Bookshelf

FICTION

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Every Rising Sun

by Jamila Ahmed

Ahmed’s novel is a captivating retelling of the classic One Thousand and One Nights via the vibrant narration of Shaherazade, a 12th-century Persian woman who fends off her own beheading through a never-ending string of mesmerizing stories. The book celebrates a renowned tale through its most timeless female character and reimagines the story as a testament to Shaherazade’s masterful wit and storytelling. (Henry Holt & Company / Macmillan Publishers)

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Burr

by Brooke Lockyer ’04

Lockyer delivers a compellingly grim tale — set in southern Ontario, Canada, in the 1990s — about a 13-year-old girl grappling with the death of her father and its eerie reverberations in her rural community. The author explores the transcendental world of death with a yearning physicality and infuses her characters with an unexpectedly beautiful zest for life, full of haunting, fantasy, and wilderness. (Harbour Publishing)

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The Vulnerables

by Sigrid Nunez ’72

Through one woman’s pointed narration, Nunez’s novel — the National Book Award winner’s ninth — cuts to the emotional heart of the plight of humanity in the post-pandemic, modern age. Her brief but incisive stories on singular moments of connection show our refreshingly recurring need for one another, no matter what. (Penguin Random House)

POETRY

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Phantom Captain

by Kim Rosenfield ’87

Winner of the Ottoline Prize, Phantom Captain draws on the author’s experience as both a poet and a psychotherapist to contend with — honestly and occasionally with humor — the difficulty of being human and the despair engendered in a world that sometimes feels headed toward apocalypse. (Fence Books) 

NONFICTION

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Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark

edited by Tara Krieger ’04

In celebration of Yankee Stadium’s 100th anniversary, Krieger has collected essays that cover the wealth of history housed in this famed sports institution. Including writings on the hallmark events held there — boxing matches, track and field meets, wrestling competitions, rodeos, concerts, and religious and political assemblies — as well as on historic ballgames played on the field, this compilation celebrates the 85 years of the House That Ruth Built. (Society for American Baseball Research)

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The Death of a Jaybird: Essays on Mothers and Daughters and the Things They Leave Behind

by Jodi Savage ’00

In lovingly sincere essays about her grandmother and mother, Savage reflects on how time can illuminate the ones we love. Her relationships with these two women — Alzheimer’s and cancer diagnoses, intergenerational dynamics of both strength and difficulty — offer a tender and insightful picture of Black womanhood in America. (Harper Collins) 

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My Life at the Wheel: Toward a Memoir

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz ’59

Schwartz shares her life as a series of sprawling, interconnected experiences in conversation with one another. Her dryly humorous and self-scrutinizing essays draw from her life as a writer and translator, her conversations with friends, and her encounters with ill health and global tragedy. (Harper Collins)

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Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way)

by Rachel Slade ’91

Slade gives an involved and illuminating account of a young optimistic couple, Ben and Whitney Waxman, as they attempt to produce a hoodie that is entirely sourced from American labor and resources. Their personal fight for labor equity touches on global-scale issues of fraught economics and trade wars and makes the current state of manufacturing in the U.S. a pressing issue for all Americans. (Pantheon)