books published july 2021

From Appleseed to XOXO .

Summer is finally upon us, folks, and it’s bringing an abundance of great new books with it. Readers across the U.S. are finalizing their summer reading lists , trying to decide which books to take on vacation, whether in a carry-on or a beach bag. But If no recently released book has tickled your vacation-reading fancy so far, one of July’s hot new releases is sure to hit the spot.

The best books hitting stores this month include rom-coms from Jasmine Guillory and Sonali Dev, memoirs from Precious Brady-Davis and Shiori Ito, thrillers from Liv Constantine and Karin Slaughter , and speculative novels from Elizabeth Lim and Shelley Parker-Chan — among many, many more. There’s something for everyone landing in stores this month, and Bustle has pulled together a list of the month’s biggest and brightest new titles for you to check out.

Presented below for your reading pleasure, the 43 most anticipated books of July 2021.

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I Have Always Been Me

Raised in a midwestern Pentecostal church, Precious Brady-Davis — as a biracial trans girl in the foster-care system — never felt as if she fit in. Little did she realize, she was born to stand out instead. In I Have Always Been Me , Brady-Davis revisits her childhood in Omaha, Nebraska, her college drag career, and her transition journey.

The Seven Day Switch

No one would ever expect Celeste and Wendy to be friends. One’s a crunchy, hands-on supermom, the other’s a workaholic who unapologetically prioritizes her career — and neither has anything good to say about the other. But when a booze-filled party lands them in a Freaky Friday -style body swap, Celeste and Wendy find out just how similar their lives really are, in Kelly Harms’ The Seven Day Switch .

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

After she answers an ad for free therapy at a local Catholic church, Gilda, an atheist lesbian, is mistaken for a job applicant. She soon finds herself working as the replacement for the church’s recently deceased receptionist, Grace, and fielding emails from Grace’s old friend — who doesn’t seem to know the woman is dead — in Emily Austin’s darkly funny debut.

The Very Nice Box

Years after the unexpected death of her girlfriend, Ava spends her days working at STÄDA. Her job at the Brooklyn furniture store provides her with a much-needed distraction from her lingering pain, but everything changes when she meets Mat. Her new boss is handsome and charming, and as they strike up an unanticipated relationship, things seem to be looking up for Ava. When she finds out the secret Mat’s been keeping from her, however, Ava’s life jerks into another surprise twist .

The Stranger in the Mirror

From the author of The Last Mrs. Parrish comes The Stranger in the Mirror , an all-new psychological thriller in which two narrative threads — one about a missing wife and mother, the other regarding a bride-to-be with no memory of her past — become hopelessly tangled.

Incense and Sensibility

Traumatized by a hate crime that hurt a close friend, Yash Raje is forced to put his campaign for Governor of California on hold. Yash’s family arranges for him to take lessons in stress management from his childhood friend, India Dashwood. Unbeknownst to them, Yash and India had a brief, but passionate, affair 10 years ago. It’s a secret that could put a stop to Yash’s political aspirations for good... but could it still be worth revealing?

Dear Miss Metropolitan

When two women are rescued from their captor’s Queens residence, a neighboring newspaper columnist can’t help but be drawn into their mystery. As the two survivors navigate life on the other side of captivity, and wrestle with the salvation that never came for their still-missing friend, Miss Metropolitan finds herself questioning how she missed the clues about the women’s plight, hidden under her nose for years.

Four years after the police forced her to reenact her assault before telling her that her assailant, Noriyuki Yamaguchi — then a prominent journalist with the Tokyo Broadcasting System — could not be prosecuted for rape, Shiori Ito — who was a Thomson Reuters intern at the time of the assault — won a civil suit against Yamaguchi, when a judge ruled that she “had not consented to the act” in 2019. Hailed as “the memoir that sparked Japan’s #MeToo movement,” Black Box tells the story of Ito’s quest for justice.

Rise to the Sun

You Should See Me in a Crown author Leah Johnson returns to stores this month with Rise to the Sun . Two heartbroken, queer Black girls, Toni and Olivia, connect at a weekend music festival. One’s mourning the loss of her father, and the other’s still reeling from a bad breakup — and they’re both about to get so much more out of this getaway than they ever imagined.

The Belle Époque: A Cultural History, Paris and Beyond

Moulin Rouge fans, take note! If you’ve ever wanted to know more about Christian and Satine’s world, Dominique Kalifa’s The Belle Époque is here to give you all the juicy details about life and love in turn-of-the-century France.

Six Crimson Cranes

Spin the Dawn author Elizabeth Lim is back with an all-new YA adventure this month. This retelling of “The Wild Swans” transports readers to Kiata, where a young princess resorts to magic to avoid her upcoming wedding, setting off a disastrous series of events. After her stepmother discovers Shiori’s hidden magical talents, she curses all of her stepchildren, turning the princess’ six brothers into cranes and warning Shiori that she must remain silent, or else the cranes will die. As the exiled princess searches for answers, it soon becomes clear that her former intended may be the only ally she has in the coming battle.

An unsuspecting pilot must make a terrible choice in Falling , the debut novel from former flight attendant T.J. Newman. After taking off from LAX on a flight to JFK, Captain Bill Hoffman learns that his wife and children have been kidnapped... and that’s not even the worst part. Not only will these criminals murder Bill’s family if he speaks up, but the captors are also threatening to kill their victims unless Bill goes through with the unthinkable: intentionally crash his plane.

Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship

Catherine Raven’s always been drawn to the wilds, and she’s never longed for companionship from other humans. But when a fox began visiting her off-the-grid Montana home at the same time every day, Raven couldn’t help but be curious about what he wanted. So begins the story of their “uncommon friendship,” recounted here in Fox and I .

The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It

Our oceans’ deepest depths are home to creatures that seem downright alien, even when compared to their counterparts in shallower zones. Helen Scales brings these sea-dwellers, as well as the fascinating features of their native environments, to light in The Brilliant Abyss .

The Startup Wife

The trajectory of one brilliant woman’s life changes entirely in Tahmima Anam’s The Startup Wife . After falling into a whirlwind romance with her childhood crush, Asha gives up on pursuing her doctorate, marries Cyrus, and follows him to work at a tech incubator. There, she develops a new app that could change the world, replacing all religious rituals with personalized, virtual faith practices. But when credit that should be Asha’s begins to trickle away, can she and Cyrus survive the coming storm?

It Happened One Summer

Cut off from their wealthy family’s coffers after one’s party-girl lifestyle grows too chaotic, sisters Piper and Hannah find themselves stuck in Westport: a tiny fishing town in the Pacific Northwest, where their late father died when the girls were young. It doesn’t take long for one of the locals, a prickly sea captain named Brendan, to make it clear: no one in Westport thinks pampered Piper can cut it in the Washington wilds. Little does Brendan know that Piper is headstrong enough to prove him wrong, if only out of spite.

We Were Never Here

Long-distance BFFs Kristen and Emily reunite every year to vacation together. But when two people close to them die in two years, Emily begins to wonder if Kristen is telling her the truth about what happens when Emily isn’t looking. Things don’t get any easier to process when Kristen shows up at Emily’s door for an unscheduled visit. Now, Emily has to decide how far she’s willing to go to protect a friend who may not have her best interests at heart, in Andrea Bartz’s We Were Never Here .

From the author of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods comes Appleseed : a sprawling cli-fi novel that probes humanity’s relationship to nature across time. Moving from the wilds of 18th century Ohio, to a near-future moment in which a Monsanto-esque company has monopolized necessities, and on to a far-future ice age, Appleseed is a gripping and timely read for 2021.

Well, This Is Exhausting

GQ ’s Sophia Benoit examines contemporary womanhood in her debut essay collection, Well, This Is Exhausting . For anyone who’s grappling lingering impostor syndrome, looks like they have it all figured out but are still foundering in some unseen area of life, or has tried to be a flawless feminist in the new millennium, this

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Record of a Spaceborn Few author Becky Chambers begins a new series with A Psalm for the Wild-Built . Centuries after robots gained sentience and left human civilization behind to live in the world’s forests, one robot emerges from obscurity to ask one question of a tea monk: What do people need? What begins as a simple question soon turns into a philosophical journey, as Sibling Dex teaches Mosscap about their way of life.

Embassy Wife

Amanda gives up a career in Silicon Valley to follow her husband, a Fulbright Scholar, to live near his family in Namibia. There, she falls in with Persephone: another American woman who suspects that her (fake) husband, a diplomat, is actually a C.I.A. operative. As their lives in Namibia become more strained, both Amanda and Persephone find themselves questioning why they are where they are, in Katie Crouch’s Embassy Wife .

The Taking of Jake Livingston

As one of the few Black students at a majority-white prep school, Jake already feels isolated from most of his peers — and that’s not to mention his ability to speak with the dead. His life gets infinitely more complicated when he meets Sawyer: the ghost of a local boy who killed himself and six other students in a recent shooting at another school. Sawyer wants something from Jake, but will the living survive this game with the dead?

The Right Side of Reckless

Regan always does what her parents expect, and right now, they expect her to stay away from Guillermo: the new kid in town, who’s on parole and doing community service for his past mistakes. When they inevitably meet, the two teens have instant chemistry, but Regan’s already in a relationship, and Guillermo is one misstep away from having his freedom revoked...

While We Were Dating

Romance queen Jasmine Guillory returns to stores this month with a Hollywood romance. While We Were Dating centers on Anna, an actor looking for her next big role, and Ben, the ad man running the campaign that Anna’s starring in. They’re on opposite sides of the camera, but when Ben steps up to help Anna in a crisis, they must decide whether to take their relationship public... or keep it away from the media’s prying eyes.

The Final Girl Support Group

Six women who survived their brushes with brutal killers gather together regularly to discuss what happens after the interviews and docuseries stop. But when one of them suddenly disappears, her 22-year-old groupmate, Lynette, discovers that their tight-knit clan of final girls is under attack. Will one of them become a final girl twice over, or can these survivors band together to weather the coming storm?

Such a Quiet Place

Harper was the one who found the bodies: Brandon and Fiona Truett, killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a car left running in the garage. Photographic evidence pointed to Harper’s roommate, Ruby, as the culprit, and the good people of Hollow’s Edge all came out to testify against her. Fourteen months after Ruby went to prison, she’s returned to Hollow’s Edge to live with her old roomie again. But when threats against Harper begin to trickle in, it becomes clear that the Truetts’ killer may have never been brought to justice at all... and they might be ready to kill again.

A Touch of Jen

Beth Morgan takes on social media and para-social relationships in this twisty debut novel. Remy and Jen worked together, once upon a time. Jen’s now a wildly successful jewelry designer, by all accounts, while Remy is still stuck in regular-job drudgery with his far less perfect girlfriend, Alicia. Alicia idolizes Jen, and her relationship with Remy hinges on their shared fantasies of a woman they barely know. When Jen invites Remy and Alicia to stay with her clique in the Hamptons, it’s a dream come true. Too bad that dream’s about to turn into a nightmare.

Enrolled in a new, arts-focused school after moving to South Korea with her family, Korean American cellist Jenny doesn’t expect to see any familiar faces. Imagine her surprise when she runs into Jaewoo: the guy who ghosted after their one adventurous night in L.A. As it turns out, he’s one of the hottest K-pop idols around, and that means dating — for Jaewoo — is strictly off-limits. Jenny’s always had a good head on her shoulders, but will she risk her future cello career to pursue a forbidden love?

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

Kristen Radtke’s graphic nonfiction book digs into America’s loneliness epidemic, which was already raging before the pandemic put everyone’s lives on hold. In Seek You , Radtke examines our uniquely American ways of dealing with what we lack from others, whether that’s social interaction, affection, or assistance.

The Comfort of Monsters

The Comfort of Monsters centers on Peg, a woman still grieving the loss of her sister, Dee, who disappeared in Milwaukee in 1991 — around the time of Jeffrey Dahmer’s final murder spree and arrest. In a bid to help Peg’s dying mother find peace, the family enlists the aid of a psychic to determine what happened to Dee, and Peg finds herself haunted by the memories of that fateful summer. What does she remember, and — more importantly — what if her memories are wrong?

Isn’t It Bromantic?

The fourth installment in Lyssa Kay Adams’ Bromance Book Club series centers on Vlad: a Nashville-based Russian American hockey player stuck in a loveless marriage to his childhood friend, Elena. He desperately wants his wife to fall for him, and joining a book club based around romance novels seems to be the best way to figure out what women want. But the skeletons in Elena’s closet are about to cross an ocean to find her in America, and Vlad’s love may not be enough to keep her safe.

When they couldn’t figure out how to help her cope with depression and substance abuse, Elizabeth Gilpin’s parents agreed to send their daughter to a boot camp for troubled teens. Abducted and abandoned in Appalachia by people who were supposed to be helping her, Gilpin soon found herself attending a boarding school rife with abuse. In Stolen she recounts the trauma of her teenage years, including the self-harm and addiction issues that continued to plague her peers from the program.

Fresh out of college and desperate to fit in with New Yorkers, Luca, the newest hire at an established magazine, finds himself surrounded by magnetic influences. Set in the early days of the Trump administration, Virtue follows Luca as he bonds with his only Black co-worker, Zara, who presses their bosses to do more to combat the administration’s policies. Luca is also compelled to befriend white creatives Jason and Paula, a married couple living a picture-perfect life in the city. But Luca’s alliances are about to be tested in ways he does not anticipate, and he’s about to learn that hindsight is, unfortunately, 20/20.

From A Separation author Katie Kitamura comes Intimacies . The novel follows an unnamed translator for the International Court as she balances personal relationships — including an affair with a married man, and friendships with both a witness to a crime and the sister of its victim — with what she hears and says at work. She has the power to dictate, quite literally, what some of the world’s most powerful people hear. The question is, what is the best and most moral use of that power?

She Who Became the Sun

A grieving orphan assumes her late brother’s identity and fortune, seeking shelter in a monastery. Disguised as a boy, Zhu is always one misstep away from losing her place among the monks, but her strong will to live sustains her through yet another tragedy: the destruction of her new home. With occupying Mongol forces threatening to destroy everyone and everything she loves, Zhu takes up a warrior’s mantle to mount her own resistance.

The Book of Accidents

Years after they endured horrific traumas there, a married couple returns to their hometown — in a deeply haunted corner of Pennsylvania — with their young son in tow. When the sensitive Oliver becomes the new focus of the town’s dark attentions, his parents recognize the signs. But can they step in before it’s too late for Oliver?

In Rachel Yoder’s sharply observant debut novel, a frustrated stay-at-home mom finds herself shifting into a canine form. No one, not even her husband, believes her when she tells them about the changes to her body and mind, but Yoder’s protagonist soon finds refuge in a strange book — A Field Guide to Magical Women — and an MLM clique that may have something much weirder than a pyramid scheme in the works.

False Witness

Decades ago, Leigh helped her kid sister, Callie, murder the man she babysat for — a man who was raping Callie and selling videotapes of the evidence. The stiff’s son was in the house at the time, but a little boy doped up on NyQuil couldn’t possibly remember what those girls did... could he? Now, that boy’s a man on trial for rape, and he wants Leigh, now a prominent defense attorney, to represent him. Leigh’s sure that Andrew knows what happened that night, and now she’ll have to get Callie out of town, if she wants to keep her carefully constructed life intact.

Fierce Little Thing

Twenty years after her commune days, Saskia begins receiving anonymous threats, ordering her to return to Maine... or else. The blackmailer knows what Saskia and the others did all those years ago, but what will going back to Home mean for any of them? As Saskia and her estranged found-family return to their old haunts, their mettle will be tested one last time .

They’ll Never Catch Us

From the author of They Wish They Were Us comes this new novel about three high-school girls — sisters Ellie and Stella, and a rival newcomer named Mila — locked in a fierce competition to impress cross-country scouts. Drawn separately into Mila’s orbit, Ellie and Stella soon find themselves taking big career risks with their new friend. But Mila’s about to disappear, leaving Ellie and Stella in the worst kind of spotlight.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois

A girl who understands DuBois’ concept of the “Double Consciousness” all too well takes center stage in this tender story. Dividing her time between the north and south, Ailey is haunted by messages from her ancestors. In order to appreciate them, she’ll have to dive into centuries of her family’s history, uncovering painful truths about their past and America’s legacy.

Not a Happy Family

From The Couple Next Door author Shari Lapena comes Not a Happy Family : a tense whodunnit centering on one ultra-wealthy clan. Someone murdered Fred and Sheila Mercer on the night of a family gathering, and each of their three children had a motive to kill. But was a member of the Mercers’ unhappy family responsible, or someone else with an axe to grind?

Hold Fast Through the Fire

K.B. Wagers’ second NeoG novel is out this month, and sci-fi fans won’t be disappointed. The story here centers on the crew of the Zuma’s Ghost ; fresh out of a roster rotation, the little family find themselves in the line of fire, thanks to a secret one of their new crewmates has brought onboard. The Zuma’s Ghost is attracting a lot of unwanted attention, and it might spell the end of the whole crew’s careers .

18 of the Best Books to Pick Up This July

Each of these astonishing reads is full of literary fireworks.

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If July is for savoring summer while finding ways of staying cool, then submerge, plunge, dip, dive into our latest ocean of literary delights. Among the treats? Smart, sassy and in some cases, scary novels set here and abroad; a triumphant memoir by an astrophysicist entitled A Quantum Life and Fox and I , an ode to the wildlife the author regularly reads aloud to. In the posthumous Carry On , the late civil rights icon John Lewis offers some final uplifting thoughts, and Kristen Radtke's Seek You is a delightful illustrated riff on a peculiarly American form of loneliness.

But if instead you want to leave the earth behind and escape upwards, check out A Pair of Wing s , a riveting novel about a Black woman pilot named Bessie Coleman written by real-life aviatrix Carole Hopson.

If none of that works, you may want to resort to psychedelics via Michael Pollan's This Is Your Mind On Plants, a not-so-sobering trip through the world of opium, caffeine, and mescaline.

Bartender: Make mine a margarita.

Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation by John Lewis

The late iconic role model Rep. John Lewis was known for his radiant humanity—particularly to young activists―and his genuine, unstoppable goodness. These final reflections, which include valuable advice on topics ranging from mentorship to vision, pay forward the ethos of his legacy and serve as inspiration for us to remain humble and faithful even in the face of monumental adversity: Lewis never lost the faith. 

The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards

SHOP AT AMAZON

A teenager vanishes in Milwaukee during the summer of 1991, as Jeffrey Dahmer’s on the prowl, cannibalizing—literally―young men. With the city in an uproar, the missing girl isn’t even a blip on law enforcement’s radar: no body, no problem. Three decades later her sister honors a vow to their dying mother, sifting scant evidence to discover what happened and why. Richards turns tropes of crime fiction on their heads in this gripping, deftly crafted debut novel. 

The Cruelty Is the Point by Adam Serwer

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 election this Atlantic writer— deemed “essential” by Ta-Nehisi Coates —probed why 63 million Americans cast votes for a racist demagogue, in a series of gimlet-eyed pieces. Now collected with fresh introductions, these essays expose, with surgical precision, a simple motivation: when confronted with a rapidly diversifying country, half our nation reverts to its own mean of meanness, advocating for travel bans, mob justice, and David-Duke-style white supremacy. 

Dear Miss Metropolitan by Carolyn Ferrell

Inspired by the notorious 2002 Ariel Castro abductions, this devastating debut novel follows three women of color—Fern, the savvy daughter of a pill-popping nurse; Gwin, lover of all things Prince; and Jesenia, a straight-A striver—who are held captive for years by the sadistic Boss Man. Suddenly, two are saved, prompting a famous gossip columnist to poke her nose into what happened. Ferrell’s sly humor and postmodernist narrative style illuminate the legacy of trauma.

Embassy Wife by Katie Crouch

If you’re in the mood for a smart, sparkling novel that is one part social satire, one part travelogue, look no further. The author of  Girls In Trucks  sets her latest in Namibia and the sub-Saharan desert, a backdrop in sharp contrast to the machinations of the American diplomats stationed there along with their “trailing spouses.” It's comical and cool.

Fox and I by Catherine Raven

Raven’s extraordinary memoir is a love song to the animal who miraculously arrives in the front yard of her remote cabin every afternoon to be read passages from The Little Prince . A poetic, revelatory portrait of a biologist’s solitary sojourn following an adolescence forever marked by her father’s violence.

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

Straddling East and West, this slim, delicate novel peels back the tensions among one Chinese family as they migrate between Hong Kong and Vancouver. The narrator, an aspiring artist, aches for her enigmatic father, whose flares of temper open a distance between the young woman, her mother, and her grandmother. Fung’s prose is its own calligraphy—blank spaces balanced against terse vignettes, evoking the wisdom of the Cantonese proverb “Trees want to be still, but the wind won’t stop blowing."

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

Weary of her life in New York, a translator flees to The Hague, where she becomes embroiled in a war-crimes trial, tripping into the chasm between languages and her own compromised role as truth-teller. In spare, diamond-cut prose, the author of A Separation,  reveals the pretty lies we tell about community and morality, the bleak “formality of a Renaissance tableau."

The Joy of Sweat by Sarah Everts

Love stinks! As do our immune systems, parenthood, and a host of other human functions. In this exuberant romp, a science journalist ponders the myths and marvels of perspiration, sniffing out why these glands are essential to our species. Everts employs original research and encounters with clinicians on the cutting edge, among them a Ph.D. who reverse-engineered his own odors. A glowing, revelatory account that belongs on the same shelf with works by Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer.

Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night by Morgan Parker

Joyous, ironic, biting, knowing—Parker’s sublime poetry encapsulates and reflects our era. Here, Tin House reissues her 2015 debut collection with an ebullient new intro from Danez Smith. Whether you are sampling it for the first time or rediscovering her work, what’s inescapable, among other qualities, is Parker’s astonishing conversance with the ever-changing vernacular of popular culture—from reality TV to hip-hop to whether or not relationships are worth it.

A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson

Bessie Coleman was a pioneering aviatrix who, in the early part of the 20th century, was forced to travel to France to learn to fly, as no one in the U.S. would give a Black woman lessons. Her thrilling true story makes for an exciting, inspiring work of fiction in Hopson’s hands. This may be the author’s first novel, but as a commercial pilot herself, she takes the tale and soars with it.

A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam

No man’s an island, and it seems no island can cut itself off from violence. The author of The Story of a Brief Marriage casts a spell in his sumptuous new novel, set in a Sri Lanka still reeling from its bloody civil war. When Krisnan’s grandmother’s caretaker dies mysteriously in her village, he travels by bus from cosmopolitan Colombo, peering out the window as towns and farms scroll by, a trek into a nation’s heart of darkness. At the end of the road reckonings of all kinds await. It's reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.

A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars by Hakeem Oluseyi

In this remarkable, moving memoir, a self-described “gangsta nerd” transcends violence, poverty, racism, and his own demons to ascend into the academic stratosphere, becoming a renowned astrophysicist. “Anything you imagine for yourself is within the realm of possibility,” he writes. “It’s a proven fact of physics.”

Seek You by Kristen Radtke

In this gorgeous graphic memoir, the Whiting Award winner blends autobiography with assiduous research, using her own experiences to illustrate a peculiarly American brand of social isolation—in which silence is punctured by sitcom laugh tracks and cowboys encourage us to be rugged individuals. A genre-bending work that lays bare both the costs and benefits of solitude.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Mulan meets The Mists of Avalon in this historical, gender-bending epic that reimagines the beginnings of the Ming Empire and the Red Turban Rebellion. When her father and brother are slain in a random act of merciless cruelty, the impoverished heroine of this saga takes up her sibling's identity—and his heaven-mandated fate to be someone great. Posing as a male, she rises up through the burgeoning insurgent ranks, a journey that takes her through the perilous battlefields of love and war. Like its protagonist, Parker-Chan’s grand debut forges its own path.

This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan

The omnivorously curious Pollan pivots off his provocative How to Change Your Mind with an enthralling odyssey into a trio of mind-altering drugs found in plants: opium, caffeine, and mescaline. In this wide-ranging, deliciously written study, he asks, why does one power us up each morning while the other two are shrouded in taboo? You’ll never look at a Starbucks Pike’s Peak the same way again.

We Want What We Want by Alix Ohlin

A 19-year-old returns from a gap year doing humanitarian work in Ghana to find her father engaged to her childhood best friend—awkward! A woman tries to keep in touch with an intriguing pal she made during a semester abroad in Spain as their lives diverge over the course of years. Ohlin’s slyly humorous and devastatingly sensuous collection of short fiction shines a brilliant light on women’s inchoate desires.

What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad

A boatload of drowned refugees washes ashore, and from their flotsam a child stirs, the sole survivor. Amir is taken in by Vänna, a teenager whose own life has come unmoored. In this searing, lyrical tale the author of American War shifts back and forth between two characters who can’t speak a word of the other’s language but forge an ironclad bond. A beguiling parable of dispossessed peoples and the burning desire for home.

Leigh Haber is Vice President, Books, Oprah Daily and O Quarterly. She is also Director of Oprah's Book Club. 

A former book editor and the author of a memoir, This Boy's Faith, Hamilton Cain is Contributing Books Editor at Oprah Daily. As a freelance journalist, he has written for O, The Oprah Magazine, Men’s Health, The Good Men Project, and The List (Edinburgh, U.K.) and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle and lives with his family in Brooklyn.  

Michelle Hart is the Assistant Books Editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Other writing of hers has appeared on the Millions, the Rumpus, and the New Yorker . Her fiction has appeared in Joyland and Electric Literature. She has been awarded a fiction fellowship by the New York State Writers Institute and was once profiled in her hometown newspaper for being in the process of writing a novel--a novel she is still in the process of writing.

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The best books to cool down with in July

Nobody somebody anybody , by kelly mcclorey.

At a bougie yacht club, a young woman takes a summer gig as a chambermaid while she studies for her EMT exam — and slowly loses her mind as she cleans up after the rich. It's My Year of Rest and Relaxation , but with fewer pills and more boats. (July 6)

Give My Love to the Savages , by Chris Stuck

This short-story collection, which traces a man's life through the lens of the different times he's been called the N-word, comes together as a harrowing portrait of race relations in America, as beautiful as it is urgent. (July 6)

People Like Them , by Samira Sedira

Fraught with class tension, Samira Sedira's delicious page-turner follows the unlikely friendship of two families in a remote French town. (July 6)

Vessel , by Cai Chongda

The debut author traces his rise from a rural childhood to being director of reporting at GQ China in Beijing, and reflects on the family with whom he has increasingly little in common. (July 6)

Embassy Wife , by Katie Crouch

A devilishly au courant satire that skewers white privilege and colonialism. The novel's wives live in Namibia — on compounds of varying degrees of luxury — and send their children to the prestigious Windhoek International School. As everyone's dirty laundry gets hung out to dry, it's hard to remember why we'd want it clean. (July 13)

A Touch of Jen , by Beth Morgan

Remy and Alicia are obsessed with Jen in Beth Morgan's darkly funny novel. When Jen invites them on a trip to the Hamptons, the infatuation turns violent. (July 13)

China Room , by Sunjeev Sahota

The follow-up to his Booker Prize-shortlisted The Runaways , Sunjeev Sahota's new novel follows characters across generations and continents (from Punjab to rural England) and is equally heart-wrenching. (July 13)

While We Were Dating , by Jasmine Guillory

The best-selling romance novelist does it again, this time with a delicious tale of an advertising executive and the movie star he casts in his new campaign. (July 13)

The Startup Wife , by Tahmima Anam

Asha and Cyrus fall madly in love, get married, invent a social media platform that reinvents rituals for modern life, get rich and successful — and then discover it all crumbling down, in this satirical skewering of the startup world. (July 13)

Nightbitch , by Rachel Yoder

The narrator of Rachel Yoder's electric debut novel — which is already slated for an adaptation starring Amy Adams — asks the age-old question: Am I struggling with new motherhood, or am I turning into a dog? (July 20)

Intimacies , by Katie Kitamura

A stream-of-consciousness novel centered on a young woman working as a translator at the Hague and attempting to navigate a complicated relationship with an older man. Fans of sparse millennial tales: Run, don't walk. (July 20)

Virtue , by Hermione Hoby

Against the backdrop of an intern spending the summer at a wealthy couple's beach house, Hermione Hoby explores the pitfalls of a class-obsessed New York City. (July 20)

They'll Never Catch Us , by Jessica Goodman

EW alum Jessica Goodman's first thriller, They Wish They Were Us , is headed to the big screen (starring Halsey), and her next follows two sisters on a high school cross-country team who become suspects when a teammate goes on a run… and never returns. (July 27)

Landslide , by Michael Wolff

After crashing onto the Trump-exposé scene with 2018's Fire and Fury , Michael Wolff turns his poison pen on the final days of the presidency. And, reader, they sound chaotic. (July 27)

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Our most anticipated books of july 2021, coming july 6th.

Dear Miss Metropolitan  by Carolyn Ferrell

“You think you’re ready for this novel, but you’re not ready. Carolyn Ferrell has shaped a story made of diamonds and broken glass; it’s going to cut you deep. Dear Miss Metropolitan is a triumph of storytelling in all its forms, a collage of styles and sympathies. A stunner.” —Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

Bolla  by Pajtim Statovci, trans. David Hackston

Kosovo, 1995. Arsim, an Albanian, is newly-married and expecting his first child. He is also infatuated with his fellow university student, Milos, a Serb. With luminous prose and a delicate eye, Pajtim Statovci delivers a relentless novel of desire, destruction, intimacy, and the different fronts of war.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead  by Emily Austin

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. This debut novel is perfectly, morbidly, hilarious. Need I say more?

Wayward  by Dana Spiotta

Dana Spiotta's  Wayward  is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female difficulty--female complexity--in the age of Trump. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird, off-kilter America, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins. Tremendous new work from one of the most gifted writers of her generation.

Give My Love to the Savages  by Chris Stuck

The nine tales in  Give My Love to the Savages  illuminate the multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience.

Coming July 13th

A Passage North  by Anuk Arudpragasam

 A beautiful, wistful novel of and about reflection. On the long train journey from his home in Colombo, to Sri Lanka's northern providence for a funeral, one man considers the history of his life, his lovers, and his country's decades-long civil war.

Coming July 20th

Colorful  by Eto Mori, trans. by Jocelyne Allen

The best-selling Japanese phenomenon is finally available in English! Colorful tells the story of a dead soul given a second chance at life, thanks to a sarcastic angel named Prapura and a heavenly lottery. Perfect for readers of The Midnight Library or Neil Gaiman.

Christians Against Christianity  by Obery Hendricks Jr

Where is the Christianity in right-wing evangelicalism? Hendricks, who teaches religion and African-American studies at Columbia University, challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers.

After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming & the Terrible Cost of Comfort   by Eric Dean Wilson

As a devoted air conditioner junkie, I'm dreading having the wool pulled from my eyes by this book, but Wilson's literary approach to history and science should help to soften the blow. 

This Is Your Mind on Plants  by Michael Pollan

Literary powerhouse Michael Pollan is back! This time, Pollan explores our relationship with psychoactive plants. Why are we so eager to normalize a caffeine addiction, but not opium or mescaline? How do those perceptions and taboos vary between communities? Why are humans, across all times and cultures, so drawn to the effects of these plants?

Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex & Marriage in America's Prisons   by Elizabeth Greenwood

“I started reading this book and couldn’t stop…[Love Lockdown is] a clear-eyed, compassionate look at prison love stories, and I found every relationship riveting.”—Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

How Literatures Begin  edited by Joel B. Lande & Denis Feeney

In this ambitious collection, historians across the disciplines come together to showcase how different literary cultures formed and grew across the globe. An examination of the practices, technologies, institutions, and individuals that created seventeen literary traditions: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, English, Romance languages, German, Russian, Latin American, African, African American, and world literature.

Shock to the System: Coups, Elections & War on the Road to Democratization by Michael K. Miller

Through in-depth examinations of 139 democratic transitions, Miller shows how democratization frequently follows both domestic shocks (coups, civil wars, and assassinations) and international shocks (defeat in war and withdrawal of an autocratic hegemon) due to autocratic insecurity and openings for opposition actors. 

NB: Some of the text on this page is sourced from publisher-provided marketing content.

Dear Miss Metropolitan: A Novel (Hardcover)

Bolla: A Novel (Hardcover)

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

Wayward: A novel (Hardcover)

Give My Love to the Savages: Stories (Hardcover)

A Passage North: A Novel (Hardcover)

Colorful: A Novel (Paperback)

Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith (Hardcover)

After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort (Hardcover)

This Is Your Mind on Plants (Hardcover)

Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex, and Marriage in America's Prisons (Hardcover)

How Literatures Begin: A Global History (Paperback)

Shock to the System: Coups, Elections, and War on the Road to Democratization (Paperback)

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16 Best Books To Read in July

JULY 6, 2021

by Violet Kupersmith

Drawing from genres as diverse as horror, humor, and historical fiction, Kupersmith creates a rich and dazzling spectacle. Full review >

by S.A. Cosby

Violence and love go hand in hand in this tale of two rough men seeking vengeance for their murdered sons. Full review >

JULY 20, 2021

by Katie Kitamura

This psychological tone poem is a barbed and splendid meditation on peril. Full review >

AUG. 24, 2021

by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

If this isn’t the Great American Novel, it's a mighty attempt at achieving one. Full review >

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

by Kristen Radtke ; illustrated by Kristen Radtke

Superb. A rigorous, vulnerable book on a subject that is too often neglected. Full review >

by Michael Pollan

A lucid (in the sky with diamonds) look at the hows, whys, and occasional demerits of altering one’s mind. Full review >

by Cynthia Barnett

An absolutely captivating nature book. Full review >

JULY 1, 2021

by Precious Brady-Davis

An inspiring memoir of nonconformity. Full review >

JULY 13, 2021

by Rodney Barnes ; illustrated by Selina Espiritu & Kelly Fitzpatrick & Tom Napolitano

A heartfelt voyage through time and space. Full review >

JULY 27, 2021

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT

by Alex Richards

A moving portrayal of grief, family, and the complexity of different perspectives. Full review >

by Nisha Sharma

A perceptive and textured romance. Full review >

by Erica Waters

Potent, atmospheric, and wholly satisfying. Full review >

CHILDREN'S

by Leslie C. Youngblood

A heartwarming story with an inspiring message about creative youth activism. Full review >

by Sarah Dillard ; illustrated by Sarah Dillard

A thoroughly delicious (and practically wordless) charmer. Full review >

by Peter Raymundo ; illustrated by Peter Raymundo

Not just another fish story—will be a favorite with fledgling marine biologists and landlubbers everywhere. Full review >

AUG. 31, 2021

by Victoria Ying ; illustrated by Victoria Ying

Important, engrossing, and altogether necessary. Full review >

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20 Most Popular Books Published in July 2021

• Author: Admin
• February 24, 2022

Table of Contents

The paper palace by miranda cowley heller, the final girl support group by grady hendrix, not a happy family by shari lapena, it happened one summer (bellinger sisters) by tessa bailey, she who became the sun (the radiant emperor) by shelley parker-chan, the last thing he told me by laura dave, the comfort book by matt haig, six crimson cranes (six crimson cranes) by elizabeth lim, any way the wind blows (simon snow) by rainbow rowell, gods & monsters (serpent & dove) by shelby mahurin, these hollow vows (these hollow vows) by lexi ryan, the fine print (dreamland billionaires) by lauren asher, such a quiet place by megan miranda, razorblade tears by s.a. cosby, the forest of vanishing stars by kristin harmel, falling by t.j. newman, the therapist by b.a. paris, false witness by karin slaughter, for your own good by samantha downing.

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace" -- the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

A fast-paced, thrilling horror novel that follows a group of heroines to die for, from the brilliant New York Times bestselling author of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires . In horror movies, the final girl is the one who's left standing when the credits roll. The one who fought back, defeated the killer, and avenged her friends. The one who emerges bloodied but victorious. But after the sirens fade and the audience moves on, what happens to her? Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized--someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece. But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.

In this family, everyone is keeping secrets--especially the dead. Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there. And they don't come much richer than Fred and Sheila Merton. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered the night after an Easter Dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated. Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their capricious father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of them is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did one of them snap after that dreadful evening? Or was it someone else that night who crept in with the worst of intentions? It must be. After all, if one of your siblings was a psychopath, you'd know. Wouldn't you?

Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington. Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.  Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek -inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girl” who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong.

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun , a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything “I refuse to be nothing…” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness… In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

We all have stories we never tell. Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother. As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered; as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss; as a US Marshal and FBI agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared. Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth, together. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they are also building a new future. One neither Hannah nor Bailey could have anticipated.

The new uplifting book from Matt Haig, the New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library , for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of a little encouragement. “It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.” The Comfort Book is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

Shiori, the only princess of Kiata, has a secret. Forbidden magic runs through her veins. Normally she conceals it well, but on the morning of her betrothal ceremony, Shiori loses control. At first, her mistake seems like a stroke of luck, forestalling the wedding she never wanted, but it also catches the attention of Raikama, her stepmother. Raikama has dark magic of her own, and she banishes the young princess, turning her brothers into cranes, and warning Shiori that she must speak of it to no one: for with every word that escapes her lips, one of her brothers will die. Penniless, voiceless, and alone, Shiori searches for her brothers, and, on her journey, uncovers a conspiracy to overtake the throne—a conspiracy more twisted and deceitful, more cunning and complex, than even Raikama's betrayal. Only Shiori can set the kingdom to rights, but to do so she must place her trust in the very boy she fought so hard not to marry. And she must embrace the magic she's been taught all her life to contain—no matter what it costs her.

In Carry On , Simon Snow and his friends realized that everything they thought they understood about the world might be wrong. And in Wayward Son , they wondered whether everything they understood about themselves might be wrong. In Any Way the Wind Blows , Simon and Baz and Penelope and Agatha have to decide how to move forward. For Simon, that means deciding whether he still wants to be part of the World of Mages -- and if he doesn't, what does that mean for his relationship with Baz? Meanwhile Baz is bouncing between two family crises and not finding any time to talk to anyone about his newfound vampire knowledge. Penelope would love to help, but she's smuggled an American Normal into London, and now she isn't sure what to do with him. And Agatha? Well, Agatha Wellbelove has had enough. Any Way the Wind Blows takes the gang back to England, back to Watford, and back to their families for their longest and most emotionally wrenching adventure yet. This book is a finale . It tells secrets and answers questions and lays ghosts to rest. Carry On was conceived as a book about Chosen One stories; Any Way the Wind Blows is an ending about endings. About catharsis and closure, and how we choose to move on from the traumas and triumphs that try to define us.

The spellbinding conclusion to the New York Times and IndieBound bestselling trilogy Serpent & Dove . This stunning fantasy take on French witches and forbidden love is perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas. Evil always seeks a foothold. We must not give it one. After a heartbreaking loss, Lou, Reid, Beau, and Coco are bent on vengeance more than ever before—and none more so than Lou. But this is no longer the Lou they thought they knew. No longer the Lou that captured a chasseur’s heart. A darkness has settled over her, and this time it will take more than love to drive it out.

From New York Times best-selling author Lexi Ryan, Cruel Prince meets A Court of Thorns and Roses in this sexy, action-packed fantasy about a girl who is caught between two treacherous faerie courts and their dangerously seductive princes. Brie hates the Fae and refuses to have anything to do with them, even if that means starving on the street. But when her sister is sold to the sadistic king of the Unseelie court to pay a debt, she'll do whatever it takes to get her back—including making a deal with the king himself to steal three magical relics from the Seelie court. Gaining unfettered access to the Seelie court is easier said than done. Brie's only choice is to pose as a potential bride for Prince Ronan, and she soon finds herself falling for him. Unwilling to let her heart distract her, she accepts help from a band of Unseelie misfits with their own secret agenda. As Brie spends time with their mysterious leader, Finn, she struggles to resist his seductive charm. Caught between two dangerous courts, Brie must decide who to trust with her loyalty. And with her heart.

Rowan I’m in the business of creating fairy tales. Theme parks. Production companies. Five-star hotels. Everything could be all mine if I renovated Dreamland. My initial idea of hiring Zahra was good in theory, but then I kissed her. Things spiraled out of control once I texted her using an alias. By the time I realized where I went wrong, it was too late. People like me don’t get happy endings. Not when we’re destined to ruin them. Zahra After submitting a drunk proposal criticizing Dreamland’s most expensive ride, I should have been fired. Instead, Rowan Kane offered me a dream job. The catch? I had to work for the most difficult boss I’d ever met. Rowan was rude and completely off-limits, but my heart didn’t care. At least not until I discovered his secret. It was time to teach the billionaire that money couldn’t fix everything. Especially not us.

We had no warning that she’d come back. Hollow’s Edge used to be a quiet place. A private and idyllic neighborhood where neighbors dropped in on neighbors, celebrated graduation and holiday parties together, and looked out for one another. But then came the murder of Brandon and Fiona Truett. A year and a half later, Hollow’s Edge is simmering. The residents are trapped, unable to sell their homes, confronted daily by the empty Truett house, and suffocated by their trial testimonies that implicated one of their own. Ruby Fletcher. And now, Ruby’s back. With her conviction overturned, Ruby waltzes right back to Hollow’s Edge, and into the home she once shared with Harper Nash. Harper, five years older, has always treated Ruby like a wayward younger sister. But now she’s terrified. What possible good could come of Ruby returning to the scene of the crime? And how can she possibly turn her away, when she knows Ruby has nowhere to go? Within days, suspicion spreads like a virus across Hollow’s Edge. It’s increasingly clear that not everyone told the truth about the night of the Truett’s murders. And when Harper begins receiving threatening notes, she realizes she has to uncover the truth before someone else becomes the killer’s next victim.

A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys. Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption.

The New York Times bestselling author of the The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything. After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything. Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.

You just boarded a flight to New York. There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard. What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped. For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die. The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane. Enjoy the flight.

The multimillion-copy New York Times bestselling author B.A. Paris returns to her heartland of gripping psychological suspense in The Therapist --a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret. When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive… As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before. Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness… In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. Mulan meets The Song of Achilles ; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.

AN ORDINARY LIFE Leigh Coulton has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defence attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilised - her life is just as unremarkable as she'd always hoped it would be. HIDES A DEVASTATING PAST But Leigh's ordinary life masks a childhood which was far from average... a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence. BUT NOW THE PAST IS CATCHING UP Then a case lands on her desk - defending a wealthy man accused of rape. It's the highest profile case she's ever been given - a case which could transform her career, if she wins. But when she meets the accused, she realises that it's no coincidence that he's chosen her as his attorney. She knows him. And he knows her. More to the point, he knows what happened twenty years ago, and why Leigh has spent two decades running. AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT If she can't get him acquitted, she'll lose much more than the case. The only person who can help her is her younger, estranged sister Calli, the last person Leigh would ever want to ask for help. But suddenly she has no choice...

Teddy Crutcher has won Teacher of the Year at the esteemed Belmont Academy, home to the best and brightest. He says his wife couldn't be more proud—though no one has seen her in a while. Teddy really can’t be bothered with the death of a school parent that’s looking more and more like murder or the student digging a little too deep into Teddy’s personal life. His main focus is on pushing these kids to their full academic potential. All he wants is for his colleagues—and the endlessly meddlesome parents—to stay out of his way. It's really too bad that sometimes excellence can come at such a high cost. USA Today bestselling author Samantha Downing is back with her latest sneaky thriller set at a prestigious private school—complete with interfering parents, overeager students, and one teacher who just wants to teach them all a lesson…

*** Data collected from Goodreads.com and other online sources.

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New Books Released in 2021: Top picks of the new fiction

Hands up all those who love browsing what’s new in books and the upcoming fiction releases? Many of the best books I read in 2020 were fiction titles that caught my eye from the 2020 new books lists , and 2021 is shaping up as another great year for reading.

📖 Related Reading: 2022 New Book Releases – My Top Picks  and my Favourite Reads of 2021 .

Bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. Jen Campbell

And, while we love nothing more than popping into our local bookstores, browsing curated 2021 new release books lists online is really the best alternative when we are not able.

Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Note links will take readers in the US, UK or Canada to their local Amazon store (if available) and in all other cases, to an online book retailer that ships the title to your region.

Join me on my adventures browsing the new books in 2021

Here each month in 2021, I will discuss my top picks of the new books published and the upcoming fiction releases. Links in this article will take you to more detail about each title and, when I have been lucky enough to read it, open up my full review in a new tab.

So read on to see which new books and upcoming releases have caught my attention so far this year.

New Books 2021 – November & December Releases

As usual, the publishers are offering up several big-name bestselling author new releases to round out the year, just in time for the 2021 festive season gift guides. But for those who love taking a chance on a debut author, a couple of those still feature amongst our top picks of the November-December book releases.

New literature & drama

In new novel The Sentence , Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louise Erdrich ( The Round House , The Night Watchman ) asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. According to Publisher’s Weekly, it ‘offers profound insights into the effects of the global pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic racism’ and is one of her most illuminating works to date.

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. Find out more>>

Prolific author Jodi Picoult ‘s 2021 release Wish You Were Here is inspired by recent events. Diana O’Toole’s life is going perfectly to plan. She’s up for promotion to her dream job (art specialist at Sotheby’s) and she’s about to fly to the Galápagos where she’s convinced her surgeon boyfriend, Finn, is going to propose. But then the virus hits New York City and Finn breaks the news: the hospital needs him, he has to stay. But he insists she still go. Once she’s in the Galápagos, the world shuts down around her, leaving her stranded in paradise. With only intermittent news from the outside world, she finds herself examining everything that’s brought her to this point and wondering if there’s a better way to live. But not everything is as it seems… Find out more >>

Okay, so I am preternaturally drawn to anything involving these especially cute creatures, but Call of the Penguins by Hazel Prior ( Ellie and the Harpmaker ) sounds like a delightful read. Fiercely resilient and impeccably dressed, Veronica McCreedy has lived an incredible 87 years. Most of them alone, in her huge house by the sea. But Veronica has recently discovered a late-life love for family and friendship, adventure and wildlife. More specifically, a love for penguins! And so when she’s invited to co-present a wildlife documentary, far away in the southern hemisphere, she jumps at the chance. Even though it will put her in the spotlight, just when she thought she would soon fade into the wings. Perhaps it’s never too late to shine? Find out more >>

New thriller reads

Debut author Wanda Morris’ All Her Little Secrets – Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta, great friends, and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes one morning when she arrives at work and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head. And then she walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has some dark secrets. She can’t be thrust into the spotlight. People are gossiping, the police are suspicious, and Ellice, the company’s lone black attorney, is promoted to replace her boss – a dream-come-true. But she just can’t shake the feeling something is off. Find out more >>

Science fiction thriller The Extinction Trials , bestselling author A.G. Riddle’s new book is described as ‘an uplifting, standalone story about people struggling against impossible odds to save their families in a world gone crazy—with a surprise ending unlike anything you’ve ever read before’.

The end… is only the beginning. After a mysterious global event known only as “The Change,” six strangers wake up in an underground research facility. They soon learn that they’re part of the Extinction Trials—a scientific experiment to restart the human race. But the Extinction Trials hides a very big secret. And so does the world outside. Find out more >>

Captivating new historical fiction

Lily: A Tale of Revenge by Rose Tremain – Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable Sam Trench and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily enjoys a brief childhood idyll fostered by an affectionate family in rural Suffolk, before she’s returned to the Hospital and punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret… Over the years, policeman Sam has kept watch over her, and when he meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction. Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness – but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death? Find out more >>

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim – An epic story of love, war, and redemption spanning half a century, set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of Jade, a young girl sold to a courtesan school and JungHo, the penniless son of a hunter. This debut novel takes readers from the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, and Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviours, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes. Find out more >>

Other notable new releases include:

Recent Book Releases

New Books in 2021 – October Releases

October is typically a big month in publishing as people begin preparing their Christmas book wishlists, and 2021 is no exception. We have highly anticipated new book releases to look forward to from international bestselling authors Amor Towles, Matthew Reilly, Jenny Colgan and Christian White, along with some lesser-known writers’ attention-grabbing thriller and historical mystery fiction synopses.

New fiction thrills

Wild Place is the much anticipated new novel from international bestselling psychological thriller author Christian White ( The Nowhere Child and The Wife and The Widow ). He is known for his devious plot twists.

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic suburb of Camp Hill in Australia. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, schoolteacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won’t listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl’s father and a local neighbourhood watch group. But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it.

Wild Plac e peels back the layers of suburbia, exposing what’s hidden underneath – guilt, desperation, violence – and attempts to answer the question: Why do good people do bad things?   Read my review >>

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfield – I will admit it was the striking and evocative cover design that first caught my attention, but a quick read of the blurb and I found this new release offers a lot more substance to chew on. Two devious women from opposite worlds discover the dangers of coveting someone else’s life, and it is Detective Ian Bird’s job to figure out how that led to a murder in the hard-luck town of Copper Falls in rural Maine. What particularly appeals to me is that apparently one of these women, Lizzie, narrates their story from beyond the grave. Find out more >>

The Last Time She Died by Zoe Sharp – A family gather to mourn the death of their beloved husband and stepfather. No one but Detective John Byron sees the young woman with the white-blonde hair hiding in the shadows watching them, but then she is gone. She breaks into the family’s home and waits for them to return and call the police. When arrested, she smiles calmly at the outraged family and says she is Blake Claremont, the deceased’s daughter. But Blake is presumed dead… she vanished 10 years ago. The first in a new Blake & Byron Thrillers series. Find out more >>

Historical mysteries

Tea Cooper ( The Cartographer’s Secret , The Woman in the Green Dress ) is known for her sweeping historical dual timeline mystery fiction and this new release The Fossil Hunter sounds like a fascinating read. A fossil discovered at London’s Natural History Museum leads one woman back in time to nineteenth-century Australia and a world of scientific discovery and dark secrets in this compelling historical mystery. Find out more >>

The reading world can never have enough feisty female sleuths… The Egyptian Mystery is the new book (#11) in Emily Organ’s bestselling Penny Green Victorian Mystery Series. “Dead men don’t just walk out of hotels…” Penny faces her most baffling case yet. Egyptologist Charles Hamilton is found dead in his hotel room, but then his body vanishes and his wife goes missing too. Find out more >>

Literary new release books

Few new releases are more highly anticipated than a new book from Amor Towles ( Rules of Civility , A Gentleman in Moscow ) and early praise of The Lincoln Highway suggests it has been worth the wait. In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served 15-months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, he’d planned to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they could start their lives anew. But it seems two friends from the work farm had hidden in the trunk of the car, and have a different plan for him… one that involves a fateful journey in the opposite direction-to the City of New York. Read my review >>

In The Impossible Truths of Love by Hannah Beckerman, when Nell’s father makes a deathbed declaration that hints at a long-held secret, it reignites feelings of isolation that have plagued her for years. Her suspicions about the family’s past only deepen when her mother, Annie, who is losing her memories to dementia, starts making cryptic comments of her own. Thirty-five years earlier, Annie’s life was upended by a series of traumas—one shock after another that she buried deep in her heart. The decisions she made at the time were motivated by love, but she knew even then that nobody could ever understand—let alone forgive—what she did. As the two women’s stories unravel, a generation apart, Nell discovers the devastating truth about her mother’s past and her own. An emotionally powerful story of identity, memory and nature of family. Find out more>>

Fun new fiction releases

As we approach the end of another year, and the Christmas season, many like me are seeking lighter, fun new fiction for my reading pile. Well, look no further than prolific authors Matthew Reilly and Jenny Colgan’s latest book releases:

The One Impossible Labyrinth by Matthew Reilly – As a long time, unabashed fan of this author’s globe-trotting action-adventure Jack West Jr series , I look forward to the supreme escapist read this grand finale will be but also sadness at saying goodbye to these characters, after a 16-year reader journey since the first title Seven Ancient Wonders in 2005. He has made it to the Supreme Labyrinth. Now Jack West Jr faces one last race – against multiple rivals, against time, against the collapse of the universe itself – a headlong race that will end at a throne inside the fabled labyrinth. Note: This may not be available to readers worldwide until Jan2022. Update: Read my review >>

The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan – I am not typically one to read Christmas-themed novels, but ever since I fell in love with the geeky charm of Jenny Colgan’s Resistance Is Futile I have been wanting to go back for another bite. The prospect of spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia does not appeal to Carmen but she has perilously little cash and few options. Frankly, Sofia doesn’t exactly want her prickly sister Carmen there either, but she has a client who needs help revitalizing his dusty and disorganized bookshop on the picturesque streets of historic Edinburgh. Carmen takes on the job, intrigued despite herself. Find out more >>

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Top Picks of the New Release Books in September 2021

September 2021 sees highly anticipated new releases from reader favourites like Sally Rooney, Liane Moriarty, Chris Hammer and Anthony Doerr, along with some intriguing new speculative fiction.

Criminal suspense

Liane Moriarty ( Big Little Lies , Nine Perfect Strangers , The Last Anniversary ) was a worldwide #1 bestseller well before the recent award-winning TV series adaptations. In her new novel Apples Never Fall , Joy Delaney and husband Stan have done well for themselves. Four wonderful grown-up children. A family business to envy. The golden years of retirement ahead of them. So when Joy vanishes – no note, no calls, her bike missing – it’s natural that tongues will wag. How did Stan scratch his face? And who was the stranger who entered and suddenly left their lives? What are they all hiding? But for the Delaney children there is a much more terrifying question: did they ever know their parents at all? Find out more >>

Chris Hammer’s Martin Scarsden crime series ( Scrublands, Silver , Trust ) has earned him a legion of fans who, like me, will be eager to get their hands on a copy of his new standalone novel, Treasure & Dirt . In the desolate outback town of Finnigans Gap, police struggle to maintain law and order. Thieves pillage opal mines, religious fanatics recruit vulnerable young people and billionaires do as they please. Then an opal miner is found crucified and left to rot down his mine. Nothing about the miner’s death is straightforward, not even who found the body. Sydney homicide detective Ivan Lucic is sent to investigate, assisted by inexperienced young investigator Nell Buchanan. Read my review of this criminally good crime fiction >>

Speculative fiction releases in September

According to early reviewers, Guy Morpuss’ speculative debut novel 5 Minds is brilliantly inventive and a must read for fans of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle . The Earth’s population has been controlled. Lifespans are limited to 80 years, except for those who agree to become a commune. Five minds sharing one body, each living for four hours at a time, but with a combined lifespan of nearly 150 years. Alex, Kate, Mike, Sierra and Ben have already spent 25-years together in what was once Mike’s body, their frequent personality clashes leading to countless arguments. Wanting to buy upgrades for their next host body, they travel to a Death Park where time can be gambled like money. But things go very wrong when Kate accepts a dangerous offer, and one of them disappears. It’s hard enough to catch a murderer. It’s almost impossible when you might be sharing a body with them . Find out more >>

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki ( A Tale for the Time Being ) is about grief, resilience, creativity and psychological difference. It is about the importance of reading, and an observation of the mess consumer culture has got us into. It is an affirmation of the power of community. It is funny, kind, wise, urgent and completely irresistible. After his father dies, Benny Oh finds he can hear objects talking: teapots, marbles and sharpened pencils, babbling in anger or distress. His mother starts collecting things to give her comfort. Overwhelmed by the clamour of all the stuff, Benny seeks refuge in the beautiful silence of the public library. There, the objects speak only in whispers. There, he meets a homeless poet and a mesmerising young performance artist. There, a book reaches out to him. Not just any book: his own book. And a very important conversation begins. Find out more >>

Immersive literary fiction

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr ( All The Light We Cannot See ) is dedicated to ‘the librarians then, now and in the years to come’ and sounds like a modern classic in the making. Bound together by a single ancient text, the unforgettable characters in this ambitious novel are dreamers and outsiders figuring out the world around them: thirteen-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril . Find out more >>

Shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, Bewilderment by Richard Powers ( The Overstory ) has been described as a ‘taut ecological parable’. Robbie is a 9-year old boy with Asperger’s-like traits, a precocious intelligence, a prodigious memory and exquisitely tuned to loss. His father, Theo, is an astrobiologist, consumed with finding signs of life in the cosmos and raising Robbie alone after the tragic death of his wife. As Robbie’s behaviour grows more unmanageable, Theo seeks out an experimental treatment that enables Robbie to pattern his emotional responses on the recorded brainwave activity of his late mother. But as government funding is pulled, Robbie suffers a precipitous decline with heart-breaking consequences. Find out more >>

Relationship dramas

Beautiful World, Where Are You is the highly anticipated new contemporary drama from Salley Rooney ( Normal People , Conversations With Friends ). Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young―but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world? Find out more >>

Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women Book 3) by Evie Dunmore sounds like the perfect antidote to the current bombardment of ‘deep and meaningful’ in the media. Going toe-to-toe with a brooding Scotsman is rather bold for a respectable suffragist and Oxford scholar but when the aspiring artist and banking heiress Hattie Greenfield finds herself at the altar with the darkly attractive financier Lucian Blackstone what else is she to do? When the bewitching daughter of his business rival all but falls into his lap, Lucian, a self-made man holding vast wealth but little power, sees political opportunity. He has no room for his new wife’s romantic notions… until a journey to Scotland paints everthing in a different light. Find out more >>

What’s New in Books in August 2021

There are some big industry names releasing new books and several intriguing debuts that will be difficult for bookish souls to resist. Here are my top picks of the new book releases in August 2021.

Fresh literary fiction

2020 was a breakout year for Aussie author Charlotte McConaghy with her epic climate fiction title Migrations (aka The Last Migration ) topping the international bestseller lists. Now she is back with another suspenseful literary fiction release, Once There Were Wolves .

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team tasked with reintroducing fourteen grey wolves into the remote Highlands, despite fierce opposition from the locals. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove them out of Alaska. When Inti’s wolves surprise everyone by thriving, she begins to let her guard down, even opening up to the possibility of love. But when a local farmer is found dead, she’s unable to accept her wolves could be responsible and makes a reckless decision to protect them, testing every instinct she has.   Read my review of this mesmerizing novel >>

Tracey Lange’s debut We Are the Brennans is receiving high praise from early reviewers. When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. She’d deserted them all―and her high school sweetheart―five years before with little explanation, and they’ve got questions. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. A richly layered, deft exploration of the staying power of shame―and the redemptive power of love―in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets . Find out more >>

Sara Nisha Adam’s debut The Reading List has been described “a quietly beautiful novel about the magic of books and the joy of human connection” by Newsweek. West London widower Mukesh is grieving his wife. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library, who discovers a list of novels she’s never heard of before in a returned book and sets out to read them all. These books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh enters the library, seeking to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, she shows him the list and these shared reading experiences build a connection between two lonely souls. Find out more >>

Freya Sampson’s debut The Last Chance Library  sounds like another heartwarming fiction release tailor-made for bookish souls. June Jones emerges from her shell to fight for her beloved local library, and through the efforts and support of an eclectic group of library patrons, she discovers life-changing friendships along the way.  Find out more >>

August 2021 mystery thrillers

While authors Joanne Harris ( Chocolat , Five Quarters of the Orange ) and Stephen King ( The Shining , Mr Mercedes ) have distinctly different writing styles, common to both are loyal fan bases eager to get their hands on copies of their new books.

A Narrow Door marks an incendiary moment for St Oswald’s school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered. But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She’ll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. After all… You can’t keep a good woman down. Find out more >>

Billy Summers is a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything… This can’t-put-it-down novel features a compelling and surprising duo who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption. Find out more >>

Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition,  In My Dreams I Hold A Knife   is an addictive, propulsive read. Find out more >>

Historical mystery & coming of age

Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening new mystery Clark and Division about a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister’s suspicious death, brings into focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II. A heartbreakingly real crime fiction plot with rich period detail inspired by true events. Find out more >>

What does it mean to feel at home in the world? To find our true family? In Allison Larkin’s new book The People We Keep a young songwriter steals a car, hits the road, and struggles against all odds to try to find the answer. About the people we choose—and even more importantly the people who choose us—this novel is both a profound love letter to creative resilience and a reminder that sometimes even tragedy can be a kind of blessing. Find out more >>

What’s New in Books in July 2021

Whether you are in lockdown or out and about enjoying holiday down-time, the new release books in July are sure to interest a wide range of readers. Here are my picks of the best new fiction books out this month.

New thrillers and suspense novels

One of the biggest name book releases in July 2021 is bestselling thriller author Lisa Jewell’s The Night She Disappeared exploring the power of toxic relationships, obsession and the murkier reaches of the human psyche.

Teenage mother Tallulah goes out on a date while her mother Kim babysits, but never returns. Desperate to find her, Kim contacts her friends and learns Tallulah and her boyfriend were last seen heading to a party at an abandoned mansion in the woods the locals call Dark Place. Over a year on their disappearance remains unsolved, but could a note discovered in the woods lead to the truth about what happened that night? Read my review >>

A Voice in the Night by Sarah Hawthorn is an addictive thriller of twists and turns from a striking new voice.

Following a bitter separation, Lucie moves to London to take up a position with a prestigious law firm. It seems an optimistic new beginning, until one day she receives a hand-delivered note with the strange words:  At last I’ve found you. A shock I‘m sure. But in time I‘ll explain. Martin. As a young intern in New York, Lucie had fallen in love with a married man called Martin, who was tragically killed in the 9/11 attacks. Could her long-dead lover have staged his own disappearance under the cover of that fateful day 20 years ago? Or is someone else stalking her, or her vivid imagination is playing tricks?   Read my review >>

More new literary mysteries in July 2021

In Intimacies by Katie Kitamura , an interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home but she’s drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover is still entangled in his marriage, her friend witnesses a ‘seemingly’ random act of violence, and she’s pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes. Find out more >>

Alison Booth ( The Philosopher’s Daughters ) is back with new mystery novel The Painting . When Anika Molnar flees Hungary not long before the break-up of the Soviet Union, she carries only a small suitcase and a painting from her family’s hidden collection. Living with her aunt in Sydney, the painting hangs in pride of place in her bedroom, until one day it is stolen. As sinister secrets from her family’s past cast suspicion over the painting’s provenance, she embarks on a gripping quest to uncover the truth. Read my review >>

July 2021 Historical Fiction

My top pick of the historical fiction releases this month is The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names .

An evocative coming-of-age World War II story about an isolated and lonely but resourceful young woman Yona who was brought up by an old woman in the Eastern European wilderness after being kidnapped from her wealthy German parents as a child, who after learning what’s now happening in the outside world, uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything. Find out more >>

July’s fresh science fiction

In novella A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) from Hugo award-winning Becky Chambers… It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools, and wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; now just urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a  lot . Find out more >>

Matt Bell’s Appleseed is being described as a breakout novel and a pulse-pounding novel of ideas. Set over 3 timelines – in eighteenth-century apple orchards in Ohio, fifty years from now when climate change has ravaged the Earth and a thousand years into the future when North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice – this novel is part speculative epic, part tech thriller, part reinvented fairy tale, and an unforgettable meditation on climate change; corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; manifest destiny; and the myths and legends that sustain us all. Sounds epic. Find out more >>

Book releases to warm the heart

In Home by Penny Parkes , Anna Wilson travels the world as a professional housesitter – stepping into other people’s lives – caring for their homes, pets and sometimes even neighbours. But growing up in foster care, all she has ever really wanted is a proper home of her own, filled with family, love and happy memories. Her friends may have become her family of choice, but Anna is still stuck in that nomadic cycle, looking for answers, trying to find the courage to put down roots and find a place to call home. Find out more >>

Kim Lock’s The Other Side of Beautiful has been described as Lost & Found   meets  The Rosie Project . Mercy Blain’s house has just burnt down, and since she hasn’t left that house for 2-years, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people. She goes to her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene’s house, but it turns out she can’t stay there, either. So, after the chance purchase of a cult classic camper van, Mercy embarks on a road trip with her sausage dog, Wasabi, and a mysterious box of cremated remains. Find out more >>

What’s New in Books in June 2021

Whether you are looking forward to your summer holidays or snuggling up with a rug and hot chocolate like I am here in the southern hemisphere, June is a great month for reading. Here’s my selection of the best new fiction books on offer.

New romance novels

Most book lovers will have heard of Graeme Simsion’s breakout bestselling non-neurotypical rom-com trilogy starring Don Tillman – The Rosie Project , The Rosie Effect and The Rosie Result . But did you know that in 2017, Simsion teamed up with his wife author Anne Buist to write Two Steps Forward , a soup-for-the-soul midlife romance set on the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrim’s trail?

Two Steps Onwards is the pair’s wise, witty and wine-filled follow-up, set on the less-travelled Chemin d’Assise and Via Francigena trail to Rome. It’s about helping the people you love, and knowing when to let go. Figuring out what you really want in life. And seizing your chances, before it’s too late. Read my review >>

In Very Sincerely Yours , the new romantic comedy from Kerry Winfrey (‘Waiting for Tom Hanks’) newly single vintage toy store assistant Theodora has a crush on children’s show host Everett St James, and summons up the courage to write to him, just like his much younger fans do – after all, he always gives them sound advice. Low and behold, he starts writing back! Hard for a booklover to resist a sweet epistolary novel. Find out more >>

Bestselling romance author Paige Toon’s latest happy-tear-jerker, Someone I Used To Know , is a heart-wrenching and romantic story about Leah, George and Theo, at fifteen and then what seems like a lifetime later. It’s about healing scars, second chances, love for the family we’re born into and the one we build along the way, and discovering the courage to love again. Recommended for fans of Beth O’Leary and Sally Thorne. Find out more >>

New thrillers and mysteries in June

Falling by TJ Newman , a former bookseller, now experienced flight attendant, is one of the most raved about debut thrillers of June 2021 — like the films  Die Hard and  Speed  on steroids (Library Journal) and Jaws  at 35,000 feet ( Don Winslow ).

You just boarded a flight to New York. There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard. What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped. For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die. The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane. Enjoy the flight… An early contender for my best book of 2021.  Read my review >>

Related Read: Another June 2021 book release set in the sky is Hostage by Clare Mackintosh .

In Gold Dagger winner Michael Robotham ‘s new standalone novel When You Are Mine , Philomena McCarthy (the daughter of a London gangster) has defied the odds and become a promising junior officer with the Metropolitan Police. Called to the scene of a domestic assault, she rescues Tempe Brown, the girlfriend of a decorated detective. The incident is hushed up, but Phil has unwittingly made a dangerous enemy with powerful friends. For me, the most intriguing of the June 2021 psychological thriller releases.  Find out more >>

Mrs England is a new gripping feminist mystery from bestselling author Stacey Halls ( The Familiars  and  The Foundling ). West Yorkshire, 1904.  Young nurse Ruby May takes a position looking after the children of wealthy couple Charles and Lilian England. As she adapts to life at the isolated Hardcastle House, Charles is welcoming but it becomes clear there’s something not quite right about the beautiful, mysterious Mrs England. Hard for this booklover to look past a Rebecca-esque Edwardian mystery.  Find out more >>

Literary and historical fiction releases

Jane Riley’s debut novel The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clock was feel-good fiction at its finest, and accordingly one of my favourite reads in 2020 .

In her 2021 release  Geraldine Verne’s Red Suitcase , her titular character is grieving the loss of her husband. Jack had two dying wishes: that his wife scatter his ashes somewhere ‘exotic’, and that she not give up on life once he was gone. He intended to spur her on to new adventures, but despite clinging to her red suitcase, Geraldine Verne hasn’t left the house for 3-months. It takes an accident for her to accept help and heartbroken Meals on Wheels volunteer Lottie brings with her more than cottage pie. A gloriously unlikely friendship blossoms. Read my review >>

My pick of June 2021’s more literary book releases is  Still Life by Sarah Winman ( Tin Man ,  When God Was a Rabbit ). It moves from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End and spans four decades, and is described as a big-hearted story of two people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster. When Joanna Cannon calls a new book ‘utterly beautiful’ and Graham Norton says it is ‘sheer joy’, it goes straight on my wishlist. Find out more >>

From bestselling historical fiction author Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, comes The Personal Librarian – a fictional account of the remarkable true story of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black American woman who became famous in high-society for her intellect, style, and wit, all while forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to retain the role she deserved and leave a lasting legacy. Love reading fiction based on fact.  Find out more >>

What’s New in Books in May 2021

As a rule, May usually turns out a bumper crop of new books, with 2021 is proving no exception. There really is a wonderfully diverse range of books in the new fiction releases lists for us to discuss this month.

Highly anticipated literary fiction

Amongst the most highly anticipated of the May 2021 book releases is Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle . With a title as grand as its scope, settings and page count, and superlatives such as ‘breathtaking epic’ and ‘masterpiece’ being bandied about, this is on my ‘must-make-time-to-read’ list.

An unforgettable story of Marion, a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost and, a century later, a vibrant canny Hollywood actress determined to bring her story to life on the big screen and liberate herself in the process —this emotional, meticulously researched novel spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles. Find out more >>

More noteworthy literary fiction releases:

How Lucky by Will Leitch – Remember what I said about diversity? This debut about a fiercely resilient young man living with a severe physical disability and his efforts to solve a crime mystery that unfolds right outside his house, is being described as ‘as suspenseful and funny as it is moving,’ and earning high praise for the authenticity of its first-person narrative.  Find out more >>

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau – Described as Almost Famous  meets  Daisy Jones & The Six , this tale of a 14-year-old girl’s coming of age in 1970s Baltimore, caught between her straight-laced family and the progressive one she nannies for—who are secretly hiding a famous rock star and his movie star wife for the summer—sounds like a great holiday read. Find out more >>

Upcoming releases – science fiction & fantasy

The Kingdoms , a new release genre-bender from bestselling author Natasha Pulley ( The Watchmaker of Filigree Street ) is being compared the writing of Stuart Turton and David Mitchell , some of my favourite authors.

In a London occupied by the French empire, Joe Tournier is a British slave. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter. But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember, in a world where English is spoken in England, and not French. Then he receives a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago by a stranger who seems to know him very well. “Come home, if you remember.” Joe’s journey to unravel the truth will take him to a remote Scottish island, and back through time itself as he battles for his life – and for a very different future. Find out more >>

One of the most original new fiction releases this month is The Ones We’re Meant to Find  by Joan He. It’s described as ‘a gripping and heartfelt YA sci-fi with mind-blowing twists’.

Cee has been trapped on an abandoned island for 3 years and 17 days without any memories of how she arrives or her life prior. All she knows is that somewhere out there, she has a sister named Kay that she is desperate to find. In a world apart, 16-year-old STEM prodigy Kasey Mizuhara is also living a life of isolation. The eco-city she calls home is one of eight levitating around the world, built for people who protected the planet―and now need protecting from it. While Kasey, an introvert and loner, doesn’t mind the lifestyle, her sister Celia hated it. Popular and lovable, Celia preferred the outside world. But no one could have predicted that Celia would take a boat out to sea, never to return. Find out more >>

New crime thrillers – May 2021

There’s rarely a shortage of new crime fiction and mystery thrillers, so popular is the genre, but the deeper psychological intrigue offered by these upcoming releases particularly caught my attention.

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz – 18yr-old Alice arrived in New York carrying only cash and a camera. One month later, she is an unidentified murder victim. Ruby Jones is also trying to start over but lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice’s body by the Hudson River. Alice is sure Ruby is the key to solving the mystery of her life – and death. And Ruby finds herself unable to let Alice go. Find out more >>

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave – Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his new wife, Hannah:  protect her . He means his 16-year-old daughter who lost her mother tragically as a child; who wants nothing to do with her new stepmother. Hannah soon realises that Owen isn’t who he said he was, and his daughter might hold the key to discovering his true identity, and why he disappeared. Find out more >>

Finally, we turn our attention to some of the best of May’s lighter new releases, books that will give you the warm and fuzzies.

May 2021 Contemporary Romance Novels

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – Poppy and Alex have nothing in common but have been the best of friends since college. They live far apart, but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together. Until 2 years ago, when they ruined everything and haven’t spoken since. Now realising that’s when she was last truly happy, and determined to fix everything, Poppy convinces Alex to join her on one more vacation. Find out more >>

The Beautiful Fall by Hugh Breakey – Every 179 days Robbie forgets everything. He knows this because last time it happened he wrote himself a letter explaining it all. To survive the forgetting, Robbie leads a solitary, regimented life. Speaks to no one if he can avoid it. But then, with twelve days left before his next forgetting, Julie invades his life. Young, beautiful—the only woman he can ever remember meeting. Read my review >>

What Was New in Fiction in April 2021

Drama & romance.

I absolutely adored Beth O’Leary’s first romantic comedy novels The Flatshare and The Switch , and now her third, The Road Trip , is one of my most hotly anticipated 2021 fiction releases.

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend’s wedding in rural Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed. But, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie’s ex, Dylan, who she’s avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier. Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they’ve totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. Sounds like the perfect romantic comedy setup. I cannot wait to read this one. Find out more >>

Other Women by Cathy Kelly has been described as “a refreshingly honest story about female friendship and marriage – and all the great loves of our life”.

Three women. Three secrets. Three tangled lives… Sid wears her independence like armour. So when she strikes up a rare connection with unlucky-in-love Finn, they are both determined to prove that men and women can just be friends. Can’t they? Marin has the perfect home, attentive husband, two beloved children – and a secret addiction to designer clothes. She has it all, so why can’t she stop comparing herself to other women? Bea believes that we all have one love story – and she’s had hers. Now her life centres around her son and support group of fierce single mums – the women she shares everything with. Well, apart from the one secret she can’t tell anyone… Find out more >>

More April 2021 chick lit releases sure to tug on the heartstrings:

Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle – Maybell Parrish lives in her head, her real life full of painful disappointments. So, inheriting an old manor from an eccentric Great Aunt provides her a chance to change things. If she can find a way to get on with grouchy but gorgeous groundskeeper and co-inheritor Wesley. Find out more >>

Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez – Vanessa’s mother and sister never saw the age of 30, so she’s been living every moment as if it were her last. But after her half sister suddenly leaves her in custody of her baby, life goes from “daily adventure” to “next-level bad” (now with bonus baby vomit in hair). Enter the surprisingly helpful hot lawyer next door, Adrian and his geriatric Chihuahua. Find out more >>

New historical & mystery fiction

There are many intriguing new historical fiction titles being released in April 2021.

While Pip Williams’ award-winning The Dictionary of Lost Words was released in Australia last year, I just wanted to highlight that it is now being released worldwide.

In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first  Oxford English Dictionary , one of their daughters decides to collect the “objectionable” words they omit… Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement with the Great War looming, Esme’s ‘Dictionary of Lost Words’ reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.  Read my review >>

The Plague Letters by V L Valentine – London, 1665. Within the growing pile of plague-ridden corpses in his churchyard, Rector Symon Patrick discovers one that’s unique. Someone is performing terrible experiments upon the dying. Desperate to discover who, Symon joins a society of eccentric medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague… Find out more >>

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin – Inspired by the true WWII history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, this is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace Bennett discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed. Find out more >>

New in crime & mystery thrillers – April 2021

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain –  Detective Anna Hart is hiding away from the world. But then a series of local disappearances reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? This deeply affecting new crime mystery weaves together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical. Find out more >>

Missing Pieces by Tim Weaver – This chunky new thriller has earned rave early reviews. Rebekah Murphy knows too much… She knows she’s alone on an abandoned island with a killer on her trail. She knows that to get home, she must live to understand why this is happening. She knows someone tried to kill her for a secret. What she doesn’t know is what that secret is… . Find out more >>

March 2021 Book Releases

Haunting historical fiction.

March is Women’s History Month, and quite fittingly there are some fantastic new historical fiction releases with strong female leads on offer.

First up, the highly anticipated The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray. This chunky new fiction is based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy. I love multiple time/narrative perspectives, and this novel features three – a founding mother (1774), a daring visionary (1914) and a reluctant resistor (1940). Described as “an intricately woven and powerfully told, sweeping novel about duty and hope, love and courage, and the strength we take from those who came before us” this sounds like a must-read. > (opens in a new tab)”>Find out more >>

Sarah Penner’s ‘subversive and intoxicating’ debut The Lost Apothecary , has featured in all the ‘highly anticipated 2021 fiction’ lists. Could this cover be any more beautiful?

In eighteenth-century London, secret apothecary shop owner Nella sells women well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But her fate is jeopardized when a young patron makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries. In present-day London, when aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell stumbles upon a clue to the unsolved apothecary murders that haunted London 200 years prior, her life collides with the apothecary’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive. Find out more >>

New mystery and literary suspense

The Vines by Shelley Nolden – A shuttered hospital on New York’s North Brother Island, the site of century-old quarantines and human experiments. When Finn, a young urban explorer, glimpses an enigmatic beauty through the foliage, intrigue turns to obsession as he seeks to uncover her past–and his own family’s dark secrets. Find out more >>

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews – A ‘stylish and sharp’ character-driven literary suspense thriller set in mysterious Marrakesh, about a secretive famous novelist and ambitious assistant locked in a struggle for fortune and fame. Described by Maria Semple as ‘part Patricia Highsmith, part  All About Eve  and pure fun’. Find out more >>

New romance and drama releases

In The Last Bookshop by Emma Young, Cait’s best friends have always been books – along with the rare souls who love them as much as she does, like grandmotherly June. When Cait set up her bookshop right in the heart of the city, she thought she’d skipped straight to ‘happily ever after’, but things are changing fast. When June’s sudden interest in Cait’s lacklustre love life and a handsome ‘Mystery Shopper’ force her to concede there may be more to life than her shop and cat, luxury chain stores are circling the prime location and a personal tragedy is brewing. Soon Cait is questioning the viability of both the shop and life she’s shaped around it. An unlikely band of allies are determined she won’t face these questions alone; but is a love of books enough to halt the march of time and progress? Read my review of this heartwarming novel >>

The Speed of Light by Elissa Grossell Dickey – A provocative debut novel told in intersecting timelines over a tumultuous, defining year in one woman’s life. After an MS diagnosis and walking away from “a fixer” but possibly the love of her life, one morning at the university where Simone works, gunshots ring out. In a temporary safe place and terrified, her mind racing, her past year comes into focus. Find out more >>

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne – From the bestselling author of  The Hating Game comes the clever and funny story of a muscular, tattooed, ‘selfish rich boy’ hired as an assistant to two eccentric 90yr-old women, under the watchful eye of ‘serious’ hardworking retirement home manager Ruthie. Find out more >>

Also new in books in March 2021:

Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro –  The latest novel from this Nobel and Booker Prize-winner, features an unforgettable narrator. From her place in a store Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the behaviour of those who come in to browse and who pass on the street outside, remaining hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Find out more >>

Infinite by Brian Freeman – Car crash victim Dylan is haunted by glimpses of  himself . A psychiatrist claims he’s undergoing a hypnotherapy treatment based on every choice he makes creating an infinite number of parallel universes, and Dylan’s doppelgänger has staked a claim to his world. Find out more >>

February 2021 New Release Books

The romance of reading.

It seems appropriate that we kick off my top picks of the new books in February with some romance.

First up, a delightful Victorian romance with a feisty leading lady. A Lady’s Formula for Love is Elizabeth Everett’s debut novel and the first book in a planned series, The Secret Scientists of London . Lady Violet is keeping secrets. She founded a clandestine sanctuary for England’s most brilliant female scientists and she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all is the feelings she has for her solitary and reserved protection officer Arthur Kneland. Find out more >>

Related reading: My Top Intelligent Rom-Com Novels

The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarro s – A divorcee starting over clashes with a bestselling writer seeking to complete her grandmother’s unfinished novel. Told in alternating timelines, this story examines the risks we take for love, the scars too deep to heal, and the endings we can’t bring ourselves to see coming. Find out more >>

The Moroccan Daughter by Deborah Rodriguez – From the author of the bestseller The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul , comes a modern story about four different women, of forbidden love, secrets and revelations, set in a country steeped in honour and tradition. Read my review >>

New mystery and suspense

Sarah Pearse’ debut gothic novel The Sanatorium is earning her high praise from early reviewers. ‘This spine-tingling, atmospheric thriller has it all: an eerie Alpine setting, sharp prose, and twists you’ll never see coming’ according to Richard Osman, and the Irish Times are calling it ‘genuinely scary’.

Elin Warner has taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother’s recent engagement she has little choice but to accept. But the venue, an isolated hotel (recently renovated sanatorium) high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place she wants to be, particularly when a storm threatens and people start vanishing… Find out more >>

The Paris Affair by Pip Drysdale – From the bestselling author of The Sunday Girl and The Strangers We Know , a new thriller set in Paris starring Harper Brown an arts journalist who dreams of being a hard-hitting reporter. She’s hot on the trail of a murderer – and the scoop of a lifetime…That’s if the killer doesn’t catch her first. Read my review >>

The Spiral by Iain Ryan – A ‘rollercoaster crime noir thriller’ (Independent) with the inventiveness of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle . After being shot twice by a colleague (now dead), Emma’s quest for answers set her on a dangerous, spiralling journey into the heart of darkness. Read my review >>

Literary and historical fiction

Helen Fisher’s Space Hopper (published as Faye, Faraway in the US) is one of the most highly anticipated new releases of 2021. A heartfelt, spellbinding, and irresistible debut novel for fans of  The Time Traveler’s Wife and  Outlander  (tick and tick!) that examines loss, faith, and love.

Although Faye is happy with her life, the loss of her mother as a child weighs on her mind even more now that she is a mother herself. In an extraordinary turn of events, she finds herself back in her childhood home in the 1970s. Faced with the chance to finally seek answers to her questions – but away from her own family – how much is she willing to give up for another moment with her mother? Read my review >>

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles – Another release with lots of buzz recommended for fans of  The Lilac Girls  and  The Paris Wife . This story of romance, friendship, family and the power of literature to bring us together, is based on the true WWII story of heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris. Find out more >>

My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee – From award-winning author of  Native Speaker  and  On Such a Full Sea , an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure – and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection.  Find out more >>

January 2021 New Fiction Releases

Thrilling new page-turners.

Rachel Hawkins’ The Wife Upstairs is one of the most hotly-anticipated new books of 2021. A modern retelling of the gothic classic Jane Eyre , this is the story of Jane (a broke, light-fingered dog-walker working in a wealthy gated-community in Alabama) who sees an opportunity in the recently widowed, rich, brooding and handsome Eddie Rochester. His wife, Bea, a beautiful and successful businesswoman had drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Can she, plain Jane, win Eddie’s heart before her past–or his–catches up to her?

Apparently with ‘a fresh feminist sensibility’ this novel ‘flips the script’ on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. Find out more >>

Related reads: The Madwoman Upstairs by Catherine Lowell

In Shiver by Allie Reynolds , things turn deadly when five snowboarding friends reunite for a weekend in the French Alps. Someone has deliberately stranded them together at the remote mountaintop resort to find out the truth about Saskia’s mysterious disappearance a decade prior. Milla’s not sure what’s worse: the increasingly sinister things happening around her or the looming snowstorm that’s making escape even more impossible. All she knows is that there’s no one on the mountain she can trust…

From Reynolds, a former competitive snowboarder, authenticity of subject and setting (one ideal for a locked-room thriller) is assured. This is a chilling dramatic thriller.  Read my full review >>

More new psychological crime thrillers:

My Best Friend’s Murder by Polly Phillips – This debut domestic drama explores a toxic but layered friendship and is a gripping read full of secrets, lies and dark motivations. Read my review >>

The Coffinmaker’s Garden by Stuart McBride – Ex-DI Ash Henderson races to catch a serial killer while a storm batters the Scottish Coast and a garden with buried human remains is falling into the North Sea. 

January 2021 literary mystery & historical fiction

What Could Be Saved by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz is described as a delicious hybrid of mystery, drama, and elegance: rich with detail, lush in language, and capable of keeping you on the edge of your seat.

With a narrative alternating between two time periods and distinctly different settings, Bangkok 1972 and Washington DC 2019, this novel depicts the secret lives and affairs of young elegant parents Genevieve and Robert Preston, and now daughters Laura and Bea as adults seeking answers to their brothers’ childhood disappearance while their once formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. This sounds like an enthralling and moving story about sibling love, rivalry and loyalty. Find out more >>

More thought-provoking literary fiction releases:

Waiting for the Night Song by Julie Carrick Dalton – A novel about childhood friendships ruptured by the high price of long-held secrets; a love song to the natural beauty around us and call to fight for what we believe in.

The Price of Two Sparrows by Christy Collins – Her award-winning novella The End of Seeing was deeply moving, so expectations are high for Collins’ first full-length work exploring issues of community and prejudice, religion and nature in the modern world. Read my review >>

Science fiction & fantasy in January 2021

Sci-fi dystopian novels were notably absent from my Best Books of 2020 list due to my recent avoidance of the genre… the real news being worrisome enough! But as we collectively look toward brighter horizons, this new January 2021 science fiction release The Effort by Claire Holroyde sounds too good to let pass by.

Featuring a diverse ensemble cast of characters from around the globe and exploring the question, ‘How would we respond if we knew an asteroid equivalent to that which ended the reign of the dinosaurs were on a collision course with earth?’, Publishers Weekly have said its deeper themes about human nature make this apocalyptic thriller more than escapist reading. Can this small highly skilled team find a way to neutralize the greatest threat the world has ever seen before mass hysteria hits or world leaders declare World War III? Sounds provocative. Find out more >>

The last of my picks of January’s new book releases is the quirky fantasy novel We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen .

Jamie wakes up with no memories but can read and erase other people’s—a power he uses to hold up banks to buy coffee, cat food and books. Zoe is also searching for her past and uses her abilities of speed and strength to deliver fast food and occasionally beat up bad guys. When the archrivals meet in a memory-loss support group, they realize the key to revealing their hidden pasts and saving countless people may be trusting each other, and themselves.

Chen’s debut, the heartfelt Here and Now and Then ranks among my favourite time-travel novels, so if anyone can pull off this oddball superhero story premise in 2021 it is him. Find out more >>

What to read next? 👉 Check out these December 2020 New Fiction Releases you may have missed and my favourite reads of 2020 .

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10 books to read in July

During the heat of July, thrillers distract us while books about the natural world enthrall us. Readers will also find the year’s most superb graphic essay, a feminist comic novel about the tech world and a harrowing memoir of teenage mistreatment. Remember, now that many social distancing restrictions have lifted, your local independent bookstore may be open again for in-person browsing.

'Razorblade Tears,' by S.A. Cosby (July 6)

When the married Isiah and Derek are murdered, it’s unclear whether the motivation was homophobia or racial hatred: Isiah was Black and Derek, White. Their ex-con fathers, Ike and Buddy, work together to find out what happened. It’s a whiplash-fast thriller with a dose of clear-eyed social justice.

Eight thrillers and mysteries to read this summer

'This Is Your Mind on Plants,' by Michael Pollan (July 6)

Everyone’s favorite omnivore is back, but just because the word “plants” is in the title doesn’t mean Pollan is discussing vegetarianism. He’s interested in plants as stimulants, calmatives and hallucinogens, and he takes on caffeine, opium and mescaline. Does he take them himself? You’ll have to read to find out.

'Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship,' by Catherine Raven (July 6)

Raven’s gorgeous account of her bond with a fox while living in a remote cabin will open readers’ eyes to the ways humans connect to the natural world and vice versa. You’ll hear a lot about how she read out loud to the fox, but even more entrancing is the way the fox responded. If there’s one book you pick up this summer, make it this one.

20 books to read this summer

'The Start-Up Wife,' by Tahmima Anam (July 13)

When Asha and Cyrus open their Utopia incubator, it’s based on an algorithm Asha wrote that provides an online spiritual rush on demand. But the bliss Asha felt when she gave up her PhD studies and reconnected with Cyrus, her high school crush, may not outlast his ambitions – or the “bro culture” and racism that sustain many a tech business these days.

'The Therapist,' by B.A. Paris

This summer, as you silently fume about the pool in your friend’s neighborhood, pick up Paris’s rage-filled and thrill-stuffed novel about a posh London gated community that’s a hotbed of secrets and lies. Alice and Leo’s new house, they discover, was recently the scene of a therapist’s murder.

'Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness,' by Kristen Radtke (July 13)

We slowly emerge from a long pandemic, and writer-illustrator Radtke (“Imagine Wanting Only This”) sees us, all of us, in our various forms of isolation. This stunning book is less a memoir than a long graphic essay, more a meditation and less a solution. How we disconnect may help us understand how to ultimately connect.

'The Comfort of Monsters,' by Willa C. Richards (July 13)

The details of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murder spree transfixed a terrified nation. But this novel takes a more personal look at how the serial killer altered a family: Thirty years after Dee McBride disappeared in Milwaukee in the summer of 1991, her sister and dying mother hire a psychic to help them find the truth.

'What Is a Dog?,' by Chloe Shaw (July 13)

Shaw, mourning the death of a beloved canine companion, looks to the dogs of her past to understand how they added to her life. Her section on “being the dog” in relationships is unlike anything you’ve read about our four-legged friends.

Love your dog? (Of course you do!) Here are 9 new books to remind you why.

'Stolen,' by Elizabeth Gilpin

When undiagnosed depression led 15-year-old Gilpin to impulsive behavior, her parents sent her to a behavioral modification program. Abducted from her bed in the middle of the night and sent to the woods to fend for herself, Gilpin shows how not to deal with mental illness; in surviving such treatment, she also shows how strong a mentally ill person can be.

'Intimacies,' by Katie Kitamura (July 20)

In her unforgettable 2017 “A Separation,” Kitamura took her protagonist to the edge of an island in the Mediterranean; in her new and equally unforgettable novel, she places an interpreter in the middle of The Hague. This woman is also embroiled in many dramas, personal and professional, forcing her to choose a path and an identity.

Bethanne Patrick  is the editor, most recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People.”

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100 Notable Books of 2021

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The nine stories in this deeply personal, frankly funny and illuminating debut — published eight months after the author’s death at age 28 — are all set in California’s Central Valley, and follow the legacies of the Cambodian genocide among the diaspora who resettled there.

For some years Bell, the author of “Scrapper” and “Cataclysm Baby,” has had climate and apocalypse on his mind. This excellent novel continues and deepens his investment. Timely, prescient and true, the book tracks the planet’s progression from lush Eden to barren hellscape.

In Rooney’s much-anticipated third novel, readers follow the lives of Alice, a writer of global acclaim, and her best friend, Eileen, who works at a literary magazine in Dublin. The two grapple with life’s biggest (and most inconsequential) issues in a lively correspondence.

Powers’s ability to translate arcane science into lush storytelling is on ingenious display in his latest novel, about a newly widowed astrobiologist and his troubled 9-year-old son, who embarks on an experimental neurofeedback therapy with profound implications for the human race.

Part homage, part psychological investigation, this novelized portrait of Huisman’s mother seeks to capture on paper the life of a beautiful, charismatic, unstable and exasperating woman — as well as the experience of growing up in her ambit.

This novel, about a half-Vietnamese American in Vietnam, is preoccupied with the body and its violations — both the sexual trauma experienced by the female characters and the ravages of colonial occupation and war upon the body of Vietnam.

This remarkable debut novel, about a young Indian woman saddled with the care of her ailing and abusive mother, inflicts a visceral punch. In spare and exacting prose, Doshi documents the petty cruelties and helpless dependency of a primal relationship in disarray.

Ferris tells the complex and often very funny story of hapless Charlie and his various attempts at success. Charlie’s novelist son eventually reveals himself to be the narrator, and sets up an impressive reversal.

The Nobel Prize winner’s first novel in 48 years, involving a sinister online business that sells human body parts for private use in rituals and superstitions, is many things at once: a caustic political satire, a murder mystery, a conspiracy story and a deeply felt lament for the spirit of Nigeria.

Weaving narratives from three eras across most of a millennium, from Constantinople in the 15th century to a space pilgrimage in the 22nd, Doerr’s first novel since “All the Light We Cannot See” offers a paean to the consolations of storytelling, and to the people who pass down ancient texts.

Franzen’s sixth novel follows the Hildebrandt family in suburban Chicago, with a shaky marriage, a crisis of faith and teenage anguish driving the compulsively readable plot. Set in the 1970s, the book examines an age-old moral dilemma: how to do good in a selfish world.

Following three central characters — a trans woman who wants a baby; her ex, a man who’s recently detransitioned; and the cisgender woman he’s impregnated — this debut novel suggests there are many different ways to be a parent, or a person.

Lewis’s haunting novel is built of vignettes whose links become gradually clear, involving a dealer in Indigenous artifacts, the Ivy-educated scion of a West African family, an East Village street kid with a pure singing voice and a photographer just back from a decade abroad.

After winning the Pulitzer Prize for each of his last two novels, Whitehead here delivers a rollicking crime caper set in the Harlem of the 1950s and ’60s, when social upheaval was just starting to roil the neighborhood. The highlight of the novel is a brilliantly executed robbery of the famed Hotel Theresa.

Mbue’s quietly devastating second novel — about a fictional African village with high mortality due to an American oil company’s pollution — charts the ways oppression, be it at the hands of a government or a corporation or a society, can turn the most basic needs into radical acts.

In the latest novel by the author of “A Separation,” a court translator in The Hague is tasked with intimately vanishing into the voices and stories of the “plethora of war criminals in our midst.”

Not quite erotica, this fiction anthology is more about the transformative nature of kink as a practice. Featuring works from a diverse selection of writers, the collection explores issues of power, agency and identity.

Klara, the solar-powered humanoid who narrates the Nobelist Ishiguro’s powerful eighth novel, is an “Artificial Friend,” purchased as a companion to a sickly teenage girl. Through the robot’s eyes, and haunting mechanical voice, we encounter a near future in which technology, ominously, has begun to render humans themselves obsolete.

Based on the lives of Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first Black female doctor in New York State, and her daughter, Greenidge’s second novel centers its post-Civil War New York story on an enduring quest for freedom. A feat of monumental thematic imagination.

In Davies’s wise, bracingly honest novel, a father chronicles his son’s birth through his teenage years. He juggles guilt, worry and marital strife alongside the joys, triumphs and laughter of family life — never sugarcoating, always leaning into the hard parts in a way that’s refreshing, timely and necessary.

Do we live and die by accident, or according to some preordained plan? Spufford explores the question in this vividly imagined and richly drawn novel, which is based on an actual World War II bombing in London.

Set in the 1950s, Towles’s exhilarating novel follows four boys on a trip across America, from rural Nebraska to the skyscrapers of New York. All of them seek a better future but have very different ideas about how to get there; over the course of 10 days this multiperspective story offers an abundance of surprising detours and run-ins.

This triumphant debut novel follows a young Black woman figuring out how to live with joy in the modern American South. The novel switches between the past and the present, alternating the heroine’s story with those of her ancestors.

In this novel of huge imaginative sympathy, Toibin delves into the rich interiority of the German novelist Thomas Mann. From childhood to early success to exile abroad, we follow Mann through personal challenges and political turmoil as he turns the complexities of life into art.

In his haunting new novel, Knausgaard alternates between the first-person accounts of nine characters, all of whom spot a huge, bright star that has inexplicably appeared in the sky. Realist drama gradually gives way to touches of horror and an enigmatic spiritual treatise.

Comprising a title novella and stories, this debut depicts finely drawn Black characters awash in microaggressions across Virginia, past and present.

Part study of suburbia, part globe-trotting adventure, Lee’s latest novel follows a young man from a transformative trip in Asia to a low-key life in a New Jersey town. Reflective, precise writing and a steady churn of pleasures and perils make for a winning combination.

Cohen imagines a college job interview in the 1950s for Benzion Netanyahu, academic and father of the recently ousted Israeli prime minister. The novel explores themes of Jewishness and diaspora as Netanyahu’s fatalistic view of Jewish history bumps up against that of the narrator, an assimilated American Jewish professor.

This singular novel by Lockwood, a lauded memoirist and poet who first gained a following on Twitter, distills the experience of life online while transfiguring it into art. The result is a book that reads like a prose poem, at once sublime, profane, intimate, philosophical, witty and, eventually, deeply moving.

In her quietly radiant new novel, Strout returns to a subject she writes about brilliantly (marriage) and a character readers have met before (Lucy Barton). A long-divorced couple team up for a (platonic) trip to Maine, where they learn about family history and also about themselves.

Part romance, part fantasy, this gorgeous novel is about meeting someone on your daily commute — a girl, it turns out, who has been riding the train since the 1970s, thanks to a magical timeslip. But it’s also about loneliness, and being unmoored from normal time, and missing people you’ve lost, and dealing with generational trauma and fearing an unknowable future.

Shteyngart’s fifth novel begins at the onset of the pandemic, with seven friends and one nemesis gathered at an estate in the Hudson Valley to wait out what they’re sure will be a quick blip in their convenient and prosperous lives.

Plenty of poems here address disability, history and quotidian human behavior, but racism and economic oppression are the former poet laureate’s primary concerns in this book, her first in 12 years. With Dove’s characteristically affable voice, the book tries to understand saving graces and the things they save us from.

A struggling writer steals a plot from his student and his life changes overnight. Suddenly, he’s a household name and the toast of the literary community. But somebody knows what he did — and wants revenge. Korelitz’s latest novel is a literary thriller with two questions at its core: Who knows the truth? And who really owns a story, anyway?

This novel follows a white South African family from the final years of apartheid to the present. A long-deferred vow to their Black housekeeper becomes a stand-in for the nation’s moral bankruptcy.

A lyrical and rebellious love story about two enslaved boys in Mississippi, whose relationship is accepted and even cherished until a Christian evangelist, also enslaved, turns the plantation against them. The novel is about their choice to love in the face of the forces that would crush them, and the repercussions of that love.

This sprawling, go-for-baroque pulp thriller is about two dads — one Black, one white, both ex-cons — who decide to avenge the murders of their sons. Cosby writes in a spirit of generous abundance and gleeful abandon and, unlike a lot of noir writers, he doesn’t shy from operatic emotion.

Inspired by a trove of letters written by her great-grandmother in 1930s Germany and incorporated into the text, Fox’s latest novel spans four generations and two continents, offering a nuanced exploration of the burden of inherited trauma on a single family riven by the Holocaust.

Erdrich's playful wit and casual style belie a seriousness of purpose, which in the case of this winning novel, entails tackling the pandemic, the death of George Floyd, the trials of doing time in prison and, not least, the power of books to change lives.

Kleeman’s novel is an unlikely amalgam of climate horror story, movie-industry satire and made-for-TV mystery, following a flailing writer who has come to Los Angeles for a film adaptation of his novel starring a tabloid-tragic teen star.

Elusive creatures flit through a Chinese city in this enchanting novel, alternately avoiding and consorting with its human inhabitants, all the while pursued by a cryptozoologist with a fondness for smokes and booze — a female, science-minded Sam Spade.

In Baxter’s new novel, an aging couple‘s search for their missing son leads them to a quasi-anarchist group. With generous, keen humor, the author suggests that their real problem might be mortality: not our tumultuous times, but time itself.

In rural Money, Miss., two white men are found murdered next to the corpse of a Black man whose mutilated face bears an eerie resemblance to Emmett Till’s. As more bodies pile up, Everett’s acid satire expands to encompass America’s racist past and present with equal parts horror and humor.

Immensely satisfying, refreshingly new and gloriously written, this vibrant noir, set in 1970s Mexico City, traces how a dowdy secretary on the cusp of 30 sparks to life thanks to the disappearance of her beautiful and glamorous neighbor.

Lish’s substantial gifts are on abundant display throughout this gorgeously written novel, which offers a rich tapestry of troubled lives in and around working-class Boston. Corey, the young protagonist, grows up with a terminally ill mother and a perplexing father whose presence gradually turns sinister.

A middle-aged woman spontaneously buys a new house and moves into it alone, without her husband or teenage daughter. Spiotta’s precisely observed, fiercely intelligent novel excavates the long and winding path that led our protagonist to this place.

El Akkad’s second novel examines opposing sides of a migrant crisis from the point of view of two children: a boy who washes up on an island after a doomed ship passage, and the girl who takes him in and tries to get him to safety. In a compassionate but nuanced telling, the novel effectively effaces assumptions of superiority and inferiority, good and bad.

Labatut’s singular imagination dazzles in this hybrid of fiction and biography, exploring the lives of major 20th-century scientists. His true subject is the ecstasy of discovery and the agonizing price it can exact.

The 2020 Nobel laureate’s stark new collection consists of just 15 poems, but each is as breathtaking as a cold night; the book affirms her icy precision and extends her interest in silence and the void through verses that seem, at times, to offer a poetics of resistance to poetry.

This romance novel has considered realism and punted it outside the highest available window. Letter openers have a hidden rapier blade; a respectable lady’s house in Mayfair is equipped with a flying spell and can sail to Bath. Yet amid the often wacky melodrama, there are moments of emotion that cut to the quick.

Equal parts biography, history and thriller, this book tells the story of the author’s idealistic but doomed great-great-aunt, Mildred Harnack, who, between 1932 and 1942, helped build a network of objectors in Berlin who hoped to stop the Nazis.

This book presents the long, troubled relationship between the United States and Iran in a breezy and supple narrative, replete with poignant anecdotes, to posit convincingly that “antagonism between Iran and America is wholly unnecessary.”

Hinton documents hundreds of often violent urban protests by Black Americans beginning in the mid-1960s, as policing grew increasingly aggressive. Such protests must be understood, she posits, not as riots but as “rebellions” against racial injustice.

Focusing on a single intimate tale that contains the seeds of today’s adoption practices and parenting norms, Glaser’s account is the most comprehensive and damning yet of the scandals at the postwar adoption agency Louise Wise Services.

A former civilian adviser in Afghanistan and aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Malkasian has written a broad-reaching, authoritative history of America’s longest war from 9/11 to the near-present, including knowledgeable details on the Afghan part of the story.

In 1994, Wang moved from China to Brooklyn with her family. This is her memoir of their tumultuous early years building a life in an unfamiliar and mostly inhospitable place.

This haunting memoir, by a man who grew up in an intentional community in India and returned to live there with his wife and children, is a sensitive excavation of fraught family history as well as a philosophical meditation on the utopian impulse.

This memoir from a young survivor of acute myeloid leukemia provides an unlikely roadmap to the new not-normal of the pandemic era. Through her treatment and subsequent cross-country roadtrip, Jaouad demonstrates the courage it takes to live with unanswered questions.

Gabler relates how the youngest Kennedy brother overcame ridicule and scandal to become one of the most effective senators in U.S. history. In five decades, Ted Kennedy sponsored nearly 700 bills that became law, and left his imprint on scores of others.

As Marton demonstrates in this biography, Merkel’s was a life full of drama, as she rose from the hinterlands of East Germany to the center of power in Berlin and overcame all of the obstacles, from Communist repression to German misogyny, on her rise to the top.

Wheatcroft’s Churchill led Britain heroically during World War II, but at other times in his life, as recounted in this revisionist biography, he was an imperialist, a racist, a drunk, a neglectful father and, perhaps most of all, a masterful mythmaker.

In this energetically reported book, Chafkin paints a deeply disturbing portrait of the billionaire entrepreneur turned Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel, tracing his ascent through the ranks of Silicon Valley moguls along with his embrace of far-right causes and beliefs.

First published in Denmark in the 1960s and ’70s, Ditlevsen’s unstinting memoirs detail in luminous prose her hardscrabble upbringing, career path and merciless addictions: a powerful account of the struggle to reconcile art and life.

In the musician’s gutting account of coming to terms with her mother’s death and coming into her own as a Korean American, food is her lifeline.

In this powerful, discomfiting book, Press investigates a series of morally fraught jobs — among them drone warfare operators and prison psychologists — and shows how such work is tacitly condoned by society while also rendered invisible so as not to disturb our collective conscience.

This account of a love triangle that roiled the country’s burgeoning evangelical movement in the late 1820s is scholarship at its most entertaining and insightful, as Heyrman, mining smoldering letters by aspiring missionaries, chronicles the ambition, hypocrisy and sexism at the heart of a crusade.

Tenacious reporting and deft storytelling by Keefe, the prizewinning author of “Say Nothing,” about Ireland’s Troubles, give this exposé of the family widely blamed for igniting the opioid crisis the moral heft of Greek tragedy, yielding a mesmerizing portrait of appalling greed and indifference.

This lively, thorough and fascinating history reconstructs the fight for gay marriage, tracing how an issue that barely registered among queer activists became, in the wake of outspoken opposition from the religious right, a priority.

“It is a confusing time to be a woman who loves a troubled man,” Henderson writes in this unflinching memoir of her husband’s long and confounding illness. She tells their story with a novelist’s eye for detail and the honesty of a trusted friend.

Paul exhorts readers to “think outside the brain.” We are not solo actors, she insists, forced to rely only on what’s in our heads to solve problems; rather, we’re networked organisms with the power to transform our thinking.

In this nuanced portrait, more than a decade in the making, Norma McCorvey — best known as “Jane Roe,” the woman at the center of Roe v. Wade — emerges as a contradictory figure, both heroine and villain of her story and one whose views on abortion are as complex as those of her fellow citizens.

Featuring characters mostly drawn from life confronting illness, loss, violence and death, this exquisite collection of pieces defies classification, blending intuition and observation into something unaccountably yet undeniably real.

In a sweeping, original history, Menand employs finely tuned capsule biographies of writers, filmmakers, artists and more to cover the interchange of arts and ideas between the United States and Europe in the decades following World War II.

This powerful blend of memoir and literary investigation begins with the author’s obsession with an 18th-century Irish poem. But it’s far from dusty scholarship; Ni Ghriofa weaves past and present, dreams and harsh reality, in an account of motherhood and transformation.

Smith, a poet and journalist, spoke with scholars, guides, heritage fanatics and tourists as he visited sites key to America’s slavery past. The result is timely and profound, an eloquent view of a history we have yet fully to confront.

A contentious publishing experience left Laymon unsatisfied with his 2013 essay collection. Now, seven years later, after buying the book back from his initial publisher and revising the collection, he returns with Take 2.

Standing 6-foot-10 with a booming voice and an urban dictionary’s worth of curse words, the onetime Georgetown basketball coach inspired a potent mixture of fear and respect. In this lively and entertaining book, Thompson, who died in August, finally gets to cast his legend on his own terms.

Expanding on a 2013 series for The Times about a homeless New York schoolgirl and her family, Elliott delivers a searing account of the family’s struggles with poverty and addiction in a city and country that have repeatedly failed to address these issues with efficacy or compassion.

In this first of two projected volumes, Logevall demonstrates how, even at an early age and despite his playboy reputation, John Kennedy took a serious interest in politics, forming a cleareyed sense of the world and his nation’s place in it.

Sykes explores the world of our ancient cousins, offering a full picture of what their lives may have looked like. It’s a remarkably crisp portrait because recent science has been able to infer a lot about Neanderthals from the little they left behind.

This slim but forceful treatise begins with patriotic despair: With inequality persisting in the United States across generations, Packer paints a picture of a deeply fractured America that he divides into four irreconcilable categories. The result, he believes, is that we are losing the art of self-government.

The 12 previously published essays collected here (mostly) for the first time were written between the late 1960s and the year 2000. Revisiting Didion’s work now provides a familiar joy, as well as a reminder of her prescience.

Based on the author’s own involvement in the movement as well as on 17 years of interviews conducted with 188 members of the group, this book is a weighty masterpiece: part sociology, part oral history, part memoir, part call to arms.

Zimmer’s book tackles some of biology’s hardest questions: What is life? How did it begin? And what criteria should we even use to call something “living”? From metabolism to sentience to evolution to our current focus on DNA, Zimmer takes the reader on an elegant, deeply researched tour.

Abdurraqib, a poet, cultural critic and essayist, uses the tales of Black performers to make powerful observations about race in America, gliding through music, television, film, minstrel shows and vaudeville. The book is also a candid self-portrait, written with sincerity and emotion.

This capacious account of New York’s recent rise describes the men and women in every facet of life who helped revitalize the city. Yet for Dyja, who sees the need for another reinvention of New York, the city has in many ways fallen prey to its own success.

This stunning memoir is less an account of the writer’s own life than a post-mortem of his parents’ marriage, and an honest and heartfelt portrayal of his mother. Sorrentino aches to gain her acceptance, a lifelong effort that often results in disappointment.

Nelson’s brainy, affecting, genre-crossing books have earned her a deserved reputation as a sui generis amalgam of poet, memoirist, theorist and critic. This provocative meditation on the ethics of freedom as a source of constraint, as well as liberation, shows her at her most original and brilliant.

In a book that is part memoir, part history, Gordon-Reed (who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for “The Hemingses of Monticello”) recounts her continuing affection for her home state of Texas, despite its reputation for violence and racism, writing that “the things that happened there couldn’t have happened in other places.”

In a series of striking essays, Horn explores how the ways we commemorate antisemitism and Jewish tragedy distract from the very concrete, specific death of Jews. She wants a more direct reckoning with Jew hatred and its consequences.

Broome’s coming-of-age memoir explores Black manhood and queerness in the Rust Belt, and the pressures that Black queer boys face to change. Broome pairs his own story with a scene he witnessed, of a father screaming at his young son.

A fascinating and rigorous, no-punches-pulled account of Lapine’s first collaboration with Sondheim, on a Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. Despite the hilarious anecdotes, this is not a collection of gossip. It is actually a story of artistic steadfastness.

The bar is high for a new Plath biography, but Clark’s meticulously researched account manages to be both riveting and revelatory, restoring complexity and nuance to a poet whose career has been overshadowed by the circumstances of her tragic early death.

This collection of essays offers a full portrait of Kennedy’s thinking as a law professor and public intellectual, demonstrating his commitment to reflection over partisanship, thinking over feeling.

The acclaimed cartoonist uses her lifelong obsession with exercise to ponder some big questions: What is going on with our ridiculous bodies and our even more ridiculous relationship between our bodies and minds?

Nearly two decades after her mother’s death, when Chow was just 13, her family is still in deep mourning, an experience she documents with wit, poignancy and fresh insight and imagery.

This memoir begins with a phone call in which the author learns that her father is coming home after almost 30 years in prison, and it ends with his release. But at its heart, this is the story of Ford as her mother’s daughter, for better and often for worse.

A former columnist for The Chicago Tribune offers a textured portrait of her 1970s childhood on the South Side, where three Black girls with similar aspirations ended up with wildly divergent fates.

The poet’s letters cast light on a generous soul with an active social life and a quicksilver wit. Artifice was Merrill’s way of being natural. He lavished his correspondents with parody and aphorism, as well as assessments of his poetic peers.

McWhorter, a Black liberal who dissents from much of the left's views on race, argues against the position that racism and white supremacy are “baked into” the structure of American society.

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