Contrary to some recent media chatter, the novel isn\u2019t dead: A glance at this month\u2019s choices, which include quirky robot sci-fi, an artist\u2019s tale set in 1950s Mexico and a dysfunctional family\u2019s reckoning with addiction, proves that imaginative storytelling has a strong heartbeat. Meanwhile, whether you\u2019re looking for history or current events, check out an oral history of the atomic bomb, an expert\u2019s thoughts on climate change and a thorough tribute to the writer James Baldwin. Happy reading!<\/p>\n
FICTION<\/p>\n
Automatic Noodle: A Novel<\/b><\/a> Late 21st-century San Francisco: California has seceded from the United States, and robots serve humans like crypto money launderer Fritz Co, whose Burgers N More is a front. He absconds and leaves four robots adrift, but with aid from unhoused human \u201crobles,\u201d they reconfigure the joint as a ramen shop \u2014 until robophobes launch a campaign to shut them down. Robots Staybehind, Sweetie, Cayenne and Hands will capture readers\u2019 hearts.<\/p>\n People Like Us: A Novel<\/b><\/a> Soot, one of the protagonists of Mott\u2019s funny and affecting new book, also appeared in 2021\u2019s \u201cHell of a Book.\u201d Like the (at first) unnamed narrator, Soot is now a middle-aged writer from North Carolina (Mott originally intended this story to be in memoir form), and both men\u2019s paths illustrate the difficulty of reconciling being Black with being American. While the theme of gun violence plays an important role, Mott is ultimately concerned with how and where his characters find safety.<\/p>\n Fonseca: A Novel<\/b><\/a> In this fictionalized version of British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald’s real-life trip to Saltillo, Mexico, in 1952, she arrives pregnant with her son Valpy in tow, hoping eccentric, elderly sisters might keep their promise to leave Valpy their silver mine. \u201cFonseca\u201d (\u201cdry well\u201d in Latin) is how Fitzgerald always referred to Saltillo, but Kane\u2019s remarkable excavation of this interlude, including real letters from Valpy, drips with juicy conflict and detail.<\/p>\n The Frequency of Living Things: A Novel<\/b><\/a> Three sisters make up the band name \u201cJojo and the Twins\u201d \u2014 but Jojo, younger sister to identical twins Emma and Araminta (Ara), isn\u2019t in the band. Instead, she\u2019s the caretaker for her siblings, who made a fortune with their blockbuster hit \u201cAmerican Mosh,\u201d then lost that fortune, in part due to Ara\u2019s substance addictions. Chapters alternate between Jojo, Emma, Ara and their absentee mother Bertie, who all discover that big love has big costs.<\/p>\n Katabasis: A Novel<\/b><\/a> Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, Cambridge University doctoral fellows in Magick, wind up in Hell looking for their adviser in a dark academia thriller whose title is the Greek word for \u201cdownward journey.\u201d This version of Hell closely resembles Dante\u2019s “Inferno,” with many circles leading toward the very worst human actions. There\u2019s a great deal of doubling back and a lot of incantatory action, both of which sci-fi\/fantasy stans will appreciate.<\/p>\n NONFICTION<\/p>\n The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb<\/b><\/a> Many accounts of the unusual and unholy circumstances that led to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II center on scientific discovery, neglecting the enormous human and environmental toll involved. Not so with journalist Graff\u2019s (\u201cWhen the Sea Came Alive\u201d) approach, in which everyone from theoreticians to site managers on to survivors of all ages share first-person stories of what they did, saw and understood.<\/p>\n Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974\u2013<\/b><\/a> Since her 1985 debut novel, \u201cAnnie John,\u201d the Antiguan-born Kincaid has been impossible to ignore, and this collection of essays and journalism shows why: Even as some critics have found her prose too personal or political, Kincaid knows she meant it to be so. Ranging from her famed \u201cBiography of a Dress\u201d to pieces for the New Yorker on to essays on gardening, the works speak of a person who has refused to be defined by any kind of constraints.<\/p>\n Greyhound: A Memoir<\/b><\/a> The Great American Road Trip, that idealized trek heading west, might be different now, according to author Pocock, who first made that journey in 2006 from Detroit to Los Angeles in the wake of grief after several miscarriages. In 2023, retracing her steps via Greyhound bus like French writer Simone de Beauvoir (\u201cAmerica Day by Day,\u201d 1948), she discovers fewer humans, more dirt and less safety \u2014 but the same magical \u201csense of no longer existing.\u201d<\/p>\n Baldwin: A Love Story<\/b><\/a> James Baldwin\u2019s four great affairs (intellectual, romantic, platonic and artistic) provide a beautiful structure for this biography, which includes careful research into the writer\/activist\u2019s upbringing and political formation as well as his widespread influence. Beauford Delaney\u2019s creative guidance, Lucien Happersberger\u2019s intimacy, Engin Cezzar\u2019s call to activism and French painter Yoran Cazac\u2019s artistic collaboration \u2014 each forms a polished facet of Baldwin\u2019s gem-like dazzle.<\/p>\n Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization<\/b><\/a> Since McKibben\u2019s 1989 \u201cThe End of Nature,\u201d the world\u2019s temperature has risen by at least 1 degree Fahrenheit. Now the author and environmental activist wants to wake everyone up to the fact that we can\u2019t stop global warming, but we can stave off reaching the next degrees if we enact the kind of political change necessary to use new technologies (like photovoltaic devices) that, instead of draining our planet\u2019s resources, harness those beaming down daily.<\/p>\n Get the latest book news, events and more in your inbox every Saturday. <\/a><\/p>\n
By Annalee Newitz
Tordotcom: 176 pages, $25
(Aug. 5)<\/p>\n
By Jason Mott
Dutton: 288 pages, $30
(Aug. 5)<\/p>\n
By Jessica Francis Kane
Penguin Press: 272 pages, $28
(Aug. 12)<\/p>\n
By Nick Fuller Googins
Atria: 336 pages, $29
(Aug. 12)<\/p>\n
By R. F. Kuang
Harper Voyager: 560 pages, $32
(Aug. 26)<\/p>\n
By Garrett M. Graff
Avid Reader Press: 608 pages, $35
(Aug. 5)<\/p>\n
By Jamaica Kincaid
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 336 pages, $30
(Aug. 5)<\/p>\n
By Joanna Pocock
Soft Skull: 400 pages, $19
(Aug. 12)<\/p>\n
By Nicholas Boggs
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 720 pages, $36
(Aug. 19)<\/p>\n
By Bill McKibben
W. W. Norton: 224 pages, $30
(Aug. 19)<\/p>\n