New Book Releases for the Week of May 20, 2025
Featuring new book releases from Anna Malaika Tubbs, Robert Macfarlane, Greta Morgan, and Anna Mitchael.
What are the unseen forces that shape the world around us? In this week's new book releases roundup, four authors offer their perspectives. These books delve into the often-neglected histories of women and people of color, uncover hidden facets of nature, inspire us to embrace a quieter life, and challenge us to seek truths that go beyond simple happiness.
The Porchlight staff members choosing books each week include Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez. As expert booksellers, we browse publisher catalogs and explore new titles from across the book industry to discover what captures our interest, and we're excited to share our findings with readers like you.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are provided by their respective publishers.
Our Recommended Books This Week
Sally’s pick: Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us by Anna Malaika Tubbs, published by Flatiron Books
In 2021, Anna Malaika Tubbs published her debut book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. During her book tour, many readers asked Tubbs the same question: How was it that the incredible stories of these three mothers got erased from the annals of American history? This question prompted Tubbs to write her next book.
In Erased, Tubbs grapples with this conundrum: in many ways, women and people of color built the United States. And so why is it that their stories are so rarely commemorated or remembered? The answer is, in some ways, simple: racism and patriarchy have colluded to ensure white men are the ones recounting history. But through her research, Tubbs uncovered much more.
Building off contemporary historical research from books like How We Get Free and Caste, seminal civil rights thinkers such as Angela Davis and Gloria Anzaldúa, and her own personal experiences, Tubbs uses her latest text to rewrite American history from a new perspective: one where women of color are at the center.
Dylan’s pick: Is a River Alive? By Robert Macfarlane, published by W. W. Norton & Company
Hailed in the New York Times as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler,” Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.
Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled respectively by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, a stream who flows through his own years and days.
Powered by dazzling prose and lit throughout by other minds and voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.
Jasmine’s pick: The Lost Voice: A Memoir by Greta Morgan, published by HarperOne
In 2019, Greta Morgan was on the rise. She had toured with Vampire Weekend, collaborated with Jenny Lewis, and garnered critical acclaim with her own musical projects. But in March 2020, after contracting Covid-19, she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder with no known cure that left her unable to sing. Her once crystalline voice now reduced to a hush, she saw her career come to an abrupt standstill.
Beyond the physical ramifications, what does it mean to cultivate a true voice? Morgan’s loss launches her into a journey of grief and self-discovery, forcing her to broaden her artistic horizons and reconstruct her sense of self. Her narrative takes us on a whirlwind tour of music studios, band buses, and celebrity-filled backstage parties, but it also takes us to the red canyons of Utah and the spacious wilderness of the American Southwest. In these vast landscapes, Morgan finds unexpected community. In the silence, she learns how to listen to parts of herself she has neglected.
Questioning the purpose of creativity and what defines artistic passion, The Lost Voice is a raw and intimate portrait of grief, self-discovery, and the choice to keep living and creating.
Gabbi’s pick: They Will Tell You the World Is Yours: On Little Rebellions and Finding Your Way by Anna Mitchael, published by Convergent Books
They will tell you that a better version of yourself is waiting to be found.
Every day, we hear a version of this message, and so we search and strive. Yet none of the places we’ve been told to look—our careers, relationships, even dreams that come true—seem to give lasting satisfaction. After twenty years as a professional writer of other people’s truth, Anna Mitchael found herself at the same crossroads. Tired of reaching and wondering where it was all headed, she began asking questions.
They will tell you to cut the blooms off your roses so that the flowers can grow back bigger and better.
This book is an invitation that grew from those inquiries. A series of vignettes, as incisive as they are lyrical, paints a portrait of a woman growing from childhood into early adulthood, navigating family, friendships, identity, career ambitions, and love. While this woman moves through a time of crisis that ultimately turns into an awakening, we see her explore, fall down, and get back up. As she learns to sift the messages she is told, we, too, are encouraged to seek truth beyond what the world has prescribed for our happiness.
Even with our wild differences, I still believe in something greater we share: a spirit of divine love at our core that, no matter how far away we get, will always be calling us home.
For hearts in search of answers, this collection poses questions to help find lasting truth.
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