New Releases Tuesday: The Best Books Out This Week

Charles Ignatius Sancho’s story starts on a slave ship with his parents, where his mother dies during childbirth and his father dies by suicide. Once he reaches England, he’s made to entertain for company and named after a character in Don Quixote. But through a sympathetic duke, he learns to read and even play music, which sets him on a course where, yes, he has to carefully navigate the world of Georgian London as a Black man, but he also meets the king, writes acclaimed music, votes as the first Black person in Britain, and fights to end slavery. Add this fictionalized account of a real Black British trailblazer to your pile of necessary historical fiction.

A young woman channels Gregor Samsa as she copes with trauma. The transformation of an unnamed protagonist is seen through the eyes of three people, each with very different relationships with her, as she shapes her body to be bigger and more in control of its surroundings. Her approach to fitness is both unorthodox and alluring, which gains her an internet following that admires her desire for aloneness. She mesmerizes Elliot, a loner at the gym, who is also a bit of a creeper. And, while Susie, an ex co-worker, offers her support, her mother begins to worry about the effect she’s having on people.

World Fantasy Award-winning author Fonda Lee is serving up a novella full of legendary beasts. Here, young Esther’s life is forever altered by the manticore that killed her mother and baby brother. Now she’s dedicated her life to destroying the monsters by becoming a ruhker, a manticore hunter who flies with giant birds of prey called rocs. Esther gets paired with a young roc, Zahra, and, in learning to work with the fantastical beast, will sacrifice all she has.

Here is a memoir that eschews a typical format in favor of vignettes, fourth wall breaks, and even a few poems. Poet Smith details the dissolution of her marriage and its effects on her children. First focusing on the personal, she eventually expands into tackling power dynamics and just how persistent gender roles are, even between seemingly progressive people.

Goo gets into the ever-complicated immigrant/child of immigrant dynamics with Throwback by literally throwing the main character, 16-year-old Samantha King, back in time. After a fight with her mother, Priscilla, Samantha finds herself in the ’90s when her mother was 17. Now she’s having to adjust to analog and a lot of casual discrimination. To add to the confusion of it all, she tries to make her mother homecoming queen, and realizes that they may have actually been friends back then.