From maqam-influenced jazz on vinyl to a new book about Sharjah, our pick of physical collectables this month

In a world of AI slop and constant social media streams, taking a moment to enjoy physical media has become more important than ever.

We asked our team to round up some of the most exciting arrivals across literature, music and cinema this month.

Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben (Penguin/Century)

Gone Before Goodbye is Reese Witherspoon's debut, co-written by Harlan Coben. Photo: Penguin

Since its founding in 2017, Reese Witherspoon’s book club has boosted the profiles of several female authors. And now, book lovers will see if it can do the same for the Oscar-winning actress as she makes her writing debut. But Witherspoon is not going at it solo. She’s employed the help of bestselling author Harlan Coben.

Titled Gone Before Goodbye, the suspense novel follows Maggie McCabe, a surgeon whose life unravels after a string of tragedies cost her her career and purpose. When a former colleague offers Maggie a second chance treating a high-profile patient overseas, she seizes the opportunity, only for the patient to vanish under suspicious circumstances. Maggie then finds herself entangled in a deadly conspiracy and is forced to go on the run to uncover the truth before she becomes the next to disappear.

David Tusing, assistant features editor

Hell's Angels (The Criterion Collection)

Hell's Angels is the result of Howard Hughes's descent into madness as portrayed in The Aviator. Photo: The Criterion Collection

Many will recognise Howard Hughes from Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, where Leonardo DiCaprio captured both the man and his eccentricities with brilliance. In that film, we see Hughes pour a fortune into a project he believed would revolutionise cinema – and make him a fortune in return.

That film was Hell’s Angels, a First World War epic that consumed three years of his life. Starring Ben Lyon, James Hall and Jean Harlow, it follows two brothers on diverging paths amid the chaos of war. Though it became one of the highest-grossing sound films of its time, it failed to recoup its enormous budget, making it a spectacular, if fascinating, flop.

Now, Hell’s Angels returns in all its aerial-dogfighting glory in a 4K Blu-ray restoration from the Criterion Collection, complete with special features that delve deeper into its turbulent creation.

Faisal Al Zaabi, gaming journalist

New Quartet Live at Pierre Boulez Saal by Amir ElSaffar (Maqam Records)

New Quartet Live captures the first musical encounter between trumpeter Amir ElSaffar’s trio – drummer Tomas Fujiwara and tenor saxophonist Ole Mathisen – and pianist Tania Giannouli on vinyl. Recorded at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, the performance brims with spirited, tempestuous moments.

ElSaffar’s trumpet, blending Arabic maqam and jazz influences, intertwines with Mathisen’s saxophone in hypnotic counterpoint, while Giannouli’s piano grounds the exchange with a steady, propulsive groove. Fujiwara’s drumming brings polyrhythmic tension and lift – a dynamic made all the more striking in this bass-less ensemble.

The collaboration emerged from a short residency at the Berlin concert hall, comprising two days of rehearsal, a sold-out concert and a recording session – now preserved on this evocative vinyl release.

Razmig Bedirian, arts and culture writer

Sharjah: The Capital of Culture (Assouline)

The latest entry into the series of Assouline books about the UAE. Photo: Assouline

Sharjah is the latest city to get the Assouline treatment by way of a coffee-table book that honours the emirate’s status as a regional creative hub. It reflects on the cultural expression of Sharjah’s architecture, its focus on ecotourism, ecology and creative industries including literature and film, and is an impressive addition to my coffee-table book collection I cannot wait to make.

Farah Andrews, head of features

Where Do I Go? by Rania Matar (Kaph)

In Where Do I Go?, Rania Matar collaborates with Lebanese women to tell their story through portraits. Photo: Kaph

This year marks 50 years since the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War – offering a time to both memorialise and warn of what is left unhealed. In the photobook, Where Do I Go?, Rania Matar collaborates with Lebanese women to tell their story through portraits and through an understanding of their relationship to a beautiful, but broken country. Each image is the result of collaboration. Matar’s subjects are not simply photographed, they are participants active in their own image-making. The process unfolds organically, with each woman reclaiming her place within the frame and, symbolically, within her country.

“While my photographs may not provide solutions or closure,” Matar writes, “I hope they nevertheless invite the viewer to pause and find the beauty, the hope, the shared humanity and the grace that still exist despite everything. They are my love letters to the women of Lebanon. This project is for us all: the ones who stayed and the ones who left but can never leave.”

Nasri Atallah, TN Magazine editor