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New in May: Adam Haslett, Meredith Russo, Jia Qing Wilson-Yang, Garrard Conley, and Cheryl Clarke

New in May: Adam Haslett, Meredith Russo, Jia Qing Wilson-Yang, Garrard Conley, and Cheryl Clarke

Author: Edit Team

May 12, 2016

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

This month, Little Brown and Company is releasing Imagine Me Gone from award-winning author Adam Haslett, a novel that charts the strained bonds of one off-center family.

From the publisher:

When Margaret’s fiancé, John, is hospitalized for depression in 1960s London, she faces a choice: carry on with their plans despite what she now knows of his condition, or back away from the suffering it may bring her. She decides to marry him. Imagine Me Gone is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Over the span of decades, his younger siblings — the savvy and responsible Celia and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec–struggle along with their mother to care for Michael’s increasingly troubled and precarious existence.

Told in alternating points of view by all five members of the family, this searing, gut-wrenching, and yet frequently hilarious novel brings alive with remarkable depth and poignancy the love of a mother for her children, the often inescapable devotion siblings feel toward one another, and the legacy of a father’s pain in the life of a family.

Author Jia Qing Wilson-Yang’s debut novel Small Beauty (Metonymy) lyrically explores themes of trans communal history and self-discovery:

Small Beauty tells the story of Mei, who in coping with the death of her cousin abandons her life in the city to live in his now empty house in a small town. There she connects with his history as well as her own, learns about her aunt’s long-term secret relationship, and reflects on the trans women she left behind. She also brushes up against some local trans mysteries and gets advice from departed loved ones with a lot to say.

9781594633010This month sees the release of Boy Erased (Riverhead), a new memoir by Garrard Conley. The book provides a harrowing account of Conley’s time in ex-gay conversion therapy:

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality.

When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.

Author Meredith Russo’s young adult novel If I was Your Girl (Flatiron Books) explores the travails of fitting in and finding love when your life is a tangle of secrets:

Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school. Like anyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret, and she’s determined not to get too close to anyone.

But when she meets sweet, easygoing Grant, Amanda can’t help but start to let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she realizes just how much she is losing by guarding her heart. She finds herself yearning to share with Grant everything about herself, including her past. But Amanda’s terrified that once she tells him the truth, he won’t be able to see past it.

Because the secret that Amanda’s been keeping? It’s that at her old school, she used to be Andrew. Will the truth cost Amanda her new life, and her new love?

This month, Word Works is releasing By My Precise Haircut, a new poetry collection from Cheryl Clarke:

Cheryl Clarke’s long-awaited fifth poetry collection travels the political and spiritual trails of her many commitments to social justice, to women of color, to the LGBTQ community, and to the rage, love, and song that live in each reader. Says Nikky Finney, “Cheryl has stayed the firebrand course, all while inventing new and wondrous paths.” 2016 Judge Kimiko Hahn adds, “Whether the tone is wily or grieving, wise or wise-ass, the reader is drawn closer by the page and into a world that may be Black, Lesbian, middle-aged, sister of a deceased Sgt. J. L. Winters, daughter of the Block Elder but is certainly a threshold for all.”

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

   

Fiction

978-080706134-3

Nonfiction
 9781554812837

 LGBT Studies

   

Young Adult 

Romance

Erotica

  • Girls on Campus edited by Sandy Lowe & Stacia Seaman, Bold Strokes Heat Stroke 
  • Three by ‘Nathan Burgoine, Bold Strokes Impressions

Speculative Fiction/Horror

Mystery/Thriller

Bio/Memoir

   

Poetry

Related posts:

Hannah Gadsby and Roxane Gay Meet in LA, David Sedaris Sells His Archive, and More LGBTQ News
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
LGBT History Month in the UK: Reflecting on Sexuality as Portrayed in Young Adult Literature
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