10 books to read in April

Yahoo

01-04-2025

Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your April reading list.
Spring is here, and with it come books that offer groundbreaking ideas to expand our outlook. The nonfiction crop includes an acclaimed novelist's perspective on writing as a person of color, a searing yet carefully documented call for changes in law enforcement and a Latin America-centered history of our hemisphere, not to mention one of the smartest recent collections of cultural criticism.
However, those who prefer fiction also have fresh choices. A debut novel examines how a gay Black man copes with family trauma on his wedding eve. A woman and a much younger man meet for lunch in Manhattan, the tensions high but their relationship unknown, while in another book, a fractured family meets in Shanghai around a hospital bed. Happy reading!
Gifted & Talented: A Novel By Olive BlakeTor Books: 512 pages, $30(April 1)
Blake, known for "The Atlas" series, started out writing fan fiction, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that this standalone fantasy borrows elements from other stories, including dark academia, family dynasty sagas and coming-of-age journeys. The three Wren siblings — Meredith, Arthur and Eilidh — have great supernatural gifts, but when their father dies and leaves his company, Wrenfare Magitech, in need of a new chief executive, their all-too-human rivalries and frailties come to light.
Rabbit Moon: A Novel By Jennifer HaighLittle, Brown: 288 pages, $29(April 1)
Haigh was on a fellowship in Shanghai where she witnessed so many traffic accidents that she began conjuring a story about an American student named Lindsey, struck down by a hit-and-run driver. Lindsey's parents fly to the Chinese city and fearfully track their eldest's recovery, leaving their younger daughter, Grace, who was adopted from China, marooned at summer camp with no information. Will the family heal or remain estranged?
Audition: A Novel By Katie KitamuraRiverhead Books: 208 pages, $28(April 8)
Cleanly sliced into two parts, this spare novel of complicated ambitions — personal, professional and familial — pits three people against their perceived places in the world as well as their rarely acknowledged shadow selves. The narrator is an actor worried about her faltering play; a lunch with a much younger man upends her world. In the book's second section, the two lunch again, this time with her husband. In which roles will they be cast?
My Documents: A Novel By Kevin NguyenOne World: 352 pages, $28(April 8)
The four youngest Nguyen family members didn't anticipate two of them getting interred at a camp set up for Vietnamese Americans in the wake of violent attacks. Siblings Jen and Duncan and their mother are sent to Camp Tacoma, while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions. Nguyen takes historical realities and weaves them into an affecting, and affectionate, story showing one family's ability to resist fascism in all its forms.
When the Harvest Comes: A Novel By Denne Michele NorrisRandom House: 304 pages, $28(April 15)
Davis, a gay Black man, is about to celebrate his marriage with white bisexual Everett, when his sister brings the news that their father, the Reverend, has died in a car accident. This strict minister paterfamilias disapproved of his violist son, and in the wake of loss, Davis finds solace in music and womanly identity, slowly healing from estrangement.
Authority: Essays By Andrea Long ChuFarrar, Straus and Giroux: 288 pages, $30(April 1)
Chu writes about culture, all of it, from Octavia Butler's sci-fi to the essays of Maggie Nelson to musicals such as 'The Phantom of the Opera' and on to television, video games, film and, oh yes, notions of gender. Chu employs her considerable expertise to argue that criticism can and should leave behind theoretical nitpicking and address the big, dangerous global issues at hand.
Defund: Black Lives, Policing, and Safety for All By Sandy HudsonPantheon: 288 pages, $29(April 1)
The Canadian lawyer, activist, author and producer is now based in Los Angeles, where she is well placed to launch her book about changing the very nature of contemporary law enforcement. Hudson's arguments about how police-related social policies have little basis in outcomes and data are persuasive, and so are her calls for starting small and establishing more human, peaceful methods of keeping the peace.
To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other By Viet Than NguyenBelknap Press: 144 pages, $27(April 8)
The Pulitzer-winning author of "The Sympathizer" and USC professor here publishes his 2023 Norton Lectures at Harvard that focus on what an outsider brings to American literature. The novelist, who arrived in the U.S. as a child refugee with his family in 1975, elucidates his writerly influences and interrogates the idea that any minority voice might serve as a 'model' for one race or ethnicity.
Fugitive Tilts: Essays By Ishion HutchinsonFarrar, Straus and Giroux: 384 pages, $33(April 15)
Poet Hutchinson's essays swoosh and roll like the sea that has surrounded and molded his life and art, from his beginnings in Jamaica to his coastal journeys on to his belief that ocean waters ultimately connect us all through suffering and joy. Whether his eye turns to childhood literature like 'Treasure Island,' reggae music, or an Impressionist painting, the author connects his influences to the wider world of art, community and our shared humanity.
America, América: A New History of the New World By Greg GrandinPenguin Press: 768 pages, $35(April 22)
'American' history classes often focus on North America and its European origins, but in this long-overdue volume by prizewinning scholar and Yale professor Grandin shows that Latin America's formation and founders are not only important but crucial to the understanding of America overall. Covering 500 years and events from conquests to wars to racism, 'America, América' should be required reading in those history classes.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.