The best books that are currently on sale

Favorite memoirs, speculative fiction, murder mysteries, and more at 15%+ off.

I reluctantly checked my email this morning and saw that two sites I love—Libro.fm and Bookshop.org—are running some massive sales. Instead of ignoring these emails and reminding myself I am not supposed to be spending money, I thought—wait a minute, I bet there are some books in here I could recommend. And I was right! These lists include a bunch of favorites, many of which are throwbacks from years ago, which I always love. For transparency: these are blurbs I’ve published elsewhere or in previous letters—I will link to original sources—because if I wrote all new blurbs, the sale would be over by the time they were done. I’m already late!!!!! And as always these are affiliate links, meaning I will get a commission from any sales made through them. (My lifetime earnings are $21.75 but as my mother says, it never hurts to try.)

Enjoy!!

Libro.fm (all sale titles here)

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang: Buy for $5

When June Hayward’s friend Athena Liu—a bestselling literary darling whose career and life June covets—dies in front of her, she can’t stop herself from leaving the apartment with Athena’s latest manuscript. After she decides to sell it under her own name, June gets a taste of the literary stardom she’d always dreamed of. But it isn’t meant to last: the book is about Chinese laborers during World War I — a history some critics are dubious June, a white woman, should tell — and soon accusations of appropriation give way to suggestions of plagiarism. Told in a captivating first person, Yellowface is both a brilliant interrogation of appropriation, “cancel culture,” and entitlement, and a wild ride from start to finish. (Bustle)

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell: Buy for $4.99

Montell is a very funny and smart linguist, and Cultish is all about the power of language to inspire but also manipulate and control. “Language is the beginning and end of everything,” Montell writes, and she shows this in her investigation of cults and the cult-adjacent: everything from Scientology to MLMs to wellness influencers to QAnon and beyond. It’s the perfect balance between analytical and entertaining. (RH)

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich: Buy for $4.99

Future Home presents a dystopian future, eerie in its familiarity, in which evolution has seemingly reversed and babies have become rare, studied, and stolen from their mothers. At the center is Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a pregnant Ojibwe woman who grew up adopted by white, big-hearted hippies and who now, at what might be the end of the world, has endeavored to reconcile her two families, two identities, and two belief systems in a journal intended for her unborn child. (BuzzFeed)

My Husband by Maud Ventura: Buy for $4.99

If it sounds familiar, it’s because I just wrote it about in my last letter! The unnamed narrator of this slim novel is obsessive and infatuated with her husband of 15 years, but there’s a darker side, too. She sets up tests and traps to gauge how much he loves her; she anticipates unfounded ways he’s disappointed in her and then tries to correct them. The husband is oblivious to all of this. The narrator lives in a world and drama of her creation, and which she is desperate to control. It’s creepy, gripping, absurdly funny, and a very exciting read.

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs: Buy for $5.99

Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ memoir is a beautifully wrought, often devastating account of a life spent yearning for a distant father’s love — the distant father just happens to be Steve Jobs. The memoir paints an intimate and unsettling portrait of Jobs, reaching back to Brennan-Jobs’ parents meeting (they were idealistic hippies; she was born on a farm), to Jobs’ public disavowal of her as a daughter, and through their relationship, which would ping-pong between love and cruelty until his death. But it’s also an ode to her mother — an honest and appreciative look at the work she had to do to make up for Jobs’ lack. (BuzzFeed)

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer: Buy for $4.99

If you’re looking for eerie speculative thriller, it doesn’t get much better than Jeff VanderMeer. In Hummingbird Salamander, he tackles climate change, tech, and conspiracies, told from the perspective of a security consultant who receives a mysterious package from a dead ecoterrorist that sets her on a dangerous treasure hunt. VanderMeer expertly plays with the timeline here, teasing details through Jane's narration, which explicitly acknowledges the reader. We know she's recounting this story from a specific point in the future, and we know that wherever that is, things are not going well. But the journey to that future is exhilarating. (BuzzFeed)

Mrs. March by Virginia Feito: Buy for $4.99

Mrs. March follows the wife of celebrated novelist George March, who loses her footing in reality when the owner of her local Upper East Side bakery suggests the loathsome protagonist of George’s latest bestseller is based on her. It’s significant that the slight comes from a woman embedded in Mrs. March’s daily routine — routine, appearances, and propriety are gravely important to Mrs. March and her paranoia about what others think of her expands into a general distrust of everyone in her life, most significantly George, who she starts to suspect might have something to do with a woman’s murder. It’s timeless—real Henry James vibes—and dark as hell. (RH)

I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young: Buy for $4.99

I’m Waiting for You is built around an aching, profound, yearning two-part story about a couple on separate ships traveling the galaxy, coordinating timelines and routes and calculating relativity to get back to Earth at the same time for their wedding. The first is told through the groom’s letters, the second through the bride’s. The journeys are doomed; mishaps and redirections keep them from each other while centuries pass on Earth, and it’s painful to see the missed connections from both sides. The other stories are well worth reading, but I’d recommend this even if it were just those two. (RH)

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth: Buy for $4.99

Unferth’s eco-heist story is inventive, but accessible; uncompromising in its critique of the agricultural-industrial complex, but also a whole lot of fun. In Janey, Cleveland, Dill, and Annabelle — two auditors for the US egg industry, two animal rights activists — Unferth has created a band of misfit reluctant radicals who come together to pull off a seemingly impossible scheme: stealing a million chickens from a local farm. Through their chaotic adventure, Unferth injects humanity and heart into the dilemma of consumption in a capitalist society. (BuzzFeed)

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling: Buy for $4.99

The Golden State follows Daphne — an exhausted mother whose husband is stuck indefinitely in his home country, Turkey, after being pressured into surrendering his green card — over the course of her frantic escape from San Francisco to the abandoned family house in rural Northern California. There is a breathless, antsy energy propelling us through these nine days as Daphne scrambles after her baby Honey, who is always sliding, writhing, tumbling out of reach. This is balanced by the real relief of her unlikely friendship with 92-year-old Alice, whose unimaginable hardships push Daphne to take stock of her circumstances and figure out what she can do about them. (BuzzFeed)

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee: Buy for $4.99

In the essays collected in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Chee writes vividly and tenderly about his many intersecting identities: a gay Korean American man, a tarot reader, a student, a writer, an activist. Through these lenses, he generously shares his hard-earned insights about love, art, and humanity — and if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself underlining many passages to return to. (BuzzFeed)

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart: Buy for $4.99

Stuart’s vivid, sweeping novel tells the story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain in 1980s–early ‘90s Glasgow, a city struggling with the closure of its mines and the resulting widespread unemployment. He and his mother, Agnes, live in rundown public housing; Agnes is beautiful and loving but often incapacitated by her alcoholism; Shuggie worships her but is often the caretaker. His father and neighbors ridicule him, but Agnes sees and loves and defends who is: a child who doesn't yet have the language or models to recognize his queerness. Stuart draws a vivid picture of working-class Glasgow, clearly evoking the smells and sounds and textures of Shuggie's bleak corner of the city, inviting us into this complicated but tender family. One of my favorites of the past decade, hands down. (BuzzFeed)

Bookshop.org: Free shipping + 15% off gift guide titles

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

I couldn’t read this fast enough. The structure—written to a “you” we slowly identify, from the perspective of the true crime podcaster protagonist, Bodie—is so surprising and effective, and perfect for audio. The collective ambivalence around what qualifies as assault or abuse, the generational shifting of ethics and norms, the racism and classism built into our institutions—Makkai explores all of it with grace and honesty as these characters revisit a decades-old boarding school murder. (RH)

Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

Every book from Samantha Irby is a gift, and her latest essay collection—a defense for owning your joy, celebrating your idiosyncrasies, and forgiving your missteps—is as hilarious, insightful, and comforting as those that precede it. It’s nearly impossible to finish without feeling seen. (Bustle)

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

Woof!! Do you know what I mean when I say this is a real, meaty NOVEL? Like you finish it and you’re like, yup, that’s what I’m talking about! That’s a novel! What I mean is it’s somehow classic and new; the prose is pristine, the plotting is intricate, the intrigue is perfectly teased out, the fictional world is dense and layered. We’re talking footnotes for fake books and interviews! I guess I should say this book-in-a-book is the biography of the elusive artist X, written by her wife after X’s sudden death. (RH)

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

In award-winning S.A. Cosby’s latest—which Publishers Weekly rightfully calls “easily his strongest work to date”—Titus Crown leaves his job at the FBI to return to his rural hometown in Charon County as its first Black sheriff. While having to both protect the county’s flagrant white supremacists and deal with the racist attacks coming his way, he’s faced with a string of crimes that shock and destabilize the community: a serial killer is on the loose. This Southern noir balances ghastly violence against multi-layered interpersonal dynamics to create an affecting page-turner. (Bustle)

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro embarks on an exploration of humanity and technology through the perspective of Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend (AF) who is distinct from other AFs in her keen observational abilities and her yearning to understand humanity. She's intent on fulfilling her purpose of making her owner happy, but this purpose becomes less straightforward when she’s purchased for 13-year-old Josie, who has a vague illness that dominates her and her mother's lives. Through Klara’s eyes, we see the near-future world of Ishiguro’s imagination: intelligent tech, jobs made redundant by robots, genetic modification, the continued destruction of the planet. But insofar as Klara is able to feel — and it’s hard to leave this book doubting those feelings, despite her mechanical parsing of them — she’s hopeful for the future, reverent of a sun she views as benevolent. The questions underpinning the book are heavy and familiar territory for Ishiguro: What does it mean to be human, to be happy, to love? But there’s a lightness in Klara’s (programmed) youthfulness, and it’s up to the reader to decide if this makes her story more bitter than sweet. (BuzzFeed)

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians is a bone-chilling account of Lewis, Gabe, Cass, and Ricky, four Blackfeet men facing the consequences of a youthful indiscretion. While out hunting elk one snowy day, the young men are frustrated when the herd retreats to land reserved for elders. They disregard the community law but the trip quickly turns chaotic, and one elk puts up a fight, taunting Lewis as he tries again and again to bring her down. Years later, after all of the young men have moved off the reservation, Lewis sees that elk again — or something evil that's taken its image. (BuzzFeed)

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The hype is warranted. Before reading this, I hadn’t been serious about gaming since Nintendo 64 but it enveloped me in the magic of world-building while throwing in deep insights about human connection, grief, reality, personhood, sacrifice. I now spend almost as much time on my Switch as I do reading, in no small part because of this book. I adored it. (RH)