14 new books for your to-read pile, including memoirs from Liza Minnelli, Lena Dunham and a grunge pioneer

Judy Blume: A Life

Mark Oppenheimer

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 480 pages, $48.99

Oppenheimer’s biography of the beloved young-adult fiction writer is based on interviews he conducted with Blume and access to her archive of notes and personal correspondences. Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” “Superfudge” and “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” earned her a legion of fans worldwide, and Oppenheimer delves into her childhood and marriages. (March 10)

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This

Liza Minnelli

Grand Central Publishing, 448 pages, $47

Broadway superstar, gay icon, style troubadour and the scion of screen legends Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Minnelli has had a career that’s the stuff of showbiz legend. With the assistance of Michael Feinstein, founder of the Great American Songbook Foundation and Minnelli’s longtime collaborator, the EGOT-winning star details her feuds, friendships and romances. (March 10)

My Summer Vacation

Zeenat Nagree

Vehicule Press, 200 pages, $22.95

In this autofictional debut, art curator and writer Nagree revisits a momentous summer of her youth in Mumbai during a time of political instability. A school essay assignment encouraging students to recount their summer holidays has seismic implications for the 12-year-old Zeenat, who grows increasingly aware of the patriarchal structures of her surroundings and the end of her childhood freedom. (March 20)

Amapiano Eyes

D. Nandi Odhiambo

Book*hug Press, 210 pages, $24.95

Described as a literary noir thriller, this globe-trotting novel follows deejay and construction worker Daliso Okoth and his girlfriend Norrie Vee after their designer-drug side hustle is kiboshed by a deal gone bad. Forced into an undignified arrangement with an ex-police detective, the two find their pandemic dilemmas on the islands of Hawaii scored with painful reminiscences of Kenya and Winnipeg. (March 24)

Son of Nobody

Yann Martell

Knopf Canada, 352 pages, $26.95

“The Life of Pi” author’s latest is a reimagining of the Trojan War told from the perspectives of an ancient warrior and a scholar in the modern day. Psoas of Midea is a goatherd who abandons his family to fight Menelaus with the Achaeans; his exploits are chronicled in a Greek text called “The Psoad,” and Harlowe Donne, a Canadian academic translating the lost work, encounters strange symmetries intertwining his life with a ghost from antiquity. (March 31)

Famesick

Lena Dunham

Doubleday Canada, 416 pages, $42

With her hit TV series “Girls,” Dunham became synonymous with millennial malaise and cantankerous romantic savoir faire. In her new memoir, “Famesick,” she tackles her struggles with benzodiazepine addiction, creative burnout and the question of whether the mortification and exposure that props up fame is worth enduring. (April 14)

John of John

Douglas Stuart

Knopf Canada, 416 pages, $38

John-Calum Macleod has just concluded his art-school education, but he can think of nothing else to do than return home to the Hebridean island of Harris. He returns to a life of sheep farming with his elderly and religious father, but his life of impiety puts him at odds with his Presbyterian Church and social environs. The follow up to Stuart’s “Young Mungo” and the Booker Prize-winning “Shuggie Bain,” “John of John” continues the Scottish American writer’s examination of working-class suffering and filial obligations. (May 5)

Mom Camp

Véronique Darwin

Assembly Press, 276 pages, $23.95

In Darwin’s experimental hybrid novel, interlocking stories and one novella develop in parallel, presenting a woman’s self-compartmentalization of her numerous identities, as well as the fragmentation other women feel in the roles that they have been assigned. The delicate psychic architecture behind one’s conception of selfhood is exposed in this promising debut collection. (May 5)

A Screaming Life

Kim Thayil

William Morrow, 320 pages, $37.99

In 1984, lead guitarist Thayil formed Soundgarden with high school friend Hira Yamamoto and roommate Chris Cornell. For more than 40 years, Thayil has been an ambassador for the grunge music scene that emerged out of Seattle, Wash., in the late ’80s. His first memoir chronicles the band’s beginnings and Cornell’s untimely death. (May 19)

Mostly Hero

Anna Burns

Faber Stories, 112 pages, $29.50

Burns’ burlesque of superhero physics is an ironic romp through the two-dimensional, four-colour world of comic books. An expanded version of Burns’ 2014 short story, this novella deconstructs the mythic structure of the hero’s journey, both in terms of what readers find compelling about the quest narrative, and the demanding requirements of one’s suspension of disbelief. (May 19)

Silver Lake

Alex Pugsley

Biblioasis, 180 pages, $24.95

The conclusion to Pugsley’s Aubrey McKee trilogy is set in the trendy Silver Lake neighbourhood of East Los Angeles, where McKee finds himself down on his luck until a chance hire as a B-movie assistant leads to bigger and better things. After stints as a screenwriter, Aubrey ascends the La La Land ladder until he is directing his debut feature, but he will first have to run the gauntlet of Victoria’s Secret models and Halifax ex-pats before his passion project can come to fruition. (May 19)

Library of Brothel

Anakana Schofield

Knopf Canada, 272 pages, $35

The Irish Canadian author of “Martin John” and “Malarky” returns with a paradox-laden record of a strange building, where an ominous set of rules welcomes all who enter its doors. Written in Schofield’s inimitable style and featuring bold typographical flourishes, “Library of Brothel” will appeal to aficionados of puzzle-box literary mischief made famous by Barthelme, Barnes and Borges. (May 26)

The Frenzy

Joyce Carol Oates

Hogarth, 336 pages, $39.99

The unifying feature of all the stories in JOates’ latest collection is a state of frenzy that visits the lives of people when they are most vulnerable. These moments of crisis become a terrible crossroads for protagonists participating in their own unravelling or reaching maturity with a graceless depletion. Whether involving a bicycle accident on a bridge or a hiker stumbling onto a lover’s quarrel, these vignettes are psychological profiles into a dark humanism. (June 16)

The Longest Death

Kevin Jagernauth

Spiderline, 320 pages, 26.99

Montreal-based critic and reviewer Jagernauth makes his impressive debut with a crime novel about a self-effacing employee at a safe deposit company who falls in love with a con man. Together, they plot to rob a vault, but the lovers run afoul of other criminals hoping to take a cut of their ill-gotten gains. (June 16)