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Cercas, Javier. Even the Darkest Night: A Terra Alta Novel. Knopf. Jun. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593318805. $30. LITERARY SUSPENSE

Crosley, Sloane. Cult Classic. MCD: Farrar. Jun. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780374603397. $27. LITERARY

Dermansky, Marcy. Hurricane Girl. Knopf. Jun. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593320884. $26. LITERARY

Hannaham, James. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta. Little, Brown. Jun. 2022. ISBN 9780316285278. $28. LITERARY

Holleran, Andrew. The Kingdom of Sand. Farrar. Jun. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780374600969. $27. LITERARY

Laskey, Celia. So Happy for You. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Jun. 2022. ISBN 9781335426901. $26.99. CD. LITERARY

Moshfegh, Ottesa. Lapvona. Penguin Pr. Jun. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593300268. $27. LITERARY

Newman, Sandra. The Men. Grove. Jun. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780802159663. $27. LITERARY

Nganang, Patrice. A Trail of Crab Tracks. Farrar. Jun. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780374602987. $30. LITERARY

Perrotta, Tom. Tracy Flick Can’t Win. Scribner. Jun. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781501144066. $27. CD. LITERARY

Yuknavitch, Lidia. Thrust. Riverhead. Jun. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780525534907. $28. LITERARY

International award winner Cercas expands to literary suspense inEven the Darkest Night, featuring a young ex-con who read Les Misérables in jail and after the murder of his sex-worker mother joins the Barcelona police and is sent to investigate a particularly brutal double murder outside the city. In another genre blender, the New York Times best-selling Crosley purveys humor, psychological twistiness, and strong writing to create what could be a Cult Classic featuring a woman who leaves a work dinner to buy cigarettes and encounters a string of ghostly ex-boyfriends (100,000-copy first printing). From Dermansky (e.g., the multi-best-booked The Red Car), Hurricane Girl sends 32-year-old Allison Brody from the West Coast to the East Coast, where she buys a small house on the beach and is promptly hit by a Category 3 hurricane that leaves her with a bleeding head and some very confused thoughts. Following Delicious Foods, which boast PEN/Faulkner and Hurston/Wright Legacy honors, Hannaham’s Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta features a woman who transitioned in prison and is finally released after more than two decades, returning apprehensively to a New York she barely knows and a family that doesn’t understand her (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, Holleran returns after 13 years with The Kingdom of Sand, whose nameless narrator has survived the death of friends from AIDS and his parents from old age and tragedy and is surviving his own end time by enjoying classic films and near-anonymous sexual encounters (50,000-copy first printing). In Laskey’s So Happy for You, following Center for Fiction First Novel finalist Under the Rainbow, Robin and Ellie have always been best friends, but queer academic Robin has her doubts about being maid of honor in Ellie’s forthcoming wedding. In the medieval-set Lapnova, from ever-edgy, New York Times best-selling Moshfegh, hapless shepherd’s son Marek—close only to a midwife feared for her ungodly way with nature—is caught up in the violence surrounding a cruel and corrupt lord. In this follow-up to Newman’s multi-starred The Heavens, all The Men in the world mysteriously vanish at once, leaving women both to grieve and to rebuild. Prix Marguerite Yourcenar winner Nganang follows up hisLJ best-booked When the Plums Are Ripe with A Trail of Crab Tracks, whose protagonist slowly reveals his story—and the story of Cameroon’s independence—on a prolonged stay with his son in the United States. The dedicated assistant principal at a New Jersey public high school thinks she has a lock on the principal’s job when the current principal retires, but alas for the durable protagonist of Perrotta’s Election, Tracy Flick [still] Can’t Win (300,000-copy first printing). In Thrust, a motherless child from the late 21st century learns that she can connect with people over the last two centuries, from a French sculptor to a dictator’s daughter; from Yuknavitch, a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize finalist.

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