New sci-fi by Emily St. Jon Mandel, stunning poetry by Ocean Vuong, and more great books coming this April

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (April 5, Grove Press)Douglas Stuart dazzled 2020 readers with his debut novel Shuggie Bain, chronicling coming of age through the eyes of a young boy in ’80s Glasgow. Now, the Scottish-American author returns with Young Mungo–the stunning love story of two Glasgow teenagers battling not only the pains of first-love, but also the terrors of homophobia, the pressures of toxic masculinity, and the complexities Catholic-Protestant politics in the ’90s. As with Shuggie Bain, here Stuart combines extraordinary compassion for his characters with an unrelenting knack for creating fraught worlds to exquisite effect. The result is one of those extraordinary push and pull reads you feel smack-dab in the middle of your chest—heartbreaking yet hopeful. [Alison Foreman]