The best new books out this week 📚

A bookish romance, a touching memoir, queer YA, and more!

Hello, book lovers! Each week, dozens of new releases hit the shelves. Here are our favorites. ❤️📚 –The BuzzFeed Books team Forwarded this newsletter? Hi! BuzzFeed Books celebrates all things books for every kind of reader, and the newsletter is the best way to keep up with curated posts, exclusive reviews, virtual events, and author features. We'll pop into your inbox every Tuesday and Sunday, with the occasional offer from a sponsor. Maybe we're biased, but we think you'll really enjoy it. Hit the button below to join us! Subscribe Credit: William Morrow Paperbacks No Words by Meg Cabot   When author Jo Wright is asked to go on an all-expenses paid trip to Little Bridge Island and speak at the island's first-ever book festival, there's only one thing stopping her from saying no: her nemesis and fellow author, Will Price, who lives on the island. Luckily, Jo learns that Will is away on the film set of his next book, and excitedly takes the speaking job. But Will isn't away at all. Not only is he on the island, but he's at the festival and determined to make amends with Jo for past actions. He seems genuine and Jo wants to believe that he's changed, but sometimes what seems like fact is really fiction. —Shyla Watson   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here. Credit: Black Lawrence Press, Riverhead Books, W. W. Norton Company Mother/land by Anada Lima   Mother/land thoughtfully examines topics of immigration, family, and motherhood, combining fresh imagery that almost paints scenes in your mind with raw, vulnerable language. Lima combines English and Portuguese into her poetry, uncovering complex feelings of identity and ancestry.  —Farrah Penn   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes by Albert Samaha   Albert Samaha's Concepcion is probably the most satisfying first-gen immigrant memoir I've read in recent memory. As he reaches the age his mother was when she migrated to the US from the Philippines, Samaha investigates his mother's beliefs that led her here, their family history, and whether a life in America was worth it after all. Samaha, who is half-Filipino and half-Lebanese, charts not just his family's immigration story, but the story of countless others who came around that time too. Part-memoir and part-journalistic venture, Concepcion is both a time capsule about a family's hopes and desires, as well as a history lesson for those who don't know much about US immigration, Spanish colonialism, and the legacy of imperialism. It's a personal story that only a reporter could write. (Full disclosure: Samaha is an editor at BuzzFeed News, and I also wrote a blurb for his book before its release.) The book is, at once, informative but approachable, heartbreaking but hopeful. It doesn't matter where your family is from, where they ended up, or where you think you belong — Concepcion speaks to the inherently human desire to build something better. —Scaachi Koul   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival by Donald Antrim   Antrim is both a fiction writer and an exceptionally skilled memoirist, and his 2006 book about his alcoholic mother, The Afterlife: A Memoir, was a funny, loving, and ultimately tragic portrait of a woman trapped in a cycle of addiction and mental health issues. Now, in One Friday in April, he recounts the journey he took leading up to his first memoir's publication, when he was wrestling with dread thinking that he had betrayed his mother by telling the story of his tumultuous upbringing. With exceptional clarity and tremendous self-compassion, Antrim methodically recounts the moments that led up to committing himself to a psychiatric hospital for several months and the harrowing experience of getting the help he needed to bring himself back from psychosis, including treatments of ECT. Interwoven in his hospital experience is a documentation of the personal annihilations he has suffered throughout his life because of his childhood: "If any one feeling has defined my life, it is the feeling, more an awareness than a thought, that only lonely rooms are safe." (Disclosure: Donald Antrim was my professor at Columbia University in 2009.) —Karolina Waclawiak   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here. Credit: William Morrow, Simon Schuster, Angry Robot, HarperTeen, Page Street Books The Brides of Maracoor by Gregory Maguire   Gregory Maguire returns to Oz 25 years after publishing Wicked with this spellbinding first book in a new series. Every day, the seven brides of Maracoor help keep time moving forward. When a bride dies, the Minor Adjutant, who visits yearly, brings a baby to replace her. When the youngest bride spots an unconscious girl, Rain, wrapped around a goose, she helps the goose bring her to shore. It's only once Rain is inside that the youngest bride realizes she's green. When Rain awakens, she's lost all memory of her past. As the seven brides bicker over what to do with Rain and factions form, the Minor Adjutant arrives on his yearly visit. With its rich character development and a healthy dash of Maguire's humor, this latest Oz tale is as satisfying a read as the Wicked Years quartet. —Margaret Kingsbury   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman   The fourth and final installment of the Practical Magic series occurs after the eponymous novel's events. Making their appearances are the Aunts Jet and Franny Owens, Uncle Vincent, Sally, and Gillian, and Sally's children, Kylie and Antonia. Sally hasn't told her daughters that they're witches. Thus, Kylie and Antonia know nothing about the Owens' women's curse and how they should never fall in love. Kylie learns of their curse only when the man she fell in love with lies in a coma. In despair, she vows to break the curse no matter what it takes, even if it means unearthing the dark side of her magic. Despite the risk, her family rallies behind Kylie, traveling from Paris to London in search of clues to breaking the curse. The Book of Magic gives an engrossing and satisfying conclusion to the series. —Margaret Kingsbury   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim   Translated from Korean, these delightfully imaginative and humorous interconnected short stories examine the characters from Cabinet 13. Cabinet 13 catalogs people referred to as symptomers, humans who represent a jump in the evolutionary chain and might be considered a new species. Office assistant Mr. Kong works for Professor Kwon, who's in charge of studying and keeping track of this new species. From a man with a ginkgo tree blooming from his pinkie to a time skipper to a woman with a lizard growing inside her mouth, these symptomers are both fascinating and annoying to Mr. Kong. While the first half reads like a series of anecdotes, a larger plot slowly emerges. Quirky and inventive, this is the second of award-winning author Un-Su Kim's novels to be translated into English. —Margaret Kingsbury   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   Jade Fire Gold by June CL Tan   In this epic fantasy with Zutara vibes, Ahn is a peasant girl who accidentally reveals her deadly magic, while Altan is a lost heir searching for revenge. In each other, they see the thing they most want: Ahn sees a path to her past and her magic, and Altan sees a path to his future and his throne. —Rachel Strolle   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here.   Dragonblood Ring by Amparo Ortiz   In this action-packed sequel, we follow both Lana and Victoria as their former team heads to Puerto Rico after the capture of the Sire. Since the end of the Blazewrath World Cup, news of burning towns and kidnapped dragons has emerged. Lana and Victoria follow the less-than-forthcoming Director Sandhar to Le Parc Du Chasseurs, a French theme park that has become an illegal fighting ring for dragons. To keep their dragons safe, they'll have to work to take down the entire operation...and keep the Sire's supporters from freeing him. —Rachel Strolle   Get it from Bookshop or from your local indie at Indiebound here. Credit: Page Street Kids, Running Press Kids, Candlewick Press Tonight We Rule the World by Zack Smedley   Smedley (Deposing Nathan) returns to do what he does best with another powerful and nuanced YA about a bisexual boy who finds himself in a complicated legal battle he never wanted. But here, Owen is out and relatively comfortable in his queerness, and also unquestionably the victim: he was sexually assaulted on a school trip by a classmate. It was supposed to remain his secret, but when someone else goes to the cops, Owen's forced to live with both the truth and the fallout. —Dahlia Adler   Get it from Bookshop or your local indie through Indiebound here.   Where There's a Whisk by Sarah J. Schmitt   Romance, betrayal, and other deliciousness abound in this contemporary YA about a competition for the next Top Teen Chef. It stars pastry chef Peyton, who's elated at the chance to win a scholarship to a top culinary school, until she realizes the show will do anything for ratings. Loath to have herself pushed into the role of "the poor girl," dredging up a past she'd rather leave behind her, Peyton does her best to avoid playing their games, but she can't be sure everyone around her is doing the same. —Dahlia Adler Get it from Bookshop or your local indie through Indiebound here.   The Heartbreak Bakery by AR Capetta   Agender teen Syd works at the Proud Muffin, a queer bakery and community space in Austin. But after being dumped, Syd's baking, which has always been an outlet for big feelings, quite literally takes on the feelings Syd was trying to bake away: everyone who eats Syd's breakup brownies breaks up. Now it's up to Syd, along with the cute bike delivery person, Harley, to fix things...including the magical brownie-induced breakup of Vin and Alec, the bakery owners. —Rachel Strolle   Get it from Bookshop or a local bookstore through Indiebound here. Credit: Mariner Books When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky by Margaret Verble   Two Feathers is a Cherokee horse-driver working at the Glendale Zoo in 1926 Nashville, just trying to find her way in life. As one of the few non-white employees, Two finds solace in another horse lover, Hank, a Black man who cares for the animals at the zoo despite coming from an affluent family. After something goes wrong at one of Two's shows, odd things begin to happen around the zoo: Images and apparitions from the past appear, and the hippo falls mysteriously ill. Two joins a quirky cast of other characters to determine what's going on in this expansive and well-researched historical work.  —Kirby Beaton   Get it from Bookshop or through your local indie through Indiebound here. Credit: William Morrow, MCD x FSG Originals No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield   Lizzie Oullette is found dead in the rural Maine town of Copper Falls, and her husband, Dwayne, is nowhere to be found. As Lizzie narrates this story from beyond the grave, we discover that a detective had found a lead: Adrienne Richards, a social media influencer and wife of a disgraced billionaire, who had been renting Lizzie's lake house. And the clearer her connections to Lizzie become, the more we uncover what happened. —Farrah Penn   Get it from Bookshop or through your local indie through Indiebound here.   This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno   Thiago has just lost his wife Vera in a tragic accident, and under a mountain of grief, he recalls the eerie circumstances leading up to his wife's death. It started with their Itza, a smart speaker practically every household has, but theirs sometimes purchased strange items they never requested, like a pink dildo and a book of black magic. Then it would speak when no one was in the room, and Thiago started sleepwalking, trying to open a door in the wall where there was no door. After Vera dies, the strangeness amplifies, and Thiago escapes into a Colorado forest only to find that the horror followed him, and it's about to get even worse. This intense cosmic horror with a touch of Mexican-American folklore is incredibly creepy and moving. I listened to the phenomenal audiobook narrated by Robb Moreira.  —Margaret Kingsbury   Get it from Bookshop or through your local indie through Indiebound here. Find these titles and other BuzzFeed Books favorites on our Bookshop page. BuzzFeed, Inc. 111 E. 18th St. New York, NY 10003 We hope you love the products we recommend! Just so you know, BuzzFeed may collect a small share of sales from the links in this email. View our privacy notice and cookie policy Unsubscribe