‘Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation,’ by Maud
Newton (Random House, March 29)
Growing up, Newton was immersed in fabulous family lore. There
was the relative who married 13 times and the one who killed a man with a hay
hook; her own mother performed exorcisms in the living room. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Newton has been writing about genealogy for years. But a family
story isn’t just about the people (even when they’re this colorful), and Newton
touches on intergenerational trauma, mental illness, the influence of religion
and more.
اضافة اعلان
‘The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found,’ by Frank Bruni
(Avid Reader Press, March 1)
In 2017, Bruni, a New York Times Opinion writer, woke up to find
his vision strangely blurry. He’d had a stroke overnight, which permanently
left him blind in one eye. The book is part medical memoir, part investigation:
Aside from exploring his own diagnosis, Bruni seeks out stories from people who
have learned new skills to compensate for a hardship, and suggests a more
empathetic view of aging and the wisdom that it brings.
‘Booth,’ by Karen Joy Fowler (Putnam, March 8)
An imaginative new novel offers glimpses of John Wilkes Booth,
Abraham Lincoln’s killer, and his family, told chiefly through the perspectives
of some of his nine siblings. The Booths — headed by Junius, a mercurial
Shakespearean actor — were a liberal, vegetarian, anti-slavery family, and
Fowler sets their personal drama and conflict during the years heading up to
the Civil War.
‘Checkout 19,’ by Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead, March 1)
A lifelong affair with language, books and reading guide this
novel, which traces a woman’s literary development. Readers never learn her
name but come to know her through her artistic taste and formative experiences
with literature.
‘Glory,’ by NoViolet Bulawayo (Viking, March 8)
A crackling political satire, this novel unfolds in Jidada, a
fictional African nation modeled on Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe’s reign. Our
guide is a goat named Destiny — the characters here are animals — who returns
from exile to Jidada as it teeters on the cusp of revolution.
‘Groundskeeping,’ by Lee Cole (Knopf, March 1)
In this debut, it’s 2016 and Owen has returned home to Kentucky,
where he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a local college. What he really
wants is to be a writer — and once he begins a relationship with an author in
residence at the school, desire and ambition overlap.
‘In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss,’ by Amy Bloom (Random
House, March 8)
After Bloom’s husband, Brian, developed Alzheimer’s disease, he
decided to end his life on his own terms — and implored Bloom to write about
it. Bloom discusses it all, from the heartbreak of his illness to the barriers
to assisted suicide in the U.S. to their discovery of Dignitas, an organization
in Switzerland that helped Brian carry out his wishes.
‘Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire,’ by
Caroline Elkins (Knopf, March 29)
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian exposes the brutal
underpinnings of the British imperial system, focusing on a few key events — including
the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica, the Irish war for independence and
uprisings in the Middle East and Africa. As she writes: “Violence enacted on
bodies, minds, souls, cultures, landscapes, communities and histories was
intimately connected to the civilizing mission’s developmentalist dogma.”
‘One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,’
by William P. Barr (Morrow, March 8)
This memoir promises an accounting of Barr’s two tenures in
presidential cabinets: first in George H.W. Bush’s administration and later in
the Trump White House.
‘Run and Hide,’ by Pankaj Mishra (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
March 1)
The lives of three young men in India converge at an elite
college, which promises a pathway out of poverty. But after graduation, Arun,
the novel’s narrator, holds back, opting for a quieter, more literary life in
the Himalayas with his mother, while his friends seize upon their new freedom.
Years later, a woman sets out to expose the secrets of Arun’s classmates,
pulling him back into his history.
‘Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations With a Body of Memory,’
by Sarah Polley (Penguin Press, March 1)
The actress and screenwriter applies medical advice she received
after a concussion to all areas of her life: to retrain her mind by engaging in
the very things that triggered her symptoms. In this collection of essays, she
talks about everything from stage fright to a difficult childbirth.
‘Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of
the Civil War,’ by Roger Lowenstein (Penguin Press, March 8)
Lowenstein explores an aspect of the Civil War often overlooked
by other histories: the Union’s financial policies, including how they
continued to shape a Reconstruction-era America and beyond.
‘What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party,’ by
Michael Kazin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, March 1)
In his account of one of the world’s oldest mass political
organizations, Kazin identifies one ideological constant: Democrats have worked
toward a system of “moral capitalism,” with “programs designed to make life
more prosperous, or at least more secure, for ordinary people.” Kazin traces
the party’s evolution, drawing on presidential records and biographical
sketches of prominent members from Jesse Jackson to William Jennings Bryan.
‘Vagabonds!’ by Eloghosa Osunde (Riverhead, March 15)
This debut novel, set in Lagos, Nigeria, focuses on characters
who live on the margins — a lesbian couple, a designer who gives birth to an
adult woman and more — in a vibrant blend of big-city life and contemporary
mythology.
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