Tuesday’s New Releases
I try damn hard when I write reviews to follow the guidelines book critics should follow, which includes not reviewing books by friends OR enemies. Bias, people, bias.
However, these release-day squibs are recommendations rather than reviews. I’m not pretending to be objective when I recommend something; I’m straight up telling you it’s worth your time.
I still try to maintain as much objectivity as I can, because who wants to just hear about my friends’ work? I have to read lots of books by people I don’t know and haven’t met and their books matter, too.
However, this week I do have two good friends whose novels are excellent and I must share them with you. See the “Full Disclosure” warnings on them. I can’t and won’t ONLY share friends’ books. I can’t NOT share some, once in a while. Caveat lector.
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
They call it “Southern noir.” I call it about damn time. Book publishing has finally realized that Black authors not only can write thrillers, not only can write excellent thrillers, but can write the kinds of thrillers that address race and racism at a high-concept and high-paced level. S. A. Cosby caught our attention with 2021’s Razorblade Tears. He’s keeping it with his new one, about a tiny Chesapeake town and its deepest secrets.
George: A Magpie Memoir by Frieda Hughes
Let’s get this out of the way first: Author Hughes is the daughter of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. She is also the sole surviving member of that family, her brother Nicholas lost to suicide in 2009. When Hughes moved to Wales, searching for peace and quiet. When she rescued a baby magpie, she unexpectedly found purpose, as well as companionship and delight. But how would she learn to let him go back to his purpose?
Such Kindness by Andre Dubus III
You could read Richard Russo’s upcoming Somebody’s Fool, and you should; it continues Sully’s tale from Nobody’s Fool and it’s terrific. But first read Andre Dubus III’s new novel Such Kindness, because Dubus may have taken the story of a working man at odds with contemporary culture to a new level, one in which people on the edges of modern society forge meaningful connections without deus ex machina privilege.
The Dissident by Paul Goldberg
Full Disclosure: Goldberg, author of The Yid, is a friend. But he is also a tremendously talented writer and funny to boot: In this new novel, it’s 1976, and a Jewish refusenik named Viktor gets tangled up in a murder the KGB wants solved before an official visit to Moscow by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in just nine days. As Viktor twists arms to get help, readers learn just how twisty survival could be in the Cold War USSR.
American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff
More Full Disclosure! Zuravleff is also a friend. What can I say? We DC-area writers have been busy this spring. Zuravleff is one of the most interesting novelists I know and read, each book wholly different and springing from its binding like a piece of perfect origami. Her new one derives from her own family’s Russian roots and how a young woman born in Pennsylvania to Old Believer parents seeks an independent life.