It’s getting just brisk enough outside to want to curl up in a big sweater with a big mug of something warm next to your TBR pile and tuck in. If you’re looking for something new to read, then why not try the newest of the new? Check out this short list of five books releasing in November from Hachette:
Grace Hale was familiar with her family’s legend: in 1947, her grandfather stopped a mob from lynching Versie Johnson, a Black man jailed on suspicion of raping a white woman. The next day, the man tried to escape and died in the process. If it sounds like Tom’s story from To Kill a Mockingbird, that’s because it is. Her “family story” was not even close to the truth. With the help of a Carnegie fellowship, Hale investigates the crime from decades before… and discovers that Versie did not die at the hands of a faceless mob.
DC Homicide Detective Alex Blum has a new case in the corpse of Chris Doyle, whose body was found full of bullets. When Alex finds a polaroid of Chris from years before arm in arm with a former informant of his, he discovers the informant, Arthur, is also missing, and the only that Alex can lean on is his CI’s mysterious girl, Celeste… and things are very quickly stacking up against her. This novel is written by a former DC policeman, so when he sets this book in 1999, it’s full of the gritty details of the age, from pagers to strip clubs to Y2K.
Did you know that Johnny Cash composed over than 600 songs? I didn’t. This book includes lyrics to 125 of them, as well as the many stories that inspired them. Cash’s son, John Carter Cash, and the family historian Mark Stielper added visual ephemera like photos and notes to expand the collection that commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Johnny Cash’s death.
In case you don’t remember the Twitter drama that unfolded… on Twitter… the company was recently acquired by Elon Musk. This book is a compendium of everything about the takeover, from the employee accounts at Twitter headquarters to his handpicked team, this book declares that it logs the “full story.”
Speaking of takeovers, remember the violent attack on the American Capitol on January 6, of 2021? Of course you do. While many of President Trump’s elect broke their oaths to the Constitution, ignoring the rulings of courts, and plotted to overturn the lawful election, Liz Cheney was one of the few Republicans who took a stand against that plot—and this is her story, from the inside.
Mary Kay McBrayer is the author of America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster. You can find her short works at Oxford American, Narratively, Mental Floss, and FANGORIA, among other publications. She co-hosts Everything Trying to Kill You, the comedy podcast that analyzes your favorite horror movies from the perspectives of women of color. Follow Mary Kay McBrayer on Instagram and Twitter, or check out her author site here.
