The 22 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 16-22, 2024
Here are the 22 best new book releases out the week of July 16-22, 2024. You want books? I’ve got books for you. I’ve got great new books to read while lounging by the pool, books you can recommend to a friend who loves Tiger Woods, books for a family member who starred in their high school production of the musical Camelot, books for the kids in your life who play too many video games, books for your book club where sometimes the wine is more important than the story and enough info on books to look smart even if you don’t have time to read any books. (But you really should make time!)
So let’s get reading. At the head of the Parade are…
The 22 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 16-22, 2024
Courtesy of Little, Brown and Company, Gallery Books, Riverhead Books
1. Tiger, Tiger by James Patterson
2. JFK Jr. by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil
3. The Striker and the Clock by Georgia Cloepfil
Two big biographies and one memoir that just might prove a sleeper hit. James Patterson on the life of Tiger Woods. What more do you need to know? (Other than the fact that the title is a play on the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake and boy has Tiger Woods been burning bright.)
John F. Kennedy Jr.–or John John as he was known by people who didn’t really know him–also burned bright and was snuffed out too soon. This year we’ve already seen a biography of his late wife, a tell-all focused on the women in the Kennedy orbit that catalogs the high price they paid and now we’ve got an “intimate” oral history of the latest Kenndy to die too soon. Will our fascination ever wane? Not this century.
Finally, Georgia Cloepfil is that rare athlete who can write well about their sport and their passion. In her case, the sport is European football aka soccer. If you caught Copa fever or enjoyed Euro ‘24 (where football did not come home to England, I’m sad to say) or if you are simply fascinated by the dedication and hard work of professional athletes, check out Cloepfil’s memoir. She’s better at soccer than 99.999% of the people on this planet (and I may be understating the case). But she’s not a superstar or even a player who could play professionally for long. She traveled around the world playing soccer for six different teams over six years, from Australia to South Korea to Lithuania. In 90 sharp entries mirroring the 90 minutes of play, Cloepfil captures what it’s like to fight so hard to play the game you love, the endless drills, the disappointments and those moments of grace that keep you going.
Tiger, Tiger by James Patterson ($32.99; Little, Brown and Company) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
JFK Jr. by RoseMarie Terenzio and Liz McNeil ($30.99; Gallery Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Striker and the Clock by Georgia Cloepfil ($27; Riverhead Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: Is This Horse-Crazy Author The Next Colleen Hoover?
Courtesy of Griffin, Berkley
4. Hate To Fake It To You by Amanda Sellet
5. Business Casual by B.K. Borison
6. The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce
Three romances capture three different stages of love. In Hate To Fake It To You, a woman posing as wildly glamorous influencer (when she’s anything but) finds herself attracted to the drop dead photographer who just might see through her innocent pose…just as the joke snowballs into something all too real. In Business Casual, a fledgling tattoo parlor entrepreneur finds herself oddly attracted to a business suit-wearing investment banker. She decides they should just have one night only of no-strings sex and get this meaningless chemistry out of the way and then get on with their lives. Then they get it on. Finally, The Ex Vows is set in the world of weddings, where Georgia will be the Best Woman to the bride-to-be and her ex Eli will be the Best Man and they will absolutely, definitely not restart anything since their broke up five years ago and it was a messy disaster and any thoughts like that would be foolish.
Hate To Fake It To You by Amanda Sellet ($17.99; Griffin) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Business Casual by B.K. Borison ($19; Berkley) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce ($19; Berkley) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Viking, CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, Ballantine Books
7. The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
8. In The Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn
9. The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
Lev Grossman shot to fame with his three novels invariably described as Harry Potter, but filled with cursing and sex. Now he tackles the tales of King Arthur. Anyone expecting a caustic, modern spin on Camelot won’t be disappointed. You’ll find Python-esque humor, transgender knights, queer knights (in the closet or whatever constitutes a closet in those days), a tiresomely perfect Lancelot and at least a hero of the expected sort: an 18 year old kid mostly abandoned, seen as useless but determined to be a knight and, who knows, perhaps of more kingly bearing than he imagines. Frankly, I was not easily won over. But Grossman isn’t here to tear down Arthurian myths or reveal them as far too lacking when it comes to gender and sexual politics. Oh he perhaps does that too. But Grossman isn’t tweaking the story of King Arthur. He’s telling it again in his own way. Each character is given a back story that deepens and impresses on our mind, from the new lesser knights we begin with to Arthur and Lancelot and the whole gang. Ultimately, it becomes quite moving. These tales will be told again and again as long as stories are told. But they won’t always be told well. Here, they are.
The late Michael Flynn was a master of science fiction, as eight nominations for the acclaimed Hugo Award make clear. His final novel looks to be a fitting capper to a renowned career. Here Flynn brings to life the people living on an asteroid that’s been hollowed out and sent on its way to colonize a planet it will take hundreds of years to reach. Just generations into the voyage, the society of some 40,000 people is collapsing. An increasing number of its inhabitants have never known anything except life on The Whale, as it’s called. It’s a microcosm of life on Earth, of course, but Flynn brings it to life with his usual clear-eyed talent for marrying hard science with rich characters.
It’s been six looooong years since author Deborah Harkness delivered a new novel in her acclaimed All Souls series. A Discovery of Witches came out in 2011 and since then we’ve had a UK TV series that ran for three seasons despite COVID throwing it for a loop, the complete All Souls trilogy and in 2018 a sequel/prequel. It seemed Harkness might have been done with this story, but happily that’s not the case. Now comes an all-new adventure with Diana Bishop, the scholar and witch who fell in love with a vampire, as one will.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman ($35; Viking) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
In The Belly of the Whale by Michael Flynn ($19.99; CAEZIK SF & Fantasy) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness ($32; Ballantine Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Mariner Books, St. Martin’s Press
10. Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser
11. Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard
Rachel Kousser is the chair of Classics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Wait, come back! She hasn’t written a book for scholars. She’s used her deep knowledge of other scholarly works and the latest archeological evidence to deliver a thrilling narrative about the last years of Alexander the Great. Seeing him devastate enemies, slaughter some but in over others, build a sprawling multicultural army while figuring out how to defeat elephants in battle or tackle a new fortification and learning as he goes is fascinating stuff. We know he will die from home (spoiler alert!) and never quite reach the edge of the world (for a very good reason, though I’m no geography buff), but how and why he goes as far as he does is a great tale. When to execute a subordinate, when to look the other way when his men contravene an order, why to bed this woman but keep his age-mate and likely lover Hephaiston even closer? Kousser puts flesh and bone on the world-beating figure who has long been ossified into a boring lesson in hubris. Oh he has hubris by the buckets, but Alexander has so much more and Kousser plumbs his contradictions and likely motivations with skill and verve.
It’s exciting to see the scholarly work of Kousser bring Alexander the Great to life. In the new popular history Women in the Valley of the Kings, scholar Kathleen Sheppard brings to life the many women who did pioneering work in Egyptology long before and then after Howard Carter made a fuss with the tomb of King Tut. Sheppard details the women who traveled and explored the Middle East and brought the world’s attention to Egypt, the first woman permitted to excavate a site, the women who captured Egyptian art and brought it to the world and on and on. Hidden figures, of course, since the story of Egyptology is usually all Indiana Jones and no women except as sidekicks. Here the women get their due and sometimes fall in love with one another, making this work doubly interesting.
Alexander at the End of the World by Rachel Kousser ($35; Mariner Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Women in the Valley of the Kings by Kathleen Sheppard ($30; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Mulholland Books, Bloom Books, Mysterious Press
12. Sugar on the Bones by Joe R. Lansdale
13. The Body in the Backyard by Lucy Score
14. Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead
There’s humor and then there’s gallows humor. The Hap & Leonard books of Joe R. Lansdale embrace the latter with a martini-dry wit (not that anyone in these rough and tumble books is asking for a martini, shaken or not). This is the exceptionally talented Lansdale’s first novel featuring the duo in five years, a period that covers the cancellation of the fine TV series based on them and the devastating death of actor Michael K. Williams, who played Leonard so wonderfully well. Like knight errants, Hap & Leonard take on a case after the woman who wanted their protection is murdered. (Well, to be fair, she did reject them, not enjoying that humor we spoke about.) Things get complicated, fast and what a treat to welcome them back.
Writer Lucy Score returns with a new comic adventure for psychic detective Riley Thorn. It’s the usual caper, if you can say “usual” when dealing with a self-absorbed news anchor who happens to be Riley’s ex-husband (is “self-absorbed news anchor” redundant?) and dead bodies and a hot boyfriend/fellow investigator and the usual interference from Riley’s adorably cranky elderly roommates. Hey, it’s a hot mess, in the best sort of way.
Author Tom Mead has a love for classic mysteries, whodunits that play fair. He also loves history and the arts and it call comes together in his latest “Joseph Spector Locked Room Mystery.” Set in the 1930s, just that teaser will make the pulse race for any fan of the Golden Age of Mysteries. Mead plays fair, laying out all the clues. His detective is a stage magician who uses his knowledge of that craft in solving crimes. And the setting is a grand estate in the English countryside? The game is afoot, again.
Sugar on the Bones by Joe R. Lansdale ($29; Mulholland Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Body in the Backyard by Lucy Score ($18.99; Bloom Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead ($26.95; Mysterious Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
15. The Big Freeze by Natalie Lampert
Journalist Natalie Lampert tackles the thorny question of whether and when to freeze your eggs. The result is an engaging and informative look at her personal journey about whether and how to do so, the ethical and personal questions they raise, the latest science and most complicated of all the state of the industry and the pressures women face when trying to figure out what is best for them.
The Big Freeze by Natalie Lampert ($30; Ballantine Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Crown, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press
16. Things Don’t Break On Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins
17. Bright Objects by Ruby Todd
18. One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day
Three thrillers to keep you on your toes. Things Don’t Break On Their Own is a twisty thriller about a sister who disappears and the survivor who finds her world being rocked at a dinner party some 25 years later.
Ruby Todd might be slotted in the fiction section of your local bookstore as easily as the thriller department. But there’s no denying the thrills in a story about a young widow who becomes obsessed with a comet approaching the earth, the scientist tracking it and the (doomsday?) cult that believes it augurs a divine message. Oh and she starts to figure out who might have murdered her husband. Jaws will drop at the revelations, apparently. (Or perhaps Revelations, if the cult is right.)
One Big Happy Family has an awesome cover wrapped around the story of three sisters who show up at the family hotel in Maine after their father dies. They each want their rightful inheritance while a larcenous maid is hiding a woman in one of the rooms and a hurricane looms nearby. Surely at least one murder will have to take place with all of that action.
Things Don’t Break On Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins ($28; Crown) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Bright Objects by Ruby Todd ($28.99; Simon & Schuster) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
One Big Happy Family by Jamie Day ($29; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: 15 Books You Must Read if You’re Obsessed With Taylor Swift’s New Album
19. I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Director Michael Mann’s 1986 film Manhunter marked the first screen presence of Hannibal Lecter (played by Brian Cox of Succession fame). It’s very good and one twist in particular is chillingly effective. A serial killer is on the loose (not Lecter) and maybe two-thirds of the way through the film we suddenly spend time with him and see the world through his eyes. He’s lonely and confused and capable of some desire for human connection and to our horror, for a moment, we empathize with him and see how cruel and capricious the world seems from his twisted point of view. The novel I Was A Teenage Slasher doubles down on this, telling the entire story from the point of view of a 17 year old kid cursed to kill for revenge. Set in a small Texas town in 1989, it’s lovingly immersed in the slasher movie culture of the 1980s and very, very violent. But sweet too? I can’t wait to check it out.
I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones ($29; S&S/Saga Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, Greenwillow Books, Enchanted Lion
20. Prunella by Beth Ferry; illustrated by Claire Keane
21. Felix Powell, Boy Dog by Erin Entrada Kelly
22. Johnny, The Sea, and Me by Melba Escobar
Three books for kids of every age. (Kids hate it when their books are bunched together with books for “little kids.” A 10 year old would be aghast to see a book they might like side by side with a picture book! I’m just assuming you’re an adult or a very savvy kid and won’t mind. Besides, a good book is a good book!) Prunella is a highly praised picture book about a little girl born with a purple thumb (instead of flowers and the like, she loves cacti and other succulents).
Felix Powell, Boy Dog is the winning story of a boy turned into a dog. He sees only in black and white (boo!) but his sense of smell is amazing! It’s an amusing romp and surely the movie rights have already been sold.
Colombian author Melba Escobar delivers a quiet, lyrical story of a 10 year old boy Pedro in Johnny, The Sea, and Me. Bullied and missing his absent father, Pedro is delighted to escape to the Caribbean on vacation with his mom. Instead of solitude, he’s befriended by a pirate! Or at least a gruff older man with a parrot who says he’s a pirate and proves the wise father figure Pedro has been longing for. (I'll forgive Escobar the Oxford comma because it's always great to see kids literature from other countries being translated into English. Pro tip: if someone bothers to translate a book into English, it's probably really good!)
Prunella by Beth Ferry; illustrated by Claire Keane ($18.99; Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Felix Powell, Boy Dog by Erin Entrada Kelly ($18.99; Greenwillow Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Johnny, The Sea, and Me by Melba Escobar; illustrated by Elizabeth Builes; translated by Sara Lissa Paulson ($16.95; Enchanted Lion) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
