Don DeLillo Re-enters the Book Market as Cleo Birdwell

Novelists, historians, and sports writers have new titles hitting shelves this month. Among them is a rare republication of a work by one of America's most famous living authors, a book he spent forty years trying to keep quiet.

Three major narratives define the current literary market. First, Louise Kennedy returns with her second novel, Stations. The Northern Irish writer, who spent nearly three decades as a chef before turning to fiction, describes her shift to writing as "strangely liberating." Like her debut, Trespasses, the new book examines the fallout of a young love, this time focused on family histories rather than religious differences.

Second, Mary Beth Keane publishes Whale Harbor. In a 2019 review of her previous work, Fresh Air critic Maureen Corrigan compared Keane to Ann Patchett, noting both authors transform "closely-observed domestic tale" into universal stories. Keane's new novel follows an Irish father and his sons across years, seas, and continents, continuing that style of sweeping domestic narrative.

Third, Matt O'Hara offers a nonfiction account of curare, a poison from the Amazon known as "flying death." O'Hara, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, traces the 1930s quest to turn this blowdart toxin into a medicine. The pursuit spanned continents and created new pharmacology avenues while largely erasing the role of the Amazon tribes who first used the herbal mixture.

Contextualizing these releases, the month also sees Daisy Johnson publish Long Wave. Johnson, who became the youngest ever Booker Prize finalist at age 27 in 2018, continues her work with spare prose and foreboding atmospheres. The novel centers on women carrying family bonds that feel like broken glass.

Tahmima Anam's Uprising provides a grim look at a river island in Bangladesh. The story is told largely from the perspective of children born to women trapped in forced prostitution. Climate change raises the waters around the island, making escape difficult for the residents and their children, though the arrival of a new girl begins to shift the community's dynamic.

The most unusual entry is Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League. Written under the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell, the book was published more than forty years before the current trend of hockey romance novels. The author is Don DeLillo, who did not publicly acknowledge writing the book until 2020. Copies became scarce, and DeLillo approved a new printing earlier this year. The preface contains only a business card with his name and the statement: "I don't want to talk about it."