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New in October: Jeanette Winterson, Carrie Brownstein, Paul Russell, Tyler Oakley and David Rakoff

New in October: Jeanette Winterson, Carrie Brownstein, Paul Russell, Tyler Oakley and David Rakoff

Author: William Johnson

October 8, 2015

Fall is here, bringing with it a slew of new books to enjoy.

This month, Hogarth is releasing The Gap of Time, a “remix” of one of William Shakespeare’s plays, from celebrated author Jeanette Winterson.

From the publisher:

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.

In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.

Riverhead is releasing Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, a memoir from iconic punk-rocker Carrie Brownstein:

Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later.

With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

Pop culture phenom Tyler Oakley humorously details his various personal pratfalls and pitfalls in his new collection Binge (Gallery Books):

Pop-culture phenomenon, social rights advocate, and the most prominent LGBTQ+ voice on YouTube, Tyler Oakley brings you his first collection of witty, personal, and hilarious essays.

For someone who made a career out of over-sharing on the Internet, Tyler has a shocking number of personal mishaps and shenanigans to reveal in his first book: experiencing a legitimate rage blackout in a Cheesecake Factory; negotiating a tense stand­off with a White House official; crashing a car in front of his entire high school, in an Arby’s uniform; projectile vomiting while bartering with a grandmother; and so much more. In Binge, Tyler delivers his best untold, hilariously side-splitting moments with the trademark flair that made him a star.

Cleis Press Press is releasing Immaculate Blue, the long-awaited new novel from author Paul Russell:

From the award-winning author of The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov comes the brilliantly conceived and precisely rendered novel Immaculate Blue, which explores the lives of four people–Anatole, Leigh, Chris, and Lydia–and their intermingled and unwinding desires. Set in upstate New York, the novel follows these characters as they achieve their aims in lives redolent with loss and hope, humor and sadness, union and alienation. Russell picks up the thread of his critically acclaimed novel The Salt Point 20 years later and tracks the lives of these friends, some of whom not only lost touch with each other but have also lost their way. Moving, at times shocking, and always memorable, Immaculate Blue points to where the personal and the political come together and shape our lives in unexpected ways. With this newest novel, Paul Russell reminds us of why he is one of the most important voices on the literary scene.

Anchor Books is releasing The Uncollected David Rakoff, an anthology of never-before-collected pieces by humorist David Rakoff:

David Rakoff’s singular personality spills from every page of this witty and entertaining volume, which includes travel features, early fiction works, pop culture criticism, and transcripts of his most memorable appearances on public radio’s Fresh Air and This American Life.

These writings chart his transformation from fish out of water, meekly arriving for college in 1982, to a proud New Yorker bluntly opining on how to walk properly in the city. They show his unparalleled ability to capture the pleasures of solitary pursuits like cooking and crafting, especially in times of trouble; as well as the ups and downs in the life-span of a friendship, whether it is a real relationship or an imaginary correspondence between Gregor Samsa and Dr. Seuss (co-authored with Jonathan Goldstein). Also included is his novel-in-verse Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish.

If you are looking for more post-beach fiction reads, make sure you check out new books from Michael Graves, Libby Ware, and Garth Risk Hallberg.

As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.

   

Fiction

Nonfiction

   

Young Adult 
 

 LGBT Studies

Romance

Erotica

 

Speculative Fiction/Horror

 

Mystery/Thriller

 

Bio/Memoir

 

Poetry

 

Related posts:

Queer Superheroes, Diverse YA, and Other LGBTQ+ News
Listen to Armistead Maupin Read From His Forthcoming Memoir 'Logical Family'
A Victory for Equality: Morehouse Offers LGBTQ Course
William Johnson photo

About: William Johnson

William Johnson is the former Deputy Director of Lambda Literary.

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