New and Upcoming Book Releases from Houston Authors!
September 30, 2024 | Sean Morrissey Carroll
This year has been incredible for Houston authors, with new releases in fiction and poetry that are inspired, diverse, and heartfelt. I spoke with booksellers are three of Houston’s best indie bookstores, Kindred Stories, Basket Books, and Brazos Bookstore to compile this list of new book releases from Houston authors. Enjoy!
Coming Soon
No One Gets to Fall Apart by Sarah Labrie
Releasing October 22
Labrie’s latest memoir traces her family history of mental illness from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, through her schizophrenic mother to her own experience with depression. As the author obsesses over an unfinished novel that she refuses to give up on she struggles to keep her life and relationships together. From Houston’s Third Ward to Paris and New York, No One Gets to Fall Apart is a searing look at shifting self-identity and turning weaknesses into strength as the author melds sheer will to relentless ambition.
Houston native Sarah Labrie has written for television including Blindspotting, Made for Love, and Love, Victor, as well as being a producer on Minx. Labrie’s opera libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall and her words have appeared in Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Dybbuk Americana by Joshua Gottlieb-Miller
Releasing October 22
I first met Gottlieb-Miller at a reading presented by Defunkt Magazine, and immediately appreciated his self-deprecating wit and gentle reading style. Little did I know that he was reading work that would become his second book, out next month from Wesleyan University Press. Dybbuk Americana centers on the author’s Jewish identity taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor. Playing with space on the page with poems stretched across text boxes like conversations or competing viewpoints, Gottlieb-Miller embodies a multiplicity not unlike the influences that make up all of our identities.
University of Houston alum and former Poetry and Digital Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast, Gottlieb-Miller was a Post-Harvey Think Tank Fellow at Rice University, representing folklore, and teaches at San Jacinto College.
Releasing October 8
Former general manager of Brazos Bookstore, Mark Haber has moved on to work for Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, but he brought his acerbic wit with him (it fits in a carry-on). After the stream-of-consciousness mono-paragraph of Reinhardt’s Garden and the Kafkaesque art history of Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, Haber returns in 2024 with another deep dive into obsession and literary hilarity. Inventing history as deftly as a modern day Herodotus, Lesser Ruins veers from one obsession to the next like an ADHD rant by Malcolm Gladwell as told by Sarte.
Death Takes Me by Christina Rivera Garza
Releasing February 25, 2025
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, Garza’s newest novel mirrors her life in urgent and mysterious fashion. Casting herself as the protagonist in a detective story inhabiting a world of surrealism, Garza and an inquisitive police officer attempt to decipher poetry found at each crime scene.
In real life, Garza’s writings about her sister’s cold case murder led to a breakthrough in the case, as described in the memoir Invincible Summer. Part of a larger call for justice for women murdered in Mexico, the author’s indomitable tenacity led from the written word to real world change.
The founder of the Spanish language Creative Writing MFA at University of Houston, Garza splits her time between Mexico City, Houston, and other cities across the world. Her many novels and poetry collections published over the past decades have been translated into more than five languages.
Speculative Fiction
The Violet Mage by L.R. Powell
Out Now
Romantasy is ALL the rage, so of course Houston has our own local author writing spicy fairy tales! The first of a trilogy, Violet Mage follows Ophelia, youngest princess of Maraleon, as she discovers her magical powers and sets out to uncover the truth of the past and find a way to save the ones she loves from imminent destruction before it’s too late.
L.R. Powell lives in Houston, drinks too much coffee, and posts about her favorite books at @lindseylikestowrite on Instagram. Violet Mage is her debut novel.
Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel
Out Now
Blending Hindu mythology and modern sensibilities, Goddess of the River follows former deity Ganga as she weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. An intergenerational epic, Ganga’s son Devavrata grows up and travels the world, always drawn to his mother’s presence in the heavens and his destiny.
Vaishnavi Patel is also the author of NYT bestseller Kaikeyi, released in 2022. Recently relocated to Houston, Patel is a lawyer specializing in civil rights who grew up in Chicago. Almost stereotypically Midwestern, she makes a mean hotdish.
Out Now
No stranger than Stranger Things, Prufer’s Sleepaway sets its mid-80s sights on trying to stay awake when the whole world falls under the spell of invisible mists that send victims into a potentially eternal slumber. The survivors live in fear of the next mist as the world crumbles around them. Alternating between the perspectives of a kleptomaniac waitress named Cora and her twelve-year-old friend Glass, Sleepaway keeps one foot in science fiction and the other in literary prose, wrestling with identity and horror in equal measure.
Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston and five-time Pushcart Prize winner, Prufer’s most recent poetry collection The Fears was the winner of the 2024 Rilke Prize.
Contemporary Fiction & Romance
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center
Out Now
Writers love to write about writers of course, but The Rom-Commers takes the oroboros to another level! Emma Wheeler has spent her life obsessing over romantic comedies, but when the chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates becomes her first big break, the fur flies as a she rewrites his awful script. Emma won’t go down easily on her first time in an LA writing room, standing up for herself, rom-coms, and love itself. This big-hearted enemies-to-lovers tale is a comfort read par excellence from a University of Houston Creative Writing Program alum and fifth generation Texan.
The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Mathieu
Out Now
Education activist, Houston-area teacher, and acclaimed author of the YA novel Moxie (which was turned into a film directed by SNL alum Amy Pohler in 2021), Mathieu brings her life into her fiction with enlivened characters and endearing misadventures in school settings that will ring true for any Gen X parents or Millennial or Gen Z students who have the chance to encounter her true-to-life fiction.
The Faculty Lounge is Mathieu’s debut adult novel, as she turns her focus from school hallways to the drama behind closed doors that consumes Lounge’s characters’ lives as they try to enlighten young minds and keep their own. A death, a mishap, and a gaggle of nosy parents drive forward this hilarious plot that brings to life the ‘real lives’ of high school teachers who have dreams and aspirations (and regrets) far beyond their charges in the classroom. When the school is threatened with shutdown at the end of the year, all the little dramas that consume the staff of Baldwin High come to a head under the looming threat of absolute change. Peppered with Mathieu’s witty dialogue and not shying away from workplace drama, The Faculty Lounge is a worthy addition to her growing list of amazing novels. Could Mathieu become our 21st century Beverly Cleary?
Nonfiction
The War Below by Ernest Scheyder
Out Now
As the world transitions to an electric future, a ticking time-bomb lies beneath the surface. In The War Below Scheyder meticulously documents the ecological devastation and impossible economics promised by energy transition evangelists as the world lurches from one environmental disaster to the next. At the same time the Western world hangs on the brink of diplomatic disaster, with China holding most of the cards in terms of material resources at the same time that they threaten to use that leverage to exact territorial and military power in the South Pacific. Longlisted for the National Book Award for Non-fiction, The War Below is necessary reading for investors looking to the future, policy-makers the world over, and anyone contemplating a Tesla purchase.
A journalist with Reuters and an energy specialist, Scheyder has also been published in TIME, Fast Company, Barron’s, and other publications. He is a frequent moderator and panelist and a passionate supporter of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.
This Familiar Heart by Babette Hale
Out Now
An autumn-spring relationship between a famed down-to-earth writer and a debutante and an unlikely but enduring love story frame Hale’s memoir of her life and times with renowned storyteller Leon Hale. When Leon passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic, Babette was left to pick up the pieces and in the process uncover her late husband’s hidden lives he had over the years.
Babette Fraser Hale is the author of A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers as well as a magazine feature writer, columnist, contributing editor, book editor and publisher who lives near Houston, Texas.
The Barber, the Astronaut, and the Golf Ball by Barbara Radnofsky & Ed Supkis
Out Now
A deep dive into a small story, Radnofsky’s The Barber, the Golf Ball, and the Astronaut examines the story of a trinket given from astronaut Alan Shepard to his barber Carlos Villagomez shortly after his return from the moon in 1971. Was this golf ball really on the moon? How does the provenance of a simple object cause such controversy? How do you prove that something has travelled out of the atmosphere, to another celestial body, and back? Over the course of years of interviews and research (were there two golf balls on the moon or three?) Radnofsky lays out cases for and against Villagomez’s claim that illuminate and obfuscate the truth.
Lawyer and former politician Barbara Radnofsky is a grandmother, mother, wife and professional mediator. She co-founded the Houston Chapter of the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues and has served on many other charitable boards.
Where Are You From: Letters to my Son by Tomás Q. Morín
Out Now
A epistolary memoir with a fractured narrative, Morín’s Where Are You From spins from autofiction’s core to address issues race and identity, origin and setting. Not long in length but dense and spiraling, this book demands attention with its intensity and masterful use of poetic prose. Ostensibly the tale of the Hispanic author finding himself in an unwelcome New Jersey town, Where Are You From pushes the boundaries of second-person narrative as Morín lectures his unborn son on lessons he will have to learn about bigotry, identity, and perception with searing existentialist questions.
Tomás Q. Morín is a professor at Rice University, accomplished poet, and Guggenheim foundation fellow. Translator of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu, Morín is a Texas native comfortable in both English and Spanish (as all Texans should be).
West University Place by Richard Cunningham
Out Now
The latest in a series of micro-histories ubiquitous in diners and hardware stores across Houston, Cunningham’s West University Place enters the pantheon of books on a Houston uncle’s coffee table and last minute gifts from forgetful grandfathers. West U (as it is known) was founded as an affordable neighborhood away from Houston’s city center in in the early 20th century. Early residents wanted Houston to annex their land, but when the city declined enough money was raised to supply electricity, water, and phone service independently. Lewis and Mae Ryon took the next step by applying for a city charter, which was granted in 1924. Over the ensuing decades West University Place evolved from treeless farmland into a picturesque small town wrapped in a big city.
Board member of the Writers League of Texas and freelance science writer Richard Cunningham has lived in West University for over a decade. His historical research led to the approval of a historical marker on Edloe Street and, along with his wife Lily Ann, Cunningham has restored a 1948 cottage in West U.
Poetry
Out Now
Winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry, […] is the least eponymous and most celebrated of the books on this list. As a Palestinian author and Houston resident, Joudah’s work ties the local to the international in a way no Houston media has since the acclaimed series Mo on Netflix. Political and personal, full of longing and love, […] will bring the reader to their knees as they inhabit the world where every sight is tinged with the echo of faraway tragedy that can only be forgotten for a moment when the immediate can overwhelm longing for justice and peace ever-present in the author’s mind and behind every carefully chosen word.
Necessary and poignant, […] follows five other books of poetry published by Joudah, including Textu from 2013, which is written as poems of 160 characters, the limit of text message content at the time and a terribly interesting constraint to put on one’s writing. Joudah volunteers for Doctors Without Borders and serves as an emergency room physician in Houston’s Medical Center.
Autobiomythography of by Ayokunle Falomo
Out Now
Falomo inhabits many selves in Autobiomythography of, casting himself as characters real and imagined, as he searches for a sense of self through Nigerian stories and mythologies as well as his own life and observations. Intent on decentralizing narratives in order to fracture the imposed demands of colonization, Falomo dons and doffs masks again and again in his search for hope and truth in a post-modern world. In this follow up to the celebrated poetry collection AFRICANAMERICAN’T, the author finds himself wandering far and wide and asking questions few dare to.
A University of Houston alumnus and current Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Zell Writer’s Program, Falomo’s words have been published in the Houston Chronicle, New York Times, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Texas Review.
Out Now
Williams’ debut poetry collection has been my favorite poetry book of the year. Her poignant, gutting words describe a life of joy and pain, transition and reflection. From a suburban upbringing to truck stop ingénue through sobriety and reinvention as a pastry chef then a poet, Wager reflects an Americana little celebrated but much travelled. Southern through and through, the twinge in Williams’ authorial voice has an edge that cuts through charm to lay bare her working class roots with vivid imagery and an ever-changing protagonist.
In the midst of teaching a flurry of poetry workshops for Poison Pen, Grackle & Grackle, and Inprint this fall, Adele is a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston and has been awarded fellowships from Inprint and the Cynthia Mitchell Woods Center.
Out Now
Alcalá brooks no quarter when it comes to intense and difficult emotion, unraveling the threads of the phases of a woman’s life and specifically lifting the veil on intergenerational gendered violence. You’s prose poetry hits hard but also has moments of tenderness that layer throughout like the years of experience that have led the author to where she finds herself, defiant and strong, today.
This is Rosa Alcalá’s fourth poetry collection. Her poems and translations have appeared in Harper’s, the Nation, and Best American Poetry. Originally from New Jersey, Alcalá is currently the Chair in Poetry at UTEP’s Bilingual Creative Writing Program.
Out Now
A book of poetry and art, Villareal freely mixes mediums as she explores her personal identities as Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and Indigenous. Written in English and Spanish, Watcha exemplifies code-switching not only between languages but between poetry and prose, as well as colloquial and academic settings with grace and vigor. This self-defining manifesto sits at many crossroads, exemplifying the multiple identities that many Houstonians embrace in our diverse and sprawling city.
A professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston Downtown, Dr. Villareal is active in Houston’s writing scene as a creator and mentor to young writers finding their voices.