’s Pride month, which is the perfect excuse to buy and read a bunch of queer books. One method I really enjoy for finding new books is to take the recommendations of my favorite authors. Carmen Maria Machado hasn’t led me astray yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have these authors on speed dial, but luckily, they usually have shared their recommendations publicly.
Below I’ve put together queer book recommendations from 11 beloved queer authors. Some are from interviews where they discussed their favorite books, and others are book blurbs. Both the authors’ works and the books they recommend cover a wide spectrum of genres and formats, including graphic novels, literary fiction, poetry, biographies, horror, sci-fi, YA fantasy, and more, so there’s something for every kind of reader.
Akwaeke Emezi recommends…
Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde
“Some of the most spectacular writing I’ve ever encountered in my life… Vagabonds! brought me to tears because it gave me a world in which my country could be home again.”
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