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NewPages Blog :: New Books

Discover new and forthcoming books from independent publishers and university presses on the NewPages Book Stand.

New Book :: Restless

Restless by Joseph Kai book cover image

Restless by Joseph Kai
Street Noise Books, September 2023

Restless by Joseph Kai is a graphic novel Set in Beirut, Lebanon, 30 years after the end of the civil war, and a few months before the disastrous explosion of August 2020. Samar, a young queer comic book artist, wanders between anguished dreams, childhood memories, sexual experiences, and Beirut’s alternative communities. This abstractly autobiographical story tells of the author’s anxiety over living in a complex city of changing colors and moods. Three powerful themes: art, sex, and political uprising, are interwoven in a compelling narrative and an otherwordly color palette

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Boomtown Girl

Boomtown Girl by Shubha Sunder book cover image

Boomtown Girl: A Collection of Short Stories by Shubha Sunder
Black Lawrence Press, April 2023

Winner of the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award, Boomtown Girl by Shubha Sunder is set entirely in the Bangalore region of South India and explores the ambitions, delusions, and struggles of people navigating a rapidly developing city. A rebellious teenager and her workaholic father confront their mutual distrust while dining at a newly opened Pizza Hut; a tailor nostalgic for his past glory in the employ of an Englishman grows obsessed with an American customer; a techie, his fiancée having broken off their engagement, takes a young, eager intern into his confidence. These stories trace Bangalore’s warp-speed transformation from a leafy backwater into India’s Silicon Valley—a place where Digital Age values clash with tradition, where British colonialism casts its strong shadow, and where visions are inspired and distorted by the forces of globalization.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Paper Cuts

Paper Cuts: Lighter Verse by Gail White book cover image

Paper Cuts: Lighter Verse by Gail White
Kelsay Books, May 2023

Gail White’s first new chapbook in seven years shows no abatement in her trademark formalist cynicism as she takes on cats, gators, Edna Millay’s goldfish, and God. She expresses sympathy for the snails found mating inside her garbage can “because on Friday nights / I look ridiculous myself.” If the heat is getting you down, some iced light verse is highly recommended. Gail White was born in Florida but has disowned it for political reasons. She currently lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where Cajun food is available at all hours. Her other books, Asperity Street and Catechism, are available on Amazon.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: World Too Loud to Hear

World Too Loud to Hear: Poems by Stephen Kampa book cover image

World Too Loud to Hear: Poems by Stephen Kampa
Able Muse Press, November 2023

The poems in Stephen Kampa’s World Too Loud to Hear confront today’s zeitgeist of dark social norms online or off. Our litany of individual and collective shortcomings is laid bare or castigated—as, for instance, with obligations we abhor, avoid, and “can’t wait / to pass down to the upstart generations.” The delivery ranges from straight or subtle to rants and execrations, while the settings range from historic and current affairs to the imaginary, dystopian, sci-fi, or surrealistic. This sui generis collection is fearless in hope, with a sobering take on our acceleratingly fearful national and global trajectory.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side

The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns into a Tunnel of Love: Poems by Kimo RedeR book cover image

The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns into a Tunnel of Love: Poems by Kimo RedeR
CW Books, January 2023

As its steeplechase of a title suggests, The Tower of Babel Tipped on Its Side Turns Into a Tunnel of Love is a book of oral and acoustic wordplay pressed to a precarious brink. These poetic experiments use alliteration, assonance, and related sound-devices to twist the tongue and tickle the eardrum while exploring matters of grammar, logic, and semantics. “Kimo RedeR’s writing explores the neuroscience of literacy, sensory overlaps between verbal meaning and oral flavor, occult aspects of the alphabet, and ecstatic, visionary states of language-use like graphomania and glossolalia.”

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Excisions

Excisions by Hilary Plum book cover image

Excisions by Hilary Plum
Black Lawrence Press, April 2023

Excisions by Hilary Plum investigates the feeling—the problem and the syntax—of being on a threshold. If you don’t know what will happen next, you can’t yet say what has happened. These poems arise from states of precise unknowing, desperate imagination, inchoate emotion, encounters with mortality and power when they’re closing in but haven’t caught you yet. What is choice, given the terms of an ill body, survival in a grotesque empire? Tenderly and acutely, these poems examine the life of before and after: when something is excised from you, it was you, and you are what remains.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Broken Metronome

Broken Metronome: Poems by Connie Post book cover image

Broken Metronome: Poems by Connie Post
Glass Lyre Press, May 2023

Connie Post’s chapbook poetry collection, Broken Metronome, is about her brother’s journey and eventual death from Parkinson’s disease. These poems explore the difficult realities of the disease and its end stage. The work examines the closeness of siblings and how that bond is not broken, even when illness strikes. The poems delve into the many corners of the long goodbye and its aftermath. Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California from 2005 to 2009 and hosted a popular reading series in the San Francisco Bay Area in Crockett, California. She has published numerous collections as well as individual works that have received a variety of awards and recognitions beyond publication. Her collection Between Twilight was released in February 2023 by New York Quarterly Books.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Unaccompanied

Unaccompanied by Tracy White book cover image

Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum by Tracy White
Street Noise Books, June 2023

Unaccompanied: Stories of Brave Teenagers Seeking Asylum, a graphic novel by Tracy White, tells the true stories of five brave teens fleeing their home countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guinea, on their own, traveling through unknown and unfriendly places, and ultimately crossing into the US to find refuge and seek asylum. Based on extensive interviews with teen refugees, lawyers, caseworkers, and activists, this book shines a light on five individual kids from among the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who enter the US each year. In stark black and white illustrations, she helps us understand why some young people would literally risk their lives to seek safety in the US. Each one of them has been backed into a corner where emigration to the US seems like their only hope.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Strength of the Illusion

The Strength of the Illusion by Jared Moore book cover image

The Strength of the Illusion by Jared Moore
Ergal Press, September 2023

The Strength of the Illusion comes to readers from Jared Moore, lecturer at the University of Washing School of Computer Science, who has created a course on the philosophy of AI and regularly teaches ethics and technical artificial intelligence courses. In this debut satirical novel, the AI researcher, Ty, has discovered how to teach a machine to write. He joins a start-up, Opel, eager to bring on-demand literature to millions. As Opel makes overbold claims about how its writing machine with automate human connection, Ty is increasingly drawn to the fiery connection with his activist partner, Zora. As each flees from their own past, Ty and Zora enjoy passionate debates about how to create a future together. When Zora urges Ty to join her protest against big tech, Ty is forced to decide what he really values. Caught between worlds, Ty loses himself in the advice of his writing machine.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Book of Redacted Paintings

The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian book cover image

The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian
Black Lawrence Press, May 2023

In The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian, the narrative arc follows a boy in search of his father’s painting, but it is unclear whether the painting exists or not. The book, a poetry collection, is also populated by a series of paintings. Some are real, incomplete, and/or missing, while most are redacted from reality. The withdrawn paintings concept is the emotional arc of the book, a combination of wishing one could paint the pieces he/she/they envision and the feeling of something torn out of a person due to a traumatic upbringing. A sort of erasure ekphrasis, to foresee artwork that was never painted. A Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series selection.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Hammer of the Dogs

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene book cover image

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene
University of Nevada Press, September 2023

Hammer of the Dogs: A Novel by Jarret Keene is a literary dystopian adventure set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas and filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley’s survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she’ll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school’s most powerful opponents.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Books Received July 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful book titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these by clicking on “New Books” under the NewPages Blog or Books tab on the menu. If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

54 Poems, John Levy, Shearsman Books
Alone, J.R. Solonche, David Robert Books
American Scapegoat, Enzo Silon Surin, Black Lawrence Press
the book of redacted paintings, Arthur Kayzakian, Black Lawrence Press
Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski, trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender Ink/Dialogos Books
Its Shadow Rakes the Grass, Bill Christophersen, Kelsay Books
The Ledger of Mistakes, Kathy Nelson, Terrapin Books
The Teller’s Cage, John Philip Drury, Able Muse Press

Fiction

All the Ways We Lived, Aida Zileian, Keylight Books
And Dogs to Chase Them, Ray Trotter, EastOver Press
The Black Hole Pastrami, Jeffrey Feingold, Meat for Tea Press
Black Licorice, Elaina Battista-Parsons
The Books Of Clash Volume 2: Legendary Legends Of Legendarious Achievery by Gene Luen Yang; illustrated by Les McClaine and Alison Acton, First Second Books
Doña Quixote: Rise of the Knight by Rey Terciero; illustrated by Monica M. Magaña, Henry Holt Books

Continue reading “Books Received July 2023”

New Book :: What Drifted Here

What Drifted Here: Poems by Barbara Siegel Carlson book cover image

What Drifted Here: Poems by Barbara Siegel Carlson
Cherry Grove Collections, December 2022

What Drifted Here by Barabara Siegel Carlson is a book of intensely lyrical meditations that dwells in the silent, often overlooked or seemingly ordinary places where the mysterious and miraculous abide, and where amidst love and grief, we draw ever closer to the heart of the spiritual. The poems, some in prose form and dramatic monologue, take dreamlike leaps into worlds both personal and historical, glimpsing through the cracks something we can never wholly know but which leaves us changed.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

July 2023 eLitPak :: Now Available: The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee

Screenshot of Temple University Press flyer announcing release of The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee
click image to open PDF

The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee is the first volume to feature the author’s complete short fiction. Leading Mukherjee scholar Ruth Maxey unearthed seven unknown stories: five in Mukherjee’s unpublished 1963 Iowa Writer’s Workshop M.F.A. thesis, “The Shattered Mirror,” and two tales from 2008. It is essential for readers familiar with Mukherjee’s work and new to her groundbreaking fiction. View flyer to learn more.

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New Book :: American Scapegoat

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin book cover image

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin
Black Lawrence Press, May 2023

American Scapegoat by Enzo Silon Surin is a book of painstakingly honest and chilling poems about America’s neglectful relationship with its own history. At the core of this reluctance to frame the past in its proper context is the fraudulent and fraught mythology that Black people are what America needs to be protected from. This extremely damaging narrative has been prominently embedded within the socio-political framework of American culture and continues to play an inescapably significant role in the Black experience in America. This timely collection looks both to the past and the future and fosters a deeply essential conversation about what it means to be Black and American in a democracy at war with itself and its humanity.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Layers

Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu; translated by Montana Kane book cover image

Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu; translated by Montana Kane
First Second, October 2023

When Pénélope Bagieu dusted off her old diaries, she found layer upon layer of cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking stories begging to be drawn. (Yes, seriously – this book is based on her actual diaries.) While she never thought she’d published a graphic memoir, Bagieu reflects on her childhood and teen years with her characteristic wit and unflinching honesty. The result is fifteen short stories about friendship, love, grief, and those awkward first steps toward adulthood.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Last Gay Man on Earth

The Last Gay Man on Earth: A Photo Comic by Ype Driessen book cover image

The Last Gay Man on Earth: A Photo Comic by Ype Driessen
Street Noise Books, June 2023

In the photo comic The Last Gay Man on Earth, author Ype Driessen is a gay man living in Amsterdam with his boyfriend Nico. When asked by Nico to accompany him on a work trip to America, Ype must confront his deep fear of flying. While doing so, Ype finds he also has to come to terms with his social and sexual anxieties, his neurotic nature, and a serious case of imposter syndrome. What follows is a moving and deeply personal story, filled with humor as well as drama —surprising, honest, and unforgettable. Ype embarks on an adventure that leads him to his ultimate fantasy: being the last person on earth. Encouraged by a sentient robot vacuum cleaner called Chupi, he finds out what it really means to be true to yourself.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: EtC

EtC by Laura Mullen book cover image

EtC by Laura Mullen
Solid Objects, November 2023

EtC by Laura Mullen explores contemporary American selfhood, socially mediated and economically motivated, within a system where we learn to see and represent ourselves as one marketable image among many, where “brand” displaces character, and the corporal and corporate intersect. Elsie is both a collection of tropes for femininity (her embodied history leaning heavily into illness and inadequacy when not floating on fantasies of power) and also a symptom of her country’s illness. Almost constantly laughing, she is – obviously – unreliable. But EtC blends persona into hyper-confessionalism to open a space for honesty – the hope is that the spectacle of Elsie exercising her fraught and limited freedoms in the context of cultural, social, and environmental disasters might provide a point of critique, in order to readjust the values shaping our experience so as to move toward ways of being in the world that might be wiser, kinder, more sane, and more real.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Prumont Method

The Prumont Method by Trevor J. Houser book cover image

The Prumont Method by Trevor J. Houser
Unsolicited Press, August 2023

Staring down the barrel of a crumbling career and imploding marriage, “math hobbyist” Roger Prumont, unwittingly creates a formula that might predict when and where the next mass shooting occurs. He hits the road (where he’s joined by his unimpressed daughter) to test whether the Method could actually save lives. Except what if mass shootings are so ubiquitous now that his predictions are merely dumb luck? And what if he’s risking his own life to find out?

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Dread Space Volume 2

Dread Space Volume 2 edited by Erick Fomley book cover image

Dread Space Volume 2 ed. by Eric Fomley
Shacklebound Books, May 2023

Dread Space Volume 2 edited by Eric Fomley is an anthology of dark military science fiction stories. Within these pages are soldiers doing their best to stay alive against otherworldly odds and unimaginable terrors. Twenty-two dark flash fiction stories from Wendy Nikel, Robert Bagnall, Liam Hogan, Dawn Vogel, Jonathan Ficke & many others. Shacklebound Books is a small press that publishes anthologies and collections in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. Most of what they publish has “a darker bend to it.” Readers can sign up for their newsletter to stay up to date on new releases, submissions, and receive two free stories every month.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: This Morning the Mountain

This Morning the Mountain: Poems by Judy Rowe Michaels book cover image

This Morning the Mountain: Poems by Judy Rowe Michaels
Cherry Grove Collections, March 2023

Judy Rowe Michaels’ sixth bout of cancer coincided with a deeper grief: her husband’s sudden death, the end of a forty-four-year marriage. Yet the poems in This Morning the Mountain, in their various turnings, reveal unexpected moments of comfort, resilience, even laughter: the pet cat’s growling capture of a broiled shrimp, “like the fierce hunter he was meant to be”; an arresting improvisation by a favorite jazz pianist; a prisoner’s empathic insight about a poem—“I guess cancer could be a prison too.” Ranging from villanelle to prose poem to irregular stanzas that surge, stumble, or sprawl across a page, these poems find the music to explore not only our natural fears of loneliness, insufficiency, heartbreak, and death but the celebration of love.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Ellie is Cool Now

Ellie is Cool Now by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren book cover image

Ellie is Cool Now by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren
Forever, March 2023

Ellie is Cool Now is the result of Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren ‘plopping’ an adult romcom chapter onto Wattpad, which resulted in a favorable readership and a Watty Award. The story follows TV writer Ellie Jenkins, who worked her butt off to put her nerdy, outcast teen years behind her. The irony being that she now works for a hit show about popular high school kids when she was So. Not. Cool. And she’s been offered the promotion of a lifetime—if she attends her reunion. But Ellie’s memory of High School Hell isn’t nearly as traumatic as the reality. No one at the reunion is what Ellie expected. Not her ex-best friend and not her secret crush. The only way she’s going to survive this whole weird ordeal is by fixing her bad high school karma, kissing the one who got away, and getting the hell out of Ohio for good. But Ellie’s discovering that in real life, she can’t just rewrite the script.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Things in the Basement

Things in the Basement by Ben Hatke book cover image

Things in the Basement by Ben Hatke
First Second, August 2023

In Ben Hatke’s graphic novel Things in the Basement, Milo is sent by his mother to fetch an errant sock from the basement of the historic home they’ve just moved into. It was supposed to just be a normal basement—some storage boxes, dust—the usual basement stuff. But when Milo finds a door in the back that he’s never seen before, it turns out that the basement of his house is enormous. In fact, there is a whole world down there. As Milo travels ever deeper into the Basement World, he meets the many Things that live in the shadows and gloom, and he learns that to face his fears he must approach even the strangest creatures with kindness.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Bert Meyers

Bert Meyers The Unsung Masters Series book cover image

Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master
Ed. Dana Leven and Adele Elise Williams
The Unsung Masters Series, June 2023

Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master is the fourteenth volume in the Unsung Masters Series and includes both a large selection of his very best poems and appreciations from José Angel Araguz, Jim Bogen, Victoria Chang, Amy Gerstler, Garrett Hongo, Daniel Meyers, Barry Sanders, Ari Sherman, Maria Simon, Sean Singer, and others. Edited by Dana Leven and Adele Elise Williams and published with financial support by the Nancy Luton Fund and the University of Houston English Department in collaboration with Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, and Pleiades.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Nervosa

Nervosa by Hayley Gold book cover image

Nervosa by Hayley Gold
Street Noise Books, April 2023

Hayley Gold’s graphic memoir Nervosa recognizes anorexia nervosa as an eating disorder. It is not a phase, a fad, or a choice. It is a debilitating illness, manifested in a distorted relationship with food, but which actually has more to do with issues of control. It is often a puzzle for doctors, therapists, parents, and friends. And so those who suffer from it are belittled, or tragically misunderstood, not only by society but by the healthcare system meant to treat it. Nervosa is a no-holds-barred, richly textured portrait of one young woman’s experience. In her vividly imagined retelling, Gold lays bare a callous medical system seemingly disinterested in the very patients it is supposed to treat and traces how her own life was irrevocably damaged by both the system and her own disorder, offering readers a remarkably candid exploration of the search for hope in the darkness.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Tell Me What You See

Tell Me What You See by Terena Elizabeth Bell book cover image

Tell Me What You See by Terena Elizabeth Bell
Whiskey Tit, December 2022

Tell Me What You See, the debut short story collection by Terena Elizabeth Bell, offers readers ten experimental works about coronavirus quarantines, climate change, the January 6th invasion on the US Capitol, and other events from 2020-2021. The title story “Tell Me What You See” is a 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) City Artist Corps winner, and the book is dedicated in part to Detroit-area Congresswoman Haley Stevens who was an inspiration for the author.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Craft

Craft: A Memoir by Tony Trigilio book cover image

Craft: A Memoir by Tony Trigilio
Marsh Hawk Press, September 2023

Tony Trigilio’s Craft: A Memoir is an exploration of the writer’s craft through a series of short, linked personal essays. When writers talk about “craft,” they frequently focus on clinical, literary-dictionary terms such as language, narrative, structure, image, tone, and voice, among others. Craft: A Memoir is an effort to understand craft through discussions of the direct experience of writing itself—through stories of how Trigilio became a writer. Each chapter features an anecdote from the author’s development as a writer that illustrates craft elements central to his body of work.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Liberators

The Liberators: A Novel by E. J. Koh book cover image

The Liberators: A Novel by E. J. Koh
Tin House Books, November 2023

At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come. From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol ferry accident, E. J. Koh’s exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: A Night of Screams

A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories edited by Richard Z. Santos book cover image

A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories edited by Richard Z. Santos
Arte Público Press, June 2023

This riveting collection of horror stories—and four poems—contains a wide range of styles, themes, and authors. Creepy creatures roam the pages, including La Llorona and the Chupacabras in fresh takes on Latin American lore, as well as ghosts, zombies, and shadow selves. Migrants continue to pass through Rancho Altamira where Esteban’s family has lived for generations, but now there are two types: the living and the dead. A young man returns repeatedly to the scary portal down which his buddy disappeared. A woman is relieved to receive multiple calls from her cousin following Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, but she is stunned to later learn her prima died the first night of the storm! There’s plenty of blood and gore in some stories, while others are mysterious and suspenseful. Contributors include Ann Davila Cardinal, V. Castro, Ruben Degollado, Richie Narvaez, Lilliam Rivera, and Ivelisse Rodriguez.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: October Journey

October Journey: Poems by Margaret Walker book cover image

October Journey: Poems by Margaret Walker
50th Anniversary Edition
Aquarius Press, July 2023

Celebrating a beloved collection’s return after 50 years, October Journey, first published in 1973, is being reissued with the addition of works not seen in decades. Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander (July 7, 1915 – November 30, 1998) was an American poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. Her notable works include For My People (1942) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, and the novel Jubilee (1966), set in the South during the American Civil War.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Read My Lips

Read My Lips: Poems by Charles K. Carter book cover image

Read My Lips: Poems by Charles K. Carter
David Roberts Books, November 2022

Charles K. Carter’s Read My Lips is a collection of poetry that follows the metamorphosis of romance; journeying from adolescent crushes to casual intimate encounters to marriage and heartbreak. Carter utilizes a variety of poetic forms including blank verse, free verse, ghazal, haiku, nirat, and prose poem as well as more unconventional forms.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Act of Contrition

The Act of Contrition & Other Poems by Joseph Bathanti book cover image

The Act of Contrition & Other Poems by Joseph Bathanti
EastOver Press, July 2023

The Act of Contrition by Joseph Bathanti is a series of linked stories and one novella that continues the adventures of Fritz Sweeney and his outrageously memorable parents, Travis and Rita, that began in Bathanti’s earlier award-winning volume of stories, The High Heart. Spanning the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, in an Italian American working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, these fourteen unforgettable stories—a mélange of incantatory magical realism and clear-eyed documentary precision (in the vein of Raymond Carver)—are narrated by Fritz in a prophetic voice that issues at once from the very aggregate of steel town Pittsburgh and his deep yearning to escape it.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: True for the Moment

True for the Moment: Poems by Ian Ganassi book cover image

True for the Moment: Poems by Ian Ganassi
David Roberts Books, April 2023

The poems in True for the Moment by Ian Ganassi address the transient and impermanent nature of internal life as it intersects with life in the world. This impermanence is part and parcel of the deceptive and shifting performance of language. From “Your Last Chance”: “Nope, no number of dictionaries can save you now.” Nothing, not even love, is free from the conditional nature of experience: “All she remembers after all these years/Is how good I was in bed.” (“Marking the Blues”). One of the last poems offers a ray of hope: “There’s a kind of salvation in the practice of the mundane,” “And practice makes perfect, or at least it can contribute / Some sort of equanimity to the dementia reality is known for…” Art and artistic technique alone are reliable, as well as the comedy that is enacted in the poems.

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New Book :: Gordita

Gordita by Daisy "Draizys" Ruiz book cover image

Gordita: Built Like This by Daisy “Draizys” Ruiz
Black Josei Press, January 2023

Gordita: Built Like This is an autobiographical comic by Daisy “Draizys” Ruiz. The 28-page color comic follows Gordita, a young Mexican-American teenager who lives in The Bronx. She’s judged for having no ass by classmates, strangers, and even family. Gordita struggles with low self-esteem and body dysmorphia. But, through her friendships with other girls who are also getting bullied and mentorship with her guidance counselor, Gordita, begins to speak up for herself and see that she is more than just her body. Ruiz started this comic as a 6-page black and white comic called “Built Like Spongebob,” which was created for and displayed at NYU’s exhibition, ¡Oye! Cuéntame un Cuento. Daisy’s first solo exhibit in Casita Maria in The Bronx featured pages from Gordita as well.

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New Book :: Petrochemical Nocturne

Petrochemical Nocturne: A Novel by Amos Jasper Wright IV book cover image

Petrochemical Nocturne: A Novel by Amos Jasper Wright IV
Livingston Press, August 2023

The Mississippi River. HAZMAT. Boxing. Suicide by cop. New Orleans Saints football. Chemical explosions. The Angola Prison rodeo. Chlorine gas ghost ships. Through these symbols and themes, readers learn about Toussaint and his formative experiences in the Standard Heights neighborhood of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “Petrochemical Nocturne” results in an indictment of what Toussasint describes as “that dystopian haunted carnival cruise line called America.” A discursive and often surreal exploration of environmental racism, southern history, the prison-industrial complex, police brutality, inter-generational trauma, and climate change, Petrochemical Nocturne is both paean and eulogy for the formerly enslaved communities of Cancer Alley, the erasure of an entire people from a poisoned landscape.

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New Book :: Romance Language

Romance Language: Poems by Amy Glynn book cover image

Romance Language: Poems by Amy Glynn
Able Muse Press, January 2024

Winner of the 2022 Able Muse Book Award for Poetry, Amy Glynn’s Romance Language is a wellspring of culture, nature, natural phenomena, myths, esoterica. A kaleidoscope of sciences and disciplines—spanning archeology, acoustics, botany, zoology, psychology, cosmology, meteorology, mythology—are freely juxtaposed with the bliss of romance gained to longing for the one lost, the celebration of nature and the teeming creatures therein to hope for their enduring sustenance. A logophilic showcase, Romance Language transports the reader into a sensory and cerebral world of the real and imagined, ever reaching for stimulus, wisdom, understanding, and enlightenment.

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New Book :: A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War

A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights book cover image

A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights
Laertes Press, September 2023

These texts in the wake of invasion, written by the members of the Theater of Playwrights, Kyiv, in spring, summer, and fall of 2022, have a documentary thrust. Reporting from diverse places in Ukraine, from Kyiv, Lviv, Mykolaiv, from occupied Kherson, from the front itself, and locations farther afield in countries of refuge; employing diverse modes of expression: poetry, screenplay, dialogue, diary, diatribe, comedy, short story, recollection, each is a singular response to a seismic and agonizing shift. Each is an act of defiance as well, an assertion of the full human weight, of the integrity of a people.

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New Book :: Whoever Drowned Here

Whoever Drowned Here: New and Selected Poems by Max Sessner book cover image

Whoever Drowned Here: New and Selected Poems by Max Sessner
Translated by Francesca Bell
Red Hen Press, August 2023

Beloved by contemporary German readers, the poetry of Max Sessner is gathered for the first time in English in Whoever Drowned Here: New and Selected Poems, translated by Francesca Bell. Painstakingly chosen from Sessner’s celebrated three collections and from new work, these poems employ a matter-of-fact magical realism to engage the profound, philosophical mysteries of the everyday. Sessner makes nimble use of the material world as he choreographs poignant reenactments of human yearning. Smocks in the window of a dry cleaner “trade stolen / caresses” at night. Death tries on your clothes while you sleep and eats your chocolate. A poem tires of being a poem, “a small mortal / thing that no one notices,” and sets off into the world to make a new life.

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New Book :: Generation Exile

Generation Exile: The Lives I Leave Behind by Rodrigo Dorfman book cover image

Generation Exile: The Lives I Leave Behind by Rodrigo Dorfman
Arte Público Press, March 2023

Rodrigo Dorfman, the son of prominent dissidents, was six years old when his family fled Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship a month after the CIA-backed coup in 1973. They fled to Argentina, and then to Havana, Paris, Amsterdam and finally Bethesda, Maryland. Mapping the memory of exile, he remembers the contradiction of living with his seething anger at losing his home and his resistance to settling down. Rebellion was an ancestral badge of honor he wore proudly. At 18, he returned to Chile and fought against the fascist dictatorship, running for his life with bullets and tear gas flying by. Dorfman’s involvement in the resistance movement there planted the seeds for his future life as a community-centered documentary filmmaker. His restless search for a place to call his own led to his wandering—around the United States, to Morocco and Turkey and the Path of Sufism. He finally made a home in the American South, where he became a “Latino” and found kinship with other immigrants who settled there. This compelling narrative recounts a displaced man’s life-long quest to establish family, roots and a sense of belonging by bearing witness to what he calls the “Nuevo South.”

New Book :: No God Like the Mother

No God Like the Mother: Stories by Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher book cover image

No God Like the Mother: Stories by Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher
Forest Avenue Press, April 2023

Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher’s debut collection of nine short stories, No God Like the Mother, follows characters in transition, through tribulation and hope. Set around the world–the bustling streets of Lagos, the arid gardens beside the Red Sea, an apartment in Paris, and the rain-washed suburbs of the Pacific Northwest–this collection of nine stories is a masterful exploration of life’s uncertainty. Ajọsẹ-Fisher was born in Chicago, raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and returned to the United States with her family in the early nineties. She won the Oregon Book Awards’ 2020 Ken Kesey Prize for this collection.

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New Book :: The Death of Weinberg

The Death of Weinberg by Walter Weinschenk book cover image

The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories by Walter Weinschenk
Kelsay Books, February 2023

The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories includes a wide sampling of Walter Weinschenk’s writing, much of which has appeared in print over the course of the last few years. Though the stories and poems vary in terms of length and style, there is a singular focus. The book is, essentially, a rumination upon life, death, and the search for meaning. Most of these pieces are speculative in the sense that there is absent any reference to a particular location, time frame, or historical context. However, these poems and stories, dreamlike in nature, focus upon essential issues with which we grapple throughout our lives: loss, loneliness, meaning, and mortality. The common thread is the narrator’s voice which is, essentially, an inner voice, a voice of consciousness, that engages us in a consideration of what it means to be human.

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New Book :: An Influencer’s World

An Influencer's World: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Social Media Influencers and Creators by Caroline Baker and Don Baker book cover image

An Influencer’s World: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Social Media Influencers and Creators by Caroline Baker and Don Baker
University of Iowa Press, June 2023

An Influencer’s World: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Social Media Influencers and Creators by Caroline Baker and Don Baker explores the business of influencing built around likes and hate, which can take a huge psychological toll on those who choose to play the game. Their work pulls back the curtain and shines a light on the often-misunderstood realities of this dynamic industry. Featuring dozens of interviews with trending influencers, CEOs, leading industry insiders, brands, mental health professionals, and celebrities, this book provides an unconventional look at both the business side of influencing and the personal lives of influencers and creators.

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New Book :: Under a Future Sky

Under a Future Sky by Brynn Saito book cover image

Under a Future Sky by Brynn Saito
Red Hen Press, August 2023

Under a Future Sky is Brynn Saito’s poetic gathering of generations, a performance with ghosts anchored in a journey with her father to the desert prison where, over eighty years ago, her grandparents met and made a life. Born of a personal ache, an unquenchable desire to animate the shadow archive, Saito’s journey unfolds in lyric correspondences and epistolary poems that sing with rage, confusion, and, ultimately, love. In these works, descendants of wartime incarceration exchange dreams, mothers become water goddesses, and a modern daughter haunts future ruins. To enter this book is to enter the slipstream of nonlinear time, where mystical inclinations, yellow cedars, and sisterhood make a balm for trauma’s scars. Altogether, the work enacts a dialogue between the past and the present; the radical ancestor and the future child; and the desert prison and the family garden, where Saito’s father diligently gathers stones.

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New Book :: Do I Belong Here?

Do I Belong Here? / ¿Es este mi lugar? by René Colato Laínez book cover image

Do I Belong Here? / ¿Es este mi lugar? by René Colato Laínez
Illustrations by Fabricio Vanden Broeck
Piñata Books, May 2023

An immigrant boy stands “in the middle of a whirlwind of children,” and wonders where he is supposed to go. Finally, a woman speaks to him in a language he doesn’t understand and takes him to his classroom. A boy named Carlos helps orient him, but later when he reads aloud, everyone laughs at him. And when he gets an “F” on an assignment, he is sure “I do not belong here.” Award-winning children’s book author René Colato Laínez teams up again with illustrator Fabricio Vanden Broeck to explore the experiences of newcomers in schools and affirm that yes! They do belong. With beautiful acrylic-on-wood illustrations depicting children at school, this bilingual kids’ book by a Salvadoran immigrant tells an important story that will resonate with all kids who want nothing more than to belong.

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New Book :: Plums for Months

Plums for Months: A Memoir of Nature and Neurodivergence by Jazi Cox book cover image

Plums for Months: A Memoir of Nature and Neurodivergence by Zaji Cox
Forest Avenue Press, May 2023

As a neurodivergent child in a hundred-year-old house, Zaji Cox collects grammar books, second-hand toys, and sightings of feral cats. She dances and cartwheels through self-discovery and doubt, guided by her big sister and their devoted single mother. Through short essays that evoke the abundant imagination of childhood, Plums for Months explores the challenges of growing up mixed race and low-income on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.

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June 2023 eLitPak :: The Bridge on Beer River: Available for Pre-Order

Screenshot of The Bridge on Beer River's flyer for the NewPages eLitPak
click image to open PDF

A rust belt city in decline retains the solace of romance, which often proves to be an empty promise or even a curse. In The Bridge on Beer River, a novel-in-stories set in Reagan-era Binghamton, New York, characters scramble for subsistence while hoping for love and a better life. View flyer and visit website for more information.

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New Book :: Player’s Vendetta

Player's Vendetta by John Lantigua book cover image

Player’s Vendetta A Willie Cuesta Mystery by John Lantigua
Arte Público Press, March 2023

Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police Department detective-turned-private investigator, is swinging in his hammock, estimating the number of mango daquiris he can squeeze from a ripe piece of fruit about to fall from his tree. He’s also waiting for a prospective client who refused to discuss her case over the phone. Ellie Hernandez hasn’t seen her fiancé, Roberto “Bobby” Player, in ten days, and she wants Willie to find him. Bobby has been obsessed with the suspicious death of his parents more than thirty-five years ago in Cuba, and he recently went to the island to find their killers. Only six years old when they were murdered, he was living in the United States, where they were supposed to join him. He was one of the “Peter Pan” kids smuggled out when Fidel Castro took over. Willie learns the Players controlled one of the most successful casinos on the island and a large sum of money—half a million dollars—disappeared with their deaths. His investigation reveals an assortment of suspicious characters who were in Havana when the Players were killed, including a former Cuban spy now living in Little Havana, Mafia gangsters involved in gambling institutions and even an undercover US intelligence agent.

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New Book :: The Hungers of the World

The Hungers of the World by John Morgan book cover image

The Hungers of the World: New & Collected Later Poems by John Morgan
Salmon Poetry, April 2023

The Hungers of the World: New & Collected Later Poems by John Morgan joins its companion volume, The Moving Out: Collected Early Poems, published in 2019, to provide a comprehensive gathering of this Alaskan poet’s work. Originally from New York, Morgan moved with his family to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1976 to direct the creative writing program at the University of Alaska. In 1982, he and his wife Nancy built a house overlooking the Tanana River with a long view south to the Alaska Range. Morgan has written a series of poems which feature that view as it changes month by month through the seasons. Morgan’s family features prominently in his work as well as larger topics that deal with history and the arts. The final section of The Hungers of the World contains two long poems: The Wedge and River of Light: A Conversation with Kabir. The latter takes the reader on an adventurous raft trip down the Copper River in Southcentral Alaska with the Indian mystic poet Kabir as Morgan’s imaginary companion and spiritual guide.

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Books Received June 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful book titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these by clicking on “New Books” under the NewPages Blog or Books tab on the menu. If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

Alone, J.R. Solonche, David Robert Books
Bar of Rest, Sara Epstein, Kelsay Books
Bridge at the End of the World, Scott T. Starbuck, Blue Light Press
Broken Metronome, Connie Post, Glass Lyre Press
The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories, Walter Weinschenk, Kelsay Books
Dreaming in Cantera, Bonnie Wolkenstein, WordTech Editions
The Dreams of Gods, J.R. Solonche, Kelsay Books
EtC, Laura Mullen, Solid Objects
excisions, Hilary Plum, Black Lawrence Press
Expert Terrain, Diane Schenker, Word Poetry
Fig Season, Joan E. Bauer, Turning Point
Glass to Sand, John Van Dreal, Cherry Grove Collections
gulp/gasp, Serena Piccoli, Moira Books
Hearts, Joanne Corey, Kelsay Books

Continue reading “Books Received June 2023”

New Book :: The Best Material for the Artist in the World

Best Material for the Artist in the World - Albert Bierstadt: A Biography in Poems by Kenneth Chamlee book cover image

Best Material for the Artist in the World – Albert Bierstadt: A Biography in Poems by Kenneth Chamlee
Stephen F. Austin University Press, March 2023

This poetic biography tracks the life and career of landscape artist Albert Bierstadt, whose 19th-century representations of the American West earned him wealth and international acclaim. These narrative, lyric, and ekphrastic poems touch the momentum of the developing west, the devastation of native tribes and the great buffalo herds, as well as the resiliency of Bierstadt’s art in times of environmental awareness and expansionist reappraisal.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!