8 New Books You Should Read This June
Every month, Emma Alpern and Jasmine Vojdani recommend new fiction and nonfiction books. You should read as many of them as possible.
Flashlight, by Susan Choi
The follow-up to Susan Choi’s 2019 National Book Award winner Trust Exercise, Flashlight tells the epic history of a fractured American family from alternating points of view, starting with the shadowy disappearance of the father, an ethnically Korean immigrant from Japan named Serk. From there, the story jumps around in time and space, chronicling the disillusioned Serk’s move to the U.S. and marriage to Anne, a white woman with whom he has a precocious yet troubled daughter, Louisa. As the captivating central family mystery is slowly illuminated, Choi’s prose shines with poetry and intelligence. —Jasmine Vojdani
Great Black Hope, by Rob Franklin
David Smith, a queer, Black, 20-something New Yorker who works in tech, is out partying in the Hamptons when police catch him with .7 grams of cocaine. Upon return to the city, he is haunted by memories of the death of his socialite best friend only months before; the investigation into what happened is ongoing, tabloids report. As Smith lawyers up and preps for his court appearance for possession, he navigates his world of privilege and attempts to process his friend’s loss, all while providing biting social commentary on the many scenes he finds himself in, from a star chef’s birthday party to the Atlanta of his childhood. Franklin’s debut novel tells a propulsive story about class, race, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. —J.V.
Murderland, by Caroline Fraser
Fraser, who won a Pulitzer for her Laura Ingalls Wilder biography Prairie Fires, asks whether the key to the Pacific Northwest’s proliferation of serial killers — Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway among them — can be found in its environmental and industrial history. Dotted with superfund sites and lead-spewing smelters, and torn through the middle by an unsteady seam between tectonic plates, the region, she thinks, might have a sinister effect on its human inhabitants that we haven’t fully grasped. This is about as highbrow as true crime gets. —Emma Alpern
Waiting for Britney Spears, by Jeff Weiss
Just past the turn of the millennium, Jeff Weiss was drowning in rejection letters from more reputable companies when he finally found a job at a tabloid. The L.A. native knew enough about the city’s entertainment industry to successfully lie on his résumé, and soon enough, he found himself on the party circuit in pursuit of intel about the stars of the early aughts — especially Britney Spears, who was about to enter a free fall that he would witness firsthand. Weiss’s “allegedly true” gonzo account of “our ravenous desire for entertainment at all costs,” as he puts it, is queasy and engrossing. —E.A.
The Möbius Book, by Catherine Lacey
This fascinating hybrid work from Catherine Lacey contains two beginnings, encouraging readings in either direction. In the surreal fictional section, estranged friends reconnect on Christmas and rehash the past while questioning whether a foreboding bloodlike substance leaking out into the hallway is real. In the memoiristic section, the writer processes the aftermath of a bad breakup. Echoing images and phrases invite us to draw parallels between the autobiographical and the invented, between life as lived and life as artistic sublimation. —J.V.
Toni at Random, by Dana A. Williams
As a writer, Toni Morrison was an unapologetic literary visionary and an exacting stylist; never before have we had such a clear look into her every-bit-as-groundbreaking career as a book editor. Drawing primarily from the author’s correspondence, Williams recounts in remarkable detail how Morrison, the first Black woman senior editor at Random House, forever transformed the publishing landscape by championing Black writers’ work and discovering new voices. This book gives a comprehensive account of Morrison’s work with Huey P. Newton, Boris Bittker, Muhammad Ali, Angela Davis, and more. —J.V.
Fresh, Green Life, by Sebastian Castillo
A decade after graduating from college, a narrator who’s also named Sebastian Castillo jumps at the chance to visit his former philosophy professor for a New Year’s Eve party, mostly because his old class crush and recent divorcée Maria will probably be there. Obsessive, pretentious, and full of self-regard, Sebastian, who’s barely left his home for a year, has no idea what he’s about to stumble into. Castillo’s short novel is a giddy character study of an unpleasant young male type. —E.A.
Hunter, by Shuang Xuetao; translated by Jeremy Tiang
From the new imprint Granta Magazine Editions comes this collection of brilliant short stories — by Chinese author Shuang Xuetao, who’s part of the recent Dongbei renaissance — in which former factory workers, recluses, and a fifth-rate actor move through China’s Northeast Rust Belt. Brooding, awkward, and confronted with bizarre incidents that verge on magical realism, they sound a little like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man if he were transported to our disorienting globalized present. “I needed comforting thoughts at this moment to show me that human connection actually existed in the world,” one narrator, a failed writer whose father is dying, says to himself, “something that gave off heat, a scene with a little noise and bustle, anything to dispel my current sinking perplexity.” —E.A.