Sure, it’s freezing outside and there’s that little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic, but who can complain when you’re cozy at home with a bookshelf stocked with new releases? To help you curate your reading list, we asked area authors and booksellers which 2021 titles they’re most looking forward to.
1. Stephanie Skees, a bookseller at The Novel Neighbor, selects Gabriela Garcia’s début novel, Of Women and Salt, coming out in April. Skees describes the book as exploring “one family’s matriarchal choices and the legacy they create. It’s a sweeping tale ranging from the 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers that will leave the reader haunted.”
2. Author of The Ugly Truth, Jill Orr is looking forward to Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan Is Killing It, due out in February. “[It’s] fast-paced, fresh, full of humor, and original,” she says. “I love funny mysteries that have an edge, and they can be hard to find. It sounds like it has a balance of action, suspense, and humor.”
3. For Josh Stevens, co-owner of Reedy Press, it’s gotta be Kazuo Ishiguro’s first book after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature: Klara and the Sun, out in March. The novel follows an artificial woman as she watches the world. Stevens says, “It’s a fascinating concept from a writer always exploring different contexts for storytelling.”
4. Shane Mullen, Left Bank Books events coordinator, is excited about A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders, based on the author’s class on the Russian short story at Syracuse University. “I think this is a very interesting book for the time,” Mullen says. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is due out this month.
5. Ron A. Austin, author of Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, will be reading the re-release of Kiese Laymon’s How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, out now. “[Laymon’s] voice is fire and iron and steel,” Austin says. “I’m excited to see how the original and extended compare and how this project speaks to the power and practice of revision.” This edition includes seven essays that appeared in the original version, as well as six new essays.
6. Kris Kleindienst, Left Bank Books co-owner, looks forward to The Prophets—out this month—by Robert Jones Jr. “Jones’ début novel belongs alongside Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison’s Beloved,” she says. “Centered on the forbidden union of two enslaved men on a Deep South plantation, it explores the roots of America's troubled psyche.”
7. Author Crystal Hubbard is looking forward to Chris Andoe’s new book, House of Villadiva, out early this year. “With humor, tenderness, and scathing clarity, Andoe shares the beauty and ugliness of a sphere of St. Louis not everyone is privy to,” she says. “Andoe, whom St. Louis’ gay community loves to hate and hates to love, has tendered a collection of quirky and rich tales.”
8. Sarah Brown, a bookseller at Subterranean Books, has her eye on Melanie Finn’s The Hare, out this month. “Brown’s stories are beautiful and have a dark, suspenseful feel that will appeal to fans of literary mysteries,” she says. “Finn also moves between cosmopolitan and rural settings in an interesting way as she shares the story of a young woman who becomes involved with and is later abandoned by a wealthy older man.”
9. Subterranean Books owner Kelly von Plonski is most excited about My Year Abroad, by Chang-Rae Lee, out in February: “It appears to wrap everything I love about fiction: family drama, worldwide locales, alternating point of view, and beautiful writing.”
10. Author Amanda Doyle’s pick: Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku, out this month. “Goldberg's juggernaut manual Writing Down the Bones came out when I was 14. She blew my mind with her insight, humor, and practicality,” Doyle says. In Three Simple Lines, Doyle looks forward to “discovering the wisdom of simple practices.”
