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Happy spring, book nerds! It's time to load up your beach bag with new releases! Here are the ones I'm looking forward to reading the most.

Note: Some of the release dates may change or be different in your part of the world. Don't come for me if they're wrong. I'm trying to keep up!

🌳  May 2023 Book Releases  💮

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Adult Literary Fiction

May 16, 2023

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Why it caught my attention: Someday I'll read a R.F. Kuang book. This is another beloved author who I've never read! This book is being compared to White Ivy by Susie Yang, which I read last year and loved. White Ivy has shocking plot twists and a protagonist who makes terrible choices for understandable reasons. I'd be thrilled with another book like White Ivy.

Buy it on Amazon

Silent Came The Monster: A Novel Of The 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks by Amy Hill Hearth

Adult Historical Fiction

May 16, 2023

Sharks are as timid as rabbits. So says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack on a swimmer at the Jersey Shore.

It's July 1916, a time when little is known about ocean creatures, and swimming in the sea is a relatively new pastime. Americans up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer's death. Little do they know that this is only the beginning.

A prominent surgeon at the shore, Dr. Halsey, after examining the wounds of the first victim, is the only person who believes that the creature is a shark and that it will strike again. But the public as well as the authorities—and even those who witnessed the attacks—don't believe him. Dr. Halsey finds himself fighting widespread confusion, conspiracy theories, defiance, and outright denial of the shark.

Seeking the input of commercial fishermen, Dr. Halsey learns that they have long been concerned about a creature they call the beast. The local Native Americans, the Lenape, have their own beliefs as well.

The shark attacks occur in an already fraught time. A brutal war rages in Europe, and Americans are divided about becoming involved. Meanwhile, an unprecedented outbreak of infantile paralysis (polio) creates widespread panic. Into this scenario, the sea monster arrives. But what is it? Theories range from a huge mackerel to a giant sea turtle, or even a German submarine.

Why it caught my attention: I love the cover! This is once again a "Based on a true story" book. Goodreads says, "the 1916 Jersey Shore shark, believed to be a great white, changed the way Americans think of the seashore, reminding us once again that nature plays by its own rules."

Buy it on Amazon

Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman

Adult Literary Fiction

May 23, 2023

Virginia, 2004. Gore is entering his second term as president. Our narrator, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the estate of renowned lawyer and World War II hero Robert Ableson. Ableson died a few years earlier. Or did he? When it becomes clear that scientists, funded by the Gore administration, have found a cure for death, more and more of life’s certainties get called into question. Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil? Is Ableson a man outside of time, or is he the product of a new era? How does America’s fate hang in the balance?

Why it caught my attention: Alternate history is one of my favorite genres. The premise of this novel reminds me of Scythe by Neal Shusterman but for adult readers. A world without death would be very different. Goodreads says it "grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on layers of memory and forgetting."

Buy it on Amazon

Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering by Margaret Atwood (Editor)

Adult Literary Fiction Composite Novel

May 30, 2023

One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbors. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t get away from the city when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming collection, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

Why it caught my attention: All my favorite authors got together to write a pandemic book! Goodreads calls it "a surprising and irresistibly propulsive novel with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng."

Buy it on Amazon

Which May book releases are you looking forward to reading?