Books By Defectors
Changeover, by Giri Nathan
In 2022, I watched a U.S. Open match so good that a thought got wedged in my head: If I'm gonna write a tennis book, it's gotta be about those two fellas. In 2024, the fellas in question, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, had a season so good that it squeezed the book out of my head and onto the page. They split the four major titles cleanly amongst themselves and established a beautiful contrast in style. I'd spent years wondering when we'd see the end of the "Big Three" era of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic—it all happened in 2024. Over the course of that year, these guys emerged, receded, cried, howled, won, doped, learned, lost. This book explains that transition between eras, and the Sinner-Alcaraz rivalry that could define the decade ahead. You don't need to know anything about tennis's past to get caught up on its present. It is suitable for both the Challengers-pilled zoomer in your life and the old-school tennis boomer. It's out in August 2025, and you can preorder it here.
You Didn't Hear This From Me, by Kelsey McKinney
I spent many months telling editors that I didn't want to write a book about gossip, because I wasn't sure what it would mean to me to do so. Then I was lucky enough to read my co-owner Sabrina Imbler's How Far The Light Reaches as a galley, and I realized just how much can be done with a blend of research and memoir and tiny observations. You Didn't Hear This From Me isn't made of stories the way Normal Gossip is. It's made of questions: the ones I have about gossip, the ones that have emerged from thinking about it so much, and the ones I'm not sure will ever be answered. I'm really proud of it! You can buy it at your local bookstore, or order it here.
How Far The Light Reaches, by Sabrina Imbler
When I started writing this book I thought it would be extremely cool and fun to write a book. Now I know it is both very nerdy and very hard to write a book! It can take years and years and when you are done, it feels like someone put you through a taffy-pulling machine. Anyway, this weird little book is basically a memoir told through the lives of 10 sea creatures (one is actually a goldfish but please don't tell anyone!) The book also features a crab, a whale, a jellyfish, a worm, a cuttlefish, an octopus, and a blob-like gelatinous zooplankton called a salp, which is actually one of our closest living invertebrate relatives. It's very earnest and gay, and you can buy it at your local bookstore or order it here.
God Spare The Girls, by Kelsey McKinney
I wrote a whole novel. It is called God Spare The Girls, and I worked so hard on it that I think I have like 90 percent of the book memorized. There is not one sport in the whole book, but there is a lot of really dramatic plot, some exegesis, and a megachurch built inside a former grocery store. I have never worked harder on anything in my entire life, so please buy it (at your local independent bookstore or here) so that maybe they will let me write another!
The Night The Lights Went Out, by Drew Magary
Sometime around midnight on the night of Dec. 5, 2018, I collapsed on the floor of a karaoke lounge, fracturing my skull in three places and suffering an inexplicable brain hemorrhage that left me comatose for over two weeks and disabled for much longer. No one could tell me why this happened. Or how. I was Drew Magary one moment and then suddenly another Drew Magary once I hit that floor. It’s an odd thing, living inside a mind you’re not sure you know anymore, one that you don’t WANT to know anymore. It’s an even odder thing for the people who love you: the people who saved your life, the people who watched you die and are desperate for you to understand—in the most intimate terms—how close you came to the end. The Night the Lights Went Out is a book about how I finally came to understand that. You can buy it now from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Target, and everywhere else. Watch your step.