If you’re new here, we love a bit of mess, and some parts of the “Wuthering Heights” adaptation by Emerald Fennel have garnered exactly that. The new movie, which just came out the Friday before Valentine’s Day, has brought about think piece after think piece on everything from the ethnicity of the leading actor to the fact that the original text—which was first published in 1847—is not exactly the romance the recent movie promotes itself as. Our Chief of Staff Rebecca Joines Schinsky discusses some of the marketing machine behind the movie here. She also discusses the movie more in depth with our Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz in a recent Book Riot podcast.
Now for this week’s new books. There’s queer YA romance Limelight by Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Korean mythology-filled pictuer book Sun, Moon, and Star: A Folktale from Korea by Nancy So Miller. Of the nonfiction releases, there’s Stuff Every Bird Lover Should Know by Alice Sun and Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power, and the Will to Live by Amber Husain.
The rest of this week’s releases include a tale of mothers and daughters in the South by Tayari Jones, short stories by Lauren Groff, Cleopatra, and more.
Kin by Tayari Jones
From the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage comes a tale of sisterhood, mothers, and daughters in the American South. Vernice and Anne are two motherless girls who grow up as best friends in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, but whose lives are set on very different trajectories. Vernice eventually goes to Spelman, where she enters into a world of affluent and connected Black women. And then there’s Anne. The hole left by her mother’s absence sends her on an all-consuming journey, which takes her down a road of love and hardship. Throughout it all, we see the various permutations and complexities of women and girls in community.
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Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff
You might love Lauren Groff for her novels Fates and Furies and Matrix, but this author is also well-known for her short stories, and Brawler is Groff’s first short story collection since her award-winning collection Florida, published in 2018. These nine stories cover a wide range of settings, from the 1950s to the present day, from (of course) Florida to California. All of the stories explore human nature and “the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.” Just like Groff’s other works, you can expect these stories to be beautifully written and endlessly quotable. —Emily Martin
Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi
If you went through (or are still in) an Egyptology phase, enjoy books that reimagine the stories of maligned women (Circe, Kaikeyi, Malinalli) or read Stacy Schiff’s brilliant biography of the Queen of the Nile and wondered why this fascinating woman’s legacy has been reduced to seduction and womanly wiles (sexism, it’s sexism), you should probably be as excited for this book as I am. I’ve been waiting for someone to flesh out Cleopatra’s story through fiction, and Saara El-Arifi has answered my readerly prayers. —Vanessa Diaz
Where the False Gods Dwell by Denny S. Bryce
Inspired by real-life choreographer Katherine Dunham’s trip to Jamaica to explore Caribbean dance, Where the False Gods Dwell tells not just the story of a legendary 1930s choreographer or a Caribbean adventure, but the sisterhood of the four women who come together to help each other when they need it most. Because even as they battle their own private struggles, a deadly hurricane is hurtling directly their way. —Rachel Brittain
I Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Adrian Nathan West
This final novel by Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa heads back to his homeland Peru, when the writer Toño Azpilcueta hears a perfromance by elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino. The performance shows Toño the importance of Peruvian music—specifically the vals genre—for society. Now, if he could just write the biography of Lalo, he could capture and share the most important parts of Peruvian culture.
Floodlines by Saleem Haddad
Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar are sisters, but they haven’t felt like family for some time. When an old painting of their father’s is uncovered, they, along with Zainab’s son, a war correspondent named Nizar, are reunited for the first time in many years. The discovery of their late father’s painting is just the push the family needed to finally face the traumas, betrayals, and heartbreak that pulled them apart in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. —Rachel Brittain
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!
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