46 new eBooks and audiobooks we’re looking forward to this week
Welcome back to New & Hot Reads, where we talk about some of the most anticipated books coming out now
The Lying Life of Adults is the first novel by Elena Ferrante to be released after her Neapolitan series (including My Brilliant Friend, the book that spawned the HBO series) made her an international sensation. This new book promises to deliver on everything readers want from Ferrante: introspective women, complicated family relationships, trials of adolescence and young adulthood, and Naples in all its splendour and vulgarity as the backdrop. Of course commitments have already been made to adapt it into a Netflix series, about which we’ll all have very strong opinions once we’ve finished the book.
Speaking of screen adaptations, Catherine Hernandez’ novel Scarborough, a realistic portrait of young people struggling to get by in the east end of Toronto, is on its way to screens near us all. So it’s a fitting time to get our hands on her follow-up, Crosshairs. In Crosshairs we’re dropped into a future Toronto, where flooding due to climate change has displaced the vulnerable, and anybody not meeting strict social norms is sent to toil in a concentration camp. Among this outcast underclass, leaders emerge to plan an uprising designed for maximum impact in a media-saturated landscape. While a science fiction novel seems at first glance a stark departure from the social realism of Scarborough, Hernandez is showing readers that the power of her imagination is equal to that of her social conscience.
His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie is drawing comparisons to Kevin Kwan’s international blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, which is wonderful if it draws readers, but they’ll find out quickly that it’s really its own thing coming from its own unique place. It’s the story of Afi, a hard-working young woman living in a small town in Ghana, who suddenly has to answer a marriage proposal from a wealthy businessman she doesn’t know. The promise of comfort and opportunity is hard to resist, but who is this man, and what can she expect of a marriage that starts this way? In this debut novel, Peace Adzo Medie has delivered a story with character-driven plot twists aplenty that make us hope this is the first book in a long career.
2016’s Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi -- coincidentally, also a book about Ghana and Ghanains -- was a huge hit that won plaudits from critics and readers alike. In Transcendent Kingdom, a woman named Gifty works toward a degree in medicine from Stanford, specializing in the neuroscience of depression, while her brother and mother each buckle under the weight of mental illness and addiction. Leaping from the slave trade in her first book to major social problems of 21st century America in her second, Gyasi -- who received at the age of 26 the National Book Foundation’s Top 5 Under 35 award -- seems determined to leave her mark by writing ambitious, challenging books.
More books coming out September 1 - 14
💭 Big Ideas
- Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty
- Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies by The Secret Barrister
- A Good War: Modernizing Canada for the Climate Emergency by Seth Klein
- Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril by Thomas Homer-Dixon
- First, Wear a Face Mask: A Doctor’s Guide to Reducing Risk of Infection During the Pandemic and Beyond by Dr. Philip M. Tierno, Jr.
- Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World by Sharon Salzberg
✍️ True Stories
- Murder in the Family: How the Search for My Mother’s Killer Led to My Father by Jeff Blackstock
- Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff
- Hitler: Downfall by Volker Ullrich
- Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3) (Pacific War Trilogy) by Ian W. Toll
- Eat a Peach: A Memoir by David Chang
- Forever Terry: A Legacy in Letter by Darrell Fox
- On All Fronts: the Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward
💘 Romance
- Dark Song by Christine Feehan
- Rules for Dating Your Ex by Piper Rayne
- Say It Ain't So by Lani Lynn Vale
- Tempted by Love by Melissa Foster
- Lennox by Dale Mayer
- A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire by Jennifer L. Armentrout
- Penthouse Prince by Kendall Ryan
- The Lost Book of the White by Cassandra Clare
- Three Weddings And A Baby by Vivian Arend
🗡️ Crime Fiction and Thrillers
- All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny
- Shadows in Death by J. D. Robb
- One by One by Ruth Ware
- The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves
- Chaos by Iris Johansen
- The Innocent Girls by B.R. Spangler
- The Unlocking Season by Gail Bowen
🖊️ Contemporary Fiction
- The Residence by Andrew Pyper
- Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
- The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes by Elissa R Sloan
- Noopiming: the Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
- The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
- Crosshairs by Catherine Hernandez
- His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
- Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
✨ Tales of Other Worlds and Other Times
- The Kidnapper's Accomplice by C.J. Archer
- Blood & Honey by Shelby Mahurin
- A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire
- Divergence by C. J. Cherryh
- Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy (Book I: Chaos Rising) by Timothy Zahn
- Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
- Iron Heart by Nina Varela
- Wild Cards XI: Dealer's Choice by George R. R. Martin
- Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston
Check out even more new eBooks & audiobooks here