Page turners for 2020
URGENT, WEIRD AND PROMISING TITLES TO GET LOST IN FOR THE FIRST HALF OF 2020
The most urgent, weird and promising books to get lost in at the start of the new year.
The wintry winds of late 2019 brought a lot of speculation about the next and penultimate novel in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series but nothing resembling a release date. Rather than sit around waiting on Martin, with the help of Houston booksellers I’ve instead assembled a book preview for 2020 that, hopefully, deals with titles that are more reliably confirmed for release.
This year starts off with a kick. Jeanine Cummins’ “American Dirt” arrives with blurbs from Stephen King and several booksellers testifying to its gripping pacing. And I found it to be as billed: an onthe-pulse novel about a mother and her son on the run from a Mexican cartel. The book opens with devastating violent outburst, and Cummins doesn’t let her foot off the gas until the story is told.
“I did not breathe for the whole first chapter,” says Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston. “The run for the border is hellish, and the timeliness of the border situation makes it a must-read.”
The book, out Jan. 21, is taut and timely and will likely pepper best-of-2020 lists 11 months from now.
Koehler is also keen on “Valentine” by Elizabeth Wetmore, due March 31.
“I loved every page,” she says. “Set in West Texas during the oil booms and busts of the ’70s, it’s the women who bear the brunt of the brutality of the culture. These characters and their intertwined stories will work a way into your heart. It’s the mythic Texas that we think we know.”
Another January release of note is “Long Bright River,” which will be in bookstores this week. Liz Moore’s fourth novel touches on the opioid epidemic in her tale of two sisters whose paths diverge greatly from childhood. It’s also a gripping piece of fiction that drew a lot of buzz weeks before release.
The list below is hardly exhaustive. But it represents a few urgent, weird and promising titles for the first half of 2020. Publication dates are subject to change.
January
“Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick,” Zora Neale Hurston: Nothing in this new story anthology is technically “previously unpublished,” but it does rescue eight stories that had been published decades ago in anthologies and then largely forgotten. The 21 stories collected represent broad thematic content mined by Hurston in Harlem in the mid-1920s.
“A Long Petal of the Sea,” Isabel Allende: This piece of historical fiction starts after the fall of the Spanish government in the 1930s and charts the journey of a widow and her spouse’s brother as they try to start a new life in Chile.
“Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: The Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-wife team dives into struggling small towns in America, revealing systems and programs that have failed. But true to the title, there are some optimistic glimmers here. They’ll appear Jan. 16 at Congregation Emanu El with the Progressive Forum.
“Me & Mr. Cigar,” Gibby Haynes: If you’re wondering what the Dallas native and Butthole Surfers frontman has been doing lately, well, he’s written a darkly funny youngadult novel about a troubled teen and his supernatural dog.
“Zed,” Joanna Kavenna: A colossal tech corporation with tendrils in life, the economy and politics, as well as a predictive algorithm set this dystopian story into motion. What could go wrong?
“The Conference of Birds,” Ransom Riggs: The fifth book in Riggs’ “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” series finds hero Jacob having dispatched his enemies with a wide open future ahead of him. The author will make an appearance Jan. 19 at the Barnes & Noble in The Woodlands.
February
“The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz,” Erik Larson: The subject hardly matters. Larson’s storytelling gifts — his sense of pacing, his ability to convey historical detail and characters — are without peer.
“The Big Goodbye,” Sam Wasson: The “Fosse” biographer tells the story of the making of “Chinatown,” one of the greatest films of all time, and one with ageless allegorical offerings.
“Apeirogon,” Colum
McCann: The National Book Award winner for “Let the Great World Spin” tells a story of two fathers — one Palestinian, the other Israeli — both suffer familial losses that bring them together. Inprint Houston brings him on April 27 to the Alley Theatre for a reading with Emily St. John Mandel.
March
“The Night Watchman,” Louise Erdrich: National Book Award winner Erdrich based this novel on the life of her grandfather, whose fight for Native American lands spanned from North Dakota to Washington, D.C. Inprint Houston brings her on March 9 to the Alley Theatre for a reading.
“Deacon King Kong,” James McBride: This novel is McBride’s first since he won the National Book Award seven years ago. It is set in a Brooklyn, N.Y., housing project like the one where he was raised, as he tells the story from multiple perspectives of a bumbling old church deacon who shoots a drug dealer.
“Death in Mud Lick: A True Story of Corporate Pill Pushers in Small Town America,” Eric Eyre: A terrific reporter, Eyre found himself at an epicenter for the opioid crisis while working at the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia. He deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, and here shares a story of a woman moved to fight back after her brother’s death.
“The Mirror and the Light,” Hilary Mantel: Mantel’s narrative about the life of Oliver Cromwell has thus far resulted in two deeply researched and gorgeously told novels. She concludes his life story and her trilogy with this volume, which — considering Cromwell’s bio — won’t likely end well.
“The Glass Hotel,” Emily St. John Mandel:
Two seemingly disparate stories are tied together, one involving a woman who disappears at sea, the other involving a Ponzi scheme in New York. Inprint Houston brings her on April 27 to the Alley Theatre for a reading with Colum McCann.
“My Dark Vanessa,” Kate Elizabeth Russell: Gillian Flynn raved about this novel that jumps between 2000, when its narrator was a teen having an affair with a 40something teacher, and 17 years later when he’s been accused of sexual abuse.
April
“How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” C Pam Zhang: Two orphaned children of immigrants set out to bury their father in this bracing story about identity, home and family.
“Afterlife,” Julia Alvarez: The first adult novel by Alvarez in 15 years tells the story of a writer and college professor who in a short span loses a husband and sister and then finds a desperate stranger on her doorstep.
“What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life,” Mark Doty: The deep feeling and deeply expressive poet Doty braids memoir, biography and criticism into a fascinating account of his relationship to the storied poet and his work.
“The Machine Never Blinks: A Graphic History of Spying and Surveillance,” Ivan Greenberg, writer, with Everett Patterson and Joe Canlas, artists: An unnerving history compressed and illustrated.
May
“Dirt: Adventures, with Family, in the Kitchens of Lyon, Looking for the Origins of French Cooking,” Bill Buford:
Admittedly, the rambling title reads like a chapter. But as he proved with “Heat,” Buford has a gift for describing the beauty and chaos of a kitchen.
June
“The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare: 1945-2020,” Tim Weiner: Check the years in the title just in case you thought the Cold War had ended. This is by the author of the authoritative CIA history “Legacy of Ashes.”
July
“Transcendent Kingdom,” Yaa Gyasi: A neuroscience Ph.D candidate chooses her path because her family — Ghanaian immigrants living in Alabama — struggle with addiction and depression.