Well, it’s been a pretty bad year so far, all things considered, with the strong potential to get worse. But as always, there’s a silver lining (of sorts): the books. Now that , it’s time for an updated preview, so here are the books the Literary Hub staff is most looking forward to reading in the back half of 2024.
I was completely enthralled by the excerpt from this collection of short pieces that ran in the Spring . The complete contains 99 pieces about death, most of them following Azrael—the devoted angel that escorts souls to their judgment at God’s feet—and Satan, who spars with Azrael. Jung, Nietzsche, and Rilke appear, as do horses, butterflies, and tortoises, all united in the shared experience of mortality.
Each piece is small, its own shining gem set into constellations with its neighbors. Williams is a beautiful and intelligent writer, and her short meditations are poetic, sad, and often quite funny too. Irish spoken-word artist and playwright Oisín (pronounced “ush-een,” in case you’re curious) McKenna’s debut novel is a queer, multi-generational, polyphonic story set in London during a sweltering June weekend in 2019.
It’s being billed as “Sally Rooney meets Torrey Peters,” which sounds pretty incredible, and just received in the : “For even as it utters a howl of rage at broken, late-capitalist Britain, is a love letter to the city—the chance it offers to forge your own identity, and the interconnectedness of urban life.” Liz .
