Here are 100 books that The New Me fans have personally recommended if you like
The New Me.
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I was born and grew up in Seoul. My bestselling debut novel has been longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. My book is inspired by my great-aunt, one of the oldest women who had escaped alone from North Korea. It is available from Harper Perennial in the U.S. and Virago in the UK. The novel’s translations continue to meet readers worldwide, including in Italy, Romania, Greece, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, and South Korea.
Eileen is one of the most twisted and unconventional literary heroines I’ve ever read. Behind her quiet demeanor and dull face hides her mind, which is like a killer’s, always furious and seething.
While working at a juvenile correctional facility, Eileen meets Rebecca, another key character far removed from most women of their generation. Seductive and deceitful, Rebecca cajoles Eileen into joining her act of crime–a violent, underhanded plan to restore her idea of justice.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
When the society, culture, and world we live in become unrecognizable and untenable, the genre of literature that best quells anxiety is satire. As the author of Satire State, I believe laughter is essential to survival and sanity. The tightly woven fabric of a society unravels slowly and then suddenly through a consecutive series of multiple actions by malignant forces. All the while, historical memory is gradually erased, and the new fabric is the only one recognized. Satire is the only way to chronicle the malignancy and force people to think hard. The following five books of satire that address urgent issues made me laugh, cringe, think, and mutter “too real” under my breath.
This sly, feminist satire posits that everything is tied to reproduction.
Zumas must have read widely before thinking out loud in print about everything from love, sex, birth, life, love, loss, loneliness, and death to small things that seem inconsequential but make sense within the tale she spins.
Narrated in a cycle by four women, the core of the novel imagines a world where abortion is banned and women are surveilled—but with absurd legal twists and deadpan irony. Zumas blends social commentary with magical realism to deliver a novel that disturbs the reader with inconvenient truths and difficult questions.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INAUGURAL ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
'Intense, beautifully crafted . . . Her talent is electric. Get ready for a shock' Guardian
FIVE WOMEN. ONE QUESTION: What is a woman for?
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers.
Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a…
When the society, culture, and world we live in become unrecognizable and untenable, the genre of literature that best quells anxiety is satire. As the author of Satire State, I believe laughter is essential to survival and sanity. The tightly woven fabric of a society unravels slowly and then suddenly through a consecutive series of multiple actions by malignant forces. All the while, historical memory is gradually erased, and the new fabric is the only one recognized. Satire is the only way to chronicle the malignancy and force people to think hard. The following five books of satire that address urgent issues made me laugh, cringe, think, and mutter “too real” under my breath.
A daring satire on race, politics, and cultural identity in America that somehow manages to be both outrageous and deeply sobering.
Beatty’s voice is like Richard Pryor meets Zora Neale Hurston—sharp, fearless, acerbic, wickedly funny, and incredibly smart.
Notably, although Beatty is an American writer, his book was published in the UK (likely because America prefers to live in denial about race) and went on to win the Booker Prize in 2016.
'Outrageous, hilarious and profound.' Simon Schama, Financial Times
'The longer you stare at Beatty's pages, the smarter you'll get.' Guardian
'The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I've read.' New York Times
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.
Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I’m a sucker for unlikeable. A charged word that’s sometimes used about protagonists but mostly only about female protagonists. When they don’t fit a template. When they are imperfect. When they push back. When they are too emotional or too distant or too interior or too driven or too obsessed or too mean or too nice or too smart or not smart enough. The protagonists in these novels are flawed—period. But flawed is complex and perfect is simple and simple is boring and no one wants to read a boring novel.
Marie—a young mother with a young child—is trying to make her way in the brutal restaurant industry toward a more settled life but is constantly battling her own self-destructive tendencies.
“I ask my memory, why did I take each next step?” she says near the beginning of the book, but readers feel that each next, disastrous step seems almost pre-ordained.Love Me Back is an unflinching and hyper-interior deep dive into why people are sometimes their own worst enemy.
"Sharp and dangerous and breathtaking.... A defiant story about a young woman choosing the life and motherhood that is best for her, without apology.” —Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist
Marie is a waitress at an upscale Dallas steakhouse, attuned to the appetites of her patrons and gifted at hiding her private struggle as a young single mother behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. It’s a world of long hours and late nights, and Marie often gives in to self-destructive impulses, losing herself in a tangle of bodies and urgent highs as her desire for obliteration…
I’m a sucker for unlikeable. A charged word that’s sometimes used about protagonists but mostly only about female protagonists. When they don’t fit a template. When they are imperfect. When they push back. When they are too emotional or too distant or too interior or too driven or too obsessed or too mean or too nice or too smart or not smart enough. The protagonists in these novels are flawed—period. But flawed is complex and perfect is simple and simple is boring and no one wants to read a boring novel.
“The story starts at…the point perhaps at which I became aware of my inability to feel any feelings beyond those set to music by the Walt Disney Company,” Claire, the narrator ofI Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness admits on the novel’s very first page.
And so we’re primed when she does what is probably considered by many to be the most monstrous thing a woman can do: she leaves her child. Interspersed with sections about family history and old letters that shed light on complicated dynamics, the book moves us through Claire’s journey as she pushes back against the expectations of marriage and motherhood in search of her own, individualized definition.
A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse-one woman's furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.
Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case…
I’m a sucker for unlikeable. A charged word that’s sometimes used about protagonists but mostly only about female protagonists. When they don’t fit a template. When they are imperfect. When they push back. When they are too emotional or too distant or too interior or too driven or too obsessed or too mean or too nice or too smart or not smart enough. The protagonists in these novels are flawed—period. But flawed is complex and perfect is simple and simple is boring and no one wants to read a boring novel.
Joan abandons her life and moves across the country on a quest to find a stranger from her past, convinced it will help her find peace.
In a savagely honest style, Animalrecounts Joan’s affairs, family history, a traumatic incident from her youth, and a gaping emptiness within herself that she’s desperate to understand. “If someone asked me to describe myself in a single word, depravedis the one I would use.”
Depraved, sure. Maybe. But it’s impossible to be angry at her because she’s so candid about what she’s doing and why. The prose itself is fresh and stark and haunting.
From Lisa Taddeo, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon Three Women, comes an “intoxicating” (Entertainment Weekly), “fearless” (Los Angeles Times), and “explosive” (People) novel about “what happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoning” (Esquire).
Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles,…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
When the society, culture, and world we live in become unrecognizable and untenable, the genre of literature that best quells anxiety is satire. As the author of Satire State, I believe laughter is essential to survival and sanity. The tightly woven fabric of a society unravels slowly and then suddenly through a consecutive series of multiple actions by malignant forces. All the while, historical memory is gradually erased, and the new fabric is the only one recognized. Satire is the only way to chronicle the malignancy and force people to think hard. The following five books of satire that address urgent issues made me laugh, cringe, think, and mutter “too real” under my breath.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “A shattering and darkly comic send-up of racial stereotyping in Hollywood” (Vanity Fair) and adeeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant,…
When the society, culture, and world we live in become unrecognizable and untenable, the genre of literature that best quells anxiety is satire. As the author of Satire State, I believe laughter is essential to survival and sanity. The tightly woven fabric of a society unravels slowly and then suddenly through a consecutive series of multiple actions by malignant forces. All the while, historical memory is gradually erased, and the new fabric is the only one recognized. Satire is the only way to chronicle the malignancy and force people to think hard. The following five books of satire that address urgent issues made me laugh, cringe, think, and mutter “too real” under my breath.
Francis Plug is a drunken fictional author crashing literary festivals, manufacturing chaos in whichever space he steps into, collecting autographs of “real writers,” and offering absurd wisdom on how to behave like a proper prize-winning novelist.
It’s satire for writers and readers who love the literary world... and love to roast it, too.
How To Be A Public Author is a novel all about the Man Booker, using the prize as a springboard to explore what it means to be an author - and a human being - in the 21st century. It documents a series of fictitious happenings at real author events, as visited by the wonderful anti-hero Francis Plug - a troubled and often drunk misfit who causes chaos and confusion wherever he goes. Inventive, funny and moving, How To Be A Public Author is both a brilliant slapstick comedy and a surprising and touching meditation on loneliness.
I love short-story collections. I’ve read dozens to hundreds of them, starting as a child reading Richard Scarry, and I still make them a regular part of my reading diet. I started trying my own hand at short fiction in 2012 and have since finished more than one hundred stories, including the ones in Animal Husbandry. I’m now working on my first novel after years as a short-story writer, and it gives me additional admiration for how many outstanding novelists are also able to master short fiction. It’s two different skill sets, and the five authors I mentioned here (among many others) excel at both.
Vonnegut has been one of my favorite authors for a long time, and this might be the first collection I read that wasn’t specifically for young readers. Some of the future-set stories like “Harrison Bergeron” and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” changed how I saw science fiction.
Welcome to the Monkey House introduced me to Vonnegut and to a love of short-story collections as a form, and it holds up remarkably well.
A MASTERFUL COLLECTION OF TWENTY-FIVE SHORT STORIES FROM THE INIMITABLE AUTHOR OF SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, KURT VONNEGUT
'Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...a zany but moral mad scientist' Time
A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms. A scientist discovers the secret to unlocking instant happiness, with unexpected consequences. In an America where everyone is equal every which way, a tennage boy plans to overthrow the system.
Welcome to the Monkey House gathers together twenty-five of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories from the 1950s and 1960s. Shot through with Vonnegut's singular humour, wit and bewilderment…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
To be a successful sales exec, required my being an observant student of human nature. The same skill applied to my becoming a successful author. I discovered the most unforgettable people I encountered throughout my career were a lot like the zany oddballs my favorite authors created and the perfect models to base my cast of characters on.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a sucker for a righteous cause that Carl Hiaasen’s riotous, rollicking, tale of muckraking to the max had me cheering his zany protagonist and one-man-wreaking-crew, Twilly Spree from the first page to the last.
Twilly Spree has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors in-your-face political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but taught a lesson in what happens when they choose not to do what Twilly considers the right thing.
Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads, a horde of hungry dung beetles, and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts - these are only some of the zany denizens of Carl Hiaasen’s outrageously funny Sick Puppy.
Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea—from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me.
When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements—such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks—that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated.
