The Best New Books Coming Out Spring 2019

By Caroline Rogers
amazon.com
Springtime is on its way. That means we’ll soon get to trade indoor reading, in which we’re cozily curled up by a fire, for outdoor reading, in which we’re reclined on blankets unfurled between green grasses and blue skies. (Admittedly, they’re both ideal scenarios, but we can all appreciate a dose of seasonal variety.) No matter the setting, we readers require good— really good, even exceptionally good—new books in which to immerse our imaginations. Luckily for us, spring 2019 promises a whole host of fantastic new stories for our shelves. From exciting debuts (Bryan Washington, Isabella Hammad, and Chia-Chia Lin, just to name a few) to much-anticipated returns (Helen Oyeyemi, Karen Russell, and Sally Rooney included) our bookmarks are going to be busy all season—and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Keep an eye out for these form- and genre-spanning new books come spring; they're novels, poetry, short stories, and nonfiction, and they're all arriving between March and May this year.
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Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Helen Oyeyemi is back with an imaginative new tale about Perdita Lee, her mother, Harriet, and their family tradition of gingerbread making, the legacy of which involves a sprinkling of magic. (March 5)

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The Altruists by Andrew Ridker

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Midwestern college professor Arthur Alter gathers his estranged children together after their mother’s death in order to finagle a piece of the inheritance in this winning family saga. (March 5)

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The River by Peter Heller

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To buy: $25.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

In Peter Heller’s latest page-turner, two college friends set out to canoe Canada’s Maskwa River, but their journey is soon disrupted by the threat of a spreading wildfire and a mystery on the water. (March 5)

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The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona

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To buy: $28, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This epic novel from National Book Award Finalist Salvatore Scibona spans the globe—and generations—as it examines the ways that families and institutions can shape a life. (March 5)

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Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins

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To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Joe Wilkins’ new novel is set in eastern Montana, where a young ranch hand named Wendell Newman finds himself in debt and the newly minted guardian of seven-year-old Rowdy Burns. The two build a strong bond that is soon tested by encroaching dangers and forces beyond their control. (March 12)

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The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

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To buy: $28.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea is a stunning portrait of a young woman growing up on an island on the Kenyan coast and then leaving home, setting off on a journey in which she encounters struggle, adventure, and great beauty. (March 12)

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Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington

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To buy: $25, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Bryan Washington makes his already much-lauded debut with Lot, a collection of extraordinary short stories set in and across the city of Houston that thrum with vitality and authenticity and are peopled with characters yearning for connection. (March 19)

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The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

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To buy: $28, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Vivid and sweeping, this thrilling debut novel from Namwali Serpell begins at Victoria Falls in Zambia in 1904 and expands outward, exploring the lives of three families as they navigate their own conflicts, hopes, and challenges over the course of the century. (March 26)

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The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

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To buy: $25.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans begins with a crime—a hit-and-run—the details of which unspool to reveal deep consequences for a group of characters constrained by circumstance and connected to each other in unforeseen ways. (March 26)

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White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

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To buy: $26.99, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Neighborhood tensions come to a boil in Julie Langsdorf’s funny new novel White Elephant, which explores what happens when suburban conflicts escalate, pranks go wrong, and dysfunction reigns. (March 26)

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A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie

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To buy: $25, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Part of Ann Beattie’s latest novel is set in a New Hampshire boarding school, where the influence a charismatic teacher has on his students has repercussions that echo long after graduation. (April 2)

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At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight

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To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

The latest novel from Tennessee-based writer Michael Knight is set in the 1990s at the titular Briarwood School for Girls, where landscapes are disrupted from within and without, both the geographic and the personal, as a new theme park makes plans to move in nearby. (April 2)

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I Miss You When I Blink: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott

amazon.com

To buy: $25, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This wonderful memoir-in-essays from Nashville writer Mary Laura Philpott is a frank and funny look at what happens when, in the midst of a tidy life, there occur impossible-to-ignore tugs toward creativity, meaning, and the possibility of something more. (April 2)

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Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick

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To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Lydia Fitzpatrick’s debut novel follows a 15-year-old Russian exchange student named Ilya as he arrives in Louisiana to live with a host family and is soon consumed by thoughts of the fate of the family he left behind. (April 2)

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Stay Up with Hugo Best by Erin Somers

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

In Erin Somers’ page-turning debut, late-night show host Hugo Best unexpectedly retires, leaving a young writers’ assistant named June Bloom out of a job and pondering a surprise invitation to spend a long weekend in Connecticut with the former host. (April 2)

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The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero

amazon.com

To buy: $26.99, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Melissa Rivero’s moving debut novel is a story about Ana Falcón, an undocumented Peruvian immigrant, and her family, who flee Peru in search of a new life in New York City, where they encounter challenges and struggle to navigate a difficult landscape. (April 2)

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The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

amazon.com

To buy: $26.48, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This exquisite debut novel follows a man named Midhat Kamal through the turns of his life, the changes of which mirror the world through which he moves. At the dawn of World War I, Kamal departs his home in Palestine to undertake his studies in France, eventually returning to Palestine during its struggle for independence. (April 9)

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Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

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To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Susan Choi sets her latest novel in a performing arts high school during the 1980s, when pressures at school and at home begin to alter the trajectories of David and Sarah, two freshmen students in love. (April 9)

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Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Virginia-based writer Angie Kim makes her debut with this propulsive new novel about a couple, Young and Pak Yoo, whose work running an experimental medical treatment comes under intense scrutiny when an accident—and an ensuing trial—threaten to upend their lives. (April 16)

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Sally Rooney’s latest, the follow-up to 2015’s Conversations with Friends, follows teenage acquaintances Connell and Marianne as they head off to college in Dublin, fall in love, fall apart, and fall back together. (April 16)

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Spring by Ali Smith

amazon.com

To buy: $25.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Spring is the penultimate installment in Ali Smith’s masterful seasonal quartet, a collection of loosely connected novels examining history, narrative and art through the lens of the titular seasons. (April 30)

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Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegül Savas

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Walking on the Ceiling explores the complex friendship that grows between Nunu, a Turkish woman starting over after the death of her mother, and M., a British writer working on a novel set in Turkey. The pair meet in Paris and go on long walks through the city, during which Nunu shares memories of her family and childhood. (April 30)

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Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

amazon.com

To buy: $26.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This fascinating book—the first by Casey Cep, a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland—examines the true-crime story and courtroom drama that obsessed writer Harper Lee seventeen years after the completion of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee spent a year in Alabama researching the case but struggled to tell the story, which remained unfinished decades later. (May 7)

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Light from Other Stars by Erika Swyler

amazon.com

To buy: $27, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Erika Swyler follows up 2015’s The Book of Speculation with this novel about family, space, time, and sacrifice. It follows the extraordinary events that occur when eleven-year-old Nedda Papas realizes that her father’s invention, an entropy machine called The Crucible, is causing chaos in Easter, their small town on Florida’s Space Coast. (May 7)

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Mosses and Lichens: Poems by Devin Johnston

amazon.com

To buy: $23, amazon.com, indiebound.org

The latest collection from poet Devin Johnston engages with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, exploring topics of transformation across the wilderness of natural landscapes. (May 7)

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Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer

amazon.com

To buy: $25, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This riveting memoir recounts the author’s extraordinary experience completing—and becoming the first woman to win and the youngest person to finish—the world’s longest horse race, the feat of endurance that is the Mongol Derby. (May 7)

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The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Loss is at the heart of this stunning debut novel by Chia-Chia Lin, in which a family of Taiwanese immigrants grapple with grief against the stark and beautiful Alaskan landscape. (May 7)

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Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

amazon.com

To buy: $25.78, amazon.com, indiebound.org

This suspenseful story is set on Russia’s remote Kamchatka peninsula, a breathtaking setting in which two young girls go missing. Their disappearance creates rifts throughout the community, fissures of loss and blame widened by the lingering mystery. (May 14)

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Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

amazon.com

To buy: $25.95, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Karen Russell makes her highly anticipated return with a collection of short stories that mingle the extraordinary with the deeply relatable and everyday. They’re peopled with vividly drawn characters whose plights are as revelatory as they are riveting to read. (May 14)

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Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

amazon.com

To buy: $26, amazon.com, indiebound.org

Equal parts poignant and funny, this irresistable new novel follows May Attaway, a university gardener, who is granted time off from her job and decides to track down four friends with whom she’s lost touch. She sets out on her journey and finds much joy and a few surprises along the way. (May 14)

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