The 18 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 2-8, 2024

Here are the best books of the week coming out from July 2 through July 8, 2024. My friends ask, does it ever get boring to pore over the hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of books coming out every single week? Does Christmas ever get boring? Do they get tired of receiving too many gifts on their birthday? Are their vacations too long? Do they want endless shrimp to end? So, no, it never gets boring.

This week the theme seems to be looking east. Some of the biggest titles of the week include Asian or Asian-American characters. They range from the mixed-race bodyguard of a Japanese gangster’s prized daughter to a Chinese-American in over his head when he leaves General Motors for a Beijing-based auto company to the kid seduced by his handsome and dangerous boarding school classmate Luke Kim.

After all that tension and high drama, it’s a relief to enter the sweet, gentle world of a quiet used bookstore in Tokyo with the welcome sequel More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. Sometimes “boring” is welcome indeed. (And once you’re invested in its characters, not so boring at all.) So, let’s get reading. At the head of the Parade is…

The 18 Best New Book Releases This Week: July 2-8, 2024

1. Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

Can any new light be shed on the Kennedy dynasty? Apparently so. A few weeks ago, a new biography of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. (or John John, as he’s invariably thought of) hit the shelves. And now journalist Maureen Callahan takes a fresh angle by focusing in on the women born or married or merely sucked up into the world of the Kennedys and the price they paid. Sexual assault, suicide, manslaughter or “merely” slander are some of the very high prices women paid, as detailed here. Anyone looking for stories of Camelot should keep looking.

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan ($32.50; Little, Brown and Company) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

2. The Night Of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani
3. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
4. The Expat by Hansen Shi

Three edge of your seat novels with major buzz.

Japanese author Akira Otani finally arrives in the US with her first novel translated into English. The Night of Baba Yaga is an explosive thriller featuring a tough young mixed race woman who is forced by a gangster into becoming the bodyguard of his daughter. The two women fall in love, go on the run and the bodycount is thrillingly high. It sounds exactly like the sort of novel director Quentin Tarantino would enjoy, so no wonder the publisher name checks Kill Bill as a reference point. Actually, if he’s still looking for his final film project, a Japanese language thriller set in the world of the Yakuza centering on two women in love who kick ass? Yeah, pretty ideal.

The God of the Woods is one of the most acclaimed books of the year based on early reviews in the trades. It’s 1975 and a 13 year old girl goes missing from a summer camp. Tragic, until you discover her brother disappeared from the same place some 14 years earlier. And they’re both children of the family that owns the camp and rules the blue collar townsfolk with an iron fist. So tragic and…suspicious? Author Liz Moore’s biggest book yet and one being compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which is about the highest praise a book like this can receive.

Career ambition, US/China relations and industrial espionage take center stage in The Expat. Princeton grad Michael Wang feels he’s hit the bamboo ceiling at General Motors, even though he’s only 26 years old. That makes him ripe for the picking, especially by a charming woman who tells Wang how he’d be perfect and go far working for a Beijing tech company. Michael will be an expat, frustrated at the limitations he feels in the US corporate culture but unmoored when he dives into the culture of the Beijing business world. Suddenly, Michael is a pawn being used both by the US and Chinese governments, desperate not to be knocked off the board entirely. Since author Hansen Shi is a Harvard grad and Michael goes to Princeton, you definitely should not assume he’s the hero or safe from a very bad ending.

The Night Of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani; translated by Sam Bett ($27.95; Soho Crime) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore ($30; Riverhead Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Expat by Hansen Shi ($27.95; Pegasus Crime) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Love at First Lick: Romance Author Kristy Woodson Harvey Falls Hard…for a Puppy

5. The Secret History of Sharks by John Long
6. The Air They Breathe by Debra Hendrickson M.D.

Two deadly but silent killers are profiled in works of science.

Is it a coincidence that a new book about sharks arrives in stores one week before the Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week marathon of TV documentaries about sharks? No, it is not. But author John Long is a strategic professor of paleontology in Australia and takes a welcome and informed deep dive into the history of sharks. They’ve been around for 500 million years–longer than any other vertebrate (take that, dinosaurs)–and they still have much to teach us about survival at the top of the oceanic food chain. Maybe humans should take notes.

In The Air They Breathe, pediatrician Debra Hendrickson is in Reno, Nevada, the front lines of the climate crisis in the U.S. It’s the fastest warming city in the country, ash falls like snow during wildfire season, that season grows longer and more deadly seemingly every year–and children pay the price. With this urgent bulletin, Hendrickson reframes the climate crisis as a health crisis and one impacting our kids right now.

The Secret History of Sharks by John Long ($35; Ballantine Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Air They Breathe by Debra Hendrickson M.D. ($27.99; Simon & Schuster) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

7. Benji Zeb Is A Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton

Ok, it’s stressful preparing for your bar or bat mitzvah. You’ve got a big party, you have to practice long stretches of Torah and come up with a speech to make everyone proud. And if you’re Benji Zeb, you also have to deal with a kid who bullies you at school that you’re secretly maybe kind of want to be “friends” with. Oh and you’re a werewolf. Your whole family are werewolves and you’ve got a wolf sanctuary on your land because if you were a werewolf with any sort of decency, wouldn’t you provide a sanctuary for your distant cousins the wolves? Of course you would. So okay, maybe learning long passages of Torah aren’t the hardest part of Benji’s life, but they are pretty hard!

Benji Zeb Is A Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton ($17.99; Tundra Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

8. More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagasawa; translated by Eric Ozawa
9. Welcome To Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal
10. The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen

Three novels filled with sweetness and charm perfect for a lazy summer afternoon.

Author Satoshi Yagasawa enjoyed a worldwide hit with their gentle novel Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. Just as you might expect, it featured an eccentric but endearing cast of characters who work at or visit said used bookshop, share their stories and perhaps tentatively fall in love. More Days offers more of the same, such as a customer who only buys books to collect the personal seal of the author (it’s a Japanese thing and very cool!) and the growing bond between our hero Takako and her uncle Satoru. Takako lives above the bookstore–rent free!–and that’s enough to qualify this as a delightful fantasy for us.

Here’s another fantasy for animal lovers: become the vet of an island paradise. That’s what happens when London vet Charlotte heads to the South Atlantic island of Tuga. She’s there to help look after and rescue rare tortoises but so many other animals need attention and the locals will poke and prod Charlotte into maybe having a peep at their goat with this problem and donkey with that problem and who wouldn’t provide care for a dog in need? It’s like James Herriott but with a lot more sunshine and fewer cows. Acclaimed and best-selling in the UK, author Francesca Segal promises a trilogy.

Megan Bannen returns to the romantasy of The Undertaking of Hart & Mercy with its followup, The Undermining of Twyla and Frank. Expect more whimsy and romance as Twyla and Frank investigate a mysterious death. Despite a murder plot, this is after all a tale set in a world with baby dragons and donuts. So pretty much everything you could want.

More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagasawa; translated by Eric Ozawa ($17.99; Harper Perennial) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Welcome To Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal ($28.99; Ecco) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen ($19.99; Orbit) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

11. The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox

The latest from acclaimed nonfiction writer Margalit Fox uncovers another fascinating tale from history. In previous books, Fox detailed everything from an engaging account of deciphering hieroglyphics to a daring escape by prisoners of war during WW I to how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made like Sherlock Holmes and helped free a man wrongly imprisoned for murder.

Now she has another juicy story to unfold: the story of the most notorious fence of stolen goods in US history, a person who operated in broad daylight (bribing the police certainly helped) and famous enough to make headlines when it all came crashing down. That person? The talented Mrs. Mandelbaum. Fox tells her story and captures an era.

We learn everything about Mandelbaum’s operation, from secret passages to safe houses to how she helped plan major heists and protected the men and women under her employ. We also learn why fencing stolen goods became big business just as she rose to power (mass production made individual items harder to trace–they all looked the same!) and how Mandelbaum became one of the most powerful figures in crime despite being a woman for both cultural and historic reasons. A decade or two later, crime would again be dominated by men but in the late 1800s, she was it. It’s a compelling narrative, to say the least, with a fascinating denouement. Mandelbaum’s story might be a miniseries (turning a book into a film or tv show is the highest compliment in this era.)

But if producers want an ongoing series, I suggest they zero in on her lawyers, the colorful and wildly contrasting duo William Howe and Abraham Hummel. Howe was enormous, dressed flashily and made every pronouncement in court (and out) with operatic grandeur. Hummel was rail thin, dressed all in black and modest. Together they represented everyone from actors and circus folk to Mrs. Mandelbaum and the law was just one of many tools at their disposal. Fox brings them to delicious life, just as she does the entire world of this unapologetic crook.

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox ($32; Random House) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

12. Ready or Not by Andu Porretta
13. The Second Chance of Darius Logan by David F. Walker
14. A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman

Three wildly different books for kids and teenagers capture the drama of growing up in clever and unexpected ways.

Andu Porretta delivers a graphic novel about high school seniors poised to go their separate ways. Cassie seems to have the least going on and so it’s no surprise she’s the most reluctant to let her best friends go. Sure, Nico is heading to London to study music and Aaron is reading law at Harvard and Marcy is going to San Francisco to create art while Cassie is waitressing in NYC. But maybe they’re not as confident as they seem? Cassie’s proposal to play a kid’s game of daring each other to take risks proves the perfect way to bond once more, reveal tensions and fears and show friends can remain friends even as life takes them all far away. It’s a great read for seniors and the warm palette and imagery of Porretta is its own comfort.

The Second Chance of Darius Logan might easily have been a graphic novel. After all, author David F. Walker is an Eisner Award-winner thanks to work on Shaft, Luke Cage and his work of history The Black Panther Party . Here Walker dives into YA with this story about a foster kid struggling to stay alive when he’s given the chance to work with the Super Justice Force, a collective of caped crusaders, but think The Boys more than JLA. Growing up isn’t easy, super powers or no super powers.

Navigating a new world is definitely a challenge for Cal Ware. He’s a poor, queer kid with a Mississippi accent who thinks a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school will let him start over. Hardly. Not when his 1% classmates diss Cal’s cheap clothes, outdated iPhone and ignorance of their world. Thank goodness he’s befriended by Luke Kim, the handsome and reckless BMOC who mentors Cal through the initiation process of entering the secret society at their school that will prove Cal’s salvation. Assuming he’s willing to do whatever it takes to gain admittance and that Kim is into Cal and not just using him.

Ready or Not by Andu Porretta ($14.99; Atheneum Books for Young Readers) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

The Second Chance of Darius Logan by David F. Walker ($19.99; Scholastic Press) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman ($19.99; Scholastic Press) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Related: Which Author Is Outshining Stephen King, John Grisham and even Colleen Hoover?

15. 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left by Robyn Hitchcock

A very welcome trend in celebrity memoirs has been to focus on life before they made it big. Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up is a prime example, chronicling his childhood, doing magic at the Magic Kingdom of Disney World and crafting the standup routine that would make him world famous…and then ending the story just as he quit standup and started to conquer Hollywood. Really, stories about fame (and then I made this film and then I met Bono…) just aren’t that interesting.

UK musician Robyn Hitchcock goes one better. Instead of focusing on life before fame (or in his case cult-like status in the rock world), Hitchcock focuses in on one crucial year. 1967 finds Hitchcock tiptoeing around the landmines of boarding school at the age of 13, just when he has a growth spurt, attracts some unwelcome attention from upperclassmen and teachers and has his mind exploded by both Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and the Beatles conquer the world once and for all with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

It’s an artistic and personal coming of age even for those who haven’t fallen under the spell of Hitchcock’s eccentric musical output. (But really, if you read the book you’ll need to hear his music and if you love his music, you’ll definitely want to read his book.)

1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left by Robyn Hitchcock ($26.95; Akashic Books) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

16. Breaking The Dark by Lisa Jewell
17. Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías; translated by Heather Cleary
18. Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles

Three novels that use sci-fi and fantasy genres to give a new spin to old stories.

Breaking the Dark could be a landmark work in the superhero/mystery world. Lisa Jewell is a top bestseller and here she delivers a gritty noir story about a private investigator exploring an offbeat case that just doesn’t make sense…and the more she unravels, the darker and more dangerous it becomes. A familiar setup for noir. But here the private investigator is Jessica Jones, a retired superhero looking to get by in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Jones was created in the 2000s, but retroactively made a classmate of Peter Parker when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. So she has a long, funky history, most recently on the Peabody Award-winning TV series that aired on Netflix. So it’s easy to see why Jewell would be intrigued by fleshing out Jones, making her the perfect character to launch the Marvel Crime series of books geared towards adults who love good thrillers and any fans of the comic book and TV show jonesing for more stories about her.

Pink Slime is a dystopian near-future novel in which an eco-collapse means nature is not playing nice anymore, the city of our hero is reeling from a plague and the only food most people can afford is a pink slime churned out by a nearby company. But really it’s a novel about a woman dealing with her ex-husband, her prickly but helpless mother and the little boy she nannies who has been all but abandoned by his parents amidst this societal collapse. It’s been acclaimed all over the world and finally translated into English. If you’re sci-fi wary, think Station Eleven.

The gothic novel will always hold an alluring power. Home should be a place of safety, so when corridors move around and doors won’t open and the walls close in, we’re naturally freaked out…and intrigued. In Midnight Rooms, it’s England in 1840 and an orphaned child of a white mother and black father with nothing to call her own hardly expects to get married. Does she have any choice when a mysterious wealthy man pledges his love, especially when our hero Orabella can thus end her uncle’s debt and her obligation to him? No, not really. But when will Orabella control her destiny? When she’s whisked away to a new crumbling mansion? When the servants shy away? When the walls seem to talk and curses are whispered by the floorboards? Will taking charge end this nightmare or end Orabella herself?

Breaking The Dark by Lisa Jewell ($28.99; Hyperion Avenue) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías; translated by Heather Cleary ($24; Scribner) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles ($28; Amistad) Buy now from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Bookshop.org

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