New Releases for 2014

The new year is only five days away, which means lots of resolutions that won’t be kept and new releases from the literary press. I’ve put together a partial list of what to expect in the bookstores in the coming year.

Leaving the Sea, by Ben Marcus

Marcus, known for his experimental fiction, returns with a book of short stories that further pushes the boundaries of what prose is capable of doing. It includes the title story about the slow disintegration of a marriage told in one sentence. Expect this to be available January 7.

Haiti Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Edwidge Danticat

Akshashic Press will be releasing their second anthology of classic fiction from Haiti. Edited by author Edwidge Danticat, this new releases will appear in bookstores on January 7.

Carthage, by Joyce Carol Oates

Oates ought to be called the hardest working writer in America. After her novel The Accursed was published last year, she’s publishing a new one, Carthage, on January 21. This involves a missing girl, an Iraqi war vet who becomes the prime suspect in her disappearance, and a town that comes to grips with the horror of death and violence in its midst.

Thirty Girls, by Susan Minot

Minot’s latest book is ripped from the headlines in world events: a young girl who’s abducted by a fundamentalist faction in Uganda; a journalist covering the events there while coping with failed relationships. Their lives intersect. A touchy subject, but we’ll see how Minot handles it with her deft prose. To be published on February 14.

Bark, by Lorrie Moore

In her first collection of short stories since her masterful Birds of America fifteen years ago, Moore’s latest tackles subjects as diverse as the Iraq war, 9/11, divorce, politics, and death and mines how the personal and the political collide in the most unexpected ways. Should hit the bookstores February 25.

 All Our Names, by Dinaw Mengetsu

The author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air returns with a new book that is a love story between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America. Yet the story delves beyond a simple love story and explores the dislocation of immigrants caused by political violence and sacrifice and the loyalty one feels to his homeland and the people who fought to liberate it. Look for it starting on March 4.

Book of Hours, by Kevin Young

Also to be published on March 4 is Kevin Young’s new book of poetry about death, grief, and the renewal of life. This collection of deeply personal poems covers the death of Young’s father and the birth of a new child with the beautiful, sharp clarity of love and wisdom.