10 new books to read in July

Only the power of rock ‘n roll can save the world from the apocalypse in Craig DiLouie’s My Ex, The Antichrist. Written in an oral history format, the novel recounts the story of the Shivers, a massively successful ’90s pop-punk band, and their frontwoman, Lily Lawless, who walked into a police station and confessed to murder at the height of their fame. More than a decade later, they’re finally breaking their silence about Lucy’s confession and their frighteningly magnetic ex-guitarist, Drake, who also happens to be Lily’s ex-boyfriend… and the Biblical Antichrist. When the Shivers go head-to-head with Drake’s new group at the Armageddon Battle Of The Bands, they’ll be lucky if they make it out alive.

In 1899 England, Grace carves out a life for herself as a talented art forger, but she can’t tell whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is legit or not. This is partially due to Grace’s face blindness, which prevents her from telling people apart based on their facial features. That’s just one of many things Grace conceals from her aunt, with whom she has lived since she was a child, including her attraction to women and her illicit source of income. Nell Stevens’ The Original tackles the nature of authenticity from several different angles as Grace tries to uncover the truth about her cousin and come to terms with herself in the process.

In Gary Shteyngart’s Vera, Or Faith, America is on the political brink, creating tension in the multicultural Bradford-Shmulkin family. Ten-year-old Vera is desperate to meet her Korean birth mother, whom she calls Mom Mom (as opposed to Anne Mom, her Russian Jewish father’s current wife, a well-meaning New England WASP), so she can ask her about her heritage. Modern geopolitics collides with a poignant, often funny story of identity, discovery, and family that only Shteyngart could tell.

Minerva grew up listening to her great-grandmother, Nana Alba, tell stories about witches and her childhood in 1900s Mexico. Fantasy veteran Silvia Moreno-Garcia weaves together three different narratives in The Bewitching: In the 1990s, Minerva is a graduate student studying horror literature. During the Great Depression, Beatrice Tremblay is studying at the same university that Minerva will eventually attend when her mysterious roommate disappears. Eventually, Beatrice goes on to become a horror author, and Minerva discovers that one of her biggest novels was based on her roommate’s disappearance. As Minerva connects the dots between her grandmother’s stories, Beatrice’s roommate, and the otherworldly presence she still feels on campus, Minerva must uncover the truth about witches and their power.

New York Times correspondent Michael M. Grynbaum gives readers a peek behind the curtain at the storied days when lifestyle and fashion magazines were at the height of their power. In Empire Of The Elite: Inside Condé Nast, The Media Dynasty That Reshaped America, Grynbaum looks at how Si Newhouse, the billionaire owner of media conglomerate Condé Nast (which owns publications like Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, and GQ), built an empire that defined American culture for decades.

Katie Yee’s debut novel, Maggie; Or, A Man And A Woman Walk Into A Bar, follows an unnamed woman whose (soon-to-be ex-) husband confesses that he’s having an affair with a woman named Maggie. Soon after, she discovers she has breast cancer, and names the tumor Maggie. Yee tells this story in snippets, jumping between moments when the narrator deals with her cancer, tells her children stories about Chinese folklore she learned from her own mother, and writes a “Guide To My Husband: A User’s Manual” for the other woman. Yee’s skillful humor prevents the narrative from getting too maudlin, even when circumstances get bleak.

Found family takes center stage in Eloghosa Osunde’s Necessary Fiction, a novel that tells the semi-interconnected stories of over two dozen queer characters in Lagos, Nigeria. The wide scope of Osunde’s novel helps establish the feeling of a true community among characters from vastly different backgrounds with varying levels of support from their blood families. Osunde’s evocative and emotional prose is the throughline that ties together their wide-ranging narrative.

Mathelinda Nabugodi studies Percy Bysshe Shelley for a living, and she puts that uniquely in-depth knowledge to use in The Trembling Hand: Reflections Of A Black Woman In The Romantic Archive. In The Trembling Hand, Nabugodi offers a new perspective on reading and understanding British Romanticism while acknowledging its ties to slavery. Nabugodi explores her relationship to the Romantics and the physical archives she combs through on a daily basis in an eye-opening text that blends research and personal narrative.