The June 2023 Prepub Alert posts are also available as a downloadable spreadsheet of titles.

Fiction

Mystery

Beutner, Katharine. Killingly. Soho Crime. Jun. 2023. 360p. ISBN 9781641294379. $27.95. MYSTERY/GOTHIC

Davis, Fiona. The Spectacular. Dutton. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780593184042. $28. lrg. prnt. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Doiron, Paul. Dead Man’s Wake. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250864390. $28. Downloadable. MYSTERY

James, Miranda. Hiss Me Deadly. Berkley. (Cat in the Stacks, Bk. 15). Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593199497. $27. MYSTERY/COZY

Lin, Ed. Death Doesn’t Forget. Soho Crime. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781641293273. $27.95; pap. ISBN 9781641294805. $16.95. MYSTERY/INTERNATIONAL

Schellman, Katharine. The Last Drop of Hemlock. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Nightingale, Bk. 2). Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781250831842. $28. MYSTERY

Taylor, Sarah Stewart. A Stolen Child. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Maggie D’arcy, Bk. 4). Jun. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781250826688. $28. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

An Edmund White Award winner for her debut, Alcestis, Beutner draws on the actual 1897 disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in Killingly, a gothic tale that plumbs missing Bertha’s secrets and those of her loner friend, Agnes. Best-selling historical fiction pro Davis goes Spectacular in 1950s New York, where newbie Rockette Marion Brooks joins with Peter Griggs—a mental health specialist promoting psychological profiling—to help the police investigate a series of bombings that have shaken the city. In Edgar Award–winning Doiron’s Dead Man’s Wake, Maine Game Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch witnesses a hit-and-flee speedboat plowing into two swimmers and suspects murder when he learns that the victims were a badly slashed up man and his married lover (100,000-copy first printing). A troubled soul in high school, Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill returns to town as a major music star, but in the New York Times best-selling James’s Hiss Me Deadly he’s getting threats that lead to a band member’s death and sets librarian Charlie Harris and bewhiskered kitty Diesel into action; originally scheduled for March 2022. Proprietor of a busy food stand at Taipei’s largest night market, Jing-nan gets framed for several big-news murders unfolding during the Austronesian Cultural Festival in Lin’s Death Doesn’t Forget. After a first outing in Schellman’s Suspense Magazine best-booked The Body in the Garden, Vivian Kelly returns in The Last Drop of Hemlock, now working full-time at the freewheeling speakeasy the Nightingale and determined to investigate the poisoning of doorman Pearlie, incongruously ruled a suicide (40,000-copy first printing). Long Island homicide detective–turned–Garda officer in Dublin, Ireland, Taylor's Maggie D’arcy is brought in on a case using her detective skills to locate the Stolen Child of a murdered model (50,000-copy first printing).

Literary Fiction

Allende, Isabel. The Wind Knows My Name. Ballantine. Jun. 2023. 272p. tr. from Spanish by Francis Riddle. ISBN 9780593598108. $28. CD. LITERARY

Appelfeld, Aharon. Poland, a Green Land. Schocken: Pantheon. Jun. 2023. 240p. tr. from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman. ISBN 9780805243611. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

Ford, Richard. Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel. Ecco. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780061692086. $30. lrg. prnt. CD. LITERARY

Medie, Peace Adzo. Nightbloom. Algonquin. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781643752846. $28. Downloadable. LITERARY

Moore, Lorrie. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home. Knopf. Jun. 2023. 208p. ISBN 9780307594143. $27. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Rachman, Tom. The Imposters. Little, Brown. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780316552851. $29. Downloadable. LITERARY

Schulman, Helen. Lucky Dogs. Knopf. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780593536230. $29. LITERARY

Slimani, Leila. Watch Us Dance. Viking. Jun. 2023. 288p. tr. from French by Sam Taylor. ISBN 9780593493304. $27. LITERARY

In The Wind Knows My Name, the celebrated Allende blends two bitter tales of separation: in 1938 Vienna, Samuel Adler is placed on a Kindertransport train by his mother so that he can escape the Nazis, while in 2019 Arizona, Anita Díaz is pulled from her mother at the U.S. border after they have fled El Salvador for safety. In the latest from multi-award-winning Israeli author Appelfeld, Tel Aviv shopkeeper Yaakov Fine decides to travel to Poland, A Green Land, to visit his parents’ ancestral village and is delighted by all he sees until he tries to purchase the tombstones from the Jewish cemetery desecrated during the Holocaust. With Be Mine, Pulitzer Prize winner Ford offers his final Frank Bascombe novel, with Frank in his twilight years facing the heart-shredding task of tending a son diagnosed with ALS (100,000-copy first printing). Following the Reese’s Book Club Pick His Only Wife, Medie’s Nightbloom features Selasi and Akorfa, cousins and best female friends in Ghana until Selasi becomes angry and withdrawn for reasons that take decades to emerge. In I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, her first novel in over a decade, PEN/Malamud and Rea Award winner Moore plumbs love and mortality in a tale interweaving vanished journals, a visit to a dying brother, and the questionable death of a therapy clown and an assassin. A novel-in-stories like Rachman’s 500,000-copy best-selling debut, The Imperfectionists, The Impostors sets end-of-rope novelist Dora Frenhofer the task of completing her final book in pandemic lockdown, as she comes to understand her own life by contemplating her missing brother, estranged daughter, lost lover, and one enduring friend (40,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Schulman’s Lucky Dogs, two women (one a U.S. television star seeking anonymity) forge a friendship while waiting on an ice cream line in Paris, but despite a shared history of having experienced male violence, one will betray the other. From Slimani, author of the New York Times best-booked The Perfect Nanny, Watch Us Dance portrays biracial siblings in late 1960s Morocco (their father is Moroccan, their mother French) who deal differently with the era’s uncertainties; tough-minded Aicha wants to study medicine in France, while her rebellious younger brother Selim would rather hang out with the hippies converging on his country.

Literary Fiction Debuts

Ani Kayode Somtochukwu. And Then He Sang a Lullaby. Roxane Gay: Grove Atlantic. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780802160751. $27. LITERARY

Track star August left Enugu City, Nigeria, for one of the country's universities far from his domineering sisters and thoughts of the mother he never knew, and he’s doing pretty well, making friends and enjoying his studies. But he feels relentlessly pulled toward the openly gay Segun, who works at a local cybercafe and won’t get involved unless August can commit wholeheartedly. Then Nigeria’s notorious antigay laws are passed. The inaugural title in Roxane Gay’s new imprint.

Basham, Brendan Shay. Swim Home to the Vanished. Harper. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780063241084. $30. LITERARY

Devastated by his younger brother’s drowning, Damien leaves home in his rusty truck and keeps driving until he finds an isolated fishing village where he feels he can escape the past. Unfortunately, the village is ruled by a family of brujas (witches), and his arrival is clouded by a young woman’s recent death. Woven into the narrative is the haunting recall of the Long Walk, the deportation of the Diné from their lands. Diné author Basham is a Pushcart and PEN/Robert J. Dau prize winner; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Gawad, Aisha Abdel. Between Two Moons. Doubleday. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780385548618. $28.LITERARY

Twin sisters Amira and Lina, who live in a Muslim neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, are graduating from high school. But their excitement is dimmed by their troublesome older brother’s return from prison, a police raid on a local business that sets off protests, and a sudden act of violence that pulls everyone apart. A story of family, community, and Islamophobia; from Pushcart Prize winner Gawad.

Go, Nathan. Forgiving Imelda Marcos. Farrar. Jun. 2023. 240p. ISBN 9780374606947. $26. LITERARY

Holed up in a Manila nursing home with a serious heart condition, Lito Macaraeg writes to his estranged journalist son in the United States, offering him a scoop about a secret meeting between Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino on the night Corazon’s husband was reputedly killed by Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. How does Lito know about the meeting? He was Corazon’s chauffeur. From a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow; with a 35,000-copy first printing.

Lin, Katherine. You Can’t Stay Here Forever. Harper. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780063241435. $30. LITERARY

After her dashing young husband is killed in a car wreck, Ellie Huang learns that he was having an affair with one of her colleagues and impetuously cashes in his life insurance to fund a sojourn at the fabled Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, France, with best friend Mable Chou. There, they share long, leisurely dinners with a couple they meet—until secrets boil over. Probing not just love and loss but interracial relationships and issues surrounding Asian American assimilation.

Willis, Deborah. Girlfriend on Mars. Norton. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780393285918. $28. LITERARY

Amber Kivinen is competing on a reality TV show with a difference: she wants to win one of two seats on the first human mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. That means leaving behind Adam, her puzzled boyfriend of 14 years. This debut novel from acclaimed Canadian short story writer Willis is based on a short story that has been optioned for film.

Thriller Series

Gaylin, Alison. Robert B. Parker’s Bad Influence. Putnam. (Sunny Randall, Bk. 11). Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780593540527. $29. CD. THRILLER

Johansen, Iris. The Survivor. Grand Central. (Eve Duncan). Jun. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9781538726372. $29. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Offutt, Chris. Code of the Hills. Grove. (Mick Hardin, Bk. 3). Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780802161918. $27. THRILLER

Patterson, James & Adam Hamdy. Private Moscow. (Private, Bk. 14). Grand Central. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781538752647. $32; pap. ISBN 9781538752661. $18.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER

Patterson, James & Brendan DuBois. Cross Down: An Alex Cross and John Sampson Thriller. Little, Brown. (Alex Cross). Jun. 2023. 448p. ISBN 9780316404594. $30. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Petrie, Nick. The Heavy Lift. (Peter Ash, Bk. 8). Putnam. Jun. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780593540558. $28. THRILLER

Rollins, James. Tides of Fire. Morrow. (Sigma Force, Bk. 23). Jun. 2023. 448p. ISBN 9780062893079. $32. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Woods, Stuart. Near Miss. (Stone Barrington, Bk. 64). Putnam. Jun. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593540060. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

With Robert B. Parker’s Bad Influence, the Edgar and Shamus Award–winning Gaylin becomes the first female author to enter the legendary Parker’s universe, with Parker's only female series protagonist, PI Sunny Randall, acting as bodyguard to an Instagram influencer. In Johansen’s The Survivor, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and archaeologist Riley Smith trek through the jungles of Laos, intent on finding (and saving) a rare animal threatened with extinction (100,000-copy first printing). Passing through Kentucky in Offutt’s Code of the Hills, Mick Hardin has every intention of heading on to France but instead gets caught up in helping sheriff sister Linda investigate the murder of a popular mechanic at the local racetrack. Jack Morgan of the investigation agency Private is standing in the New York Stock Exchange with a former U.S. Marine buddy when his buddy is shot to death, leaving Jack to follow clues to Russia; Patterson and Hamdy’s Private Moscow is the first “Private” thriller since 2018. With Alex Cross Down owing to serious injury, John Sampson is left alone to deal with a series of ferocious, seemingly unrelated military-style attacks; Patterson and DuBois reunite. In Petrie’s The Heavy Lift, veteran Peter Ash is helping loyal friend Lewis get beyond the criminal life by tracking down an associate, but all they find is a burnt-down cabin—with notebooks that could incriminate Lewis now unaccounted for. In Rollins’s Tides of Fire, a military submarine’s disappearance off Australia’s coast leads to warfare in a dead sea recently found to be rich with bioluminescent coral, and the subsequent geological disaster destabilizes an entire region (250,000-copy first printing). From the late Woods, Near Miss is another—and maybe final?—Stone Barrington title.

Thriller Stand-Alones

Bartz, Andrea. The Spare Room. Ballantine. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781984820495. $28.99. SUSPENSE

Stuck during Covid lockdown in the apartment she shares with the man who just canceled their wedding, Kelly gladly accepts an offer to move into the secluded Virginia mansion of childhood friend Sabrina—now a best-selling author—and her master-of-the-universe husband. Soon, she finds herself enchanted by her hosts, and they indicate their willingness to become a threesome, but then she learns some things about their past that give her pause. Following We Were Never Here, a Reese's Book Club Pick.

Chavez, Heather. Before She Finds Me. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780316531351. $28. THRILLERS/DOMESTIC

Delivering daughter Cora to college, Julia Bennett barely saves her from a violent attack on campus and suspects (given her own hidden past) that the attack was not as random as claimed. Meanwhile, when trained assassin Ren Petrovic learns about the attack, she thinks it looks exactly as if it were executed by husband and colleague in arms Nolan, but he never told her about it. From the rising star who wrote No Bad Deed and Blood Will Tell; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Clarke, Amy Suiter. Lay Your Body Down. Morrow. Jun. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9780358418313. $30. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

When Del Walker left behind her Minnesota hometown and its overweening church, she also left behind Lars, the man she loved, who had chosen to marry another. When he is killed six years later, she becomes suspicious and returns to find the church a full-blown cult run by the scarily patriarchal Pastor Rick Franklin. Now she must dig through layers of lies—and face her own long-buried religious trauma—to find out what happened. From the author of the acclaimed Girl, 11; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Cosby, S.A. All the Sinners Bleed. Flatiron: Macmillan. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9781250831910. $27.99. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Disgusted by the racist police force he encounters when he returns to his small Southern hometown, FBI agent Titus Crown tosses his name in the ring and becomes the town’s first Black sheriff. A year later, after his deputies shoot a young Black man to death, he investigates what happened and finds himself on the trail of a serial killer. From the author of the New York Times best-selling Razorblade Tears.

Heaberlin, Julia. Night Will Find You. Flatiron: Macmillan. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9781250877079. $27.99. SUSPENSE

Vivvy Bouchet may be an astrophysicist, but years ago she used her psychic skills to save the life of a child. Now that child is full grown and a cop, and he’s desperate for her second-sight help in solving a still-newsworthy cold case involving a kidnapped girl. From the author of the internationally best-selling Black-Eyed Susans; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Quirk, Matthew. Inside Threat. Morrow. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780063051683. $30. CD. THRILLER/ESPIONAGE

With the White House under attack, the President has fled to a doomsday bunker outside Washington, DC, with only the most trustworthy staff in his wake. One of them is Secret Service Agent Erik Hill, who comes to realize that the current attack has been fomented from within. From the New York Times best-selling author of Red Warning; with a 150,000-copy first printing.

Sager, Riley. The Only One Left. Dutton. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780593183229. $28. SUSPENSE

Only young Leonora survived her family’s vicious slaughter in 1929, and town gossip blames her for the deaths despite an absence of proof. Since then, she’s refused to leave her family’s crumbling mansion high on Maine’s coastline, and by 1983 she’s in need of a caregiver. Home-health aide Kit McDeere takes the job, and one night, Leonora, rendered mute by a series of strokes, taps out a single sentence on the typewriter: “I want to tell you everything.” From the New York Times best-selling Sager, a LibraryReads Hall of Famer.

Trussoni, Danielle. The Puzzle Master. Random. Jun. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780593595299. $27. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/SUPERNATURAL

Imprisoned for murder but refusing to speak of her crime, Jess Price draws a puzzle that her psychiatrist believes may explain what happened, and celebrated puzzle constructor Mike Brink is asked to take a look. Soon, Mike realizes that Jess is hiding something more terrifying than her crime, which leads him to the God Puzzle, a prayer circle created by the 13th-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia. From New York Times best-selling Angelology author Trussoni.

Thriller Debuts

Adelman, Melissa. What the Neighbors Saw. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250876560. $28. CD/downloadable. SUSPENSE

Pregnant Alexis and lawyer husband Sam, who’s on the cusp of making partner, are thrilled with the Cape Cod fixer-upper they’ve just bought in a fancy Washington, DC, suburb. Their joy is short-lived, however, as neighbor Teddy is found murdered on the banks of the Potomac and secrets start crawling up through the cracks of a now-divided neighborhood. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Cochran, Rachel. The Gulf. Harper. Jun. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780063284128. $30. CD. THRILLER

In 1970s Gulf-coast Texas, 29-year-old Lou is mourning her brother’s death in Vietnam while helping to renovate the crumbling mansion of her older neighbor, Miss Kate. Then Miss Kate is murdered, and no one—including Miss Kate’s grasping daughter, who’s arrived in town to reclaim the house—seems to care about finding the killer. From Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner fiction award winner Cochran; with a 35,000-copy first printing.

Gilbert, Sian. She Started It. Morrow. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780063286290. $30. CD. SUSPENSE

Once close friends who have drifted apart, Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe decide to accept an invitation for an all-expenses-paid meetup in the Bahamas from Poppy Greer, who always hopefully skirted their group. Poppy is clearly prospering, and the island is gorgeous—but it’s also remote and precisely the sort of place where ugly secrets can come out in the open and wreak havoc. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Kvensler, Ulf. The Couples Trip. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781335455000. $27.99. CD. SUSPENSE

Each year, Anna, Henrik, and Milena take a big hike together in the rugged mountains of northern Sweden. This year, however, Anna and Henrik agree to let Milena’s boyfriend, Jacob, come along. Big mistake. Screenwriter/showrunner Kvensler’s first effort won the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers' Best Debut of the Year and was short-listed for the Crimetime Award; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Michallon, Clémence. The Quiet Tenant. Knopf. Jun. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780593534649. $28. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

Good neighbor Aidan has a secret: he’s a serial killer who has already dispatched eight women and has a ninth, Rebecca, imprisoned in a backyard shed awaiting the knife. Compelled to move with his daughter, Aidan must bring Rebecca along but wagers that she is too cowed after five years of captivity to attempt escape. But Rebecca is tougher than he thinks. A big-news debut that inspired 30 international auctions.

Stewart, Polly. The Good Ones. Harper. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780063234154. $30. THRILLER

There were signs of struggle when Lauren Ballard disappeared 20 years ago, leaving her husband and young daughter bereft. Now her friend Nicola Bennett has returned to their Appalachian hometown, newly unemployed and still trying to figure out what happened to Lauren. No one else seems to care anymore, but Nicola soon uncovers some shocking secrets. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Wilding, Rose. Speak of the Devil. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250886934. $28. CD. SUSPENSE

An ex, a wife, a widow, a teenager with a crush, a mother figure, a friend, and a journalist—seven women, all linked to a man who has been murdered, and all with a reason to kill him. They swear that they didn’t do it, and to protect themselves, they’re joining forces to figure out who did. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Historical Fiction

Benedict, Marie, & Victoria Christopher Murray. The First Ladies. Berkley. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593440285. $28. CD. HISTORICAL

Harmel, Kristin. The Paris Daughter. Gallery: S. & S. Jun. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9781982191702. $28.99. CD. HISTORICAL

James, Tania. Loot. Knopf. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593535974. $28. HISTORICAL

Kiernan, Stephen P. The Glass Château. Morrow. Jun. 2023. 384p. ISBN 9780063227316. $30. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

See, Lisa. Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. Scribner. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9781982117085. $28. HISTORICAL

Tsukiyama, Gail. The Brightest Star. HarperVia. Jun. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780063213753. $32. HISTORICAL

Williams, Beatriz. The Beach at Summerly. Morrow. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780063020849. $30. lrg. prnt. CD. HISTORICAL

From Benedict and Murray, the New York Times best-selling authors of the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian, The First Ladies assays the relationship between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, whose parents were once enslaved. In the New York Times best-selling Harmel’s The Paris Daughter, Elise must go into hiding when the Germans occupy Paris during World War II and entrusts her young daughter to friend Juliette—their two girls are close—only to discover at war’s end that Juliette has vanished and only one girl (but which one?) survived a bombing. In lates 1700s India, 17-year-old Abbas works under French clockmaker Lucien du Leze to create a massive tiger automaton for Tipu Sultan (called the Tiger of Mysore), then returns to apprentice with du Leze in France and eventually heads to England to rescue his tiger, which British forces treated as Loot; James’s The Tusk That Did the Damage was a San Francisco Chronicle best book. Wandering through devastated post–World War II France, Asher finds sanctuary (but hides his Jewish identity) at The Glass Château, where glass is being manufactured to replace the shattered windows of postwar France’s cathedrals: award-winning journalist/novelist Kiernan was inspired by the life of Marc Chagall. In the New York Times best-selling See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, Yunxian is trained by her physician grandmother in 15th-century China and works with a young midwife, but an arranged marriage threatens to confine her to a life of wifely subordination. Following Tsukiyama’s much-praised The Color of Air, The Brightest Star reimagines the life of Anna May Wong, the only Asian American woman to achieve fame in Hollywood’s early days. In the New York Times best-selling Williams’s The Beach at Summerly, caretaker’s daughter Emilia Winthrop is thrilled when charismatic role model Olive Rainsford arrives at Winthrop Island’s Summerly estate in 1946, then is thrown into turmoil when she learns that someone at Summerly is transmitting secrets to the Soviets.

Contemporary Pop Fiction

Audrain, Ashley. The Whispers. Viking. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781984881694. $28. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Nonfiction

Our World, Today & Tomorrow

Hershfield, Hal. Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. Little, Brown Spark. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780316421256. $29. Downloadable. PSYCHOLOGY

Johnson, Scott C. The Con Queen of Hollywood. Harper. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780063036932. $32. TRUE CRIME

Leach, Samantha. The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia. Legacy Lit: Hachette. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780306826917. $29. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Mahfouz, Sola & Malaina Kapoor. Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education. Ballantine. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593359761. $28. MEMOIR

Patterson, Scott. Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis. Scribner. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781982179939. $30. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Rothstein, Lean & Richard Rothstein. Just Action: Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted under the Color of Law. Liveright: Norton. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781324093244. $25. SOCIAL SCIENCE/DISCRIMINATION

Waldman, Michael. The Supermajority: The Year the Supreme Court Divided America. S. & S. Jun. 2023. 480p. ISBN 9781668006061. $29.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

A professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Hershfield illuminates an idea that’s recently been in the news: to improve your life now, you need to work harder to imagine and connect meaningfully to Your Future Self (45,000-copy first printing). With The Con Queen of Hollywood, award-winning investigative journalist Johnson expands on his Hollywood Reporter story about the con artist who managed to rip off millions of dollars from people in the entertainment industry (100,000-copy first printing). With The Elissas, Leach presents a cautionary tale centering on best friend Elissa, who was thrown out of private school and sent to a $10,000-a-month boarding school for troubled teenagers, where she bonded with classmates named (eerily) Alissa and Alyssa; Elissa died of encephalitis shortly after graduating, and her two friends subsequently succumbed to drug use (60,000-copy first printing). As a girl in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Mahfouz was denied an education but still entertained Defiant Dreams, teaching herself mathematics at age 16 and sneaking into Pakistan to take the SATs; she eventually escaped to the United States and is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University. Patterson’s Chaos Kings focuses on the Universa fund to illuminate the activities of high-risk traders who go after so-called black swans—unforeseeable upheavals that can yield billions in profits. Having explained in the nearly million-copy best-selling The Color of Law how U.S. federal, state, and local governments have not just facilitated but actively created segregation, Richard Rothstein teams with housing policy expert (and daughter) Leah Rothstein in Just Action to explain how segregation can be dismantled, focusing on what local organizations can do about securing renters’ rights, diversifying exclusively white areas, and more. President of the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, Waldman shows how the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative Supermajority has driven the Court’s rulings far from what most people in the country want and what the implications will be.

Memoir

Beach, Natalie. Adult Drama: And Other Essays. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781335914026. $27.99. MEMOIR

Beach follows up her viral New York Magazine essay "I Was Caroline Calloway," about her toxic ties with the famed Instagram influencer, by framing details of own life—her triumphs and disappointments, political activism and fashion tastes—within a broader cultural assessment. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Bell, Darrin. The Talk. Holt. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9781250805140. $29.99. MEMOIR

A Pulitzer Prize winner for Editorial Cartooning, Bell uses the graphic format to elucidate the conversation parents must have with Black children about racism and its concurrent threat of violence, recalling his mother explaining why he couldn’t play with a white friend’s water gun. As he considers the long-term impact of such conversations, he faces the need to have “the talk” with his own son. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Brokaw, Tom. Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story. Random. Jun. 2023. 160p. ISBN 9780593596371. $28. lrg. prnt. MEMOIR

Legendary broadcast journalist Brokaw shows where he got his grit by recalling his parents, who toughed out the Depression and World War II with equanimity. His mother Jean’s farming family lost everything in the Depression, while his father, Red, left school in second grade to help support the family but acquired skills in mechanics that eventually led him to work for the Army Corps of Engineers. Inspired by Red’s memoirs, recorded late in life.

Ellis, Helen. Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage. Doubleday. Jun. 2023. 224p. ISBN 9780385548205. $26. MEMOIR

The New York Times best-selling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code, Alabama-born Ellis lives in a New York apartment that really does have a coral lounge, so vibrant that someone left her a sticky note asking for the color. Here she recalls the lounge as refuge during the pandemic.

Gill, Charlotte. Almost Brown: A Memoir. Crown. Jun. 2023. 256p. ISBN 9780593443019. $27. MEMOIR

An award-winning Canadian author whose tree-planting memoir, Eating Dirt, was a No. 1 national best seller in Canada, Gill returns with another memoir, this time plumbing her life as the daughter of an Indian father and English mother who met and married in 1960s London. The obstacles her parents faced at the time (not so open to interracial unions) and issues she faced growing up—what does the social construct person of color mean for her, and why does she sometimes feel distant from her father?—are delineated here.

Hodes, Martha. My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering. Harper. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780062699794. $32. CD. MEMOIR

NYU professor Hodes had a particular reason for wanting to revisit the September 1970 hijacking of four planes leaving Tel Aviv by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At age 12, traveling unaccompanied with her 13-year-old sister to New York, she was on one of the flights. Here she seeks to understand the fragility of memory and the impact of trauma. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Hughes, Frieda. George: A Magpie Memoir. Avid Reader: S. & S. Jun. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9781668016503. $28. MEMOIR

The daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, painter/poet Hughes lives in the Welsh countryside with a passel of animals, some rescued. Her rescues have included a baby magpie she saved from a nest destroyed in a storm, whom she named George. Here she recounts George’s transformation from a terrified bundle of damp feathers to a charming and affectionate companion, transforming her own life even as she sorrowfully contemplates the time when he’ll have to fly away.

Hull, Anne. Through the Groves: A Memoir. Holt. Jun. 2023. 224p. ISBN 9780805093377. $26.99. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Can you imagine growing up in an orange grove in Florida, with Disneyland being built nearby? That’s what Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Hull’s childhood was like, and it wasn’t all happy. Even as the natural landscape fell to Disneyfication, the polarity between her sometimes dangerously dreamy father and ambitious Brooklyn-born mother made for confusion. Hull finally realized that she had to leave home, especially as her own sexuality emerged. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Lekas Miller, Anna. Love Across Borders: Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World. Algonquin. Jun. 2023. 256p ISBN 9781643752334. $27. Downloadable. MEMOIR

U.S. journalist Lekas Miller fell in love with Syrian Salem Rizk in Istanbul, where they were both reporting on the Syrian civil war. When Turkey began clamping down on refugees, leaving Salem with nowhere to go (he could not return to Syria), she worked her way through his asylum claims and the U.S. ban on Muslim immigrants to bring him to the United States as her husband. Here she recounts their story and those of similar couples while plumbing the history of discriminatory laws worldwide that have restricted travel.

Page, Elliot. Pageboy: A Memoir. Flatiron: Macmillan. Jun. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9781250878359. $29.99. CD/downloadable. MEMOIR

Currently starring in the hit series The Umbrella Academy, Page is not just an Academy Award–nominated actor but a notable trans advocate. His much-anticipated memoir shares his thoughts on love, gender, mental health, relationships, and life in Hollywood. With a 750,000-copy first printing.

Paul, Chris with Michael Wilbon. Sixty-One: Life Lessons from Papa, On and Off the Court. St. Martin’s. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9781250276711. $30. Downloadable. MEMOIR

A 12-time NBA All-Star and two-time Olympic Gold medalist currently playing for the Phoenix Suns, Paul here discusses a lot more than basketball. The day after he signed a letter of intent to play college basketball, he learned that his grandfather had died from a heart attack following an assault, and he recounts his grandfather’s inspirational role in his life and in the larger Winston-Salem community. His grandfather died at age 61, and Paul honored him the day after his burial by scoring 61 points. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

Shields, Aomawa. Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe. Viking. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593299180. $28. MEMOIR

Told by a white male professor that as a young, fashion-loving Black woman she didn’t fit into her astrophysics PhD program, Shields left to pursue acting. But a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope pulled her back, and after returning to school as the oldest and the only Black student in her PhD cohort, she’s now the Clare Boothe Luce Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.

Styron, Rose. Beyond This Harbor: Adventurous Tales of the Heart. Knopf. Jun. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9780525659020. $32. MEMOIR

The author of four volumes of poetry; a human rights activist who cofounded Amnesty International USA and chaired PEN’s Freedom-to-Write Committee and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Awards; a celebrated hostess and friend to the likes of Arthur Miller, James Baldwin, and the Kennedys; and wife of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist William Styron, Rose Styron offers a thoroughgoing memoir of her rich and rounded life.

Viren, Sarah. To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories. Scribner. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781982166595. $28. MEMOIR

While doing research for a book about her high school philosophy teacher, who taught students to question everything, Viren was waylaid when her wife, Marta, was notified that she was being investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach. While striving to uncover the accuser and prove Marta’s innocence, Viren was drawn back to her high school teacher’s reflections on the nature and nuances of truth.

U.S. History

Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Apr. 2023. 612p. ISBN 9780300244052. $35. HISTORY/INDIGENOUS

A Western Shoshone and professor of history and American studies at Yale University, Blackhawk argues that U.S. history cannot be understood without understanding how Indigenous and settler histories are interwoven. Among his points: European colonization was not a foregone conclusion, Indigenous nations helped shape England’s empire, Indigenous affairs were closely linked to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Indigenous peoples of California were among the first casualties of the Civil War, and Indigenous activism in the 20th century reshaped U.S. law and policy. Oxford scholar Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent is getting lots of deserved attention, but here is a voice from within.

Davis, Wes. American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs. Norton. Jun. 2023. 368p. ISBN 9781324000327. $30. HISTORY

Nineteenth-century naturalist John Burroughs and inventors Henry Ford and Thomas Edison would not seem to have much in common, but they were good friends. Here is an account of the various road trips they took together, from Transcendentalist New England all the way to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. In a Ford Model T, of course.

Grant, Will. The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West. Little, Brown. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780316422314. $30. Downloadable. HISTORY

Much has been written about the fabled Pony Express, which delivered mail in relays across the western United States in 1860–61, covering a distance equivalent to riding from Madrid to Moscow. But as recounted here, Outside magazine writer Grant actually rode the entire trail himself (with his horses Chicken Fry and Badger). Fortunately, he’s an expert horseman, having cowboyed in Texas and raced the nearly 900-mile Mongol Derby. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Kahn, Mattie. Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America’s Revolutions. Viking. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593299067. $29. HISTORY/SOCIAL ACTIVISM

From Black 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who refused to relinquish her seat on a segregated Montgomery, AL, bus nine months before Rosa Parks took her stand, to teenage Chinese immigrant Mabel Ping-Hua Lee leading a suffrage march up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in 1912, teenage girls have often been crucial to social justice movements in the United States. Even when sidelined by prejudice, argues Kahn, a former cultural director at Glamour, they found ways to operate effectively behind the scenes.

Kelley, Blair. Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class. Liveright: Norton Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781631496554. $30. HISTORY/BLACK

Amid current conversations about the fate of the white working class, Kelley provides an important reminder that the Black working class has been central to the story of labor in the United States. Her assessment covers two centuries, from her earliest known ancestor, an enslaved blacksmith, to laundresses, Pullman porters, and domestic maids, to the essential workers of the COVID pandemic. Kelley is director of the Center for the Study of the American South.

Kendi, Ibram X. (text) & Joel Christian Gill (illus.). Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America. Ten Speed. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9781984859433. $29.99. HISTORY/GRAPHIC NOVEL

Here is a graphic-format version of MacArthur fellow Kendi’s groundbreaking best seller, Stamped from the Beginning, with art furnished by Gill, chair of the MFA in Visual Narrative at Boston University and creator of the award-winning graphic novel series Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History.

McGill, Joseph Jr. & Herb Frazier. Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery. Hachette. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780306829666. $29. Downloadable. HISTORY

As founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, McGill—a former field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation—travels throughout the entire country to spend the night in former slave dwellings. His efforts, and the events surrounding them, are meant to deepen our understanding of enslavement in the United States and highlight often hidden history. With a 25,000-copy first printing.

Martin, Rachel Louise. A Most Tolerant Little Town: A Forgotten Story of Desegregation in America. S. & S. Jun. 2023. 400p. ISBN 9781665905145. $29.99. HISTORY

As a graduate student participating in a Southern oral history project, Martin visited the small town in Tennessee whose school became the first in the former Confederacy to undergo court-mandated desegregation. She found to her dismay that people weren’t eager to talk. Years later, she returned, interviewing over 60 townsfolk—including some of the first students to desegregate the school—to ferret out secrets and discover what really happened in 1956.

Michaud, Jon. Last Call at Coogan’s: The Life and Death of a Neighborhood Bar. St. Martin’s. Jun. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9781250221780. $29. HISTORY

From its opening in 1985 to its pandemic-driven demise in 2020, Coogan’s Bar and Restaurant in New York City’s Washington Heights was a mainstay in a multiethnic, mostly immigrant community countering discrimination and gentrification. Lin-Manuel Miranda led the opposition when efforts were made to close the bar in the 2010s. Collection Management Librarian at the Millburn Free Public Library, NJ, Michaud (When Tito Loved Clara) recounts the bar’s history and introduces us to its owner and regulars.

Stille, Alexander. The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune. Farrar. Jun. 2023. 432p. ISBN 9780374600396. $30. HISTORY

Founded in 1950s New York, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis espoused ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from society’s norms, starting with the dismantling of the nuclear family. Its famous patients ranged from Jackson Pollack to Judy Collins. By the 1970s, its therapists had become abusive tyrants, and it was shuttered in the 1990s. Stille (Excellent Cadavers) tells the story. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Swarns, Rachel. The 272. Random. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780399590863. $28. HISTORY

In 2016, journalist Swarns (American Tapestry) broke the story about the Jesuit priests who sold 272 enslaved people in 1838 to save their mission, the newly founded Georgetown University. Here she expands on the story of the 272 through the history of one family divided by the sale, moving back to the 1600s, when free Black woman Ann Joice arrived as an indentured servant and was subsequently enslaved, then forward to two descendants reunited by her reporting and current efforts at reparation.

World History

Blackbourn, David. Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500–2000. Liveright: Norton. Jun. 2023. 832p. ISBN 9781631491832. $45. HISTORY

Borman, Tracy. Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I: The Mother and Daughter Who Forever Changed British History. Atlantic Monthly. Jun. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9780802162069. $28. HISTORY

Clark, Christopher. Revolutionary Spring. Crown. Jun. 2023. 768p. ISBN 9780525575207. $40. HISTORY

Garton Ash, Timothy. Homelands: A Personal History of Europe. Yale Univ. May 2023. 368p. ISBN 9780300257076. $28. HISTORY

Glass, Charles. Soldiers Don’t Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War. Penguin Pr. 336p. ISBN 9781984877956. $29. HISTORY

Hartman, Darrell. Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media. Viking. 400p. ISBN 9780593297162. $30. HISTORY

Pick-Goslar, Hannah. My Friend Anne Frank: The Inspiring and Heartbreaking True Story of Best Friends Torn Apart and Reunited Against All Odds. Little, Brown Spark. Jun. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780316564403. $29. Downloadable. HISTORY/MEMOIR

Sullivan, Randall. Graveyard of the Pacific: Shipwreck and Survival on America’s Deadliest Waterway. Atlantic Monthly. Jun. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9780802162403. $30. HISTORY/MEMOIR

Thomas, Evan. Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II. Random. Jun. 2023. 336p. ISBN 9780399589256. $28. lrg. prnt. HISTORY

Vickers, Michael G. By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy. Knopf. Jan. 2023. 576p. ISBN 9781101947708. $35. HISTORY

von Bremzen, Anya. National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home. Penguin Pr. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780735223165. $29. HISTORY/CULINARY

Walker, Tamara J. Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad . Crown. Jun. 2023. 352p. ISBN 9780593139059. $28. HISTORY/BLACK

Walton, Calder. Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West. S. & S. Jun. 2023. 704p. ISBN 9781668000694. $34.99. HISTORY

Award-winning Vanderbilt historian Blackbourn rethinks Germany in the World, arguing that it was a persuasive force even before unification in the 19th century. Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and a prolific historian, Borman (Crown & Sceptre) limns the historic significance ofAnne Boleyn & Elizabeth I. In Revolutionary Spring, Wolfson Prize–winning Clark refreshes our view of the revolutions that rocked Europe in 1848. In Homelands, Oxford historian Garton Ash draws on both scholarship and personal experience to portray Europe post–World War II. In Soldiers Don’t Go Mad, distinguished journalist Glass uses the friendship and literary output of outstanding war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen—both gay and both ultimately opposed to fighting—to show how an understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment first emerged during the industrialized slaughter of World War I. Journalist Hartman’s Battle of Ink and Ice shows that the contention between explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both claiming to have discovered the North Pole, also sparked a newspaper war with all the earmarks of fake news. The long-anticipated My Friend Anne Frank recounts Holocaust survivor Pick‑Goslar’s friendship with Frank (she’s called Lies Goosens in The Diary of a Young Girl), having been together with her at the Westerbork transit camp and eventually Bergen-Belsen. Also known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, the Columbia River Bar forms where the river pours into the ocean off Oregon’s coast and creates fearsome currents that have claimed numerous lives; like his abusive father, Sullivan risked crossing it, and he makes his book at once history, memoir, and meditation on male behavior at its extreme. Former undersecretary of defense for intelligence in the Obama administration, Vickers recalls a life in intelligence and special operations that arcs from his Green Beret days to his involvement in the CIA’s secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan to the war on terror. In Road to Surrender, the New York Times best-selling Thomas (First: Sandra Day O'Connor) relies on fresh material to convey the decision to drop the atomic bomb from the perspectives of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, and Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific. In National Dish, three-time James Beard award-winning food journalist von Bremzen investigates the relationship between food and place by examining the history of six major food cultures—France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey. In Beyond the Shores, the Harriet Tubman Prize–winning Walker (Exquisite Slaves) considers why Black Americans leave the United States and what they encounter when they do, moving from early 1900s performer Florence Mills to 1930s scientists to the author’s own grandfather. An historian at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Walton assays the century-long intelligence war between the West and the Soviet Union/Russia, considering lessons that can be gleaned today in Spies.