10 of the best new books you should read this April

With daylight lingering longer, why not while away a couple hours with one of these newly released books? The novels range from supremely short to extremely long and include settings as disparate as a sunny cruise ship and COVID-era Manhattan. If you’re looking for nonfiction, you can choose from titles about rock gods, the cosmos or sexual freedom. You can also catch several of the authors in person at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, April 18 to 19 at USC. Happy reading!

FICTION:

Transcription: A Novel
By Ben Lerner
FSG: 144 pp., $25
(April 7)

It’s any writer’s nightmare: You’re about to conduct an important interview, but your recording device — in this case, a smartphone — won’t work. The narrator of Lerner’s tight, astonishingly trenchant new book pretends to record part of his conversations with his elderly mentor and then uses his memory to write a profile. Years later, those memories are called into question, creating a meditation on truth, time and influence.

American Fantasy: A Novel
By Emma Straub
Riverhead Books: 304 pp., $30
(April 7)

There’s a lid for every pot and a themed cruise for every stan, which, in the case of Straub’s seventh novel, is a cruise for middle-aged fans of a 1990s boy band. When Annie’s sister Katherine, a die-hard Boy Talk “Talker” has to bow out of their trip, Annie — much more lukewarm about the whole thing — goes it alone and discovers how powerful nostalgia can be, especially when it’s coupled with an unexpected connection with a band member.

Midnight, at the War: A Novel
By Devi S. Laskar
Mariner Books: 240 pp., $30
(April 14)

Rita Das regularly flees her personal life and its traumas for her professional life and its challenges; she’s a journalist who reports from war zones. Soon after the events of 9/11, Rita receives an assignment to an unnamed Arab country where her traumas and challenges catch up to her and she has some decisions to make. Laskar (“Circa”), herself a journalist, quietly highlights the conflict between healing the self and observing the world.

See You on the Other Side: A Novel
By Jay McInerney
Knopf: 304 pp., $30
(April 14)

The tetralogy that began with 1984’s acclaimed “Bright Lights, Big City” comes to a close with this volume, in which sixty-somethings Russell and Corrinne Calloway attend parties in early 2020 as the global pandemic encroaches. There will be deaths, of characters as well as relationships, but McInerney’s always-sharp insights on social strata and human nature guarantee that in the midst of sadness we are also entertained. Catch McInerney in person with novelist Adam Ross (“Playworld”) in conversation with critic David Ulin on April 18 at the L.A. Times Festival of Books from 12 to 1 p.m. at USC (tickets required).

Questions 27 & 28: A Novel
By Karen Tei Yamashita
Graywolf Press: 464 pp., $30
(April 28)

As she did to great effect in her 2010 “I-Hotel” about Asian Americans in 1960s San Francisco, Karen Tei Yamashita employs polyphony in her new novel about Japanese Americans during World War II. The title refers to items on the U.S. government’s “loyalty questionnaire,” and the book employs a polyphony of voices — including oral histories and a musical instrument — to give ironic and searching responses that create a provocative symphony. The author will appear alongside local novelist Naomi Hirahara to discuss the Asian American experience in historical fiction at the Festival of Books on Saturday, April 18, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. (tickets required).

NONFICTION:

The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Pantheon: 368 pp., $32
(April 7)

Physicist Prescod-Weinstein (“The Disordered Cosmos”) opens with a colleague’s query: Is it “space-time” or “spacetime,” as she recounts in the New Scientist? Readers who approach this dense but astonishing book will laugh at how superficial that query seems in contrast to the mysteries of the universe. But the author’s hope that we unravel those mysteries in an anti-colonial manner is anything but superficial as she urges human needs above profits. See Prescod-Weinstein live on the “Cosmic Wonder” panel at the Festival of Books on Saturday, April 18, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. (tickets required).

The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report
By Rosa Campbell
Melville House: 216 pp., $32
(April 14)

Shere Hite researched and wrote 1976’s “The Hite Report” on human sexuality, which sold 50 million copies before it was attacked by right-wing evangelicals and essentially disappeared. Historian Campbell resurrects Hite’s groundbreaking survey showing that clitoral stimulation, not penetrative sex, was necessary for most women to climax. As we cope with the 21st-century resurgence of misogynistic trends like trad wifery, Hite’s message resonates.

The Lost Cities of El Norte: Coronado’s Quest, the Unconquered West, and the Birth of American Indian Resistance
By Peter Stark
Mariner Books: 432 pp., $35
(April 14)

“Cortés, what a killer,” sang Neil Young, underlining the apocryphal idea that conquistador Hernán Cortés was more bloodthirsty than counterparts like Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. In “Lost Cities,” author Stark challenges that juxtaposition, showing that despite the Spanish policy against mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, Coronado and others tried — and failed — to use their might against the tribes of the Plains.

The Rolling Stones: The Biography
By Bob Spitz
Penguin Press: 704 pp., $38
(April 21)

Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman once said, “Never let the truth spoil a good story!” Spitz (“The Beatles”) hasn’t snagged interviews with the band members, but he has plenty of archival material to weave in to an excellent account of how two well-bred friends (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) took their passion for blues music and created one of the world’s most famous rock-and-roll bands, still on tour as those band members reach their mid-octogenarian years.

The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
By Steven J. Ross
Bloomsbury: 416 pp., $33
(April 28)

Author Ross concentrates on how organizations like the Anti-Defamation League fought post-World War II prejudice and violence. Meanwhile, readers may be shocked by the story that emerges: How forgotten white supremacist figures like George Lincoln Rockwell and Jesse Benjamin Stoner tried to foment racial hatred throughout the United States. Then, as now, “truth was less important than belief.” Ross will appear at the L.A. Times Festival of Books to discuss “Democracy, Fascism, and America Today” on Sunday, April 19 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. (tickets required).

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”