10
TITLES TO
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1 / The World Doesn’t
Require You
BY RION AMILCAR SCOTT
These terrifyingly funny stories set
in a fictional Maryland town—
including a daring novella about a
disgraced professor plotting to
upend a historically black university’s
status quo—comprise not just a
dynamic collection but a whole
haven for misfits.2 / Black Light
BY KIMBERLY KING PARSONS
In 12 tales as dark as crude oil, Parson
illuminates the addictions and desires
of rough-and-tumble Texan women,
among them an alcoholic who sees
doom everywhere after she begins
dating a doctor, and a high schooler
who falls for her friend and fears being
outed by her brutish brother.3 / Chances Are...
BY RICHARD RUSSO
As summer crowds disperse from
Martha’s Vineyard, a trio of 66-year-
olds grapples with the secrets and
sins of their youth. Russo, the Pulitzer
Prize–winning chronicler of middle-
class malaise, has crafted a morality
tale inside a suspense story, with
echoes of Chappaquiddick.4 / Motherland
BY ELISSA ALTMAN
The James Beard Award winner and
author of Poor Man’s Feast serves
up a deliciously wry memoir of
her codependent relationship with
her mother, a woman who takes
pleasure in dispelling her daughter’s
“Rockwellian Thanksgiving fantasy.”5 / Doxology
BY NELL ZINK
A master of compassionate satire
bestows another off-kilter epic,
this time centering on a pair of
aging punk rockers wrestling with
dreams deferred and raising a
daughter amid the destabilizing din
of 21st-century life.6 / The Yellow House
BY SARAH M. BROOM
While New Orleans is famous for its
beignets, Sazeracs, and jazz, this
exquisite memoir shines a spotlight on
a neglected neighborhood and one
family’s engrossing odyssey through
the second half of the American
century, with three indefatigable
women at the wheel.7 / Haben
BY HABEN GIRMA
The deaf-blind daughter of an Eritrean
refugee and an Ethiopian immigrant,
Girma has redefined disability on her
own unyielding terms, playing hide-
and-seek as a child, climbing an iceberg
in Alaska, and graduating from Harvard
Law. This autobiography by a millennial
Helen Keller teems with grace and grit.8 / The Trojan
War Museum
BY AYSE PAPATYA BUCAK
A chorus of ghost girls. A young woman
dispatched to Appalachia to tend to
her dying grandmother. Greek gods
as conniving as teenagers. Bucak’s
luminous debut taps folklore and real
life to flesh out complex characters
with an agile, inventive hand.9 / The Way Through
the Woods
BY LONG LITT WOON
A Malaysian woman mourns the death
of her Norwegian husband by foraging
for mushrooms—from morels to Yellow
Knights—in this singular memoir in
which the author becomes a “traveler
in the fungi kingdom.”10 / The Plateau
BY MAGGIE PAXSON
Villagers in a rugged corner of World
War II France spirited Jewish children to
safety, led by a pacifist who paid with his
life. This radiant, anthropological history
unearths the community’s tradition
of caring for the displaced and reflects
on whether goodness is innate.
—HAMILTON CAIN AND M.H.88 SEPTEMBER^2019 OPRAHMAG.COM
Poetry Pause
Too long I’ve sought
What I had no name for,
Till one day
I unclenched my fist
And found a grain
Of sand in it.
Whose joke is this?
I couldn’t say.
—FROM COME CLOSER AND LISTEN: NEW
POEMS BY CHARLES SIMIC (ECCO)9102