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
This lively debut from librettist and former opera singer Vincent takes stock of the current state of opera and the challenges facing it. She unpacks debates like whether directors should revise classic opera scores (which traditionalists often treat as “carefully preserved antiquit[ies]” but are closer to the product of “centuries-long game of Telephone,” according to Vincent) and production companies’ reluctance to take risks on less popular operas. Sharp insights are also offered about directors’ attempts to breathe new life into classics—on the one hand, fresh stagings can be less impactful for audiences unfamiliar with the original, but traditional stagings raise questions of their own (an extreme example being the continued use of blackface and yellowface in some corners of the opera world). Drawing on personal experience and a wealth of interviews, Vincent paints a clear-eyed picture of an art form constrained by massive costs, shrinking audiences, and bygone traditions, while also giving due to its beauty and resilience. Longtime opera lovers and newcomers alike will be edified. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly
“Football is so ingrained in American society that it’s hard to visualize an America without it,” contends journalist Klosterman (The Nineties) in this eye-opening and entertaining cultural history of the sport. He traces the origin of modern football back to the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and Giants, noting that the game’s importance came not from what happened on the field but from the record-setting 45 million people who watched at home. Football, Klosterman writes, is a sport made for television, as the experience of watching on a screen, where the camera follows the ball, far exceeds attending in person. He asserts that the attraction to the sport lies in its similarities to “ancient war” and the chance it offers male athletes to prove their strength and ability. Despite the sport’s apparent omnipresence, Klosterman makes a convincing case that football will go the way of horse racing and eventually decline in popularity, citing dwindling youth participation amid increased awareness of the dangers of repeated head trauma and the NFL’s financial model, which continuously drives up prices for fans and advertisers. Approaching the subject with rigor and drawing on his lifelong fascination with the game, Klosterman sheds light on football’s “outsized and underrated” role in shaping contemporary culture. The result is a transcendent appraisal of America’s favorite sport. Copyright 2025 Publisher’s Weekly
From educator and TikTok phenom Laura Danger, an insightful and practical guide that will teach you how to recognize unproductive dynamics at home, transform your relationships, find your community-and break free from a life of mediocrity. Ever had the feeling your spouse is totally capable of doing that simple household task? Ever felt so burned out you want to hide in the bathroom while your house devolves into chaos? All of us are running a race against a culture telling us we need to be more, to hustle more, and that we should be doing it all ourselves. It's a cycle that needs to be broken, and in this book, Danger, an experienced educator, facilitator, and domestic equity advocate, sets out on a path of unpacking the inequity and rage in the erasure of domestic labor and care to guide readers to a healthier and more balanced life. Organized in seven chapters covering topics like harmful stereotypes and communication models, from the nag paradox to weaponized incompetence, No More Mediocre asks why we make light of deeply problematic dynamics and who wins when we buy into them. Drawing from case studies, including non-traditional, intentionally developed family structures, and her own experience with mental illness and the demands of work and family life, Danger provides communication models and actionable steps you can take to restructure your household and better thrive at home and with partners in a chaotic world. A battle cry for better, Laura Danger shows that there are countless practical ways to maintain bonds, beat back against the status quo, and to meet our own and one another's needs, because we all deserve more than mediocre-- Provided by publisher.
FICTION
Tibet in 1869 is an isolated country that forbids European visitors as part of its effort to protect itself from Western imperialism. Despite this, two Europeans are separately making their way toward Lhasa, Tibet's largest city. One is a woman counting on her biracial appearance to cloak her until she becomes the first European woman to reach Lhasa, while the other is a British captain planning to darken his skin with walnut oil long enough to chart the course of a river and win glory back home. The captain's Indian guide, Balram, has agreed to assist for a very different reason than fame: he heard that a friend who earlier assisted the British has been arrested and is being held as a spy deep within Tibet. As the parties move toward Lhasa and a charismatic stranger crosses paths with both groups, they must ask themselves whether what they hope to gain is worth what they stand to lose. VERDICT Anappara (Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line) delivers a beautifully written, character-driven novel about colonialism that blends stunning descriptions of the Tibetan landscape with flawed and fascinating protagonists. Recommended for readers looking for an immersive story worth slowing down and taking one's time with. Copyright 2025 Library Journal.
Words literally come to life for a lonely assistant librarian in this exquisite tale from Moorman (The Vanishing of Josephine Reynolds). One night, heartbroken over a breakup, Stella Parker throws her journal into the library’s furnace. Soon after, her words retaliate, hitting her so hard she feels like she’s being stabbed through the heart. Searching the library for answers, she encounters some strange characters, including a man who says he’s Jack Mathis, the handsome American WWII soldier at the heart of her favorite novel, Beyond the Southern Horizon. After Stella accidentally unleashes the villainous Captain Hook from the pages of Peter Pan, she learns the rules of the magical library and works together with Jack to catch Hook, who’s far more dastardly in Moorman’s hands than in J.M. Barrie’s story. As they fall for each other along the way, Jack and Stella grapple with the fact that his time in the real world expires in just a few days, which Stella’s mentor, Arnie Cohen, explains to her. Moorman drops in plenty of delightful details, such as the appearance of Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, who dazzles the library’s women patrons, and she makes it easy to suspend disbelief, considering that, as Arnie says, “The world is full of the impossible.” It’s a marvel. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
This tense and staggering tale of rock climbing and family demons from Tallent (My Absolute Darling) explores the cost of following one’s dreams. Best friends and high school seniors Daniel Redburn and Tamma Callahan steal every spare moment to climb the rock formations of Joshua Tree National Park. Dan is a straight-A golden child under enormous pressure from his family to shed burnout Tamma and become the first of the Redburns to attend college. Tamma, a lesbian, is a social outcast and troublemaker. Uninterested in school, she dreams of becoming the world’s best rock climber. But in a landscape where everything feels “luminous with meaning” to these California desert rats, their families’ entwined past bears down hard. Dan’s mother, Alexandra, a runaway writer once taken in by Tamma’s working-class mother, Kendra, has a congenital heart defect, but the money that could save her life has been set aside for Dan’s future. Meanwhile, Tamma’s chaotic home life is rife with alcoholism, neglect, and sexual assault, and further complicated by Kendra’s long-held bitterness at never doing anything with her own life. As Tamma becomes increasingly reckless in her climbs and Dan contemplates a future without the one person who really understands him, each wonders if there is any “version of oneself other than the self one already finds oneself to be.” The answer is in Tallent’s novel, a brutal portrait of finding hope in an unforgiving landscape. It’s a towering coming-of-age saga packed with muscle and heart. Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly.
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