With so many great books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including The Burrow by Melanie Cheng and Roman Year by André Aciman.
“How I start a prayer: with the same hand I use / to lift food to my mouth, I draw a line down / to my navel pulling a zipper or curtain string / to reveal the small wolf in my belly, the one I feed / fat and vinegar.” Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, October 2024) by Albert Abonado. Second book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Nicole-Anne Keyton. Publicist: Mei Su Bailey.
“I was raised to fear the water.” Women Surrounded by Water (Mad Creek Books, November 2024) by Patricia Coral. First book, memoir. Agent: None. Editor: Kristen Elias Rowley. Publicist: Samara Rafert.
“They found him through an advertisement on Gumtree.” The Burrow (Tin House, November 2024) by Melanie Cheng. Third book, novel. Agent: Clare Forster. Editor: Masie Cochran. Publicist: Becky Kraemer.
“Pronouncing a word that begins and ends with T, with real, dew-glowing hair, with ears hardening to a slow song coming from me.” The Hormone of Darkness: A Playlist (Graywolf Press, October 2024) by Tilsa Otta, translated from the Spanish by Farid Matuk. First book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Carmen Giménez. Publicist: Caelan Ernest Nardone.
“Frost dusted Fourteenth Street; the taxi headed eastward, away from the hospital, along the imaginary line that separated downtown from the rest of this dark and morbid city.” I Will Do Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love (Abrams Press, October 2024) by Charles Bock. Third book, memoir. Agent: Barbara Jones. Editor: Jamison Stoltz. Publicist: Taryn Roeder.
“‘Why can’t we buy pinot noir from Walmart?’ Sameer says as he stacks dinner plates in the dishwasher.” Diversity Quota (University of Wisconsin Press, October 2024) by Ranjan Adiga. First book, story collection. Agent: Kanishka Gupta. Editor: Dennis Lloyd. Publicist: Alison Shay.
“may he have new life like the fall / fallen tree, wet moist rotten enough / to see shoots stalks branches & green / leaves (& may the roots) grow into his side.” Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, October 2024) by A. B. Spellman. Third book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Lauri Scheyer. Publicist: Stephanie Elliott Prieto.
“The Amateur Boxer, by William Ranken: online, its credit tells me it lives at the Salford Museum in Manchester, a place I’ve never been.” The Charterhouse of Padma (Godine, October 2024) by Padma Viswanathan. Fourth book, novel. Agent: Anjali Singh. Editor: Celia Johnson. Publicist: Caroline Brink.
“Once upon a time, there was a plague.” Mysticism (New York Review Books, October 2024) by Simon Critchley. Twenty-third book, nonfiction. Agent: Nemonie Craven Roderick. Editor: Edwin Frank. Publicist: Nicholas During.
“If I were straight, or if I lived in one of a handful of cities—really, a handful of neighborhoods—it could happen at a coffee shop.” The Spring Before Obergefell (University of Nebraska Press, October 2024) by Ben Grossberg. Fifth book, first novel. Agent: None. Editor: Courtney Ochsner. Publicist: Tayler Lord.
“What is that man doing?” An Authentic Life (Copper Canyon Press, October 2024) by Jennifer Chang. Third book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Michael Wiegers. Publicist: Ryo Yamaguchi.
“‘I am not a monster, you know, and no ogre either,’ said my great-uncle Claude as he was about to walk out of our apartment and head toward the stairway.” Roman Year (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2024) by André Aciman. Thirteenth book, second memoir. Agent: Lynn Nesbit. Editor: Jonathan Galassi. Publicist: Stephen Weil.
