Our Bookshelves Can’t Wait for These Spring 2018 Releases

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Buy it: $26, amazon.com; indiebound.org

The author of 2016’s Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty is back with a tenderly imagined story collection, one that traverses small towns and tropical islands, all the while revealing truths about parenthood, love, and growing up that you didn’t know you needed to hear, but are so immensely glad you did.

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

George Saunders calls this collection “a near-miraculous and brilliant debut.” Because we trust George Saunders’ opinion on all things short story related, we can’t wait to pick up this collection—written by a U.S. Navy veteran about soldiers, veterans, and the gravity of war—when it’s released in March.

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Buy it: $26, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Aminatta Forna’s new novel, Happiness, is set in London and follows the aftereffects of a chance encounter between Jean, an American studying foxes in the city, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist. It’s about unexpected connection in the midst of the unending bustle and thrall of the city.

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Buy it: $26.99, amazon.com; indiebound.org

The newest novel from Delaware-based writer Marisa de los Santos begins with an unexpected meeting between a young woman named Clare and an elderly woman named Edith. Edith and Clare take turns telling the story, one of a broken engagement, a life-changing gift, and the eternal mysteries of the heart. 

Publication Date: March 6, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Luis Alberto Urrea’s new novel is an unforgettable family epic, a sweeping story that takes place over one weekend in San Diego in which a family unspools stories—legendary, mythic, and utterly entertaining—that have been passed down to them and which bring to life a vivid rendering of the Mexican-American immigrant experience in America.

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Buy it: $25, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Set in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, Laura & Emma tells the story of single mother Laura and her daughter, Emma. Laura raises Emma in the privileged sphere in which she was raised, a landscape that comes into focus through a series of often funny, sometimes sad, and always insightful snapshots.

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Buy it: $23, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Suspenseful and bracing, Christine Schutt’s new collection is composed of a novella and ten stories that are, at turns, brilliant, witty, and darkly comic—all filled with characters drawn in gorgeous, near-Gothic strangeness and gripping, eye-widening perspectives.

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Buy it: $17, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Mallory Ortberg (The Toast! Texts from Jane Eyre!) retells classic folktales in this winningly mischievous collection. With her unmistakable voice, Ortberg spins undeniably feminist takes on much-loved classics—a storytelling alchemy that preserves the dark origins of the tales while invigorating them anew. 

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Buy it: $25, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Nafkote Tamirat’s debut novel opens on an island commune where a young woman and her father make their home. How did they get there? It’s an engrossing story about a parking lot attendant, an Ethiopian community in Boston, and the entanglements one endures for the sake of family and love.

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Buy it: $15.95, amazon.com; indiebound.org

At turns hysterical and thought provoking, Brock Clarke’s story collection The Price of the Haircut promises to transport you. In Florence, Italy, a man believes he must compete with novelist Mario Puzo for his wife’s affection. A couple find themselves in a bed-and-breakfast that is also the former home of Lizzie Borden. And, memorably, the child actors from the film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory face their fates. It’s a satirical collection shot through with moments of enlightenment.

Publication Date: March 20, 2018

Buy it: $26, amazon.com; indiebound.org

In this wonderful new novel, a group of thirty-something high school friends (they call themselves “The Gunners”) reunite after a tragedy. Connecting with each other again prompts them to confront their struggles, finding friendship, forgiveness, and hope along the way.

Publication Date: March 20, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

An engrossing tale about art and legacy and fathers and sons, Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher tells the story of Pinch, the son of a genius artist named Bear, who struggles to feel worthy of his parentage and eventually launches a plot to realize his own legacy.

Publication Date: March 27, 2018

Buy it: $40, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Biography buffs will devour this rendering of famed art collectors Dominique and John de Menil, who collected widely and established the Menil Collection as well as the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

Publication Date: March 27, 2018

Buy it: $26.99, amazon.com; indiebound.org

If you’re looking to add a dose of suspense to your reading list this spring, Tangerine is it. It’s the story of Alice Shipley and her husband John, who move to Tangier and are soon surprised by an unexpected visitor, a renewed friendship, a mysterious disappearance, and a world turned thrillingly upside down.

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

In America Is Not the Heart, Elaine Castillo has written an impossible-to-put-down, multi-generational family epic emerging from the life of Geronima (called Hero), a Filipino doctor who endures capture and torture in the Philippines and escapes, fleeing to Milpitas, California, and a new life, the experience of which brings triumph and tragedy anew.  

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

Buy It: $26, amazon.com; indiebound.org

The praise for this much-anticipated new essay collection from Sloane Crosley has been pouring in, with the likes of David Sedaris (“How sure-footed and observant Sloane Crosley is. How perfectly, relentlessly funny.") and Steve Martin (“She stays consistently funny and delivers a book that is alive and jumping.”) weighing in on the author’s talents. It’s a collection of essays at turns hilarious, heartfelt, and insightful that promises to earn a permanent place on your bookshelf and in your imagination.

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

Buy it: $29.95, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Beloved short story writer Lorrie Moore is back with a collection of prose. That’s all you need to know. But we’ll go on: It’s packed with essays and criticism on topics so varied, it will make you head spin (in the best way). Lorrie Moore has plenty to say, and we want to hear it all. This will be a collection to devour immediately when it’s released in April. 

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

Buy it: $28, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Perhaps the most talked-about spring release yet, Meg Wolitzer’s upcoming novel is an intricately woven and deeply layered story that follows women who connect, yearn, chase their ambitions, navigate structures of existing power while claiming their own, and who write their own stories—stories that ignite their imaginations and, sometimes, look vastly different from what they first planned. 

Publication Date: April 10, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Madeline Miller’s debut novel, The Song of Achilles, brought fresh eyes and heartrending, gorgeous prose to a classical epic—the story of Achilles, Patroclus, and the Trojan War. This mythical reimagining is precisely what Miller promises to do with her highly anticipated new book, Circe, which Ann Patchett calls “an epic spanning thousands of years that's also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner.” We’ll be diving into it as soon as we can get our hands on it this spring.

Publication Date: April 10, 2018

Buy it: $24, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Chris Offutt’s new novel takes place in rural Kentucky, where a veteran makes his home and builds a family while working for a bootlegger and navigating the land. When a threat encroaches and endangers his family, he’ll do whatever it takes to protect those closest to him. Stewart O’Nan says, “Like the late, great Larry Brown and the late, great William Gay, Chris Offutt delivers a hardscrabble, mythic South with a laconic voice that turns sly to describe the follies of Man…Country Dark is a smart, rich country noir.”

Publication Date: April 10, 2018

Buy it: $24.84, amazon.com; indiebound.org

This cultural history traces twentieth-century America through the lives and letters of women writers, thinkers, and cultural critics (including Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, and Nora Ephron), as well as the obstacles they faced and the new ways of thinking they sparked through their work.

Publication Date: April 10, 2018

Buy it: $15.99, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Jez Burrows’ new book is composed of short fictions—very short fictions. Made up entirely of stories inspired by example sentences from dictionaries, these snappy tales are thrillingly inventive, totally immersive, and endlessly entertaining.

Publication Date: April 17, 2018

Buy it: $15.99, amazon.com; indiebound.org

Alexander Chee, author of the wonderful novel The Queen of the Night, is back with a collection of essays delving into many facets of his life, education, and art. It promises to be a wise, poetic, and instructive addition to bookshelves everywhere.

Publication Date: April 24, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

An adventure caper, a dose of true crime, and an obsession with the natural world fill this exciting spring release. In it, Kirk Wallace Johnson investigates the origins and ends of an ornithological heist conducted by a 20-year-old American flautist within a facility of the British Museum of Natural History. It’s fascinating from the first page to the last—you won’t be able to put it down.

Publication Date: April 24, 2018

Buy it: $27, amazon.com; indiebound.org

From the author of American Wife, Eligible, and Prep comes a collection of sharply observed and unforgettably crafted stories about relationships, grudges, and gender roles in the lives of lawyers, couples, and mothers—the sheer power of Sittenfeld’s storytelling talents will leave you breathless.

Publication Date: April 24, 2018

Buy it: $22, amazon.com; indiebound.org

We can’t wait to read this new novel about family, folly, and the lure of the wilderness set on the wild landscape of the American frontier. Colm Tóibín says, “West has all the stark power and immediacy of a folktale or a legend. It is also structured with great artistry, a beguiling sense of form and pace, and a depth in the way the characters are created, making clear that Carys Davies is a writer of immense talent.”

Publication Date: May 1, 2018

Buy it: $26.88, amazon.com; indiebound.org

After 2011’s The Paris Wife, Paula McLain didn’t think she’d be writing about Hemingway again, but, with a new piece of historical fiction on the horizon, we’re so glad she did. Love and Ruin brings to life Martha Gellhorn, noted war correspondent, travel writer, and also Hemingway’s third wife, during their adventurous and turbulent years together.  

Publication Date: May 1, 2018

Buy it: $26.95, amazon.com; indiebound.org

A utopian summer camp born of an oil bust and populated by people both yearning for a waning idealism and coming to terms with their lives and relationships? Sign us up. Heather Abel’s sharp and shining debut brings to life a quirky, specific landscape that brings into focus essential truths about life—growing up and into it, and just plain living it.

Publication Date: May 8, 2018

Buy it: $25.99, amazon.com; indiebound.org

This new book, a never-before-published true story written by Zora Neale Hurston, is poised to be the most powerful release of the year. It recounts the life of Cudjo Lewis, a 95-year-old man Hurston interviewed in Plateau, Alabama, in 1927. Lewis was the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade, and after Hurston spoke to him about his experiences, the horrors of slavery, and their lasting effects on his life, she wrote this account—tragic, haunting, and essential—that will finally be published this spring.

Publication Date: May 15, 2018

Buy it: $26, amazon.com; indiebound.org

The four young friends who make up the Van Ness Quartet—Brit, Jana, Daniel, and Henry—undergo personal and professional successes as well as their fair share of tumult in this exciting debut about the power of music and the importance of friendship.