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There are a ton of great books out this month — which ones should you grab?

Answer 6 Questions And We'll Tell You 6 New Books To Read

It’s 1960s New York; Cuffy Lambkin, better known as Sportcoat, a deacon at the Five Ends Baptist Church, has just shot 19-year-old drug dealer Deems Clemens in the face — effectively putting a target on his own back. Residents try to make sense of the shooting as the mystery behind it slowly unravels.

_[Deacon King Kong](https://www.amazon.com/dp/073521672X)_ by James McBride

An apartment building in Soviet-era Ukraine is accidentally erased from municipal records — and, in nine absurdist stories, the residents figure out how to survive when their existence isn't recognized.

_[Good Citizens Need Not Fear](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Citizens-Need-Not-Fear/dp/0385545290)_ by Maria Reva

At the end of his life, Stanford Solomon — actually Abel Paisley — comes clean about having faked his death more than 30 years ago, abandoning his life and family in Jamaica to start anew in the US. From there, Card moves into the past and future, exploring the stories of Paisley's ancestors and descendants — enslaved women in colonial Jamaica, his struggling daughters in modern Harlem — and the ways each generation's trauma bleeds into those that follow.

_[These Ghosts Are Family](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982117435)_ by Maisy Card

_The Everlasting_ looks at Rome over the course of 2000 years, from the perspective of four characters — an early Christian child martyr, a gay medieval monk, a Medici princess, and a modern scientist — as they contend with the meaning of being good.

_[The Everlasting](https://www.amazon.com/Everlasting-Novel-Katy-Simpson-Smith/dp/0062873644)_ by Katy Simpson Smith

Leichter’s protagonist is a temporary worker, working endlessly with her temp agency to hopefully one day settle into “permanence.” She’s unnamed, as are her many boyfriends, whose multiplicity — like that of her series of surreal gigs — make it nearly impossible for her to settle into any kind of stable existence. Instead, she gives herself over to meaningless jobs, in a world just slightly askew — where putting a pin in a topic means puncturing your planner, and all of our corporate work-speak turns literal.

_[Temporary](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1566895669)_ by Hilary Leichter

Jing Jing is bored at her job as a tech reporter, where she is dismissed and underpaid as a young Chinese American woman, and when her long-term boyfriend announces he’s moving to Ithaca, New York, to attend grad school, she decides to go with him in hopes of achieving her own fresh start. But as she travels from San Francisco to Ithaca to China and back — and as she starts researching the history of Chinese women and interracial relationships in the US — Jing Jing explores her relationship with her own history and identity. There's a road trip, family history, storytelling — familiar themes to anyone who loved _Walk Two Moons_.

_[Days of Distraction](https://www.amazon.com/Days-Distraction-Novel-Alexandra-Chang/dp/0062951807)_ by Alexandra Chang

Samantha Irby is hilarious, relatable, and self-deprecating — especially in her third essay collection, which delves into life's awkward moments (like trying to make friends as an adult, or when Crohn's disease interferes with her social life) and the indignities of aging. Irby is indomitable and holds nothing back — just like another writer we know and love.

_[Wow, No Thank You](http://s://www.amazon.com/Wow-No-Thank-You-Essays/dp/0525563482)_. by Samantha Irby

Ant, who lives on the East Coast, flies home to Illinois to attend the funeral of one of his oldest friends, Ray. Picking him up from the airport is Ray’s cousin, Vince. Together they set out to drive to the funeral while untangling old hurts, popping Oxy, and grappling with adulthood’s disillusionments. It's dark for sure, but if you loved _Bridge to Terabithia_ that's A-okay.

_[Whiteout Conditions](https://www.amazon.com/Whiteout-Conditions-Tariq-Shah/dp/1937512916)_ by Tariq Shah

_The Glass Hotel_ is a sprawling novel that follows the fallout of a wealthy investor’s Ponzi scheme, drawing unexpected connections in its wake. At the center is Vincent Smith, a woman who leaves her bartending gig in the Canadian wilderness to try her luck in New York (“the kingdom of money”) as the trophy wife of Jonathan Alkaitis, the man whose financial scam will ruin countless lives. There's love, intrigue, betrayal — and ominous flashes into the future.

_[The Glass Hotel](https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Hotel-Emily-John-Mandel/dp/0525521143)_ by Emily St. John Mandel

Life is good for 68-year-old Loretha Curry: She sits at the top of a beauty supply empire, her marriage is as exciting as it ever was, and she's surrounded by a group of tight-knit, lifelong friends — and those are the women she leans on when tragedy strikes.

_[It's Not All Downhill From Here](https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-All-Downhill-Here/dp/1984823744)_ by Terry McMillan

Thirty-one-year-old Casey Peabody is grieving her mother's sudden death, recovering from a love affair gone wrong, and trying to finish the novel she's been writing for six years. While she watches her friends get married and start families, she's waiting tables, living in a shitty apartment, and clinging to her dream of living a creative life — but when she falls for two men at the same time, her precarious position shifts into a full crisis.

_[Writers & Lovers](https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Lovers-Lily-King/dp/0802148530)_ by Lily King

Jason Rosenthal is the husband named in the heartbreaking 2017 Modern Love essay you definitely read: "[You May Want to Marry My Husband](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/style/modern-love-you-may-want-to-marry-my-husband.html)." The essay was written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who was dying of cancer, and who died just a week after it was published. _My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me_ is Jason's memoir of his life before, with, and after Amy. It's about love, loss, and family — and it's guaranteed to make you cry.

_[My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me](https://www.amazon.com/Wife-Said-You-Want-Marry/dp/0062940597)_ by Jason B. Rosenthal

4\. You're the underdog in a righteous fight. What are you up against?

Unferth’s eco-heist story is inventive, but accessible; uncompromising in its critique of the agricultural–industrial complex, but also a whole lot of fun. In Janey, Cleveland, Dill, and Annabelle — two auditors for the US egg industry, two animal rights activists — Unferth has created a band of misfit reluctant radicals who come together to pull off a seemingly impossible scheme: stealing a million chickens from a local farm. Through their chaotic adventure — and an exploration of the life events that brought each character to it — Unferth injects humanity and heart into the dilemma of consumption in a capitalist society, making very clear the consequences of moving forward with blinders on.

_[Barn 8](https://www.amazon.com/Barn-Novel-Deb-Olin-Unferth/dp/1644450151)_ by Deb Olin Unferth

Erdrich brings us a story based on the life of her grandfather, Patrick Gourneau. Like Gourneau did, protagonist Thomas Wazhashk works as a night guard, is a chair on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa council, and becomes instrumental in the 1953 fight against a bill that would allow the government to abandon treaties that protected Native Americans’ rights to their land. Thomas’s niece Patrice works at the factory he guards at night and stretches her small salary to support her brother and mother while dreaming of abandoning the expectations she feels from the tribe and following her big sister Vera to Minneapolis. Erdrich is uniquely able to create a cast of distinct and lively characters in a world that is expansive but not overwhelming — and, here, she has done so in a story of power and prejudice, tradition and self-discovery, and the Native fight against oppression that is as relevant now as it was in the 1950s.

_[The Night Watchman](https://www.amazon.com/Night-Watchman-Louise-Erdrich/dp/0062671189/)_ by Louise Erdrich

On March 27, 1964, the very young state of Alaska was struck by what is still the most powerful earthquake in American history, and Anchorage — a city that had been a beacon of progress in this new frontier, a manifestation of its residents’ optimism — was literally torn apart. _This Is Chance!_ is the riveting account of the following three days — the resilience and resourcefulness of a town that hadn’t yet established a system or infrastructure to handle such an emergency, and the bravery of Genie Chance, an ambitious and underestimated radio reporter whose impromptu three-day broadcast became the beating heart of a community struggling to survive. It’s a beautifully wrought and profoundly joyful story of compassion and perseverance.

_[This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together](https://www.amazon.com/This-Chance-Shaking-All-American-Together/dp/0525509917)_ by Jon Mooallem

Lucas and Margo are twentysomething friends and colleagues who regularly commiserate over the racism they’re forced to deal with at their tech jobs: Lucas is one of many Asian employees at tech startup Nimbus but not the engineer everyone assumes he is; Margo is an engineer at the same firm but also Nimbus’s only black employee and often belittled. The two decide to get revenge by stealing Nimbus’s user database and turning those usernames and passwords into jobs at rival startup Phantom — but the plan goes tragically awry when Margo is killed in a car accident. Mourning his friend’s death and living with a potentially dangerous secret, Lucas starts to suspect Margo’s accident wasn’t an accident at all — and when he hacks into her laptop in search of answers, he welcomes a host of new problems.

_[New Waves](https://www.amazon.com/New-Waves-Novel-Kevin-Nguyen/dp/1984855239)_ by Kevin Nguyen

It’s the year 2000; 15-year-old loner Vanessa Wye is excited to be singled out by her charismatic 45-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane, as someone special — someone worthy of his special attention — in a relationship that soon becomes sexual. Seventeen years later, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Vanessa learns Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by another former student — and she’s forced to reckon with the nature of this defining relationship of her past. Jumping back and forth in time, Russell explores questions of agency, abuse, and sexual power dynamics.

_[My Dark Vanessa](https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Vanessa-Kate-Elizabeth-Russell/dp/006294150X)_ by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Personal assistant Carey Douglas and structural engineer James McCann are on a book tour with superstar husband/wife home remodeling and design gurus who seem to be perfect in every way — except they secretly hate each other, which makes for a miserable road trip. But Carey needs her job (and health insurance) and James was promised the role of a lifetime at the end of the tour — so they vow to work together to keep their bosses' secret, and hopefully maintain their own sanity.

_[The Honey-Don't List](https://www.amazon.com/Honey-Dont-List-Christina-Lauren/dp/1982123915)_ by Christina Lauren

Set in 18th-century Europe, Nannerl Mozart hopes to become an acclaimed composer, but her father has forbidden her to continue her practice once she reaches a marriageable age. When the future of her younger brother Wolfgang begins to look brighter than her own, she finds a magical stranger who has the power to make her dream come true — but at a cost. Lu tells a gorgeous story about what it means to be forgotten.

_[The Kingdom of Back](https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Back-Marie-Lu/dp/1524739014)_ by Marie Lu

The Flores family — ex-footballer father Augie, hustling mother Malia, kids Dean, Noa, and Kaui — are native Hawaiians constantly struggling to make ends meet in the state with the highest cost of living. When middle child Noa appears to acquire some mystical healing powers, the family takes advantage of it to eventual devastating effect. Alternating perspectives among the family members over the course of a decade, Washburn has written a vivid, heartbreaking portrait of a family rocked by economic precarity.

_[Sharks in the Time of Saviors](https://www.amazon.com/Sharks-Saviors-Kawai-Strong-Washburn/dp/0374272085)_ by Kawai Strong Washburn

Cleo and Layla used to be best friends. Now they're not. Cleo wants to forget Layla exists, but it's not as easy as she thinks, considering she's assigned to be Layla's tutor. But what happens when Cleo's past comes back to haunt them both? Woodfolk pens a raw story about friendships growing apart.

[_When You Were Everything_](https://www.amazon.com/When-Were-Everything-Ashley-Woodfolk/dp/1524715913) by Ashley Woodfolk

Jemisin’s riveting urban fantasy imagines a New York City come to life — literally, through a human avatar who must protect the city from an ancient evil. But when one avatar isn’t strong enough to withstand the battle, five people, one from each borough, are asked to become avatars and join in the fight to save the city. These new avatars act as representations of the boroughs they call home, and the tensions that arise within their group — tensions that threaten the success of their dire mission — are emblematic of the real NYC and the class and racial tensions that plague it.

_[The City We Became](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0356512665)_ by N.K. Jemisin

Eliese Colette Goldbach didn't expect her first job out of college to be at the local steel mill, but it was her only chance of financial security — even though it represented everything about her Rust Belt childhood that she was trying to escape. _Rust_ looks at that childhood and the way it shaped her ideas of mill work and steelworkers — and how the reality of her experience, and the camaraderie she found, blew up those preconceived notions.

_[Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit](https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Memoir-Eliese-Colette-Goldbach/dp/1250239400)_ by Eliese Colette Goldbach

Jordan Kisner was a "naturally reverent" child, a born-again Christian among a nonreligious family. So when she lost her faith in god as a teenager, she needed other things to believe — food cleanses, fad workouts, pop culture, academia. _Thin Places_ explores the ways we understand ourselves and our souls; it's a psychological, philosophical, and spiritual investigation.

[_Thin Places: Essays From in Between_](https://www.amazon.com/Thin-Places-Between-Jordan-Kisner/dp/0374274649) by Jordan Kisner

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Answer 6 Questions And We'll Tell You 6 New Books To Read

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