Our Most Anticipated Books of April 2021

Fiction

Coming April 6th

First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami

As the title suggests, all eight of these new stories from internationally-acclaimed author, Haruki Murakami, are told in first-person singular. An enigmatic collection that skirts the boundary between fiction, auto-fiction, and memoir.

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person--whether it's your lover or a stranger on a train--and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.

Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian

"In a perfect alchemical blend of familiar and un-, Gold Diggers takes a wincingly hilarious coming-of-age story, laces it with magical realism and a trace of satire, and creates a world that's both achingly familiar and marvelously inventive. Written with such assurance it's hard to believe it's Sanjena Sathian's debut, this is a dizzyingly original, fiercely funny, deeply wise novel about the seductive powers--and dangers--of borrowed ambition." --Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins

New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins makes her fiction debut with this electrifying novel, that brings to life one powerful and enigmatic family in a tale rife with secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and magic.

Coming April 13th

An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector

New translation of a formerly unavailable Lispector novel with an afterword by Sheila Heti. Need we say more?

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Ding-ding-ding! This is one of those books everyone will be talking about.

"Open Water is tender poetry, a love song to Black art and thought, an exploration of intimacy and vulnerability between two young artists learning to be soft with each other in a world that hardens against Black people."--Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing

Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick

At 92-years-young, Ozick is back with her first novel in 11 years. In Antiquities, an aged trustee of a now-defunct boys school recalls (with some difficulty) the days of his youth along with the glamorous and unglamourous history of the institution which shaped him.

Aquarium by Yaara Shehori

"Ambitious, intelligent, and nuanced, Aquarium is a story that interrogates the limits of stories and the words we use to tell them, whether they are made of hand signs, speech sounds, or written letters. The emotional force of Yaara Shehori's novel turns on what remains unspoken: the fierce attachment of two sisters during childhood and the reverberating consequences of tearing them apart." --Siri Hustvedt, author of Memories of the Future

Coming April 20th

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

A major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel from the 1940s by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy. Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city's sewer system.

Defekt by Nino Cipri

It's no secret that we're Nino Cipri stans here--both of their previous books, Homesick and Finna, are so good we've fought over who gets to write the staff picks--so obviously this new novel, set in the same multiverse as Finna, has us wriggling in anticipation.

Coming April 27th

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

After an 8-year fiction hiatus, Jhumpa Lahiri is back with a new novel! An unnamed woman drifts through an unnamed city, the urban landscape itself acting as both interlocutor and friend. Continuing her love of the language, Lahiri wrote this novel originally in Italian and breaths a hint of that linguistic magic into her narrative.


Non-Fiction

Coming April 6th

Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello

Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society: the violence they experience, the rage they suppress, the ways their bodies often reveal what they cannot say aloud, and finally, what it means to transgress being good in order to reclaim your own life.

Philip Roth by Blake Bailey

The culmination of years of conversations with the late author, his friends, his lovers, and his archives, Blake Bailey's biography clocks in at 912 pages.
"Everything you ever wanted to know about Philip Roth you can discover in his novels. Everything you ever wanted to know about what it took to become one of the greatest American writers of our time, you will find in Blake Bailey's breathtaking biography." --Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner

In nineteen razor-sharp essays, The Hard Crowd spans literary journalism, memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about art and literature, including pieces on Jeff Koons, Denis Johnson, and Marguerite Duras.

First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human by Jeremy DeSilva

Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet's dominant species.

Coming April 20th

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner

A brilliant memoir that settles in your soul like a good sour candy--tart, sweet, painful, yet delicious. Growing up as one of the few Asian Americans in her school, Zauner recounts her evolving, illusive relationship with her own Koreaness made all the more urgent by her mother's terminal cancer diagnosis when Michelle was twenty-five. Gripping, beautiful, guaranteed to make you cry in H Mart, on the subway, or in your mother's arms.

The Free World: Art & Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand

"Louis Menand's The Free World is at once an astonishing work of history and criticism and an essential road map to the middle decades of the twentieth century, from Sartre, Trilling, and Mailer to Sontag, Rauschenberg, and Baldwin. Every page is bracing; the whole amounts to an epic. In a landmark study of a time when art and ideas mattered, Menand's very act of interpretation, the book itself, shows why they still do." --Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

 

NB: Some of the text on this page is sourced from publisher-provided marketing content.

First Person Singular: Stories By Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translated by) Cover Image
By Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translated by)
$28.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9780593318072
Published: Knopf - April 6th, 2021

Staff Pick Badge
Peaces: A Novel By Helen Oyeyemi Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9780593192337
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Riverhead Books - April 6th, 2021

Gold Diggers: A Novel By Sanjena Sathian Cover Image
$27.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9781984882035
Published: Penguin Press - April 6th, 2021

Caul Baby: A Novel By Morgan Jerkins Cover Image
$27.99
Not Available
ISBN: 9780062873088
Published: Harper - April 6th, 2021

An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures By Clarice Lispector, Stefan Tobler (Translated by), Sheila Heti (Afterword by), Benjamin Moser (Series edited by) Cover Image
By Clarice Lispector, Stefan Tobler (Translated by), Sheila Heti (Afterword by), Benjamin Moser (Series edited by)
$22.95
ISBN: 9780811230612
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: New Directions - April 13th, 2021

Staff Pick Badge
Open Water By Caleb Azumah Nelson Cover Image
$16.00
ISBN: 9780802157942
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Grove Press, Black Cat - April 13th, 2021

Antiquities By Cynthia Ozick Cover Image
$21.00
ISBN: 9780593318829
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Knopf - April 13th, 2021

Aquarium: A Novel By Yaara Shehori, Todd Hasak-Lowy (Translated by) Cover Image
By Yaara Shehori, Todd Hasak-Lowy (Translated by)
$27.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9780374105921
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - April 13th, 2021

The Man Who Lived Underground: A Novel By Richard Wright, Malcolm Wright (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Richard Wright, Malcolm Wright (Afterword by)
$22.95
ISBN: 9781598536768
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Library of America - April 20th, 2021

Staff Pick Badge
Defekt (LitenVerse #2) By Nino Cipri Cover Image
$14.99
ISBN: 9781250787491
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Tordotcom - April 20th, 2021

Whereabouts: A novel By Jhumpa Lahiri Cover Image
$24.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9780593318317
Published: Knopf - April 27th, 2021

Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason By Gina Frangello Cover Image
$27.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9781640093164
Published: Counterpoint - April 6th, 2021

The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 By Rachel Kushner Cover Image
$26.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9781982157692
Published: Scribner - April 6th, 2021

First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human By Jeremy DeSilva Cover Image
$27.99
Not Available
ISBN: 9780062938497
Published: Harper - April 6th, 2021

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir By Michelle Zauner Cover Image
$26.95
ISBN: 9780525657743
Availability: On hand at one or more locations, see product page for details
Published: Knopf - April 20th, 2021

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War By Louis Menand Cover Image
$35.00
Not Available
ISBN: 9780374158453
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - April 20th, 2021