Five books to read in April 2016

I was surprised while making this list how excited I was about a book written by the dude from The X-Files. This month is filled with books from unknowns, authors trying to avoid the sophomore slump and political non-fiction. Check out some of these books this spring.

Bucky F*cking Dent – David Duchovny (4/5)

Duchovny said this wasn’t a baseball book, but a story about fathers and sons as well as romance set against baseball. The titular Dent is a real life hero or villain depending on if you’re a Yankees or Red Sox fan. In a tie-breaker game to get into the playoffs in 1978. Spoiler: the Yankee player crushes a homer as well as all of New England’s hearts. But again, this is about more than baseball.

Tuesday Nights in 1980 – Molly Prentiss (4/5)

The New York City art world in 1980 was on fire. The city was also fighting commercialization. In the midst of all of this is an art critic named James, an Argentinian exile called Raul, and the fresh-off-the-bus from Idaho Lucy. Over the course of one year, their lives will shift in unexpected ways. They’ll have to learn to rebound after crushing losses.

Now & Again – Charlotte Rogan (4/5)

Rogan’s follow-up to The Lifeboat is about Maggie. She’s a wife and mother in a predictable life pattern. Then she begins to start noticed all of the injustices in the world. There’s also Penn. He’s the reluctant heir to a family fortune and makes a disastrous decision. Rogan uses these two stories to explore the interconnectedness of our lives.

The Killing of Osama bin Laden – Seymour M. Hersh (4/12)

Hersh wrote a series of essays about the end of bin Laden’s life. In those he explored the White House’s role in everything. This book expands those ideas and asks whether or not the Obama administration brought the hope and change it promised, or if it continued the covert lies of the Bush administration before it.

Hystopia – David Means (4/19)

Kennedy survives the assassination attempt on his life and has created the Psych Corps. The goal of this new government agency is to keep America’s mental state safe. This alternate history novel explores how the world might have been in this world. The book uses a returning Vietnam soldier who wants to write a book as the gravitational center of its core.