With so many great books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the mix. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline and Surety by Anna Zumbahlen.
“Mama says we eat with our eyes.” Hungered (Henry Holt, May 2026) by Amanda Rizkalla. First book, novel. Agent: Ayesha Pande. Editor: Retha Powers. Publicist: Catryn Silbersack.
“Inside, we greet the light.” How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters With Art and Our Selves (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, April 2026) by Megan O’Grady. First book, memoir. Agent: Sarah Burnes. Editor: Jenna Johnson. Publicist: Jillian Briglia.
“Still ideals approach through rendering rains and profiles.” Surety (Inlandia Institute, April 2026) by Anna Zumbahlen. First book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Cati Porter. Publicist: Mckenna Deluca-Martinez.
“We are born in gravel.” Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood (Bloomsbury, May 2026) by Joseph Osmundson. Fourth book, nonfiction. Agent: Kent D. Wolf. Editor: Mo Crist. Publicist: Amanda Dissinger.
“My window faces the last tree in our yard.” The Memory Museum (Graywolf Press, April 2026) by M Lin. First book, story collection. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff. Editors: Anni Liu and Ethan Nosowsky. Publicist: Caelan Ernest Nardone.
“We break in to houses after church.” The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming (Milkweed Editions, April 2026) by Angela Pelster. Second book, essay collection. Agent: Samantha Shea. Editor: Daniel Slager. Publicist: Natalie Wollenzien.
“Despite the extravagance of Fanny’s lace wedding gown, ordered from France, the profusion of pink peonies, grown in a side garden for the occasion, and the three-hundred-pound hog turning on a spit, all anyone could talk about were the twins from Siam.” The Foursome (Mariner Books, May 2026) by Christina Baker Kline. Eleventh book, tenth novel. Agent: Eric Simonoff. Editor: Caroline Zancan. Publicist: Heidi Richter.
“There had been many hotel rooms for the adulterers, currently peacefully asleep in a large white bed.” Permanence (Avid Reader Press, April 2026) by Sophie Mackintosh. Fourth book, fourth novel. Agent: Grainne Fox. Editor: Margo Shickmanter. Publicist: Rhina Garcia.
“I know the bitter ones.” Strange Gift (Wandering Aengus Press, April 2026) by Veronica Kornberg. First book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Tina Schumann. Publicists: Michelle Politiski and Holly Watson.
“On one of the days I found my gender I was in my white dotted orange / Punjabi suit sans dupatta I always went sans dupatta because a dean at / the arts college told me I had to wear the dupatta always while working / and when I asked him why he said to me with smiling eyes in his third / language and my first and only fluent one ‘So you always look like a pretty / girl!’” The Daughter Industry: A Hauntological Confession, Alternative History, Speculative Autopoetics in Three Acts With Seven Players (Nightboat Books, April 2026) by Soham Patel. Fourth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editors: Lindsey Boldt and Naima Yael Tokunow. Publicist: Dante Silva.
“Her body is completely stuck.” My World Is Melting: Living With Climate Change in Svalbard (University of Wisconsin Press, May 2026) by Line Nagell Ylvisåker, translated from the Norwegian by Kelsey Camacho. First book, nonfiction. Agent: Northern Stories. Editor: Dan Crissman. Publicist: Alison Shay.
“These creamy-seeming salty waves / this morning washing all this / demon DNA onto the shore, along // with all those demons’ broken plastic sandals / tossed off all these decks of demon / cruise ships & out of their / demonic helicopters.” I Was Bonnie & Clyde (Copper Canyon Press, May 2026) by Laura Kasischke. Twenty-second book, eleventh poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Michael Wiegers. Publicist: Ryo Yamaguchi.
