Book Lust: May 2023
A list of books I can't wait to read that were published in May 2023!
Below is a list of books that were published in May 2023 that really grabbed my attention! I learned my lesson in April, and I’ve worked really hard to keep this list more manageable. As a result, lots of very good sounding books did not make the cut. If you want a more complete list of ever book that is published every week, I highly encourage you to subscribe to Liberty Hardy’s Patreon, What’s My Page Again. That is where I get all of these titles in the first place.
What May publications are looking good to you?
May 2nd
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: I LOVE Adjei-Brenyah’s short story collection Friday Black. Like love love love. It’s a dark speculative fiction collection that really plays with concepts. This first novel from Adjei-Brenyah (also speculative) seems very similar. I bought it so fast lol
Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes: I love Bruce, I love music history. Nebraska is an album that fascinates me. I can’t wait to read this.
Gone to the Wolves by John Wray: Another one I bought extremely quickly. Set in the 1980s in Florida at the height of the Satanic Panic and anti-metal music craze, a group of dear friends and metal lovers make a cross-country trip to Hollywood. Their friendship starts to fall apart, but when one of the group goes missing in mysterious circumstances, the remainder reunite to do whatever it takes to get their friend back. Read the full summary because it does a better job than my writeup.
Homebodies: Stories by Amy LeBlanc: “Homebodies is an uncanny and ghostly debut with stories that provoke dread, abjection, and horror.” Yes, perfect, thank you.
Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes: Follows the story of three generations of women and community in Hawai’i, featuring hula. I love stories set in Hawai’i about Hawaiians. Read the full summary for a better idea of what this is about.
Swamp Story by Dave Barry: Florida adventures, including cryptids and treasure.
The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality by Andy Clark: There is no objective truth, except that you do not have enough weed on hand to read this book. Stock up first.
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin: I LOVE Justin Cornin, and this new techno-dystopia from him about aging (?) really has my interest piqued. I really enjoyed his series that started with The Passage (zombie apocalypse books).
The Midnight News by Jo Baker: A thriller/mystery situation about a woman in London during the Blitz, convinced someone is after her and all her friends. I love a good woman falling apart novel!
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw: Monstrous mermaids and a plague doctor! I don’t know how that will work, but I’m excited to find out! Khaw is a very buzzy name in the horror world right now.
The Whole Animal by Corinna Chong: This short story collection is giving me The Vegetarian vibes. They seem like darker stories where physicality is very important. Maybe a bit of body horror??
You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula by Hannah Matthews: This nonfiction seems very important right now as those of us who value autonomy, privacy, and healthcare fight to regain those rights and find ways to keep people safe during this really shitty time.
May 9th
American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life by Jennifer Lunden: “A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author's quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James--ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.”
Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key: A memoir examining love and solitude through Joni Mitchell’s Blue.
Atalanta by Jennifer Saint: I unfortunately have not yet read Saint’s Elektra or Ariadne, but I’m going to jump in here with Atalanta. I’m excited to read about this huntress/warrior in Greek mythology and her adventures with the Argonauts!
Beleth Station by Bryan Smith and Samantha Kolesnik: Two horror novellas set in a small, crumbling, post-industrial Pennsylvania town full of threats and terrors. As someone who lives in Pennsylvania and is very familiar with this kind of dying/dead town, I’m excited to read some horror set in one.
Chasing the Black Eagle by Bruce Geddes: Unique spy story set during the Harlem Renaissance.
Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe: Horror examining post-partum depression and family trauma. Features “dead women” allegedly living at the bottom of a well whispering shit. And a baby eating a mother to death?? Idk, sounds great.
Into the Groove: The Story of Sound from Tin Foil to Vinyl by Jonathan Scott: The history of recorded sound.
Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods by Mariana Alessandri: “A philosopher's personal meditation on how painful emotions can reveal truths about what it means to be truly human.” This fascinates me because I think I do this naturally. I’d love to explore it more.
The Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa (Author), Samantha Schnee (Translator): Feminist revision of various Bible stories! “In brilliant prose, Carmen Boullosa offers a twist on the Book of Genesis that dismantles patriarchy and rebuilds our understanding of the world--from the origin of gastronomy, to the domestication of animals, to the cultivation of land and pleasure--all through the feminine gaze.” Fascinating!
The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays by Kelly McMasters: Memoir about a woman building what she thought was her dream life and then realizing she wanted to escape it.
The Other Ones by Jamesie Fournier (Author), Toma Feizo Gas (Illustrator): Illustrated short horror stories by an Inuit author, set in that culture. This is a very specific niche that I love and am exciting for!
When She Fell by Karen Cole: This sounds like a juicy thriller I’ll eat up. Alex is a young journalist who is sent a book about a woman being pushed over a cliff to her death, as well as a newspaper article about the death of the author of that book. Things aren’t lining up, or maybe lining up too well? Alex smells and story and decides to travel to the site of the author’s disappearance to investigate various pushings or non-pushings. One can imagine the twists, the turns, the danger!
Why Sinéad O'Connor Matters by Allyson McCabe: Sinéad was right.
May 16th
Berlin by Bea Setton: I recently stated on Twitter that I am NOT a Berlin person, despite never having been there. I just know I’m not cut out for that city. And this book about a young woman trying to start over in a fresh city sounds like it’s going to prove to me that I am definitely not a Berlin person. Daphne hopes she’ll be living a bohemian lifestyle, make new friends, have a new life in Berlin, but one night something strange and unnerving happens that completely derails all her plans.
Dona Cleanwell Leaves Home: Stories by Ana Castillo: I’m really interested in the story most described in the summary about a young Mexican American woman in the 1960s (I think) looking for how to make a difference in the world, but landing on making her family whole instead. “Spanning from Chicago to Mexico to New Mexico, the stories in Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home illuminate a chorus of people whose stories will leave you breathless.”
Girl Country: And Other Stories by Jacqueline Vogtman: These stories sound kind of folk horror like, stretching across the world and featuring stories of all kinds of women (monstrous or otherwise). The blurb comps it to Orange World, so I’m there.
No One Will Come Back For Us by Premee Mohamed: A collection of contemporary cosmic horror and dark sff stories by one of the greats of the genre!
Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain: This short story collection is set in Western PA’s Appalachian country and that’s all I needed to know to want to read it.
The Disenchantment by Celia Bell: Historical fiction about two French noblewomen conducting a secret illicit love affair in the 17th century amid all kinds of social and politician happenings. There is drama and hotness to be had.
The Enchanted Hacienda by J. C. Cervantes: This is literally just Encanto but for adults. It sounds like a warm hug…excatly the thing I want to read when the world feels extremely stressful.
The Great American Everything by Scott Gloden: “A short story collection exploring the bounds of contemporary family and how we move forward in a world so often changed by loss.” I think I’m just at a place in my life where this sounds really really interesting to me.
The Guest by Emma Cline: I love Emma Cline, so I will read anything she puts out. People’s reactions to this been have been intense, which makes me even more excited since the summary is a bit vague. Alex is a woman who seems to be used to lying about who she is, maybe?? And during the course of this book shes wandering around causing chaos, maybe?? I kind of what to go in cold and be surprised with this one.
The Postcard by Anne Berest (Author) Tina Kover (Translator): An intriguing family mystery presents itself to Anne when a postcard arrives offering a clue about her family who were murdered at Auschwitz decades before. Anne, helped by other family members, digs into their past and their flight from Russia ultimately to Paris to learn more and to discover who sent the postcard. They say this book is a novel, but the main character and author share a first and last name. I love a good family mystery.
The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams: This sounds like a novel about sloppy people, a genre I greatly enjoy. A husband, wife, and the wife’s best friend have a strained relationship…a relationship that blows up over the course of a single day. This book sounds juicy. It sounds like Elizabeth Taylor would have acted the shit out of the adaptation. I must read it in the sun!
The Wreck: A Daughter's Memoir of Becoming a Mother by Cassandra Jackson: A memoir about family secrets, American history, and a pain that is both personal and political. Jackson hunts down the truth about herself and her family while becoming a mother herself. Her story is wrapped up in Jim Crow and the brutality of the American medical system.
Yellowface by R. F. Kuang: I’ve really been anticipating this one. “White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American.”
May 22nd
I was in a weird mood when I was picking books for this particular week, so not a whole lot was really appealing to me, just fyi.
Above Discovery by Jennifer Falkner: yet another weird speculative fiction short story collection by a woman. I simply must have it.
Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny: badass women botanists in the 1930s, doing what no one believed they could do, contributing so much to science and the history of the US. Sounds refreshing.
Boy Parts by Eliza Clark: This book has already been out for a while, I guess in the UK?? A lot of people I know have already read it and RAVED about it. This is a disturbing horror book about an unhinged woman who is also an artist and have a friendship with a young man that I’m guessing gets out of control. I have an idea where this one is going, and I think I’m going to like it.
Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street by Victor Luckerson: I’m always interested in learning more about Tulsa and it’s Black and African American history. I know about the massacre but not a lot about what came after.
Dwell Here and Prosper by Chris Eagle: This sounds like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Harriet the Spy. A look at aging and what happens when you hit that weird part of your life where you’re just kind of forced to wait around until you die. Kinda my vibe right now.
Raw Dog: The Naked Truth about Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus: I think Jamie wrote this for me. A history of the hot dog and its cultural place in the US.
Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda: A thriller western featuring two women with, uh, intense pasts and a jail break. Sounds very entertaining!
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling: The fictional journal of our girl, Sacajewea. I don’t know if I fully get the premise of this one, but I love Indigenous stories and anything written by Indigenous women. Lots of people say this book is good, and the writing is beautiful.
The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives by Naoíse Mac Sweeney: A reexamination of the concept of “Western Civilization” and what it actually is comprised of…is it even real?? I love a good alternative look at history. History is often taught just one way, leaving out the important stories of so many. Because of that, we have a very limited understanding of our own past. Works like this are very important.
Tonight It's a World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics by Bill Peel: Black metal is infamous for being far-right, Nazi-adjacent, domestic terrorist friendly music. But Peel digs in deeper, past that initial layer, to find the leftist anti-capitalist side of this notorious music genre. I’m a metal fan (not so much black metal), so I’ll be reading this.
When the World Didn't End: A Memoir by Guinevere Turner: Turner is the screenwriter of American Psycho, she also grew up in the Lyman Family Cult. This memoir takes a look at her childhood both in the cult and when her mother left it, taking her and her sibling with her.
May 30th
Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott: Abbott is just a good time every time. I’ll read anything she publishes. This thriller follows pregnant Jacy on a trip to her father-in-laws remote cabin in remote Michigan. It seems like a good idea at first, but then a health scare for Jacy causes the vacation to take a turn. Soon, weird stuff about Jacy’s past is coming out, Jacy’s paranoia is increasing, and she’s feeling trapped in this cabin while her husband’s family scrutinizes her body beyond the level of comfort.
Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves by Quinn Connor: This one seems weird and creepy, great for summer. A town overtaken by Yellow Fever is unexpectedly flooded during a summer storm, killing everyone. When a lock-box from that summer is discovered, three descendants of those killed in the flood show up to face the past of the town and manage their own present.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig: Historical fiction featuring ruthless female pirate? Political drama dealing with a new Chinese Emperor? Power struggles???? Yes. Great cover, too.
Into the Amazon: The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist by Larry Rohter: We celebrate hottt conservationists in this house.
Stiletto by Brenda Peterson: This reminds me of some old paperback horror/thrillers I would read at my Grandma’s lake house. It sounds juicy, and I love the murder of a big pharma douche bag.
The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman: Like if Austen characters where given a boost of modern feminist sass and set out into the world to solve mysteries and protect other women in Regency era England. First up, rescuing a friend from a violent husband. Next, solving a murder.
The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb: The next time I’m in the mood for a sweeping, ambitious historical epic that zeroes in on fascinating stories to illustrate a bigger history, this is what I’ll be picking up. I love books like this! “Connecting India's tumultuous 19th and 20th centuries to its distant past and its potentially apocalyptic future, this sweeping tale of rebellion, courage, and brutality reinvents fiction for our time.”
The Second Woman by Louise Mey (Author), Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Translator): An unhappy woman is made incandescently happy by the introduction of her dream man. She moves in and starts living the life of her dreams, except that the first woman wont go away. This sounds pretty twisty and dark so I’m in.
The Vanishing Hour by Seraphina Nova Glass: This thriller sounds like a similar vibes as movies like Sleeping with the Enemy and such (a favorite of mine). A woman’s violent and terrifying past catches up to her in the quiet, isolated life she’s built to hide in. She’ll have to confront what happened to her to save others.
Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest by Amanda Lewis: I love books about nature, about fish out of water, about adventures, and about hijinx. This memoir seems to have it all!
Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls by Angela Sterritt: This promises to be a challenging but necessary read…a memoir from an Indigenous journalist about her own experiences growing up a woman and Indigenous, as well as her experiences fighting for other Indigenous women in a world deadly to them.
Uranians: Stories by Theodore McCombs: Queer speculative fiction short stories that all sound fascinating! This collection feels like it holds a lot of knowledge.