Best New Books Out This Month, BIPOC Edition

Is this one nonfiction? Is it fiction? Um…yes! Rankine is known for bending genre to her will: her poetry collection Citizen: An American Lyric used photographs, analysis, and quotations to meditate on race, stress, and prejudice. Now, in Triage, Rankine presents a sort of memoir, as two characters, the narrator and theorist, bounce off each other and try to find their place both in their relationship (described as sisters) and in the world. The book promises to be a trip, a text accompanied by full-color illustrations, a book about violence past and present, and what it means to forge a kinship. —Leah Rachel von Essen

The latest from the award-winning Yoon is an odyssey like you’ve never yet seen. Etna is an ex-military dog, and it’s through his eyes that we travel a war-torn landscape after he decides to leave the men he has fought with for years. He’s searching for a true home, and thinks he may find it in the place where he was originally taken from. But the journey there is filled with people and places that bear the mark of war, and are, in some ways, just as dangerous. —Erica Ezeifedi

This highly anticipated release watches as Jeon-Gi, the prepubescent Korean American child of immigrants, comes of age. Inside his working class parents’ house, he’s loved, but outside the house, he’ and other ‘s part of a group of kids who are constantly in and of trouble. Once he turns 11, everything that he was trying to balance—American gender and family dynamics—hit a fever pitch, and the consequences of what happens change everything forever. —Erica Ezeifedi

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 in the morning, tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima were killed and countless were injured in an atomic blast. Kiyoshi Tanimoto was on the edge of the city when he saw the blast and ran to the city center to find his family. In this newly discovered memoir, Tanimoto gives a first-hand account of the horrors he saw and the region’s long road to recovery. —Kendra Winchester

Bestselling author Olivie Blake’s latest features an L.A. that is currently experiencing a “summer of exsanguination.” Or at least, that’s what the news is calling it. Someone is murdering girls, and an odd energy is blowing in from Santa Ana. Even with all that going on, Anya Morris is just trying to focus on an acting career that seems to grow more and more unlikely. But then she catches a break: she gets invited to work for the de Witts, a Hollywood film dynasty. It’s in their Hollywood Hills villa that she meets Jude, who keeps to himself, even though he is next in line to be the head of the family. Anya is naturally drawn to him, despite there clearly being something really wrong with him…there’s also the matter of the family’s occult curse and bloodstained villa. Question is: will she make it out alive, or make a deal with the devil? —Erica Ezeifedi

In her first contemporary romance, Liana introduces us to Sofia, a content creator who highlights forgotten women from history whose stories deserve to be heard. She develops an online friendship with one of her followers that feels like the precursor to a different kind of relationship…which wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t show up in person as her visiting friend’s boyfriend. I am not usually one for romances featuring someone who is already in a relationship, but I trust Liana to guide us through with grace.  —Jessica Pryde

Mary Church Terrell, Anna J. Cooper, and Ida Gibbs are accustomed to standing out in a crowd. They learned the art of debate at Oberlin College, where they first had to fight for their right to attend the school as Black women in the 19th century. Now, they’re fighting for civil rights and women’s suffrage even as they struggle to be recognized as full U.S. citizens because of their sex and the color of their skin. Their differences as much as their similarities have brought them here, ready to fight for their rights and freedom. —Rachel Brittain

We love a marriage-in-crisis romance in this house, and the fact that it’s a Black sapphic marriage in trouble with the high stakes addition of one of them being a WNBA player? Yes yes yes. Courtney and Sasha have been married for a couple of years, during which Sasha has been adjusting to life as a stay-at-home dog mom. They aren’t as close as they were in the earlier days of marriage, as Courtney’s life on the road is taking a toll on their relationship. When Courtney breaks her arm and can’t play for a while, the couple are thrown together at a much higher level of proximity than they’re used to, which leads to plenty of personal and shared revelations. —Jessica Pryde

The author of Lore of the Wilds and Lore of the Tides takes us to a new fae world where the Heir, the subject of a prophecy connected to the Prince of the Underworld, has been conscripted into a magical war college. She has to hide her magic from the Fae who keep her captive, so they don’t know who she is, but nothing can protect her from the visions she gets in dreams and awake, promises from a dark power who can only be one man (if you can call him that). Like Lore, this is the first in a duology, so be prepared to wait incredibly impatiently for the story to wrap up sometime in the future. —Jessica Pryde

South Korean author Kim Bo-Young’s fiction has been called a “breathtaking piece of cinematic art” by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. Her recently translated novella is set in a seaside village that is quarantined after a plague spreads, turning its victims into fish-like monsters. Bodyguard Mu-young moved to the village to be with her niece, but now her niece is dead, and Mu-young’s only job is hunting down villagers who try to break isolation. But when a bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, everything changes. —Emily Martin

This thrilling fantasy takes readers all the way back to just before Y2K in 1999, when the world wondered if the changing of the calendar would cause the computers to crash. Zahara is a young woman navigating the anticipation as she searches for her missing twin sister…who only she believes ever existed. —Liberty Hardy

Harper’s grandmother, Gigi, told her stories growing up about Brown girls who gathered magic from the stars. So when Gigi dies, Harper begins to feel some kind of magic stirring beneath her own skin. She wants to know what it all means.

This means Harper is going to enroll at Black Mountain Academy, an elite boarding school her grandmother attended, and that’s rumored to be haunted by witches.

Harper’s going to find out both her own power and about the secrets at Black Mountain, even if it means dodging an ex-bestie who wants her off campus and her ex-bestie’s cousin. So when Harper discovers a legend about 12 witches who died on campus, she’s unable to shake a connection with them. But the school doesn’t want its secrets unraveled, which means Harper’s attempts to learn about herself and the witches may be cut short before they begin.

This one is getting comps to Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn. —Kelly Jensen

For fans of detective duos, Japanese murder mysteries, and “an asteroid is about to hit the earth” setting

If there are only two months left to live—an asteroid is about to hit the earth—what’s the point of solving a murder? Turns out some people are trying to go about their lives as usual until they figure out what to do. Enter Haru, a university student getting her driver’s license, and Isagawa, her instructor/former police detective. When they find someone stabbed to death, they decide to investigate since the police most likely won’t.