Looking Ahead: May Highlights

May's a big month for book releases, with publishers prepping for summer reads and Memorial Day weekend officially kicking off beach reading (OMG I'm already packing my sunscreen). It's also the beginning of the summer movie series, which means tie-ins and related reads abound. And last (but certainly not least, thanks for reading, Mom!), May is the month of Mother's Day, which means yet another influx of books about mothers and daughters, none of which are featured below. But not because I don't love my Mom. Just because those books don't look as good as these do:

Call Me Zelda, by Erika Robuck (NAL, May 7) I read Erika's Hemingway's Girl last year and loved it, and that was before I found out she was a local-to-me author. Don't doubt for a second that I didn't jump at the chance to read her newest novel, which focuses on a fictionalized friendship between the real Zelda Fitzgerald and the imagined nurse Anna Howard. This one's perfect for fans of Z: A Novel of Zelda (St. Martin's, March 2013), and will hit shelves just in time for the May 10th release of the new Gatsby movie. Oh, and if you're in the Annapolis area, Erika will be reading and signing at the Annapolis B&N on May 10th.

Good Kings Bad Kings, by Susan Nussbaum (Algonquin, May 28): I finished this last weekend and it took me over a week to write a review for Shelf Awareness, simply because I couldn't find the words to express how wonderful this is. And heartbreaking. Telling the story of the dysfunctional and often cruel ILLC, a nursing home for juveniles with disabilities, it will make you reconsider every assumption you've ever made about what it means to be disabled--especially when you lack the resources or support that so many of us take for granted.

The World's Strongest Librarian, by Josh Hanagarne (Gotham, May 2): The title alone is enough to make me want to read this one. The publisher's blurb claims that the book "illuminates the mysteries of this little-understood disorder, as well as the very different worlds of strongman training and modern libraries." Sign. Me. Up.

Homeward Bound, by Emily Matchar (Simon & Schuster, May 7): I read Jessica Valenti's Why Have Kids? last fall, and have had my eye out for more in the same vein ever since. While this tackles overall domesticity, not parenting and motherhood specifically, it sounds like it will scratch all kinds of thinky gender-study itches. The sociology minor in me is squealing with delight.

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And look, I even ended up with an entirely accidental even split between fiction and non-fiction - just like my April recap. I'm sensing a trend, here, friends.