Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
NONFICTION
by Jeff Perlman
* Biographer Pearlman (The Last Folk Hero) chronicles the brief, chaotic life of rap legend Tupac Shakur in this excellent biography. Shakur was born in 1971 to mother Afeni, a Black Panther who successfully defended herself in the Panther 21 trial but fell into crack addiction, often leaving Shakur to fend for himself. They moved from New York to Baltimore in 1984 and later to California, where Shakur found acting success as an “intimidating street hustler” in 1992’s Juice, a role the sensitive young man sometimes seemed to play in real life to gain acceptance, according to Pearlman. That persona—along with drugs, alcohol, the effects of childhood trauma, and a general recklessness—contributed to Shakur’s erratic, sometimes criminal behavior, Pearlman suggests. (He was convicted and imprisoned for sexual assault in 1995, the same year his album Me Against the World launched him to commercial success.) Drawing on interviews with nearly everyone in Shakur’s orbit, including the man who, as an infant, inspired “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” Pearlman paints a complex, three-dimensional portrait of a passionate artist who could be single-minded and obstinate, who was driven by a nagging need “to fulfill his destiny before it was too late” (which became tragically prescient when he was killed in 1996), and whose contradictions were many (his legacy as “hip-hop’s greatest booster of women” seemingly runs counter to the numerous sexual assault allegations made against him). The result is an endlessly captivating portrait of a singular artist. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat
* Activist, journalist, and maker of the Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane, Noisecat now offers his first book, a kaleidoscopic exploration of identity, family, community, and the rich cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. Noisecat never shies away from the brutal realities that people such as those in his Shuswap community have faced and continue to face, including the erasure of the history of the First Peoples of this land. Yet this bitter pill is always cut with his tender and thoughtful interweaving of individual stories of Indigenous resilience and hope. By interspersing throughout the book the myths of the Coyote (the trickster deity of the Shuswap) and critical histories detailing everything from the evolution of the Salish language to the colonization of Canada, Noisecat manages to entertain and inform in equal measure. Every tale, whether myth or history, is imbued with a beautiful honesty that will surely move readers. VERDICT A genre-bending work of nonfiction written with immaculate composure, this book will find a broad audience in libraries everywhere.
* Activist, journalist, and maker of the Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane, Noisecat now offers his first book, a kaleidoscopic exploration of identity, family, community, and the rich cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. Noisecat never shies away from the brutal realities that people such as those in his Shuswap community have faced and continue to face, including the erasure of the history of the First Peoples of this land. Yet this bitter pill is always cut with his tender and thoughtful interweaving of individual stories of Indigenous resilience and hope. By interspersing throughout the book the myths of the Coyote (the trickster deity of the Shuswap) and critical histories detailing everything from the evolution of the Salish language to the colonization of Canada, Noisecat manages to entertain and inform in equal measure. Every tale, whether myth or history, is imbued with a beautiful honesty that will surely move readers. VERDICT A genre-bending work of nonfiction written with immaculate composure, this book will find a broad audience in libraries everywhere.
-Collin Stephenson Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery by Siddarth Kara
* The 1781 tragedy that unfolded aboard the Zorg, a Dutch ship used to transport enslaved Africans, provided the spark for the first abolitionist movement in Great Britain. After spending months along the African coast filling its cargo hold, in March 1781, the Zorg was captured by British privateers and set sail for Jamaica with over 380 enslaved people crammed below its decks. By late November, after an exceptionally long voyage while running short of provisions, the ship's crew threw roughly 130 men and women, plus a child, into the sea. Including deaths by disease and suicide, the mortality rate for this voyage exceeded 50 percent. Kara (sociology and social policy, Univ. of Nottingham; Cobalt Red) details how the presumptive enslavers' insurance claims for the people who were murdered outraged Britons and fomented one of the world's first successful abolition campaigns, with enslavement finally being outlawed in England in 1807. Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement. VERDICT Readers interested in the study of enslavement and maritime history will seek out this title.
-Chad E. Statler Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
Bog Queen by Anna North
The discovery of a woman’s body in an English bog kicks off the piercing latest from North (Outlawed). It’s 2018 and American forensic scientist Dr. Agnes Linstrom is tasked with identifying the remains, which are uncannily well-preserved. Though initially believed to be a murder victim from 1961, the body turns out to date back more than two millennia. Agnes needs more time to provide answers about who the woman was, but her work is complicated by interventions from a peat moss company eager to resume its harvesting in the area, and from environmental activists calling for a stop to Agnes’s forensic digging. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Agnes and the long-dead woman, a young druid leader who travels from her village near the bog to a settlement ruled by a king who has welcomed Roman influence, sometime around 50 BCE. As the druid returns home, she is badly wounded by a rival leader. Eventually, Agnes determines these wounds were not the cause of the druid’s death. Part of the novel’s thrill comes from the way in which North leaves the rest of the mystery for the reader to piece together, and Agnes’s partial access to the truth is made even more poignant through the masterful depiction of how painfully out of sync she is with other people (“She spoke in what she thought was a normal and measured way... but every time she could see the senior professors sneaking sidelong looks at one another”). North reaches new heights with this brilliant novel. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
Hole in the Sky by Danile H. Wilson
This mind-blowing novel describes an encounter between a unique scientist, a paranormal algorithm, an investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and an Indigenous man struggling with loss. When a first-contact event is predicted, followed by confirmed reports of a spacecraft heading toward Earth, these disparate elements come together at the Spiro Mounds complex in western Oklahoma, where the spacecraft will touch down. At the last moment, the visitor hangs in the air and then melts into the ancient site, leaving the onlookers mystified. Mikayla, the NASA scientist, wearing AI assistive technology, arrives at the site and encounters Brian the investigator, along with Jim Hardgray and his daughter Tawny. They enter the tunnels beneath the mound complex, where they slowly realize, through a series of paranormal events, that the visitors are the original inhabitants of Earth, and their return does not bode well for humanity. The military mobilizes against the invaders, but the aliens feed on consciousness and will cause a veritable living hell on Earth for all sentient beings if they are not stopped. VERDICT Wilson's (The Clockwork Dynasty) suspenseful, adrenaline-filled adventure will keep readers engaged and guessing to the end. -Henry Bankhead, Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
* The 1781 tragedy that unfolded aboard the Zorg, a Dutch ship used to transport enslaved Africans, provided the spark for the first abolitionist movement in Great Britain. After spending months along the African coast filling its cargo hold, in March 1781, the Zorg was captured by British privateers and set sail for Jamaica with over 380 enslaved people crammed below its decks. By late November, after an exceptionally long voyage while running short of provisions, the ship's crew threw roughly 130 men and women, plus a child, into the sea. Including deaths by disease and suicide, the mortality rate for this voyage exceeded 50 percent. Kara (sociology and social policy, Univ. of Nottingham; Cobalt Red) details how the presumptive enslavers' insurance claims for the people who were murdered outraged Britons and fomented one of the world's first successful abolition campaigns, with enslavement finally being outlawed in England in 1807. Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement. VERDICT Readers interested in the study of enslavement and maritime history will seek out this title.
-Chad E. Statler Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
FICTION
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Majumdar (A Burning) spins a luminous story of a family facing climate catastrophe and food scarcity in near-future Kolkata. It revolves around a mother known only as Ma, who manages a shelter between caring for her aging father and two-year-old daughter, Mishti. The three of them have obtained highly coveted “climate visas” and are preparing to join Mishti’s father in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he’s spent the past six months working as a medical researcher. All is hopeful until the household is visited by a young thief named Boomba, who followed Ma home from the shelter suspecting (correctly) that she is siphoning food from her workplace. The plot thickens when Boomba makes off with the family’s passports, causing further complications for all involved. Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city’s “remaining benevolent billionaire” lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river. As Ma and her family struggle to reclaim the passports, Majumdar unspools Boomba’s backstory, crafting a complex antagonist who gradually gains the reader’s sympathy. There’s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. This proves once again that Majumdar is a master of the moral dilemma. -Eric Simonoff, WME. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
Majumdar (A Burning) spins a luminous story of a family facing climate catastrophe and food scarcity in near-future Kolkata. It revolves around a mother known only as Ma, who manages a shelter between caring for her aging father and two-year-old daughter, Mishti. The three of them have obtained highly coveted “climate visas” and are preparing to join Mishti’s father in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he’s spent the past six months working as a medical researcher. All is hopeful until the household is visited by a young thief named Boomba, who followed Ma home from the shelter suspecting (correctly) that she is siphoning food from her workplace. The plot thickens when Boomba makes off with the family’s passports, causing further complications for all involved. Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city’s “remaining benevolent billionaire” lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river. As Ma and her family struggle to reclaim the passports, Majumdar unspools Boomba’s backstory, crafting a complex antagonist who gradually gains the reader’s sympathy. There’s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. This proves once again that Majumdar is a master of the moral dilemma. -Eric Simonoff, WME. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
The discovery of a woman’s body in an English bog kicks off the piercing latest from North (Outlawed). It’s 2018 and American forensic scientist Dr. Agnes Linstrom is tasked with identifying the remains, which are uncannily well-preserved. Though initially believed to be a murder victim from 1961, the body turns out to date back more than two millennia. Agnes needs more time to provide answers about who the woman was, but her work is complicated by interventions from a peat moss company eager to resume its harvesting in the area, and from environmental activists calling for a stop to Agnes’s forensic digging. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of Agnes and the long-dead woman, a young druid leader who travels from her village near the bog to a settlement ruled by a king who has welcomed Roman influence, sometime around 50 BCE. As the druid returns home, she is badly wounded by a rival leader. Eventually, Agnes determines these wounds were not the cause of the druid’s death. Part of the novel’s thrill comes from the way in which North leaves the rest of the mystery for the reader to piece together, and Agnes’s partial access to the truth is made even more poignant through the masterful depiction of how painfully out of sync she is with other people (“She spoke in what she thought was a normal and measured way... but every time she could see the senior professors sneaking sidelong looks at one another”). North reaches new heights with this brilliant novel. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
This mind-blowing novel describes an encounter between a unique scientist, a paranormal algorithm, an investigator of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and an Indigenous man struggling with loss. When a first-contact event is predicted, followed by confirmed reports of a spacecraft heading toward Earth, these disparate elements come together at the Spiro Mounds complex in western Oklahoma, where the spacecraft will touch down. At the last moment, the visitor hangs in the air and then melts into the ancient site, leaving the onlookers mystified. Mikayla, the NASA scientist, wearing AI assistive technology, arrives at the site and encounters Brian the investigator, along with Jim Hardgray and his daughter Tawny. They enter the tunnels beneath the mound complex, where they slowly realize, through a series of paranormal events, that the visitors are the original inhabitants of Earth, and their return does not bode well for humanity. The military mobilizes against the invaders, but the aliens feed on consciousness and will cause a veritable living hell on Earth for all sentient beings if they are not stopped. VERDICT Wilson's (The Clockwork Dynasty) suspenseful, adrenaline-filled adventure will keep readers engaged and guessing to the end. -Henry Bankhead, Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
