Authors Working Outside Their Typical Genres

Fresh Complaint: Stories

by Jeffrey Eugenides

This is the first book of short stories from Pulitzer Prize-winning Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Marriage Plot, including ten tales narrating the stories of a young traveler, a failed poet, an art-loving husband and father, a high school student from an immigrant family. (Note for audiophiles: Cynthia Nixon reads two of the stories on the audiobook.) Release date: October 3 2017.

Feel Free: Essays

by Zadie Smith

In her first essay collection since 2009's Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith discusses good books, Billie Holiday, rap, Facebook, and why we love libraries. Smith is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books; these essays primarily appeared first in those publications. NPR says "reading Feel Free is a lot like hanging out with a friend who's just as at home in a museum as she is binge-watching a sitcom." Release date: February 6 2018.

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays

by Marilynne Robinson

From the publisher: "New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display. What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life."

Look Alive Out There: Essays

by Sloane Crosley

Sloane Crosley, bestselling author of The Clasp, describes the transition to nonfiction like this: "I was working on fiction for so long, and that was so freeing in some ways. 'Oh good, I get to make everything up!' But then it's sort of horrifying in other ways, where you're like, 'I have to make everything up. I'm responsible for everything.'" So here, Crosley returns to the form of her 2008 collection I Was Told There'd Be Cake, describing the events of her "madcap life"—everything from playing herself on Gossip Girl to climbing active volcanoes. Her new work has been compared to Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, and David Sedaris. Release date: April 3 2018.

I Am, I Am, I Am

by Maggie O'Farrell

In O'Farrell's memoir-of-sorts, she tells the story of her life through seventeen brushes with death. I didn't quite believe the premise when I first heard it (Seventeen brushes? Really?), but O'Farrell doesn't mess around with this heart-pounding collection, in which she recounts near-misses with car accidents, murderers, anaphylaxis, a childhood bout with encephalitis, and more. There's obviously some sensitive content here, but I'd like to especially point out that O'Farrell's heart-rending essay on miscarriage is some of the finest writing I've seen on the subject (a subject that's not covered enough in literature).

Florida

by Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff has already written three bestselling novels (one of which Barack Obama chose as his favorite novel of the year in 2015). More than ten years ago she moved back to her home state of Florida, and many were surprised to hear that her Fates and Furies follow-up would be a collection of short stories centered around the history, ecosystem, and psyche of Florida through characters that are wives, mothers, homeless women. The publisher says, "the stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life."

You Think It, I’ll Say It: Stories

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld has a reputation as a "skewerer of subjects" from her bestsellers Prep, American Wife, and her Jane Austen Project novel Eligible. This new collection includes ten stories exploring class, gender roles, and the misconceptions that underpin our lives, by covering Ivy League schools, high school tormentors, and suburban mothers.

Awayland: Stories

by Ramona Ausubel

Calypso

by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is no stranger to the short-form, but unlike his previous collections, these new tales from life all center around one theme: middle age, mortality, and the importance of family bonds. Think Peter Mayle in Provence, only on the Carolina coast, where even in his vacation home he finds "it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself." Sedaris's observations are full of his trademark biting wit; Kirkus calls this "Sedaris at his darkest—and best."

Authors Working Outside Their Typical Genres

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