Here in Chicago, we’re experiencing the joys of what we call Fool’s Spring—a deceptively temporary period of warmer weather that is almost certain to be followed by a snowstorm or bout of negative-degree temperatures.
While March in Chicago brings fading glimpses of spring, the literary release calendar is anything but a mirage. In fact, March brings us our most packed month yet with new books from some of our favorite writers working today. So take off your jacket (but be sure to keep it close), enjoy some well-deserved sun, and head to your local bookstore to get your copy of these 12 can’t-miss books!
The Dream Hotel
By Laila Lalami
Pantheon
Laila Lalami’s latest is a sci-fi thriller that is already proving to be less speculative and more realistic with every passing day. The Dream Hotel follows Sara, a mother who is detained by the Risk Assessment Administration when their algorithm concludes that she may harm her husband in the future. Sentenced to a retention center designed to lower her level of risk, she enters into a labyrinthian nightmare in which obscure data points rule our society, freedom, and humanity. Written by the capable hands of a modern literary star, The Dream Hotel is the novel of our tech present and future.
Vanishing Daughters
By Cynthia Pelayo
Thomas & Mercer
From the master of making readers grip the edge of the seats comes a thrilling tale about a woman confronting the horrors of fairy tales and nightmares while being stalked by a serial killer in Chicago. As journalist Briar Throne investigates her mother’s death in their South Side home, she begins to unravel the dangerous secrets that threaten to claim her life as well. Bram Stoker Award-winning author Cynthia Pelayo is at the height of her powers in Vanishing Daughters, crafting a book that you’re destined to return to again and again.
Stag Dance
By Torrey Peters
Random House
Torrey Peters’s captivating Detransition, Baby was a landmark debut in the literary world, and with Stag Dance they return with the same humor, heart, and force. Stag Dance consists of one novel and three stories that follow a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging operation, a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school, and much more. Peters’s writing always grabs your attention, and with their latest release they perfectly showcase their acid wit, incredible talent, and eye for possibility.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
By Kristen Arnett
Riverhead Books
We will always cheer a new release from Kristen Arnett here at the Chicago Review of Books, as her deadpan humor and tenderness always land. Cherry Hendricks is a down-on-her-luck clown, whose fortunes begin to change when she meets a magician named Margot the Magnificent. But their professional and personal relationship makes her question how far she’s willing to go for Margot’s attention and what type of clown she truly wants to be. Arnett again proves to be incredibly attuned to heartbreak, and even when you can’t help but laugh, this story will carry you through every emotion imaginable.
The Antidote
By Karen Russell
Knopf
Karen Russell is the queen of the short story form, but we have been waiting since Swamplandia! for her to return with a novel. Well, wait no more, because The Antidote is officially here, and we can tell you with confidence that it was well worth the wait. This Dust Bowl epic follows a memorable cast of offbeat characters that includes a sentient scarecrow and a Prairie Witch, whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets. But when the Prairie Witch—like many banks during the Great Depression—goes bust, her loss threatens to upend the community and lay bare the violent pasts of the residents. When you consider the ingenuity, humor, and sheer scope of this story, it’s safe to say that The Antidote could have only been written by the great Karen Russell.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Stephen Graham Jones
S&S/Saga Press
Who’s ready for some historical horror this month? In The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a vampire haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. Told from a series of transcribed interviews, Stephen Graham Jones has written both a memorable American Indian revenge story and a terrifying horror novel.
Mothers and Other Fictional Characters
By Nicole Graev Lipson
Chronicle Prism
Mothers and Other Fictional Characters takes readers on a riveting journey through literary history to explore what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce them to stock characters. Weaving together literary criticism and memoir, Nicole Graev Lipson brings the breadth of life to her every subject. Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is an ode to womanhood in every iteration and form by creating the necessary space for messiness and meaning.
Ultramarine
By Mariette Navarro
Translated by Eve Hill-Agnus
Deep Vellum Publishing
The unnamed narrator of Ultramarine is a female captain whose success in managing a crew of twenty men and her own vessel relies on her ability to adhere strictly to protocol. But when she allows herself to go swimming in the deep ocean with her men one day, they return to the ship to discover that her crew no longer totals twenty men, but instead twenty-one. Mariette Navarro’s latest is a metaphysically disorienting psychological thriller that rips at the fabric of her narrator’s mind and the reader’s expectation of what is or is not acceptable.
Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age
By Ada Palmer
University of Chicago Press
The Renaissance—as we were often taught—was a societal golden age…right? Think again. Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance is an ambitious and delightfully irreverent take on the period that reveals the chaos that existed under all the art and beauty. Palmer argues that what we understand about the Renaissance is primarily the nostalgic vision of later historians, while the truth is that the era was far more diverse, fragile, and uncertain. Inventing the Renaissance is a raucous work of history that is equal parts delightful and insightful.
The Unworthy
By Agustina Bazterrica
Translated by Sarah Moses
Scribner
With the runaway success of Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica has already cemented herself as one of the brightest modern stars in literary horror, but The Unworthy continues to take a step forward in the scope of her terrifying vision. In a world plagued by climate catastrophe, a woman aspires to ascend the ranks of the Enlightened at her convent. But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls to join the ranks, the narrator begins to question everything she thought she understood about her faith. The Unworthy is an eerie parable about the climate crisis and ideological extremism.
Dream Count
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf
Dream Count follows a group of four women who must balance their loves, longings, and desires. Spanning the globe between America and Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie crafts her interconnected lives into a transcendent novel that strikes at the heart of what it means to seek true happiness in our modern world. Like Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists before it, Dream Count is an absolute triumph of the written word.
See Friendship
By Jeremy Gordon
Harper Perennial
Culture writer and aspiring podcaster Jacob Goldberg begins to dig into the tragic past of one of his best high school friends to discover a deeper story about his upbringing. Jeremy Gordon’s See Friendship is a finely tuned debut, moving deftly between humor, sharp grief, and the unsettling disconnect that comes with remembering long-forgotten memories. Gordon perfectly captures the experience of our modern digital age in which we are consistently confronted with the specters of our past, just a click of a button away but also incredibly distant.
The Chicago Review of Books is co-sponsoring an event with Jeremy Gordon on Thursday, March 20! Join us at City Lights Bookstore at 6:30 PM CT to hear Jeremy Gordon talk with author Peter C. Baker about See Friendship!
