New Releases Tuesday: The Books Out This Week You Need To Read

In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.

Reasons to read it: Brandon Taylor got a lot of buzz for his 2020 debut, Real Life. Roxane Gay calls him a “a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways.” This short story collection promises to be “psychologically taut and quietly devastating.” It’s about longing for and being denied intimacy. Taylor is a name to watch!

A summer heatwave blankets New York City in darkness. But as the city is thrown into confusion, a different kind of electricity sparks…

A first meeting. 

Long-time friends. 

Bitter exes. 

And maybe the beginning of something new.

When the lights go out, people reveal hidden truths. Love blossoms, friendship transforms, and new possibilities take flight.

Beloved authors — Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon — celebrate the beauty of six couples and the unforgettable magic that can be found on a sweltering starry night in the city.

Reasons to read it: This is another novel of interlinked stories, but this one is YA. Each of these authors is well-respected, with bestselling and award-winning titles, so there will be a lot of readers excited to get their hands on this. It’s a celebration of Black teen love, and it promises to be a charming, funny, and heartwarming read.

Along the Intracoastal waterways of North Florida, Daniel and Aubrey navigated adolescence with the electric intensity that radiates from young people defined by otherness: Aubrey, a self-identified “Southern cracker” and Daniel, the mixed-race son of Jamaican immigrants. When the news of Aubrey’s death reaches Daniel in New York, years after they’d lost contact, he is left to grapple with the legacy of his precious and imperfect love for her. At ease now in his own queerness, he is nonetheless drawn back to the muggy haze of his Palm Coast upbringing, tinged by racism and poverty, to find out what happened to Aubrey. Along the way, he reconsiders his and his family’s history, both in Jamaica and in this place he once called home.

Buoyed by his teenage track-team buddies ― Twig, a long-distance runner; Desmond, a sprinter; Egypt, Des’s girlfriend; and Jess, a chef ― Daniel begins a frantic search for meaning in Aubrey’s death, recklessly confronting the drunken country boy he believes may have killed her.

Reasons to read it: This is about Daniel’s escape from a stifling small town in Florida to make a life in New York, and how his childhood friend’s death led him back there. It’s a poetic meditation on grief, but also explores the complexities of race, class, and sexuality in the American South and Jamaica.

On Wendy Darling’s first night in Chicago, a boy called Peter appears at her window. He’s dizzying, captivating, beautiful ― so she agrees to join him for a night on the town.

Wendy thinks they’re heading to a party, but instead they’re soon running in the city’s underground. She makes friends ― a punk girl named Tinkerbelle and the lost boys Peter watches over. And she makes enemies ― the terrifying Detective Hook, and maybe Peter himself, as his sinister secrets start coming to light. Can Wendy find the courage to survive this night ― and make sure everyone else does, too?

Acclaimed author K. Ancrum has re-envisioned Peter Pan with a central twist that will send all your previous memories of J. M. Barrie’s classic permanently off to Neverland.

Reasons to read it: This is a YA retelling of Peter Pan with a diverse cast that I feel like I’ve been anticipating for years! It’s finally here! This includes bisexual, lesbian, and asexual side characters, a Black main character, and Ojibwe side characters. It’s a dark urban fantasy take on this story, which takes place over one whirlwind night.

All martyrdoms are difficult.

Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.

So when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.

A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.

Reasons to read it: This is another one I’ve been counting down the days until. This has been billed as “cannibalistic nuns fantasy,” which apparently isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s also not NOT about cannibal nuns. And zombies. This also has a bisexual woman main character!

In Sanskrit, yoga means to “yoke.” To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of “yoke” is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday — a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living.

In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it’s a full-time job loving yourself, all through the lens of yoke. She calls out an American yoga complex that prefers debating the merits of cotton versus polyblend leggings rather than owning up to its overwhelming Whiteness. She questions why the Western take on yoga so often misses — or misuses — the tradition’s spiritual dimension. And reveals what she calls her own “whole-ass problematic”: Growing up Baháí, loving astrology, learning to meditate, finding prana in music.

And in the end, Jessamyn invites every reader to find the authentic spirit of yoke — linking that good and that bad, that light and that dark.

Reasons to read it: This is about finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat. Her previous book is Every Body Yoga, which I really enjoyed: it’s a primer for getting started with yoga that’s inclusive of larger bodies, and it also is about Stanley’s journey to starting yoga. In this book, she explores the philosophy behind yoga that she implements in everyday life.