New Pages Winter 2024
Below, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published since June! You can also review earlier 2024 titles.

Blood Test: A Comedy [fiction]
Pantheon, 2024
From the New York Times: "[A] quiet masterpiece.... The genius of Blood Test is how adroitly Baxter takes the measure of our moment, in all its insanity and perplexing depravity. It is a profound and unsettling—and, yes, frequently funny—snapshot of our current tribulations, cast in relief against the stubborn peculiarities of the American character. Humor is famously subjective, but it’s safe to say that, from the start, we’re in practiced and confident hands here.”

The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef: In Pursuit of the Ideal Meal
University of Virginia Press, 2024
From the publisher: "At turns heartfelt and witty, accessible and engaging, The Farmer, the Gastronome, and the Chef explores how Wendell Berry, Carlo Petrini, and Alice Waters have changed America’s relationship with food over the past 50 years. Philippon weighs the legacy of each of these writers and activists while planting and harvesting vegetables in central Wisconsin, speaking with growers and food producers in northern Italy, and visiting with chefs and restaurateurs in southeastern France. Philippon considers what a sustainable food system might look like and what role writing can play in making it a reality." Read an interview with Philippon.

Incandescent [poetry]
Nodin Press, 2024
From poet Connie Wanek: "The luminous poems in Incandescent offer us brilliantly lit images from the great breadth of life, 'leavened with the wild god of yeast.' Many explore the moral and ethical questions of our age. They are spare and beautifully crafted. Yet they are also rich with soul-nourishing images and eternal themes. Among the poems in this book are some that will stick with you always, such as 'Motivation.' Here a bird spotted on a balcony, perched 'on the fake branch of a fake tree,' is nevertheless singing. Buchwald says, 'the perch may not matter / only the desire to sing.'"

How to Lose a Best Friend [young adult fiction]
MTV Books, 2024
From Publishers Weekly: "Via penetrating prose, Casomar’s fresh debut depicts a teen’s refusal to accept his best friend’s lack of romantic interest. Baseball star Zeke Ladoja schemes to confess his love for his best friend Imogen at the 16th birthday bash he’s planning. But Imogen doesn’t share Zeke’s feelings. In this sure-footed portrayal of contemporary teen romance, Casomar utilizes Zeke and Imogen’s alternating POVs to candidly capture the social systems that uphold the inherent entitlement of the friend zone myth as well as the costs of railing against its toxic messaging."

We Love the Nightlife [fiction]
Berkley, 2024
From Cosmopolitan: "The vampire renaissance is among us, and there is no one better to bring us to the next level than Rachel Koller Croft. The author is taking us all the way to the 1970s for this wild story. Disco, broken friendships, and a giant mystery are just the beginning. Two vampires that are the absolute life of the party are opening up their own nightclub together, but not everything is as it seems as one of them hatches a plan to escape from the other’s grasp. Ready to have a bloody good time?"

The Return to Everywhere Street [young adult fiction]
Burton Mayers Books, 2024
From the publisher: "The highly awaited sequel to the multi-prize winning The Little House on Everywhere Street. The fabulous Redmaynes, evicted from their time-travelling house, embrace their new lives on the idyllic-looking farm where they've sought temporary sanctuary―a farm so isolated that it exists in a self-contained bubble in spacetime visible only to them. After a disconsolate Felice is tempted back to Paris, a chain of time-twisting events is set in motion that brings both the solace of an old friend and the peril of an old enemy back to their door."

The Glass Girl [young adult fiction]
Delacorte, 2024
From Publishers Weekly: "Fifteen-year-old Bella relies on alcohol consumption to cope with her parents’ divorce, the pressures of school, the responsibility of helping raise her sisters, and the death of her beloved grandmother. Forced by family and friends to attend rehab, Bella must find a better way to move forward. Pairing searing dialogue with hard-hitting story beats rendered in unfiltered prose, Glasgow puts a microscope to adolescent self-destruction that is both engrossing and devastating. Combining The Bell Jar with Euphoria, this heart-wrenching read offers a resonant and compassionate look at teenage substance reliance."

Deed [poetry]
Wesleyan University Press, 2024
From Library Journal: "greathouse follows up Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award winner, with another impressive collection focusing on the nature of desire. Recalling being 'called a boy-thing with a girlish // manner, when I meant to be a girl / or girl-ish,' greathouse goes on to cite all the places trans people like her are prohibited ('bathrooms & airplanes, churches & young adult literature').... The poems radiate a sort of joyous physicality, an appreciation of the body, and images of bonding prevail ('it’s how I hold another / body that gives mine its worth'). greathouse’s main tool, aside from rich language, is a sophisticated plunge into the etymology of words."

Terminal Maladies [poetry], winner of the 2025 CAAPP Book Prize
Autumn House Press, 2024
From Publishers Weekly: "In this tender debut, Nebeolisa witnesses and mourns the death of his mother from cancer.... Nebeolisa’s attention to his mother’s changing body is meticulously and compassionately observed, from 'the chemo rash / on the back of her hand' to her coughing, 'like the sound / of maize seeds in the maws of a grinder.' Compounding the poet’s grief is his move from Nigeria to the US for his education. Nebeolisa’s poems are rich with familial and emotional nuances, and are left artfully unresolved. A robust assemblage of dreamscapes, conversations, prayers, and meditations on life and death, this collection humanely reckons with the realities of losing a parent."

Lines [poetry]
Nodin Press, 2024
From novelist Alison McGhee: "Nolan's great humanity is evident in both his poems and his devotion to making poetry immediate and accessible. In his new collection we are treated to observations both large―current politics, life in the time of COVID―and small, as when the poet recalls specific moments from childhood or observes his beloved cats. Firmly rooted in the northern Midwest, in mid-life, Nolan's poems work on the reader the way memory itself does, when moments from the past shimmer up to reveal the patient glimmers of wisdom that are the lucky prizes of growing older."

The Complete Personal Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson: Expanded Second Edition
Bell Rock Books, 2024
From essayist Phillip Lopate: "What a joy to get this complete edition of Stevenson's personal essays! In addition to the great ones all aficionados of the form know and love, there are many treats which show the freedom and flow of this master essayist's prose, as well as the capaciousness of his interests. Thanks to the intrepid digging and skillful assemblage of editor Olsen, lovers of belles-lettres are enriched by this long-overdue and much appreciated collection."

In the Evening [poetry]
Broadstone Books, 2024
From the publisher: "At the close of his title poem, Reichard declares that he will 'let silence speak in my stead'―which in this case means giving voice to the silent dead (such as those lost in two politicized pandemics), or stepping aside for others to be heard, like his 'American Saints,' mostly martyrs to homophobia, or his heart taking the form of birds.... In some respects less personal than Reichard’s previous collections ('I was not going to say anything / about love'―but of course he does, being 'stupid in love'), it nevertheless is infused with hope of being 'sustained / by love,' opening with possibility."

A Thousand Times Before [fiction]
Viking, 2024
From NPR: "A Thousand Times Before follows a magical tapestry passed down between three generations of women in one family, from pre-Partition Karachi to modern-day Brooklyn, which lets them inherit the memories of all the mothers and daughters before them and choose to influence their fate. An intricate and heartbreaking novel, it considers what we inherit and how history shapes us. It also beautifully captures the warmth of sisterhood and the bonds that women share. It’s a story that you want to share with your loved ones."