This is sure to be a breakout hit this summer and the most talked about. Rob Franklin takes on so many big issues, and the way they land in this complicated world that we live in. Well worth your time (and your book clubs!)
Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin, (List Price: $28.99, S&S/Summit Books, 9781668077436, June 2025)
Reviewed by Laura Taylor, Oxford Exchange in Tampa, Florida
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I could spend years in a cookbook shop and never get bored. Where do I begin? I love the weirdness of cookbooks; how they capture the larger culture of a specific time-period and tell the tale through the prism of food. Take, for example, one of my cookbook treasures: The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook by Robin Leach. It’s a time capsule of the eighties — glass block, Dynasty-style hairdos, Brooke Shields — and the food is as awful as the fashion. Or another favorite: A Treasury of Great Recipes by Vincent and Mary Price, a collection of all the menus that the famous horror maestro and his wife collected over their world travels in the ‘40s and ‘50s and the meals that they hosted for their friends in their exquisite Hollywood home. If I could jump into the pages of a cookbook, it might be that one.
― Adam Roberts, Interview, OutSFL
What booksellers are saying about Food Person
About Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts is the author of The Amateur Gourmet, Secrets of the Best Chefs, and Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway. He started his food blog The Amateur Gourmet in 2004, and also hosts the podcast Lunch Therapy. Roberts has also written for The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their dog Winston. Food Person is his first novel.
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Food has always been an obsession of mine, but I had never written it really into my fiction, aside from, occasionally describing what somebody was eating, describing a flavor somebody remembered. But this was the first time where, I think years of reading cookbooks, of watching cooking shows, of watching my parents cook, of cooking myself, and experiencing different flavors and different cuisines, and being really tuned into that…I think this was when all of that sort of manifested. This was my first try at writing something that felt like eating. And there were even moments where I would try to eat the foods that I was describing to get the mouth feel right…I completely invented recipes for for several of the dishes in Aftertaste that wind up being these sort of spiritual connections that can bring a spirit back. And in some cases, I would attempt to make the flavors, but in most cases, I just knew in my head what it would taste like from from just experiencing cooking and experiencing flavors. I would use that sort of intuition, also paired with what that character needed at the time. So I think one of the things in Aftertaste that happens is that the food is never just the food. The food is really evocative of a particular flavor of memory. So is it they’re sweet? Is it? Is it something that really disturbs the spirit that’s trying to come back? Is it something warm? Is it something that they’re excited to taste again? Is it a recollection that buoys them, or is it something that crushes them?
― Daria Lavelle, Interview, Table Talk
What booksellers are saying about Aftertaste
About Daria Lavelle
Daria Lavelle is an American fiction writer. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in the New York metro area, her work explores themes of identity and belonging through magic and the uncanny. Her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere, and she holds degrees in writing from Princeton University and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, children, and goldendoodle, all of whom love a great meal almost as much as she does. Learn more at DariaLavelle.com..
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I have had relationships with humans, but I’ve also loved a lot of people in stories. I’ve been told by my doctor not to talk about this too much, but ever since I was a child, I’ve had 30 or 40 imaginary friends who live on a different star or planet with whom I have shared love and sexual experiences. ……Some say that the worlds I write about are dystopian, but a lot of people think that actually reality is worse… I’ve often felt love, obsession, desire, friendship, a kind of faith, or almost a prayer-like relationship with these men – and they’ve always been men, so it’s a heterosexual relationship – who live inside stories. With Vanishing World I was trying to create a place where it might be easier for people who find it difficult to live in this world.
― Sayaka Murata, Interview, Guardian
What booksellers are saying about Vanishing World
About Sayaka Murata
SAYAKA MURATA is the author of many books, including Convenience Store Woman, winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Earthlings, and Life Ceremony. Murata has been named a Freeman’s “Future of New Writing” author and a Vogue Japan Woman of the Year.
GINNY TAPLEY TAKEMORI has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She lives at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.
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Don’t know if it’s the dire days of 2025 or what, but I had to laugh (so as not to cry?) while reading Spent, which felt bleakly, hysterically absurdist, a parody/satire but not without care and all too true in the way it represents the daily buzzing oversaturated mania of the hypercurrent time we live in. Poking fun at cliches of those aligned on far and opposite ends of the political spectrum, Bechdel, with humor, tugs at the impossible and insane moral quandaries of trying to make meaning, make art, make anything–focus! while everyone is drowning in “content” and grabbing at shredded attention spans and money while the world burns/floods/landslides (terrifyingly apocalyptic to realize that we’re in this dystopia NOW) and ethical consumption (and maybe ethical anything) is impossible. And yet…I enjoyed reading Spent, couldn’t look away from the train wreck we’re in. It doesn’t land hopelessly either, but instead lets go of grandiosity and the large scale, landing on the fact that we are still here and we’ve got to take care of each other in the day-to-day.
Spent by Alison Bechdel, (List Price: $32, Mariner Books, 9780063278929, May 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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In Kevin Wilson’s latest, we have a different kind of sibling drama–one in which the siblings in question don’t even know the others exist. That is, until they’re thrown together in a PT Cruiser on a road trip to ambush–er, confront–the father who abandoned them all. When Madeline “Mad” Hill, a farmer in rural Coalfield, Tennessee, meets her older half-brother Rube, a mystery writer, the quiet life she’s built for herself is turned on its head. Likewise, when the two of them leave Coalfield together to seek out their younger half-sister Pepper, they disrupt a propulsive college basketball season. And it doesn’t stop there. As they collect still more siblings, more lives are interrupted, more trajectories diverted. But as the siblings get to know each other and themselves, they find that maybe the thing that was missing from each of their lives was each other. Traveling west, this group of just-introduced siblings follows the path and pieces together the puzzle of their shared, absent father–a man who methodically tried on different identities and shed them as he sought his own happiness, forsaking theirs. With heart, humor, and empathy, Kevin Wilson explores the divide between the family we’re born with and the family we choose, and what happens when they intersect.
Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson, (List Price: $28.99, Ecco, 9780063317512, May 2025)
Reviewed by Joyce McKinnon, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
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My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende follows Emilia, a bold and curious young writer who pushes the boundaries of what’s expected of women in her time (19th century). As one of the first female journalists, an assignment takes her from San Francisco to Chile, her late father’s homeland. Emilia is drawn into a country on the brink of civil war and into the heart of her own identity. I didn’t know I wanted to read about the Chilean civil war until Isabel Allende had me hooked. Her writing is descriptive and clear without being overly flowery, and I loved Emilia’s character; she’s not only a fierce woman ahead of her time, but someone I could see myself being friends with, which brought a sense of comfort to an otherwise heavy story. Allende does a remarkable job showing how war ravages not just countries, but the hearts and minds of everyone it touches. There is an element of romance that does not overshadow the story, but seamlessly adds another beautiful layer to it. I equally loved watching Emilia reclaim her Chilean roots. It’s clear this book was written not just to illuminate history, but also as a love letter to Chile from Allende through Emilia’s journey.
My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende, (List Price: $30, Ballantine Books, 9780593975091, May 2025)
Reviewed by Bianca Eckhoff, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Wow! The Dream Hotel took me by surprise, but I could not put it down. It’s a gripping, all-too-real exploration of the ways in which data collection and technology could literally imprison us. Propulsive, creative and thought-provoking, this compelling novel combines the sci-fi elements of The Minority Report with the social commentary of The Handmaids Tale! A fabulous read!
The Dream Hotel: A Read with Jenna Pick by Laila Lalami, (List Price: $29, Random House, 9780593317600, March 2025)
Reviewed by Anderson McKean, Page & Palette in Fairhope, Alabama
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Too Soon by Betty Shamieh is a fantastic, delightfully funny, and meaningful read. Spanning over fifty years, you’ll meet three generations of Palestinian American women who are tough as nails and want more choices and something better for each generation, even as the pull of tradition informs their values. Zoya, Naya, and Arabella all have to negotiate for the chance to voice their true selves despite societal constraints. This would be a great book club choice for discussion.
Too Soon by Betty Shamieh, (List Price: $28.99, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 9781668046548, March 2025)
Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
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The Pretender is an absolute blast. In a similar vein to writers such as Maggie O’Farrell or Hilary Mantel, Jo Harkin has taken a footnote from the history books – in this case Lambert Simnel, a 15th-century pretender to the English throne – and from it created a character and story that just leaps off the page. It’s bawdy, earthy, irreverent and witty, and I absolutely loved it.
The Pretender by Jo Harkin, (List Price: $30, Knopf, 9780593803301, April 2025)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
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Told via a fairytale pitch-perfect unreliable narrator (who continues to shift the story in acquiescence to the ghost chorus), Sour Cherry brings the reader along to witness the hauntings and the haunted, complicit women trapped in violent cycles, and the rot and decay that are apparent when the stories are stripped away. If Angela Carter and Carmen Maria Machado were trapped in House of Leaves, you’d be holding this book in your hands.
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou, (List Price: $17.95, Tin House Books, 9781963108194, April 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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It is late on a Thursday evening, and I just finished this absolutely exquisite book. If I could give the author a hug right now, I would. I loved the highly detailed history. I was gripped by the family drama. I was seduced by Luella and William and Robert! I embraced the poetry of the cry-inducing ending. This book is truly exquisite storytelling. In a case of purely delightful coincidence that made this book feel so personal and special, there is a post-Civil War community near my hometown called The Promised Land that had been settled by formerly enslaved people. As I read this book, I kept imagining the story taking place there. If anyone reading this would like to know more about these communities, check out the nonfiction book titled The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson!
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, (List Price: $29, Berkley, 9780593337721, April 2025)
Reviewed by Thomas Wallace, Reading Rock Books in Dickson, Tennessee
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Tongues is a masterpiece, and with it Anders Nilsen fulfills the most ambitious possibilities of the graphic novel as a medium. Rarely have images and words, form and function, been married so beautifully; his pages and panels bursting with innovative, jewel-like complexity and cascading, organic beauty. The story marries the erudite and the bawdy, political and mythical, violent and meditative, in ways that you find only in literature’s greatest: Utopia, Candide, Gulliver’s Travels, The Plague, The Castle, Cosmicomics, The Master and Margarita, White Noise. This book belongs in the pantheon.
Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen, (List Price: $35, Pantheon, 9781524747206, March 2025)
Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky
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All the feelings for Red Dog Farm! Mr. Miller tells a beautiful story of family, landscape, and the way you can never truly know either. It’s a tale of fierce love, harsh wind, and a really good dog. It’s one of those books I wish I could experience for the first time again and again. It’s oh so good!
Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller, (List Price: $28, Little, Brown and Company, 9780316575140, March 2025)
Reviewed by Susan Williams, M Judson Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina
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When I first conceived of these stories, around 2016, a lot of trans writing was very sure that it had to be a specific thing: In order to capture the trans experience, we have to invent a totally new narrative for this wild and different style of life that has strange punctuation and asterisks and parentheses in it! And I was very resistant to this because I was like, I actually think that trans lives are built out of the exact same things that any other life is built out of. The emotions that are operative for a trans person are the exact same emotions that are operative for anybody else. It may be arranged slightly differently or with slightly different balances, but 99 percent of them are all the same. And so, there was a way in which I was like, You know what? I’m going to just write trans stories to show that you don’t need to invent some othering form to explain a trans life. You can explain a trans life in a teen romance. Then, I just started finding them fun.
― Torrey Peters, Interview, The Cut
What booksellers are saying about Stag Dance
About Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters is the bestselling author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Award, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. Torrey rides a pink motorcycle and splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont.
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