From bookselling to alien languages, 10 of May’s best paperback releases

Paperback Picks

Don’t look now, but it feels like we finally made it through winter. As those summer vacation plans loom off on the horizon, May is when publishers begin to put out last year’s big releases — the summer beach reads and the hard-hitting investigations — in more affordable (and travel-friendly) paperback form. This month’s collection of new-in-paperback titles includes award-winning nonfiction and one of the most-talked-about novels of 2023.

“His Name Is George Floyd” by Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa (Penguin Books, $20). This 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winner for nonfiction takes a compassionate, comprehensive look at the life of a man whose brutal murder inspired a national conversation about race and policing. George Floyd was a father, a neighbor and a martyr whose name became a rallying cry for change; two Washington Post reporters try to uncover the person behind the headlines.

“The Guest” by Emma Cline (Random House Trade Paperbacks, $18). Cline’s scathing, funny novel about a young woman who spends a week scamming her way into the homes of wealthy people in a beach community was the hot new release of 2023. Its disaffected, morally challenged protagonist stands as one of the most memorable literary creations of the last ten years.

“The Whispers” by Ashley Audrain (Penguin Books, $18). The New York Times Book Review says this thriller about four families struggling to find the truth in the shadow of a terrible accident has “a sucker-punch ending you’ll have to read twice to believe,” and multiple reviewers praise Audrain’s observations about the dark side of motherhood.

“An Amerikan Family” by Santi Elijah Holley (Mariner Books, $19.99). Subtitled “The Shakurs and the Nation They Created,” this biography tracks an exceptional family from the founding of a controversial Black Panther chapter to the rise and heartbreaking death of Tupac Shakur. The Shakur family has raised authors, activists and community organizers, and Booklist raves that “Holley’s riveting, detailed history is essential reading for understanding modern America and the Shakurs’ enduring legacy.”

“On Earth as It Is on Television” by Emily Jane (Hyperion Avenue, $17.99). In this debut novel, spaceships suddenly hover over most of the world’s major cities for long enough to make Earth’s inhabitants uneasy, and then they just as quickly disappear with no explanation. Three people set out to find meaning in a world that has swiftly been rendered even more meaningless than usual.

“The Silverblood Promise” by James Logan (Tor Books, $19.99). The first book in Logan’s “The Last Legacy” series introduces a disgraced con artist who must traverse a fantasy realm full of swashbuckling adventure in order to solve the mystery of his father’s death. If you like your fantasy novels packed with comedy, action and old-fashioned derring-do, “Promise” is the book for you.

“Death Valley” by Melissa Broder (Scribner, $17.99). A young woman wracked with grief over her father’s impending death and her husband’s worsening illness flees to the desert to be alone. In the middle of Death Valley, she finds a cactus that may or may not be magical. Elle calls this surrealistic novel “funny, brilliant, gutting, and easily devoured over the course of one blissful afternoon.” 

“Size” by Vaclav Smil (William Morrow Paperbacks, $19.99). Smil, the distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba who has been selected by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers, offers a meditation on the effect that size has on biology, sociology and history. From viruses to blue whales, this ambitious book tries to explain why size does matter.

“Translation State” by Ann Leckie (Orbit, $19.99). The “Ancillary Justice” author returns with a new sci-fi novel about a translator who disappears, kicking off a dispute between multiple alien civilizations. This book, which graced many best-of lists on science fiction fansites across the internet last year, manages to walk the line between political thriller, space opera and a meditation on what it means to be a person in a society full of people.

“Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale” by Paul Yamazaki (Ode Books, $13.95). Yamazaki is one of the world’s greatest booksellers. He helped make San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore into an internationally beloved destination, and his memoir is a love letter to bookstores, booksellers and book-lovers of all stripes. (Bonus for Seattle readers: The foreword is written by Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company’s longtime readings coordinator and Yamazaki’s contemporary.)