April 18, 2026
This week features three novelists with well-earned reputations for offering tips on living. We have the return, after a decade, of an author who has been to Hollywood and back; a much-anticipated third novel from a writer with an Atlantic magazine column called “Brooklyn, Everywhere;” and the happy resurgence of a novelist whose work regularly features a vibrant New Orleans. There is also a necessary book about the transformative power of art, and a collection from an Irish-born writer whose exquisite work we are proud to present at The Center.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Go Gentle
By MARIA SEMPLE
Published by G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Semple’s new semi-autobiographical novel is a wild ride about the toxicity of Hollywood, the fallout from #MeToo, and the desire for a simpler life. Adora Hazzard’s stint writing for an SNL-like show was exciting—until it wasn’t. When she is thrown out, she signs an NDA. Years later, she is a mother, a philosophy tutor to wealthy young twins, and a staunch follower of Stoicism. But as her Hollywood experience resurfaces in the press, she becomes embroiled in a caper-like mystery involving wealthy art donors, a private library, and the Venus de Milo. Enter a mysterious, handsome man… Semple has concocted a compulsively readable modern novel about how to live.
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How It Feels to Be Alive
By MEGAN O’GRADY
Published by FSG
O’Grady, T magazine’s “Culture Therapist,” has put together a wonderfully welcome book—a hopeful treatise referred to as a mash-up of arts criticism and personal narrative. Opening with a vivid account of viewing color and light through James Turrell’s immersive Skyspace, she concludes: “There is an ethics to seeing, to being precise at how we look at things.” She has selected five artists to illustrate how art can change your life: minimalist painter and printmaker Agnes Martin, photographer Carrie Mae Weems, conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, visual artist Pope.L, and sculptor Beverly Pepper. O’Grady cites the desire to explore “the tangle of art and life,” which she has done beautifully.
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The News from Dublin
By COLM TÓIBÍN
Published by SCRIBNER
Whether exploring Irish characters in Brooklyn and Long Island or fictionalizing the lives of Thomas Mann and Henry James, Tóibín’s reputation as one of our best living writers is always in evidence. In “Journey to Galway,” a mother relives the news that her son, a fighter pilot, is dead. (“Each morning it occurred to her that this might be the day, the day when Robert’s luck ran out…”) From there, Tóibín tenderly reveals both the son’s character and his infidelity. Whether in Ireland, Spain, or America, all nine stories are told in Tóibín’s signature scintillating and deceptively powerful prose. It is an essential collection.
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The Oyster Diaries
By NANCY LEMANN
Published by NYRB
NYRB is spearheading a revival of Lemann’s work and has just reissued her classic 1985 debut Lives of the Saints. In her new novel, which features a character from Saints, we move between New Orleans and Washington, DC, as Delery Anhalt reckons with midlife and ruminates on her shaky marriage, her regrets, and her father’s aging. One delight is her recounting of his habit of grading oysters from a local restaurant—which she calls “the work of a madman” (“Sept. 5-terrible; Sept. 7-no good; Sept. 10-terrible; Sept. 12-wonderful”). The diaries trace her life both forward and backward, forming a lovely, rueful portrait that will encourage you to revisit her earlier work.
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Last Night in Brooklyn
By XOCHITL GONZALEZ
Published by FLATIRON BOOKS
Gonzalez’s third novel packs a punch while being totally entertaining. Set in our own Fort Greene, it unfolds as a Gatsbyesque story of money and ambition among the neighborhood’s people of color. And what rich world-building she achieves in her recreation of 2007 Brooklyn. Alicia, 26, with a nice, smart, long-distance fiancé, is feeling a little restless. When her cousin moves to the neighborhood and she gets more involved with her larger-than-life friend La Garza (and the parties she throws), things begin to shift—and the tension builds. Gonzalez’s vivid portrait of a time and place, and all the complications of race and class that accompany it, is perfectly calibrated.
