Wile away your afternoon with one of these paperback releases
Here are 10 freshly published paperbacks to help wile away an afternoon.
‘The Candy House’ by Jennifer Egan (Scribner, $17.99):
A follow-up to “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” this novel is “less a sequel … than a fraternal twin,” wrote a reviewer in the Guardian. “… ‘The Candy House’ is a novel of Easter eggs — of hidden in-joke treats. It begs to be read alongside its more extroverted sibling, and to consider, in the space between them, the deflations — incremental and otherwise — of the last decade.”
‘What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year’ by Charles Finch (Vintage, $17):
Author Finch was commissioned in March 2020 by the Los Angeles Times to write a diary of his impressions during lockdown. “Even at its darkest,” wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “this serves as a moving testament to the resilience of humanity.”
‘Booth’ by Karen Joy Fowler (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $18):
Fowler’s novel explores the family of John Wilkes Booth, who in real life left his acting career behind to become one of American history’s most famous assassins. “We know even before we turn the first page where the intertwined timelines of the Booths and American history will lead,” wrote a Washington Post reviewer, “but Fowler’s deftly imagined family portrait keeps us riveted.”
‘Like a Sister’ by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland Books, $17.99):
Garrett’s novel involves dead reality
TV star Desiree and her half-sister, Lena, who doesn’t believe the official explanation of an overdose. I wrote last year, “It’s a smart whodunit — for the record, the final reveal wasn’t who I thought it was — and Lena’s voice won me over instantly.”
‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ by Xochitl Gonzalez (Flatiron Books, $18.99):
This debut centers on a wedding planner who’s disappointed in love. A Washington Post critic wrote, “What’s most impressive about ‘Olga Dies Dreaming’ is the way Gonzalez stretches the seams of the rom-com genre to accommodate her complex analysis of racial politics.”
‘Secret Identity’ by Alex Segura (Flatiron Books, $18.99):
Carmen Valdez, an assistant at a comic book publisher in the ’70s, dreams of creating her own superhero book but gets pulled into a mystery when a colleague unexpectedly turns up dead. An NPR reviewer called it “a well-crafted and layered mystery-thriller that excels in multiple dimensions.”
‘French Braid’ by Anne Tyler (Vintage, $17):
Tyler’s latest has a wider lens than usual, spanning 60 years in the loving but taciturn Garrett family. “One gets the sense that Tyler is no longer quite so interested in the details,” wrote a New York Times reviewer. “Instead, ‘French Braid’ offers something subtler and finer, the long view on family: what remains years later, when the particulars have been sanded away by time.”
‘Joan Is Okay’ by Weike Wang (Random House Trade Paperbacks, $17):
The author returns with a novel about a Manhattan ICU doctor who has a complicated relationship with her family. A New York Times reviewer wrote, “Joan’s dry wit is downright hilarious, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes as a coping mechanism ... Joan’s wry humor is sometimes punctuated by moments of unexpected tenderness.”
‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House Trade Paperbacks, $20):
The author examines how America, past and present, has been shaped by a hidden caste system. New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner described it as “an extraordinary document, one that strikes me as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”
‘City on Fire’ by Don Winslow (William Morrow Paperbacks, $18.99):
Winslow kicks off a new franchise with a tale of two New England crime empires — one Irish, one Italian. “‘City on Fire’ does for Rhode Island what David Chase’s ‘The Sopranos’ did for New Jersey,” wrote a Washington Post reviewer.