By Amber Brown
As a fellow indie book business, we love to boost voices from independent presses. Here are some of our can’t-wait picks for this coming fall.
From Lanternfish Press: These Bones by Kayla Chenault (out September 14)
From Publisher’s Weekly: “Chenault's mesmerizing debut follows the Lyons family starting in 1909 through a series of vignettes that create a mosaic portrait of the Bramble Patch, the Black section of fictional Midwestern city Napoleonville, which was "built on the bones of its dead." The ensuing story is constructed of first-person accounts, news clippings, academic writing, and interviews, building a polyphonic narrative of a deteriorating community—and the demonic entity called the Barghest who feeds off them. Chenault's short but powerful gothic work blends the best elements of folklore, horror, the blues, and archival history in resonant and lyrical prose. Fans of alternate histories, suspenseful literary fiction, and Black speculative fiction will be hooked on piecing together this intricate, entrancing tale.”
From Grove Press: 12 Bytes : How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson (out October 12)
In 12 Bytes, the New York Times bestselling author Jeanette Winterson draws on her years of thinking and reading about artificial intelligence in all its bewildering manifestations. In her brilliant, laser focused, uniquely pointed and witty style of story-telling, Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, the politics of race and gender, and computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now. With wit, compassion and curiosity, Winterson tackles AI's most fascinating talking points, from the algorithms that data-dossier your whole life to the weirdness of backing up your brain.
From Catapult Books: Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo (out October 5)
This is the gripping story of a mixed-race woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew. Masterful in its examination of freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots.
From Soft Skull Press: People from My Neighborhood: Stories by Hiromi Kawakami (out November 30)
A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll's brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People from My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday—the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office—slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six "palm of the hand" stories—fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand and brief enough to allow for dipping in and out—Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.
From Counterpoint Press: The Perishing by Natashia Deón (out November 2)
A Black immortal in 1930's Los Angeles must recover the memory of her past in order to save the world in this extraordinarily affecting novel for readers of N. K. Jemisin and Octavia E. Butler. Lou believes she was sent for a very important reason, one that only others like her will be able to explain. With the help of friends, she sets out to investigate the mystery of her existence and make sense of the jumble of lifetimes calling to her, just as new forces rise to threaten the existence of those around her. Set against the rich historical landscape LA during prohibition, the creation of Route 66, and the collapse of the St. Francis Dam, The Perishing is a stunning examination of love and justice through the eyes of one miraculous woman whose fate seems linked to the city she comes to call home.
From Tin House: Windswept : Walking in the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs (out September 7)
Annabel Abbs’s Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women is a beautifully written meditation on connecting with the outdoors through the simple act of walking. In captivating and elegant prose, Abbs follows in the footsteps of women who boldly reclaimed wild landscapes for themselves, including Georgia O’Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the French River Garonne, Daphne du Maurier along the River Rhône, and Simone de Beauvoir—who walked as much as twenty-five miles a day in a dress and espadrilles—through the mountains and forests of France.
From Graywolf Press: The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber (out October 19)
The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father, and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger. Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s debut is a magical realist coming-of-age tale told through the lens of the Swahili and diasporic Hadrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya. Richly descriptive and written with an imaginative hand and sharp eye for unusual detail, The House of Rust is a memorable novel by a thrilling new voice.
From Europa Editions: Trust by Domenico Starnone (out October 19)
Pietro and Teresa's love affair is tempestuous and passionate. After yet another terrible argument, she gets an idea: they should tell each other something they've never told another person, something they're too ashamed to tell anyone. They will hear the other's confessions without judgment and with love in their hearts. In this way, Teresa thinks, they will remain united forever, more intimately connected than ever. A few days after sharing their shameful secrets, they break up. Not long after, Pietro meets Nadia, falls in love, and proposes. But the shadow of the secret he confessed to Teresa haunts him, and Teresa herself periodically reappears, standing at the crossroads, it seems, of every major moment in his life. Or is it he who seeks her out?
From Two Dollar Radio: 808s and Otherworlds: Essays & Poems by Sean Avery Medlin (out September 14)
808s & Otherworlds announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized. From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.
From Hub City Press: We Imagined It Was Rain: Stories by Andrew Siegrist (out October 5)
Hailed by ZZ Packer as "a master of tone, detail, and imagery", Andrew Siegrist's debut collection, We Imagined It Was Rain, is a love song to Tennessee. These loosely connected stories are imbued with tenderness, seriousness, and a deep understanding of the human spirit. A young man moves to the mountains and builds an heirloom chest in the wake of his son's death; a town official must make the decision to execute a circus elephant; two siblings help their father commit suicide; a preacher picks up the pieces of his ruined church, and his marriage, after a devastating flood; locals share stories of the girl with eyelashes so long she can braid them. Siegrist demonstrates careful attention to the smallest moments, to the rain on a windowpane, to individual mementos passed down through generations, in this far-reaching and thoughtful collection.
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