Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos

By Nash Jenkins

A transfer to a New Jersey boarding school falls in with two social heavy hitters and gets expelled. The student who moves into his old dorm room tries to figure out why. This debut novel by a Northwestern doctoral candidate is a late-aughts period piece —  think BlackBerrys and Vampire Weekend — with prep-school-scandal bones. May 16

Dual Memory

By Sue Burke

The Edgewater author took a break from her popular Semiosis sci-fi trilogy (the third installment is expected next year) to write this standalone novel, whose protagonist joins forces with his AI personal assistant to rebel against their Arctic island’s pirate overlords. May 16

Women We Buried, Women We Burned

By Rachel Louise Snyder

Snyder, originally from Chicago, wrote about domestic violence in No Visible Bruises, which the New York Times named one of the 10 best books of 2019. Now she turns her reporter’s sensibility on her own life: a tumultuous childhood in an evangelical cult after her mother’s death, homelessness in her late teens, and a career as a journalist. May 23

Good Night, Irene

By Luis Alberto Urrea

The UIC creative writing professor and Pulitzer finalist draws on his mother’s Red Cross service for his sixth novel, which follows two nurses on the European front lines of World War II. Urrea’s attention to women’s roles in conflict makes this a new kind of war novel. May 30

Maddalena and the Dark

By Julia Fine

The DePaul University writing teacher follows up her acclaimed debut, What Should Be Wild, with this gothic work set in 18th-century Venice. Two students at a prestigious music school fall into an intense friendship. But in their attempt to ensure the futures they desire, the pair become entangled in Venice’s dangerous and alluring underworld. June 13

Rivermouth

By Alejandra Oliva

Oliva, an advocate at the National Immigrant Justice Center in the Loop, weaves her experience working as a translator at the Mexican border with her family’s history of immigration. Using as symbols the Rio Grande, the border wall, and the tables where she prepares migrants for asylum interviews, Oliva argues for a more welcoming nation. June 20

The Gutenberg Parenthesis

By Jeff Jarvis

A journalism professor in New York City, Jarvis started his career at the Chicago Tribune after graduating from Northwestern nearly 50 years ago. Now he reflects on what he sees as the end of an era, documenting the age of print media from the advent of the printing press to the dawn of the internet. June 29

The Light Room

By Kate Zambreno

Zambreno, who worked at Newcity in the early 2000s after studying at Northwestern and the University of Chicago, meditates on parenting during a pandemic and climate crisis in this memoir, which asks how this unusual time will shape its children. July 4