Hello, book lovers! Each week, dozens of new releases hit the shelves. Here are our favorites. ❤️đ –The BuzzFeed Books team |
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| None of this Rocks by Joe Troman From the lead guitarist and cofounder of the renowned band Fall Out Boy comes an insightful and humorous memoir. While Trohman delivers details on the formation and rise of Fall Out Boy, he also gets candid about his own history. Taking us back to his childhood during the late '80s and '90s, Trohman recalls his distant and oftentimes rocky relationship with his mentally ill mother, anti-Semitism from his peers and community, moving around the country, advocating for his own mental health and therapy, and the misogyny and racism he witnessed within the punk scene. None of it's vague or sugar-coated. Instead, Trohman's candor allows us to authentically glimpse into the highs and lows of his life growing up as a loner kid who loved music. —Farrah Penn Get it from Bookshop. Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam This is a fascinating trans and gender nonconforming history that shows the diversity of how societies across history have defined gender and the people who lived outside gender binaries. From Anne Lister to actors playing women on and off stage in a prison war camp to two-spirit & á»gbanje identities, Heyam depicts the complexities of gender identity across cultures. They prove that being trans and breaking away from traditional gender roles is not a new phenomenon and, in fact, has a deep and rich history. Though academic and heavily researched, it's an accessible and engagingly written read. Heyam provides an extensive list of further reading at the end. The audiobook, narrated by the author, is excellent. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton In this powerful and brilliant graphic memoir, Beaton depicts the two years she spent working in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to pay off her student loans. As one of the few women working in the claustrophobic, mostly male oil camps, she experienced relentless misogyny. It would be easy for Beaton and the reader to hate all the men Beaton encountered in the camps, yet Beaton does not allow the reader that too-easy reaction. She challenges the reader to see that these men could be anyone's fathers, brothers, cousins, and friends. She shows their humanity while at the same time unflinchingly addressing the day-to-day horrors she experienced. It's a vulnerable, moving, and empathetic glimpse into the micro-society the isolation of oil camps develops. However, it's clear that the misogyny, though worse in the camps, does not exist only within its confines. Beaton also confronts her own culpability in the climate destruction caused by the oil camps, something she had not considered when, fresh from college, she had signed up for the camps. This is easily the best graphic work I've read this year. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. |
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Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi This beautifully written collection of interconnected short stories takes place in Nigeria's past, present, and future and centers a group of women and their descendants connected through a moment of shared trauma. In a Nigerian all-girls boarding school, Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape lead a revolt when their headmistress fires all the best teachers. The repercussions of that revolt follow each of them through the years. In one story, a successful Nigerian-American businesswoman has a moment of epiphany after revisiting her childhood home and riding the bus. In the future, U.S. hospitals incarcerate those with hospital debt, and a Nigerian grandmother takes the place of her son with cancer in one such hospital so he can receive the treatment he needs in Nigeria. In the past, a woman navigates infertility by paying other women to bear children for her, but the growing presence of white people and their religion shifts local perceptions of that practice. It's a powerful collection of stories that readers of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi will enjoy. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. |
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The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber This is the captivating sequel to Once Upon a Broken Heart, the stunning YA fantasy romance where readers were introduced to Evangeline Fox and Jacks, the Prince of Hearts. After an intense cliffhanger, Evangeline swears to never trust Jacks again. She believes Jacks needs her to open the Valor Arch, and after his betrayal, that's the last thing Evangeline plans to do. But of course, nothing is as simple as it seems, and when Evangeline becomes all too aware of a new curse affecting her happily ever after, she'll have to team up with Jacks once again in order to try and break it. With heart-dropping twists and turns, Garber raises stakes to a whole new level. —Farrah Penn Get it from Bookshop. Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans This first book in a new epic fantasy series set in a queer normative world has an intriguing magical system, intricate world building, and entertaining characters. In the city of Bezim, wealthy alchemists practice their magic in an exclusive club while the Inquisitors hunt down illicit alchemy. When the rich need more alchemical supplies, they call on Siyon Velo, who travels the multi-dimensional planes to gather ingredients. He dreams of training to become an alchemist, but as the offspring of poor fishermen, he doesn't have the social rank to buy himself into the alchemy's ranks. When he unintentionally pulls off a stunning bit of magic saving a falling girl in public, the alchemists suddenly accept him into their ranks. However, the Inquisitors now hunt him. Meanwhile, the planes have become unbalanced, and the alchemists must figure out how to re-establish balance before it's too late. It was a lot of fun getting lost in the audiobook narrated by Kirsten Foster. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. Bindle Punk Bruja by Desideria Mesa This 1920s historical fantasy set in Kansas City is such a fun read. The sexy part-time reporter and part-time speakeasy owner Luna Alvarado gets her bruja skills from her Mexican abuela and her fair skin tone from her no-good wealthy white father. She uses that skin tone to pass as white in a world where being Mexican means constant racism and fewer opportunities, and she already has few enough being a woman. She's saving up to buy her own jazz club when she crosses the wrong mobsters. Her plans for the future begin to crumble as all the crooks in Kansas City descend upon her. She does have one trick up her sleeve: her magical ability to charm men with a touch of skin. Her magic is growing, too, but she needs to figure out how to harness it before she ruins her business and puts her family's lives in danger. Frankie Corzo narrates the audiobook and it's great. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir The third book in The Locked Tomb quartet is as mind-bendingly complex and intriguing as the previous books. Nona does not remember anything before awakening six months earlier in the care of cavaliers Pyrrha and Camilla and necromancer Palamedes. While she inhabits Harrowhawk's body, she has Gideon's eyes, and Camilla and Palamedes take extensive notes in their quest to discover who exactly Nona is. The sweet and naive Nona is very unlike either of her possible previous selves and has neither Harrow's necromancy powers nor Gideon's skill with the sword. She likes to spend her days volunteering at a local school, trying to impress one of the students, and walking the science teacher's dog. Unfortunately for Nona, the Emperor Undying would like to use her as a weapon, and the entire planet is on the verge of war in their quest to eliminate zombies. In her dreams, Nona remembers herself as Harrowhawk speaking with the Emperor as he tells her about how necromancy powers came to be thousands of years earlier. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott Jewish and Eastern European folklore entwine in this magical, queer-inclusive contemporary fairytale about inherited trauma and sibling relationships. Bellatine Yaga and her brother Isaac haven't seen each other in years, not since Isaac ran away from home as a teenager. Since then, Isaac has been traveling from city to city using his shapeshifting ability to con people, while Bellatine has become a woodworker and hides her powers to animate inanimate objects. They meet again when they inherit a house on chicken legs from a distant relative and decide to take it on the road and become a traveling puppet show. However, Isaac and Bellatine aren't the only ones interested in the house. An evil follows them, the Longshadow Man, intent on destroying the house. To combat the evil, the siblings must look to the past and their Jewish ancestry for answers. It's a captivating read, at turns both dark, disturbing, whimsical and sweet. —Margaret Kingsbury Get it from Bookshop. |
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I'm The Girl by Courtney Summers New York Times bestselling author Courtney Summers returns with a queer thriller that explores sexism, misogyny, and the dangerous power men hold in this world. After 16-year-old Georgia is the first to stumble upon the body of 13-year-old Ashley, she teams up with Ashley's sister Nora to help bring justice to her family, all while being thrust into the world of Aspera, a club for the privileged and wealthy. It's a gritty, uncomfortable exploration of power imbalance and what it means to free yourself from it. —Farrah Penn Get it from Bookshop. The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum It's always nerve-wracking to read a book that's supposed to represent you and your community, especially the aspects most people never see, but in my not-all-that-humble opinion, Blum absolutely nails it in his sharp, witty, insightful, and resonant debut, in which nobody's thrilled with Orthodox Jewish teen Hoodie Rosen. He's fallen for the non-Jewish mayor's daughter (a negative on two counts), and that mayor and her town aren't exactly happy for the recent influx of Jewish residents, either. As anti-Semitic activity rises in response to the town's growing Jewish population, Hoodie has to figure out where he stands: with his heart, or with his people. Being on the insider track for this one, I'll admit it's at times a deeply uncomfortable read, but only in the way the very best books are. —Dahlia Adler Get it from Bookshop. As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh Salama has been volunteering at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who have entered through their doors since the revolution broke out in Syria. Her desperation to find a way out before her sister-in-law gives birth has manifested as Khawf, an imagined companion who tries to get her to leave her beloved home. As her loyalty to her country and her fight to survive clash within her, she'll begin to see the world around her in a new light, and will rely upon the courage and heart inside to make impossible choices. —Rachel Strolle Get it from Bookshop. |
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