New-Release Roundup

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state. . . . With a first-person register reminiscent of the fierce self-disclosure of Sheila Heti and the poetic precision of Ocean Vuong, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a bold debut novel that examines the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance.”

By Marisa (Mac) Crane

Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin

“Dubus’s nonfiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs, and pain. . . . He writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget.”

The title essay of this collection appeared in the July 2021 issue of The Sun.

By Andre Dubus III

Mother Doll

“Mother Doll is a sharp and visceral nesting doll of a novel, about four generations of mothers and daughters and the inherited trauma cast by Russian history. . . . Ferociously funny and deeply moving. . . . Katya Apekina’s second novel is a family epic and a meditation on motherhood, immigration, identity, and war.”

By Katya Apekina

Devout: A Memoir of Doubt

“In this revelatory memoir, Anna Gazmarian tells the story of how her evangelical upbringing in North Carolina failed to help her understand the mental health diagnosis she received, and the work she had to do to find proper medical treatment while also maintaining her faith. . . . Anna shows that pursuing our emotional health and our spiritual well-being is one single mission and, in both cases, an act of faith.”

By Anna Gazmarian

Adam in the Garden

“AE Hines lyrically examines the thresholds we cross: from childhood to adulthood, youth to old age, rejection to self-acceptance. . . . Whether set in the garden of the body, our fragile earth, or the biblical Eden, these poems fall through gaps in their subjects to reveal the extraordinary that is hidden in the middle of everyday life.”

“Some Quiet Evenings,” one of the poems included in the collection, was first published in The Sun’s July 2023 issue.

By AE Hines

What We May Be

“John Hodgen’s What We May Be is a cry of love and pain (and he makes them almost indistinguishable) on behalf of the human race, its history, its future, [and] its lovely possibilities that seem always out of reach. The poems of this award-winning poet declare again and again that the reaching itself defines the best in us, and he is cheering us on.”

By John Hodgen

Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir

“A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park. . . . Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is an invitation for readers to consider how we find our place in a world that insists on stark binaries, and a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to fight to be themself.”

Two chapters from this memoir were published as essays in The Sun: “The Beetle King” in our August 2022 issue and “White Face, Black Eyes” in our May 2024 issue.

By Zoë Bossiere

Fire Exit

“From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. On the far bank, he caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s always been something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep. . . . Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, is a masterful and unforgettable story of family, legacy, bloodlines, culture and inheritance, and what, if anything, we owe one another.”

By Morgan Talty

Wheel

“Hayden Saunier’s Wheel contains much wisdom, much humor, many quiet reveries, lots of farm and house chores, much regret and gratitude. For all its constant motion, it’s a tight collection governed by theme and voice, but also by powerful formal means, especially repeated music and imagery, marked out in something like sonata form. Wheel all but refuses to be read silently; readers may find themselves unknowingly slipping into recitation.”

“The Wisdom Package,” one of the poems included in the collection, was first published in The Sun’s June 2024 issue.

By Hayden Saunier