Books Launching in June 2024


Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books published in June 2024 from CLMP members.

 

Cover of Green Island by Liz Countryman, featuring a black-and-white sketch of a lighthouse.Green Island by Liz Countryman 

Tupelo Press | June 1, 2024

In this poetry collection, Countryman “mines childhood for its longing, its intense sensations, its loneliness.”

 

 

 

Cover of Pee Poems: Second Edition by Yang Licai, featuring yellow paint splatters on a blue and black background.Pee Poems: Second Edition by Yang Licai

Translated from the Chinese by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu

Circumference Books | June 1, 2024

These poems “go deep and dark—with deceptive lightness—into the metaphysical and the social, offering insight and humor along the way.”

 

 

 

Cover of Breaking the Curse: A Memoir about Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft by Alex DiFrancesco, featuring a tarot card design with a hand holding a candle burning at two ends.Breaking the Curse: A Memoir about Trauma, Healing, and Italian Witchcraft by Alex DiFrancesco

Seven Stories Press | June 4, 2024

This memoir is “a tour de force of narrative nonfiction, a reimagining of the self-help genre, and a brave memoir about mystical forces, trauma, trans life, and how we must heal ourselves to survive.”

 

 

 

Cover of Landsickness by Leigh Lucas, featuring a line drawing of a figure with a scribbled face on a yellow background.Landsickness by Leigh Lucas

Tupelo Press | June 2, 2024

Landsickness “explores the inelegant progress of grief and pursues a relentless search for evidence of the beloved’s presence through the physics of splashes, the history of seasickness, and the science of depression.”

 

 

 

Cover of It Didn't Start Out That Way by Judy Bridges, featuring a black-and-white photograph of a toddler in a bonnet.It Didn’t Start Out That Way by Judy Bridges

Hidden Timber Books | June 4, 2024

In this collection of personal essays, Bridges “sees her life and her characters from all sides, up and down, and brings them to life.”

 

 

 

 

Cover of Dances of Time & Tenderness by Julian Carter, featuring a drawing of chains on a white background.Dances of Time and Tenderness by Julian Carter

Nightboat Books | June 4, 2024

This collection of essays is “a cycle of stories linking queer memory, activism, death, and art in a transpoetic history of desire and touch.”

 

 

 

Cover of Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix by Katherine Cross, featuring a button with a cursor against a cloudy sky.Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix by Katherine Cross

LittlePuss Press | June 4, 2024

In this book, Cross “excavates a fallen world of social media’s political promises, from Twitter epidemiology, to handwringing over TikTok, to the ersatz hopes of new platforms like Bluesky. ”

 

 

 

Cover of Clouds Are The Mountains of the World by Alan Davis, featuring three figures silhouetted on a road leading into a clouded city.Clouds Are The Mountains of the World by Alan Davis

Woodhall Press  | June 4, 2024

This novel-in-stories “dramatizes the heroic quest of three women—mother, daughter, granddaughter—to reunite in a post-apocalyptic future.”

 

 

 

Cover of Life Span by Molly Giles, featuring a close-up illustration of part of the Golden Gate Bridge with a silhouetted seagull.Life Span by Molly Giles

WTAW Press | June 4, 2024

This memoir in flash form recounts Giles’ many trips across the Golden Gate Bridge “since the first sunny day in 1945 when she rode from San Francisco to Sausalito in a moving van with her father.”

 

 

 

Carrion by Wes Jamison

Red Hen Press | June 4, 2024

This essay collection “sees mythical ravens murmur alongside the actual bone and viscera of crows, starlings, and pigeons in disarming explorations of desire and destruction, the body and creation.”

 

 

 

Cover of Freak Show by Casey Killingsworth, featuring the text on a red-and-white-striped circus-tent background.Freak Show by Casey Killingsworth

Fernwood Press | June 4, 2024

In Freak Show, Killingsworth “assembles poems outlining his own freakishness, the odd jobs and shifts that earned him his living, the difficulty trying to relate to other people, even how to love.”

 

 

 

Cover of Close to the Surface: A Family Journey at Sea by Bethany Lee, featuring a photograph of a whale in the water.Close to the Surface: A Family Journey at Sea by Bethany Lee

Fernwood Press | June 4, 2024

In this memoir, Lee recounts her family’s story of traveling the Pacific Ocean by sailboat, as well as “her own uncertain pilgrimage, and the ingenuity and courage it takes to sail over the horizon and find your way home.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Coracle and the Copper Bell: Poems to Carry Skin and Soul by Bethany Lee, featuring a photograph of a leaf floating in water.The Coracle and the Copper Bell: Poems to Carry Skin and Soul by Bethany Lee

Fernwood Press | June 4, 2024

The poems in this collection speak “to the work it takes to weave body and soul into a trustworthy vessel, capable of navigating the currents of a life with curiosity and courage.”

 

 

 

Cover of Billy & Girl by Deborah Levy, featuring a collage of black-and-white photographs on a pink and orange background.Billy & Girl by Deborah Levy

Dalkey Archive Press | June 4, 2024

The “ultimate dysfunctional kids” in Levy’s novel “are every boy and girl reeling from the pain of their childhoods, forgetting what they need to forget, inventing worlds they think will be better.”

 

 

 

Cover of Kintu (Anniversary Edition) by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, featuring abstract orange and blue faces on a green background.Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Transit Books | June 4, 2024

First published in Kenya in 2014, this novel is “a multilayered narrative that reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan.”

 

 

 

 

Cover of Hell Gate Bridge by Barrie Miskin, featuring a black-and-white illustration of a woman’s face and the Golden Gate Bridge seen through a cracking hole.Hell Gate Bridge by Barrie Miskin

Woodhall Press  | June 4, 2024

Miskin’s memoir “brings rare mental illnesses into the light, seeks to heal the fractures in our broken maternal and mental healthcare system, and shows how we can overcome the impossible when we fight to save the ones we love.”

 

 

 

The Unfinished Family by Barbara E. Murphy

Červená Barva Press | July 1, 2024

The poems in this collection “explore the impulses of duty and loyalty, love and fear and compulsion for perfection as the speaker comes to embrace the mistakes that are inevitable in every family.”

 

 

 

Cover of To Die in June by Alan Parks, featuring pink text on a black and white image of a vaulted ceiling.To Die in June by Alan Parks

Europa Editions | June 4, 2024

In this new installment in the Glasgow-based series, Detective Harry McCoy searches for a missing boy and investigates corruption.

 

 

 

Cover of Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin, featuring a black-and-white photograph of two people looking into a camera on a beach.Forgotten on Sunday by Valérie Perrin

Translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle

Europa Editions | June 4, 2024

Perrin’s novel “depicts the consequences of undeclared love and, in her inimitable way, portrays once again how the past is never really past.”

 

 

 

Cover of Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation by Daniel Rachel, featuring a black and white photograph of several men sitting on the ground.Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation by Daniel Rachel

Akashic Books | June 4, 2024

This book, told in three parts, “is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment shaped British, American, and world culture.”

 

 

 

Cover of Blue Elegies: Poems by Helen Ruggieri, featuring drawings of two flying, crested birds on a blue background.Blue Elegies by Helen Ruggieri

Sea Crow Press | June 4, 2024

According to TAK Erzinger, this collection is “an avian ode that migrates and mitigates through a lifetime of experiences.”

 

 

 

Cover of Cocoa the Tour Dog: A Children's Picture Book by Stick Figure, Adam Mansbach, featuring an illustrated brown dog with a blue bandana.Cocoa the Tour Dog: A Children’s Picture Book by Stick Figure and Adam Mansbach

Akashic Books | June 4, 2024

This picture book, illustrated by Juan Manuel Orozco, “is the saga of an Australian shepherd who meets her soul mate: a struggling musician, Scott, with dreams of spreading love on stages across the globe.”

 

 

 

Cover of Their Borders, Our World: Building New Solidarities with Palestine, featuring text and an abstract illustration on a green background.Their Borders, Our World: Building New Solidarities with Palestine

Haymarket Books | June 4, 2024

Edited by Mahdi Sabbagh, this anthology of essays “connects Palestinian resistance with global freedom struggles against settler colonialism and calls on us to think more concretely about the practice of solidarity.”

 

 

 

Cover of What Makes Him Tic?: A Memoir of Parenting a Child with Tourette Syndrome by Michele Turk, featuring text over a blurry photograph of a woman and a child.What Makes Him Tic?: A Memoir of Parenting a Child with Tourette Syndrome by Michele Turk

Woodhall Press  | June 4, 2024

What Makes Him Tic? is “a moving portrait of a family, a marriage, and a mother coping with day-to-day life amidst the stresses of caring for a boy with a stigmatizing condition.”

 

 

 

Cover of Our Bodies Electric by Zackary Vernon, featuring an illustration of a person in gray jeans and a green shirt on an orange background.Our Bodies Electric by Zackary Vernon

Regal House Publishing | June 4, 2024

Our Bodies Electric is “a coming-of-age story that celebrates the exuberance of youth, the individual quest for sexual identity, and the joy of finding connections in the most unexpected of places.”

 

 

 

Cover of 404 Not Found by Lucas Baisch, featuring the text in a circle against a painterly sepia background.404 Not Found by Lucas Baisch

53rd State Press | June 10, 2024

404 Not Found is “a twisting, twisted work of intricacy, density, and despair netted in kidnap, virtual utopias, upended borders, and Freddy Krueger cosplay.”

 

 

 

Cover of Fabulosa by Karen Rigby, featuring the text in white on a blurred pink and black background.Fabulosa by Karen Rigby

JackLeg Press | June 10, 2024

Underpinning Rigby’s poetry collection “is a keen interest in cinema, fashion, feminism, transformation, and textuality (from ars poeticas to portmanteaus to ekphrastics).”

 

 

 

Cover of Sad Sacked by Liz Alterman, featuring a cartoon illustration ofa woman running carrying papers and a briefcase.Sad Sacked by Liz Alterman

Vine Leaves Press | June 11, 2024

According to Joel Stein, this memoir is “a sweaty, funny examination into suburban marriage, motherhood, social status and all the other reasons I left New Jersey.”

 

 

 

Cover of Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia, featuring a photograph of a woman standing on grass with her hands raised below a tree.Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia

Haymarket Books | June 11, 2024

Edited by Katrina M. Powell, this anthology about Appalachia “brings together twelve narratives of refugees, migrants, and generations-long residents that explore complex journeys of resettlement.”

 

 

 

The Throne by Franco Bernini

Translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky

Europa Editions | June 11, 2024

The first novel in Bernini’s Machiavelli Trilogy “recounts the enigmatic life of Niccolò Machiavelli, revealing the complex man behind the infamous political strategist.”

 

 

 

Cover of Cómo no ahogarse en un vaso de agua by Angie Cruz, featuring a line drawing of a woman with blue lipstick and a blue sleeve on a yellow background.Cómo no ahogarse en un vaso de agua by Angie Cruz

Translated to the Spanish by Kianny N. Antigua

Seven Stories Press | June 11, 2024

Cruz’s novel, presented here in a Spanish-language edition, follows “a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story.”

 

 

 

Cover of Nazar Boy by Tarik Dobbs, featuring white text on a blue background.Nazar Boy by Tarik Dobbs

Haymarket Books | June 11, 2024

Dobbs’ poetry collection “explores surveillance, queerness, disability, race, and working-class identity in post-9/11 America.”

 

 

 

Cover of Zan by Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh, featuring yellow text over a woman’s face with sweeping hair.Zan by Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh

Dzanc Books | June 11, 2024

The stories in this collection “provide a deep and nuanced view of contemporary Iranian women as they navigate a crucial moment in their nation’s history.”

 

 

 

Cover of Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise by Natasha Kanape Fontaine, featuring a bright pink bird shape on a dark purple background.Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise by Natasha Kanape Fontaine

Translated from the French by Howard Scott

Book*hug Press | June 11, 2024

In this novel, a young art history student in Montreal “connects with other Indigenous artists and thinkers, learning about the power of traditional ways and the struggles of other Nations.”

 

 

 

Cover of China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry, , featuring large white text above an image of men in white walking across a slick road.China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry by Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, and Ashley Smith

Haymarket Books | June 11, 2024

In this book, Friedman, Lin, Liu, and Smith share “snapshots of China’s growing social movements—from its labor struggles to feminist campaigns, and more,” providing “some of the building blocks we’ll need to construct a movement that centers international solidarity across borders.”

 

 

 

Cover of A Punishing Breed by DC Frost, featuring an illustration of a road and a lighthouse and flowers and palm trees.A Punishing Breed by DC Frost

Red Hen Press | June 11, 2024

In this first novel in a new series, “Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy, racial and sexual tensions, and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress.”

 

 

 

Cover of Between This World and the Next by Praveen Herat, featuring a collage-like image of a woman with green-tinted skin and white bangs.Between This World and the Next by Praveen Herat

Restless Books | June 11, 2024

Winner of the 2022 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Herat’s thriller is “a breathtaking exploration of power, identity, unconditional love, and the question of how far we’ll go to uncover the truth.”

 

 

 

Cover of Under the Neomoon by Wolfgang Hilbig, featuring a neon crescent moon on a green background.Under the Neomoon by Wolfgang Hilbig

Translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole

Two Lines Press | June 11, 2024

Originally published in Germany in 1982, this short fiction collection “is a neon-bright reminder of humanity’s folly and the importance of storytelling from down below, where the workers toil.”

 

 

 

Cover of Saturn by Simon Jacobs, featuring white text over a blue patterned background.Saturn by Simon Jacobs

Long Day Press | June 11, 2024

In these short stories, “David Bowie sees every mask he has ever worn, every shapeshifting phase of an iconic, fifty-year career even the most jaded critic wouldn’t hesitate to call ‘classic.'”

 

 

 

Cover of The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines, featuring a fractured photograph of a pink-toned woman looking over her shoulder.The Vixen Amber Halloway by Carol LaHines

Regal House Publishing | June 11, 2024

LaHines’ novel is “a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women’s rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman’s psychological breakdown.”

 

 

 

Cover of Sapello Son by Alejandro Lucero, featuring text over a black circle on a rust-colored background.Sapello Son by Alejandro Lucero

Bull City Press | June 11, 2024

According to Aldo Amparán, the poems in this collection “sprawl like the New Mexico landscape they inhabit—across memory, family, and the complexities of the body.”

 

 

 

Cover of WannaBeat: Hanging out... and Hanging on ... in Baby Beat San Francisco by David Polonoff, featuring an illustration of elements from a city, including skyscrapers, human figures, bicycles, and bridges.WannaBeat: Hanging out … and Hanging on … in Baby Beat San Francisco by David Polonoff

Trouser Press Books | June 12, 2024

This book is “an incisive and provocative novel about yearning for authenticity in the face of an increasingly artificial reality.”

 

 

 

Cover of Canadiagua by Donald Revell, featuring a painting of a woman in a white headdress behind white lilies.Canadiagua by Donald Revell

Alice James Books | June 11, 2024

Revell’s fifteenth collection “weaves anxiety and morality into a tangled web, asking how we’re supposed to live in a world where our imaginations can cause irreparable harm.”

 

 

 

Cover of The Story of The Everything, The Nothing, and Other Strange Stories by Gyula Gábor Tóth, featuring a surrealist illustration of a black cat holding a flower, in front of two frog balloons.Story of The Everything, The Nothing, and Other Strange Stories by Gyula Gábor Tóth

Translated from the Hungarian by Adam Z. Levy

Transit Books | June 11, 2024

Illustrated by Norbert Nagy, this children’s book “whisks readers away to lands of paradox and play: to a place where anything can happen, one where everything exists all at once, and another where nothing exists at all.”

 

 

 

Cover of Gainesville by Colin Winnette, featuring the text on a blue and red splotched background.Gainesville by Colin Winnette

Long Day Press | June 11, 2024

In this intergenerational novel, “the offspring of a central Texan family fight, steal, dig holes, and force people to eat sand.”

 

 

 

Cover of Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa, featuring a dark, red-toned image of buildings.Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa

Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley

Feminist Press | June 11, 2024

Tongueless is a psychological thriller following two rival teachers that “sheds light on the current political situation in Hong Kong.”

 

 

 

Cover of Wheel by Hayden Saunier, featuring a surreal image of a compass surrounded by growing trees.Wheel by Hayden Saunier

Terrapin Books | June 12, 2024

According to Lynn Levin, “Wheel offers us pleasure after pleasure of finely tuned lyric poems that contemplate the circularity of being, its darkness, its hope.”

 

 

 

Cover of Happy Poems and Other Lies by Jeddie Sophronius, featuring a detailed sepia print of plants in a jungle.Happy Poems and Other Lies by Jeddie Sophronius

Codhill Press | June 15, 2024

This poetry collection “details the experience of an exiled speaker who struggles to conform to the rigid religious beliefs imposed by their family.”

 

 

 

 

Object 7 ( ,a spirit loosely, ,bundled in a frame, ) by Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough

Futurepoem Books | June 15, 2024

According to Marwa Helal, in this collection “Tilghman Goldsborough is reporting live on the minuscule and maximal repercussions of the manmade.”

 

 

 

Cover of Hereafter by Alan Felsenthal, featuring the corner of a house with round and arched windows.Hereafter by Alan Felsenthal

The Song Cave | June 18, 2024

Felsenthal’s second poetry collection “moves between the difficult work of mourning and the spirited nature of life.”

 

 

 

Cover of Global Justice: Three Essays on Liberation and Socialism by Ernesto Che Guevara, featuring an illustration of a broken chain on a red and orange background.Global Justice: Three Essays on Liberation and Socialism by Ernesto Che Guevara

Seven Stories Press | June 18, 2024

In this collection of three speeches, Che Guevara “offers a revolutionary view of a world in which human solidarity and understanding replace imperialist aggression and exploitation.”

 

 

 

Cover of Justicia Global: Tres ensayos sobre liberación y socialismo by Ernesto Che Guevara, featuring an illustration of a broken chain on a red and orange background.Justicia Global: Tres ensayos sobre liberación y socialismo by Ernesto Che Guevara

Seven Stories Press | June 18, 2024

In the speeches in this Spanish-language edition, Che Guevara “offers a revolutionary view of a world in which human solidarity and understanding replace imperialist aggression and exploitation.”

 

 

 

Cover of Gather the Olives: On Food and Hope and the Holy Land by Bret Lott, featuring a landscape beneath a blue sky.Gather the Olives: On Food and Hope and the Holy Land by Bret Lott

Slant Books | June 18, 2024

In this memoir, Lott “considers how food and the people with whom we share it can bring together hearts and souls in a lasting, meaningful, and peaceful way.”

 

 

 

Cover of Blue Rice by Frances Park, featuring a silhouette of a woman with a seascape inside her against a black background.Blue Rice by Frances Park

Vine Leaves Press | June 18, 2024

In this novel, “an elderly Korean woman relives her years upended by the Korean War, finding love in the rubble, and her acclimation to 1960 America.”

 

 

 

Cover of Murder in Mennefer by Al Sirois, featuring an illustration of a person i a loincloth holding a torch beneath a crescent moon.Murder in Mennefer by Al Sirois

Regal House Publishing | June 18, 2024

In this YA novel set in ancient Egypt, “Imhotep must use all of his wiles to outwit his enemies, protect his family, and save the realm.”

 

 

 

 

Cover of Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe by Jim Tilley, featuring an image of a rippling stream in the desert.Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe by Jim Tilley

Red Hen Press | June 18, 2024

In these poems, Tilley “draws on his experience as a poet and mathematician to fix a lens on the current raw state of the country and the world and on interpersonal relationships.”

 

 

 

Cover of Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! by Judy Kronenfeld, featuring an illustration of an apartment building with some windows lit.Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! by Judy Kronenfeld

Bamboo Dart Press | June 20, 2024

This poetry chapbook is a paean to the author’s mid-twentieth century Bronx childhood as the sole offspring of warmly loving—if sometimes provincial, overprotective, or embarrassing—immigrant parents.”

 

 

 

Cover of Ryder by Djuna Barnes, featuring black-and-white illustrations in shapes on a cream and orange background.Ryder by Djuna Barnes

Dalkey Archive Press | June 25, 2024

This novel is “a rhapsodic saga that could have come only from Barnes’ pen—and politics—as impactful today upon at its first pressing, a document of sexual revolution and censorship.”

 

 

 

Cover of Another North by Jennifer Brice, featuring white text over an image of the aurora borealis.Another North by Jennifer Brice

Red Hen Press | June 25, 2024

According to Dana Spiotta, these essays are a “precise and intimate depiction of what one can see from the complicated vantage of middle age.”

 

 

 

Cover of Ricky & Other Love Stories by Whitney Collins, featuring cursive text over pink and orange hearts with sparkles.Ricky & Other Love Stories by Whitney Collins

Sarabande Books | June 25, 2024

In this short fiction collection, Collins “applies her sharp eye, black humor, and generous heart to love stories (and the stories we tell ourselves about love).”

 

 

 

Cover of Confuse the Wind by Rachel Stolzman Gullo, featuring silhouetted figures against a city with painterly fire or leaves and flying birds.Confuse the Wind by Rachel Stolzman Gullo

Vine Leaves Press | June 25, 2024

This novel is “about our human interdependence and how we desperately need one another to survive and hopefully thrive.”

 

 

 

Cover of Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin, featuring a collage of photographs in red and black on a red striped background.Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin

Nightboat Books | June 25, 2024

Instructions for the Lovers is “a taught, tender collection of poems woven with sadness and loss dealing with aging, attachments, and the precarity of life.”

 

 

 

Cover of My Name Is Sita by Bea Vianen, featuring the text over twelve spiny fruits against a brown-orange background.My Name Is Sita by Bea Vianen

Translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman

Sandorf Passage | June 25, 2024

Originally published in 1969 and set in 1950s Suriname, this novel “makes it all too clear what women have had to, and continue to, sacrifice in the name of claiming their identity.”