These 15 new books for May include stirring new fiction from Isabel Allende, a memoir from a 6'7" librarian struggling with Tourette's syndrome, a hilarious novel of a young man's job as a bird tracker and more.
Before You Go
15 Books To Read In May 2013
Maya's Notebook(01 of15)
By Isabel Allende "I turned sixteen and my family crumbled away," writes Maya Vidal, narrator of Isabel Allende's gripping new novel, Maya's Notebook (Harper). Maya was raised in Berkeley, California, by her Chilean-born grandmother, Nini, and grandfather, Popo, whose death from cancer leaves her reeling. The downward spiral that follows lands her in court-imposed rehab and an even deeper descent into drugs, violence and crime on the streets of Las Vegas. Her savior? A nurse name Olympia Pettiford, "Madonna of the defenseless." As Maya's yearlong diary begins, she is running from both sides of the law. Nini has sent her into hiding with her old friend Manuel Arias, an anthropologist who lives in a remote village on the southern coast of Chile, on "a tiny island so small it's almost invisible on the map, in the middle of the Dark Ages." By now Maya is a 19-year-old with hair dyed four colors and "residues of the wild life" running in her veins. In a land ruled by storms and tides, with its lingering tradition of magic and sorcery, she finds refuge. But for how long? Allende has earned an international following of millions since the publication of her 1982 novel The House of the Spirits. Here she retains the storytelling magic that is her signature, while deftly juxtaposing the alternating universe of the past -- including Child's dark history of political terror -- and present. At its heart, though, this is a tale of a girl's journey toward self-discovery, of the fierce power of truth, and of the healing force of love. — Jane Ciabattari (credit:Marko Metzinger/Studio D)
Life After Life(02 of15)
By Kate AtkinsonWe've all felt it, the desire to return to a pivotal moment and handle it differently, changing (for the btter presumably) everything that follows. In Kate Atkinson's dazzling new novel, Life After Life (Reagan Arthur), the fantasy behind that reality turns out to be rivetingly complex. Born in the English countryside in 1910, Ursula Todd lives and dies again and again, each time reaching an older age as she tries to avoid the mistakes of her previous existence. High concept? Sure. But with prose this good, it never reads like a gimmick. Ursula has no clear recollection of having lived before, just "sensations, as if a memory was being tugged reluctantly out of its hiding place." It's fascinating to watch her evolve into someone smarter, stronger, and more assertive. Not to say life ever gets easy. As Ursula grows tougher, so do the challenges she encounters. Though the lecher in the stairwell and the abusive husband who once preyed on her are no threat to the wise-up Ursula, in their place she faces the horrors of living under siege in London during World War II. But then she is an infant again, where "she could hear the delicate chink of cups on saucers....A man lifted her up and tossed her in the air and sugar cubes scattered across a lawn. There was another world but it was this one." Witnessing the rise of Hitler and the resulting carnage, and then moving back in time, Ursula confronts a twisted version of a timeless question: Knowing now what I will know then, what should I do?— Karen Holt (credit:Marko Metzinger/Studio D.)
Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots(03 of15)
By Jessica Soffer Lorca, the lonely teenager at the center of Jessica Soffer's emotional novel Tomorrow There WIll Be Apricots (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is a self-mutilator whose addiction to pain terrorizes her "like an angry wasp"; it's a poor substitute for the warmth her mother, Nancy, doesn't offer. Since their arrival in New York CIty, Nancy has been singularly focused on her flourishing career as a chef, and when Lorca is found cutting her thigh with a paring knife in the school bathroom and suspended, Nancy has no patience to spare. Desperate to find a way to connect with her mother, Lorca turns to the one thing she knows makes her happy: food. Lorca has long been adept at whipping up an omelet de fromage or pasta arrabbiata as salve to her mother's dark moods; now she determines to master her favorite dish: the Iraqi masgouf, a delicate fish concoction requiring intricate preparation. She enlists the help of Victoria, an Iraqi-Jewsish cooking instructor in mourning for her husband, and together the two embark on a journey that takes on a significance beyond their original mission, finding in each other the solace, nourishment and companionship they've both been missing. Soffer's breathtaking prose inter-weaves delectable descriptions of food with a profoundly redemptive story about loss, self-discovery, and acceptance. After seeing an old photo of her mother hiding the scars on her arm by folding it "into herself like a broken wing across her chest," Lorca realizes: "My mother was like me...it made terrible, perfect sense."— Abbe Wright
The Selected Letters of Willa Cather(04 of15)
"I'm not fond of writing letters," Willa Cather confided to poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, but nearly seven decades after the celebrated novelist's death, it's clear the lady protested too much. Collected for the first time, Cather's prolific correspondence displays the range and depth of her relationships and traces the evolution of her fact, from her youth on the Nebraska prairie to her sorrow-drenched decline in New York. In that pre-textng, pre-Twitter age, she kept the postal service busy. Cather moved among the eminent literary circles of her day, corresponding with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and Langston Hughes -- but the intimacies of her life she reserved mostly for family and friends. In The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (Knopf), both sides come to life. Virtually every letter contains some insight about writing, a hammer or chisel for her toolbox. "As one grows older one cares less about clever writing and more about a simple and faithful presentation," she once confessed. "But to reach this, one must have gone through the period where one would die, so to speak, for the fine phrase." In her last years, Cather withdrew into a cone of morose isolation, plagued by ill health and the horrors of World War II. "I have cared too much, about people and places -- cared too hard," she wrote to her brother. "It made me, as a writer. But it will beak me in the end." By turns effusive, despairing, mischievous, vain and bighearted, Selected Letters unfolds like an epistolary autobiography, teeming with rich period detail and the savvy observations of a complicated artist at the height of her powers. (credit:Marko Metzinger/Studio D)
In the Body of the World: A Memoir(05 of15)
By Eve Ensler On initially ignoring symptoms of cancer: "Why didn't I fight for my body? Because in order to fight I would have had to face what was wrong....Because secretly I didn't think my fighting would make a difference...Because I was madly attached to life and I simply could not bear the depth of my attachment."On what the experience taught her: "[Joy] grows from gratitude and cannot exist where there is mad cynicism or distrust. You will touch this joy and you will suddenly know it is what you were looking for your whole life, but you were afraid to even acknowledge the absence because the hunger for it was so encompassing." —From Enler's new book, In the Body of the World: A Memoir (Metropolitan) (credit:Marko Metzinger/Studio D)
The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family(06 of15)
By Josh HanagarneA 6'7" agnostic Mormon with a neurological disorder finds refuge in weight lifting and parlays his passion for books into an unlikely career.— Abbe Wright
The Woman Upstairs(07 of15)
By Claire Messud In this literary page-turner, a Boston teacher with dreams of becoming an artist is first enamored of, and the feels betrayed by, a seductive couple who've relocated from Paris.— Abbe Wright
Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods(08 of15)
By Christine Byl While taking a break after college to work as a "traildog" in Montana's Glacier National Park, a woman unexpectedly falls in love with the backbreaking labor and decides to stay on.— Abbe Wright
Snapper(09 of15)
By Brian KimberlingIn this hilarious debut novel, a young Indiana man's job as a bird tracker brings him up close and personal with all manner of creatures. — Abbe Wright
Heart of Palm(10 of15)
By Laura Lee SmithAn incandescent first novel set in the small town of Utina, Florida, whose inhabitants struggle to balance tradition and progress.— Abbe Wright
Bolívar: American Liberator(11 of15)
A fascinating biography of the charismatic military leader who sparked a revolution—written by the former nook review editor of The Washington Post, herself half Peruvian.— Abbe Wright
The Third Son(12 of15)
By Julie Wu A boy growing up in Japanese-occupied Taiwan in the 1940s will do anything to escape his tormenting family and reconnect with his first love in this compelling work of fiction. — Abbe Wright
Body and Bread: A Novel(13 of15)
By Nan Cuba Years after her brother Sam's suicide, as her family prepares to sell their farm, anthropologist Sarah Pelton digs into the secrets Sam left behind while attempting to live fully without him.— Abbe Wright
The Edge of the Earth(14 of15)
By Christina Schwarz From the author of Drowning Ruth, the story of a young woman who escapes her family's rigid expectations to live as a caretaker in a California lighthouse. — Abbe Wright
Give and Take(15 of15)
By Adam Grant Written by the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School, a primer on success that debunks the notion that in business, nice guys finish last.— Abbe Wright