Literary Hub » Naomi Wood! Britney Spears! Fomenting revolution! 20 new paperbacks out this December.

December is upon us, and that means not only a month of exciting new books to look forward to, but a wonderful opportunity for many of us to also pick up some new books as gifts for the special ones in our lives. And if you love the feel of a paperback in your hands, you’re in luck, for I have a bevy of fascinating new paperback editions to suggest, each coming out this month. Below, you’ll find twenty intriguing options to consider in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including daring debut novels and story collections, fresh offerings from beloved authors, memoirs, and thought-provoking nonfiction.

It’s been an American year unlike any other I’ve experienced, and it’s remarkable, in some ways, that we’ve reached this far; it is difficult not to feel like multiple exhausting years have passed already. Art is always vital, and it is only more vital now, as we live out this long dark night of a country’s soul. So, keep books by your side always, and give them, too, to your loved ones.

Stay safe, Dear Readers, and I’ll see you again for more paperbacks coverage in the new year.

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Julia Armfield, Private Rites
(Flatiron)

“This queer, dystopian take on Shakespeare’s King Lear set in a city drowned by endless rain is atmospheric, gripping, and gorgeous.”
–People

Karina Sainz Borgo, No Place to Bury the Dead
(Harpervia)

“[A] rich and lyrical tale of desperation and redemption, set during an outbreak of a plague that causes amnesia…. Throughout, Sainz Borgo applies stark poetry to the terrifying setting, where ‘moans and cries attributed to ghosts sometimes masked executions and beatings.’ It’s a stunner.”
–Publishers Weekly

Ella Baxter, Woo Woo
(Catapult)

“A captivating meditation on art, obsession, and the difficulties women face while creating their work…Discomfort and vulnerability permeate the tale, a smolderingly disturbing yet often hilarious chronicle…near-hallucinogenic….The book shines as a satire on the relentless blurring of reality and artifice within the art world….[R]eaders who enjoy capital-A Art will likely be enthralled by Baxter’s careful dissection of an artist at work.”
–The Boston Globe

Daniel Saldaña Paris, Planes Flying Over a Monster: Essays (trans. Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman)
(Catapult)

“Daniel Saldaña París writes about cities as labyrinths, with each new path twisting through memory and failure and searching and invention, leading readers to corridors where the intimate and the cosmic intersect. Planes Flying Over a Monster is a tremendous work of art.”
–Laura Van den Berg

Mark Lilla, Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know
(Picador)

“If a genie offered to tell you the exact year and month and day that you were going to die, you would almost certainly shrink back and refuse the offer. There are things you don’t want to know. In this tour de force, Mark Lilla explores the deep sources of this refusal. An exuberant, inexhaustible storyteller, Lilla finds the hidden, self-protective will to ignorance at the center of our most cherished religious myths, philosophical systems, and literary masterpieces.”
–Stephen Greenblatt

Omo Moses, The White Peril: A Family Memoir
(Beacon Press)

“Intricately crafted, and a riveting read, this unputdownable whirlwind journeys through five generations of a Black family fighting for Black liberation, and a young man’s fight to traverse the rocky distance between father and son.”
–Lisa Delpit

Callie Siskel, Two Minds: Poems
(Norton)

“In Two Minds, the hungers of loss, love, and familial bonds intersect at the interstices of art and memory. With a palette knife, Callie Siskel scrapes at the raw face of elegy, revealing interior forms on a canvas where the poet’s father lives beyond death. Reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art, these intimate poems achieve an enduring, painterly resonance that is startling and lucid in language.”
–Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Samrat Upadhyay, Darkmotherland
(Soho Press)

“Darkmotherland is Samrat Upadhyay’s magnum opus, full of narrative energy and dramatic dynamics. With a Dickensian sweep and a vast cast of characters, Upadhyay created an ancient world saturated with the spirit of our time and shaped by political ambition and dark vision; hence the unavoidable violence of destruction. It is also a world that at times vibrates surreal resonances. A grand novel indeed.”
–Ha Jin

Karissa Chen, Homeseeking
(Putnam)

“Karissa Chen’s debut novel weaves expertly between present and past, telling the story of childhood sweethearts who meet again late in life and are torn between looking back and moving on. A kaleidoscopic yet intimate view of the Chinese diaspora, Homeseeking explores how identities flex and transform during war—and which fundamental parts of us remain the same no matter where we find ourselves.”
–Celeste Ng

Naomi Wood, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
(Mariner Books)

“How terrifically exciting to see Naomi Wood flourish in the short story form. It seems the perfect vehicle for her wit, intelligence, mischief and levity. These stories absolutely nail the experiences of women rebelling in worlds calibrated to restrict and undernourish them. They skewer modern parenting, maternity, romance, and morality. It’s a beautiful, electrifying thing to witness—a writer so hilariously and so reasonably voicing the unspeakable.”
–Sarah Hall

Britney Spears, The Woman in Me
(Gallery Books)

“Powerful in its vividness…much has been made of the ‘bombshell’ revelations from this memoir…but vastly more interesting are the quiet revelations about herself….Spears has always been funny and so unequivocally herself, even when recounting her mistreatment by most of the men in her life….You can sense Spears gaining her power back, inch by inch. The Woman in Me is a worthy act of self-resurrection.”
–The Los Angeles Times

Stephanie Gorter, The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America
(Ecco)

“The Icon and the Idealist is a shrewd and deeply researched dual biography, one that compares and contrasts two legendary (and maddeningly complex) 20th century feminist figures, Margaret Sanger and Mary Dennett, in ways that shed new light on their individual and dual accomplishments and conflicts. It’s also, like the best of cultural histories, all too necessary at a time when women’s bodily autonomy is under new and renewed threats.”
–Sarah Weinman

Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
(PublicAffairs)

“In this remarkably assured and sweeping history of the present, Vincent introduces us to the activists, hackers, punks, martyrs, and the millions of ordinary people whose small acts of bravery spurred the mass protests of the last decade. Bevins’ clear-eyed, sympathetic account of the unfulfilled promise of these protests leaves his reader with a bold vision of the future—one in which his book’s lessons are used to transform an uprising into a true revolution.”
–Merve Emre

Emma Pattee, Tilt
(Scribner)

“[A] nail-biting debut… Pattee’s depiction of a post-earthquake Portland feels bracingly realistic, and her depictions of marriage and impending motherhood are achingly raw. Shocking and full of heart, this leaves a mark.”
–Publishers Weekly

Rémy Ngamije, Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space: A Literary Mixtape
(Gallery/Scout Press)

“Imaginative and immersive, Ngamije tells stories through poetry and shopping lists, complete with a B-side like a true tracklist. A [study] of music and fiction, Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space is a modern treat.”
–Our Culture

John Sayles, To Save the Man
(Melville House)

“Set in 1890, the year of the Wounded Knee Massacre, John Sayles’s novel, To Save the Man, is a story of a culture taken. At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, young Native Americans find themselves having to negotiate the demands of assimilation against the ways of life they’ve always known. A master storyteller, Sayles reminds us of the cost of history on the individual life. This blend of fact and invention makes for an unforgettable read.”
–Lee Martin

Eliza Moss, What It’s Like in Words
(Holt)

“What It’s Like in Words by Eliza Moss is an astute depiction of toxic relationships and the devastation often left in their wake. However, it is also a testament to the healing power of art, the importance of comfortable love, and learning to always value oneself, flaws and all.”
–Chicago Review of Books

Carl Elliot, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No
(Norton)

“Carl Elliott, one of America’s most important and humane voices calling out medical corruption, goes deep in The Occasional Human Sacrifice. It’s not only about research that amounts to human torture, or even taking on some of the marquee institutions in science. This important book explores how corruption in any realm germinates and why people blow the whistle despite the price they pay.”
–Brian Alexander

Trisha Sakhlecha, The Inheritance
(Penguin Books)

“What do you get when you pair a wealthy Delhi business owner on the verge of retirement, his three troubled kids, and a remote island? A high-stakes game of greed, of course!….Like Succession meets Knives Out, or in other words, an absolute page-turner.”
–Marie Claire

Travis Mulhauser, The Trouble Up North
(Grand Central Publishing)

“Never has a fictional family so subtly mirrored the struggles of our society—addiction, environmental destruction, economic disparities, sickness, ATVs—with such humor and intelligence. Mulhauser brings to mind other lauded Michigan writers—Elmore Leonard in the pitch-perfect dialogue, Jim Harrison in the attentiveness to landscape and wildlife—but The Trouble Up North, for a novel so deeply rooted in a place, is as much a state of mind.”
–Michael Parker