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The Best New Books Publishing in 2024

2024

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Anna O: A Novel
by Matthew Blake
Harper, 01/02/2024
 
What if your nightmares weren't really nightmares at all?

We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Diary of a Confused Feminist
by Kate Weston
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 01/02/2024
 
At fifteen, Kat Evans is still sorting it all out, and that includes being a good feminist (and, by extension, a good human).

She promises herself ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish
by Francesca Peacock
Pegasus Books, 01/02/2024
 
"My ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world." —Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Sky's End: Above the Black
by Marc J Gregson
Peachtree Publishers, 01/02/2024
 
Exiled to live as a Low, sixteen-year-old Conrad refuses to become heir to his murderous uncle. But Meritocracy is a harsh and unforgiving rule on the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors
by Erika Howsare
Catapult, 01/02/2024
 
Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They're one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence....more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Storm We Made: A Novel
by Vanessa Chan
Marysue Rucci Books, 01/02/2024
 
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Verdigris
by Michele Mari
And Other Stories, 01/02/2024
 
At the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends his summers at his grandparents' modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore, ...more
Literary Fiction
Aednan: An Epic
by Linnea Axelsson
Knopf, 01/09/2024
 
In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous ...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
 Debut Author
Cold Victory
by Karl Marlantes
Grove Press, 01/09/2024
 
Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Goldenseal
by Maria Hummel
Counterpoint Press, 01/09/2024
 
Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Inside Knowledge: Incarcerated People on the Failures of the American Prison
by Doran Larson
New York University Press, 01/09/2024
 
Inside Knowledge is the first book to examine the American prison system through the eyes of those who are trapped within it. Drawing from the ...more
Essays
Invisible Woman: A Novel
by Katia Lief
Atlantic Monthly Press, 01/09/2024
 
Joni Ackerman's decision to raise children, 25 years ago, came with a steep cost. She was then a pioneering filmmaker, one of the few women to break ...more
Lunar New Year Love Story
by Gene Luen Yang
First Second, 01/09/2024
 
She was destined for heartbreak. Then fate handed her love.

Val is ready to give up on love. It's led to nothing but secrets and heartbreak, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
My Friends: A Novel
by Hisham Matar
Random House, 01/09/2024
 
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Northwoods: A Novel
by Amy Pease
Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 01/09/2024
 
Eli North is not okay.

His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Mysteries
 Debut Author
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
by Hannah Ritchie
Little, Brown Spark, 01/09/2024
 
It's become common to tell kids that they're going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil...more
Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Old Crimes
by Jill McCorkle
Algonquin Books, 01/09/2024
 
Jill McCorkle, author of the New York Times bestselling Life After Life and the widely acclaimed Hieroglyphics ("One of our wryest, warmest, wisest ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence
by Yaroslav Trofimov
Penguin Press, 01/09/2024
 
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yaroslav Trofimov has spent months on end at the heart of the conflict, very often on its front lines. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
River East, River West: A Novel
by Aube Rey Lescure
William Morrow, 01/09/2024
 
Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she's never known her Chinese father, and is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Shut Up, This Is Serious
by Carolina Ixta
Quill Tree Books, 01/09/2024
 
Belén Dolores Itzel del Toro wants the normal stuff: to experience love or maybe have a boyfriend or at least just lose her virginity. But ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
by Kohei Saito
Astra House, 01/09/2024
 
Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs and are nevertheless unable to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Sugar, Baby
by Celine Saintclare
Bloomsbury Publishing, 01/09/2024
 
Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Termush: A Novel
by Sven Holm
FSG Originals, 01/09/2024
 
Termush caters to every need of its wealthy patrons―first among them, a coveted spot at this exclusive seaside getaway, a resort designed for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Atlas of Us
by Kristin Dwyer
HarperTeen, 01/09/2024
 
Atlas has lost her way.

In a last-ditch effort to pull her life together, she's working on a community service program rehabbing trails in the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years: A Novel
by Shubnum Khan
Viking, 01/09/2024
 
Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Nearly a century later, it stands in ruins: an isolated boardinghouse for eclectic...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The Waters: A Novel
by Bonnie Jo Campbell
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/09/2024
 
On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp―an area known as "The Waters" to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan―herbalist and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
You Dreamed of Empires: A Novel
by Álvaro Enrigue
Riverhead Books, 01/09/2024
 
One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet ...more
Historical Fiction
A Drop of Venom
by Sajni Patel
Rick Riodan Presents, 01/16/2024
 
All monsters and heroes have beginnings. This is mine.

Sixteen-year-old Manisha is no stranger to monsters—she's been running from them for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Place for Vanishing
by Ann Fraistat
Delacorte Press, 01/16/2024
 
The house was supposed to be a fresh start. That's what Libby's mom said. And after Libby's recent bipolar III diagnosis and the tragedy that preceded...more
American Wings: Chicago's Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky
by Sherri L. Smith
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 01/16/2024
 
In the years between World War I and World War II, aviation fever was everywhere, including among Black Americans. But what hope did a Black person ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Behind You Is the Sea: A Novel
by Susan Muaddi Darraj
HarperVia, 01/16/2024
 
Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
City of Laughter
by Temim Fruchter
Grove Press, 01/16/2024
 
An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka
Doubleday, 01/16/2024
 
From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
If I Promise You Wings
by A.K. Small
Algonquin Young Readers, 01/16/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old Alix Leclaire dreams of becoming a renowned feather artist, creating statement pieces that define glamour and high fashion. As an ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Ilium: A Novel
by Lea Carpenter
Knopf, 01/16/2024
 
The young English narrator of Lea Carpenter's dazzling new novel has grown up unhappily in London, dreaming of escape, pretending to be someone else ...more
Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age
by Chip Conley
Little, Brown Spark, 01/16/2024
 
The midlife crisis is the butt of so many jokes, but this long-derided life stage has an upside. What if we could reframe our thinking about the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
by Rebecca Boyle
Random House, 01/16/2024
 
Many of us know that the Moon pulls on our oceans, driving the tides, but did you know that it smells like gunpowder? Or that it was essential to the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery
by Annie Liontas
Scribner, 01/16/2024
 
Annie Liontas suffered multiple concussions in her thirties. In Sex with a Brain Injury, she writes about what it means to be one of the "walking ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
So Let Them Burn: Divine Traitors # 1
by Kamilah Cole
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 01/16/2024
 
Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
by Nick Romeo
Public Affairs, 01/16/2024
 
Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century – widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiseration of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Best That You Can Do: Stories
by Amina Gautier
Soft Skull Press, 01/16/2024
 
Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers and families in Puerto Rico, these stories ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
by Manjula Martin
Pantheon Books, 01/16/2024
 
Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means—now—to live in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
This Wretched Valley
by Jenny Kiefer
Quirk Books, 01/16/2024
 
Take only pictures. Leave only bones.

This trip is going to be Dylan's big break. Her geologist friend Clay has discovered an untouched cliff face ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/16/2024
 
In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Where You End: A Novel
by Abbott Kahler
Henry Holt and Company, 01/16/2024
 
When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma, she sees her mirror image: Jude, her twin sister. Jude's face and name are the only memories Kat has from before ...more
Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials
by Marion Gibson
Scribner, 01/16/2024
 
Witchcraft is a dramatic journey through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
by József Debreczeni
St. Martin's Press, 01/23/2024
 
József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go "left," his life ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Dead in Long Beach, California: A Novel
by Venita Blackburn
MCD, 01/23/2024
 
Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay's dead body in the wake of his suicide. There's no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs
by Benjamin Herold
Penguin Press, 01/23/2024
 
Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Family Family: A Novel
by Laurie Frankel
Henry Holt and Company, 01/23/2024
 
"Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don't we ever get that movie?"

India Allwood grew up...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
In Utero
by Chris Gooch
Top Shelf Productions, 01/23/2024
 
Twelve years after a disastrous explosion, young Hailey is dropped off by her mum at a holiday camp in a dilapidated shopping mall. Alienated from the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Into the Sunken City
by Dinesh Thiru
HarperTeen, 01/23/2024
 
In the slowly sinking city of Coconino, Arizona, the days are long, the money is tight, and the rain never stops.

For Jin Haldar, this life is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
by Uché Blackstock MD
Viking, 01/23/2024
 
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story
by Keren Blankfeld
Little Brown & Company, 01/23/2024
 
Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
by Antonia Hylton
Legacy Lit, 01/23/2024
 
On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
No One Can Know: A Novel
by Kate Alice Marshall
Flatiron Books, 01/23/2024
 
Emma hasn't told her husband much about her past. He knows her parents are dead and she hasn't spoken to her sisters in years. Then they lose their ...more
Picasso's Lovers
by Jeanne Mackin
Berkley Books, 01/23/2024
 
The women of Picasso's life are glamorous and elusive, existing in the shadow of his fame—until 1950s aspiring journalist Alana Olson determines...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Radiant Heat
by Sarah-Jane Collins
Berkley Books, 01/23/2024
 
The blaze came out of nowhere one summer afternoon, a wall of fire fed by blustering wind. Yet, somehow, Alison is alive. She rode out the fire on the...more
The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers
by Jim Morris
Beacon Press, 01/23/2024
 
A gripping narrative in the tradition of A Civil Action and Toms River.

Working at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company chemical plant in Niagara ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee
by Ellen Oh
Crown Books for Young Readers, 01/23/2024
 
Mina has become the hero of her own story. Literally.

When Mina Lee woke up on Saturday morning for SAT prep, she did NOT expect to:

1. Nearly ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Holocaust: An Unfinished History
by Dan Stone
Mariner Books, 01/23/2024
 
The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked.

...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Sanctuary
by Andrew Hunter Murray
Blackstone Publishing, 01/23/2024
 
Ben is a painter from the crowded, turbulent city. For six months his fiancée, Cara, has been working on the remote island of Sanctuary Rock, the...more
Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s
by Sarah Ditum
Abrams Press, 01/23/2024
 
Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Twilight Territory: A Novel
by Andrew X. Pham
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/23/2024
 
The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Womb City
by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Erewhon Books, 01/23/2024
 
Nelah seems to have it all: fame, wealth, and a long-awaited daughter growing in a government lab. But, trapped in a loveless marriage to a policeman ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1
by Angela Y. Davis
Haymarket Books, 01/30/2024
 
For over fifty years, Angela Y. Davis has been at the forefront of collective movements for abolition and feminism and the fight against state ...more
Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti
by Jake Johnston
St. Martin's Press, 01/30/2024
 
Haiti's state is near-collapse: armed groups have overrun the country, many government officials have fled after the 2021 assassination of President ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World - and How You Can, Too
by Ijeoma Oluo
HarperOne, 01/30/2024
 
In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Come and Get It
by Kiley Reid
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 01/30/2024
 
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Confrontations
by Simone Antangana Bekono
Bloomsbury Publishing, 01/30/2024
 
Salomé Atabong is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands. She arrives at a juvenile ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds
by Michelle Horton
Grand Central Publishing, 01/30/2024
 
In September 2017, a knock on the door upends Michelle Horton's life forever: her sister had just shot her partner and was now in jail. During the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect: A Novel
by Benjamin Stevenson
Mariner Books, 01/30/2024
 
Ernest Cunningham returns in a deliciously witty locked room (train) mystery.

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their ...more
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
by Jonathan Blitzer
Penguin Press, 01/30/2024
 
Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Hard by a Great Forest: A Novel
by Leo Vardiashvili
Riverhead Books, 01/30/2024
 
Saba is just a child when he flees the fighting in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia with his older brother, Sandro, and father, Irakli, for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Held: A Novel
by Anne Michaels
Knopf, 01/30/2024
 
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
How We Named the Stars
by Andrés N. Ordorica
Tin House Books, 01/30/2024
 
When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family's hopes and dreams, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Mockingbird Summer: A Novel
by Lynda Rutledge
Lake Union Publishing, 01/30/2024
 
In segregated High Cotton, Texas, in 1964, the racial divide is as clear as the railroad tracks running through town. It's also where two girls are ...more
Literary Fiction
Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel That Survived the CIA
by Patrick Winn
Public Affairs, 01/30/2024
 
In Asia's narcotics-producing heartland, the Wa reign supreme. They dominate the Golden Triangle, a mountainous stretch of Burma between Thailand and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
One Hour of Fervor
by Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions, 01/30/2024
 
Haru, a successful Japanese art dealer, loves beauty, harmony, art, balance, intriguing women, sophisticated conversation, and elegance. Months after ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy
by Dominic Erdozain
Crown, 01/30/2024
 
More than a hundred lives are lost to firearms every day in America. The cost is more than the numbers—it is the fear, the anxiety, the dread of...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Poemhood: Our Black Revival: History, Folklore & the Black Experience: A Young Adult Poetry Anthology
by Amber McBride, Erica Martin, Taylor Byas
HarperTeen, 01/30/2024
 
Come, claim your wings.

Lift your life above the earth,

return to the land of your father's birth.

What exactly is it to be Black in America?...
more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Spectral Evidence: Poems
by Gregory Pardlo
Knopf, 01/30/2024
 
Elegant, profound, and intoxicating—Spectral Evidence, Gregory Pardlo's first major collection of poetry after winning the Pulitzer Prize for ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Swanna in Love: A Novel
by Jennifer Belle
Akashic Books, 01/30/2024
 
It's the summer of 1982 and fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain is the only one left at camp. The place is a ghost town by the time her mother Val finally ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Cleaner: A Novel
by Brandi Wells
Hanover Square Press, 01/30/2024
 
Every night, she cleans. On the fourth floor of an unnamed office in an unnamed city, the night cleaner comes and does what she does best—sorts ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Excitements: A Novel
by CJ Wray
William Morrow Paperbacks, 01/30/2024
 
Meet the Williamson sisters, Britain's most treasured World War II veterans. Now in their late nineties, Josephine and Penny are in huge demand, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Mountain King: Asker Series #1
by Anders de la Motte
Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 01/30/2024
 
Criminal inspector Leonore Asker seems to have the leading position at Malmö's Major Crime Division within reach. But things go awry when, in the...more
The Ukraine
by Artem Chapeye
Seven Stories Press, 01/30/2024
 
The Ukraine is a collection of 26 pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Wander in the Dark
by Jumata Emill
Delacorte Press, 01/30/2024
 
Amir Trudeau only goes to his half brother Marcel's birthday party because of Chloe Danvers. Chloe is rich, and hot, and fits right into the perfect ...more
Wolves of Winter: Essex Dogs #2
by Dan Jones
Penguin Books, 01/30/2024
 
1347. Bruised and bloodied by an epic battle at Crécy, six soldiers known as the Essex Dogs pick through the wreckage of the fighting—and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Your Utopia: Stories
by Bora Chung
Algonquin Books, 01/30/2024
 
In "The Center for Immortality Research," a low-level employee runs herself ragged planning a fancy gala for donors, only to be blamed for a crime she...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Yours from the Tower
by Sally Nicholls
Walker Books, 01/30/2024
 
Tirzah, Sophia, and Polly are best friends who've left boarding school and gone back to very different lives.

The year is 1896, and Polly is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
by Tia Williams
Grand Central Publishing, 02/06/2024
 
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a ...more
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir
by Walela Nehanda
Kokila, 02/06/2024
 
When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Bright Red Fruit
by Safia Elhillo
Make Me a World, 02/06/2024
 
Bad girl. No matter how hard Samira tries, she can't shake her reputation. She's never gotten the benefit of the doubt—not from her mother or ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Burma Sahib: A Novel
by Paul Theroux
Mariner Books, 02/06/2024
 
At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along with several other young conscripts, he would...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Cahokia Jazz: A Novel
by Francis Spufford
Scribner, 02/06/2024
 
Like his earlier novel Golden Hill, Francis Spufford's Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, now through the lens of a subtly altered ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons
by Sarah Scoles
Bold Type Books, 02/06/2024
 
Nuclear weapons are, today, as important as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Dead Girls Don't Say Sorry
by Alex Ritany
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 02/06/2024
 
Friendship, at least for me, has never been anything but complicated.

Before:
One year ago, best friends Nora and Julia were starting their senior...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Dinner on Monster Island: Essays
by Tania De Rozario
Harper Perennial, 02/06/2024
 
Tania De Rozario was just twelve years old when she was gay-exorcised. Convinced that her boyish style and demeanor were a sign of something wicked, ...more
Even If It Breaks Your Heart: A Novel
by Erin Hahn
Wednesday Books, 02/06/2024
 
The only thing keeping nineteen-year-old Case Michaels together after the death of his best friend, Walker, is a list Walker left behind of things he ...more
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories
by GennaRose Nethercott
Vintage, 02/06/2024
 
The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Float Up, Sing Down
by Laird Hunt
Bloomsbury Publishing, 02/06/2024
 
Candy Wilson has forgotten to buy the paprika. Turner Davis needs to get his zinnias in. Della Dorner told her mother she was going to the Galaxy ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
by Bianca Bosker
Viking, 02/06/2024
 
An award-winning journalist obsessed with obsession, Bianca Bosker's existence was upended when she wandered into the art world—and couldn't ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
by Shayla Lawson
Tiny Reparations, 02/06/2024
 
In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)
by Ruha Benjamin
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/06/2024
 
A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. Work that doesn't strangle the life out of people? ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Infinity Alchemist: Infinity Alchemist # 1
by Kacen Callender
Tor Teen, 02/06/2024
 
For Ash Woods, practicing alchemy is a crime.

Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic—so when Ash is rejected ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Last Seen in Havana: Havana Mysteries
by Teresa Dovalpage
Soho Crime, 02/06/2024
 
Newly widowed baker Mercedes Spivey flies from Miami to her native Cuba in 2019 to care for her ailing paternal grandmother. Mercedes's life has been ...more
Livin' Just to Find Emotion: Journey and the Story of American Rock
by David Hamilton Golland
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 02/06/2024
 
Since exploding on the scene in the late 1970s, Journey has inspired generations of fans with hit after hit. But hidden under this rock 'n' roll glory...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Nightwatching: A Novel
by Tracy Sierra
Pamela Dorman Books, 02/06/2024
 
Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Ordinary Human Failings: A Novel
by Megan Nolan
Little Brown & Company, 02/06/2024
 
It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the "peasants" —...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
by Allen C. Guelzo
Knopf, 02/06/2024
 
Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Out of Body
by Nia Davenport
Balzer + Bray, 02/06/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old Megan Allen has been jumping from friend group to friend group in her high school, trying on identities like outfits. Nothing ever ...more
Praiseworthy
by Alexis Wright
New Directions Publishing, 02/06/2024
 
In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Redwood Court: Fiction
by DéLana R. A. Dameron
The Dial Press, 02/06/2024
 
"Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Significant Others: A Novel
by Zoë Eisenberg
Mira Books, 02/06/2024
 
Roommates since college, Jess and Ren have built a strong—if at times codependent—friendship. Now navigating their late thirties, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Smoke Kings
by Jahmal Mayfield
Melville House, 02/06/2024
 
Nate Evers, a young black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets 62 years after Emmett Till. When...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Absinthe Underground
by Jamie Pacton
Peachtree Publishers, 02/06/2024
 
After running away from home, Sybil Clarion is eager to embrace all the freedom the Belle Époque city of Severon has to offer. Instead, she's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Adversary: A Novel
by Michael Crummey
Doubleday, 02/06/2024
 
In an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
by Michael Wolraich
Union Square & Co., 02/06/2024
 
Vivian Gordon went out before midnight in a velvet dress and mink coat. Her body turned up the next morning in a desolate Bronx park, a dirty ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The End of Love: Sex and Desire in the Twenty-First Century
by Tamara Tenenbaum
Europa Editions, 02/06/2024
 
Born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tamara Tenenbaum approached the sexual and affective habits of the secular...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature
by Ludovic Slimak
Pegasus Books, 02/06/2024
 
What do we really know about our cousins, the Neanderthals?

For over a century we saw Neanderthals as inferior to Homo Sapiens. More recently, the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Road from Belhaven: A Novel
by Margot Livesey
Knopf, 02/06/2024
 
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster
by John O’Connor
Sourcebooks, 02/06/2024
 
Bigfoot is an instantly recognizable figure. Through the decades, this elusive primate has been featured in movies and books, on coffee mugs, beer ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Tainted Cup
by Robert Jackson Bennett
Del Rey, 02/06/2024
 
In Daretana's greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Teacher
by Freida McFadden
Poisoned Pen Press, 02/06/2024
 
Lesson #1: trust no one

Eve has a good life. She gets up each day, gets a kiss from her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high...more
The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: The Complete Story of the World's Most Famous Artwork
by Noah Charney
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 02/06/2024
 
Leonardo da Vinci's portrait, called the Mona Lisa, is without doubt the world's most famous painting. It achieved its fame not only because it is a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Things We Didn't Know
by Elba Iris Pérez
Gallery Books, 02/06/2024
 
Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Women: A Novel
by Kristin Hannah
St. Martin's Press, 02/06/2024
 
"Women can be heroes, too."

When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Trondheim
by Cormac James
Bellevue Literary Press, 02/06/2024
 
In Norway, thousands of miles from home, a student drops dead on the street. A passerby revives his heart, but he remains in a coma from which he may ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Ways and Means: A Novel
by Daniel Lefferts
The Overlook Press, 02/06/2024
 
Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
You Glow in the Dark
by Liliana Colanzi
New Directions Publishing, 02/06/2024
 
The seven stories of You Glow in the Dark unfold in a Latin America wrecked and poisoned by human greed, and yet Colanzi's writing—at once sleek...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
by Lauren Markham
Riverhead Books, 02/13/2024
 
When and how did migration become a crime? Why does ancient Greece remain so important to the West's idea of itself? How does nostalgia fuel the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic
by Yi Shun Lai
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 02/13/2024
 
November 1914.

Clara Ketterling-Dunbar is one of twenty-eight crew members of The Resolute—a ship meant for an Antarctic expedition now ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Acts of Forgiveness: A Novel
by Maura Cheeks
Ballantine Books, 02/13/2024
 
Every American waits with bated breath to see whether or not the country's first female president will pass the Forgiveness Act. The bill would allow ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country
by David Finkel
Random House, 02/13/2024
 
As this powerful book begins, Brent Cummings finds himself coping with the feeling that the country he loves is fracturing in front of his eyes. An ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor
by Ronald Drabkin
William Morrow, 02/13/2024
 
Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year
by Paul Alexander
Knopf, 02/13/2024
 
In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Black Girl You Are Atlas
by Renée Watson
Kokila, 02/13/2024
 
In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Call Me Iggy
by Jorge Aguirre
First Second, 02/13/2024
 
Ignacio "Iggy" Garcia is an Ohio-born Colombian American teen living his best life. After bumping into Marisol (and her coffee) at school, Iggy's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Convergence Problems
by Wole Talabi
DAW Books, 02/13/2024
 
In "An Arc of Electric Skin," a roadside mechanic seeking justice volunteers to undergo a procedure that will increase the electrical conductivity of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear
by Robin Wasley
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 02/13/2024
 
High school is hard enough to survive without an apocalypse to navigate.

Sid Spencer has always been the most normal girl in her abnormal hometown,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both: A Novel
by Mariah Stovall
Soft Skull Press, 02/13/2024
 
Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is an immersive journey into the life and mind of Khaki ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
If You See Them: Young, Unhoused, and Alone in America
by Vicki Sokolik
Spiegel & Grau, 02/13/2024
 
They hide in plain sight. They survive on free school breakfasts and lunches, join school sports teams in order to shower, sleep on friends' couches, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Leaving: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/13/2024
 
One of Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2024

"I never thought I'd see you here," Sarah says. Then she adds, "But I never thought I'd see you...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Neighbors and Other Stories
by Diane Oliver
Grove Press, 02/13/2024
 
A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
No One Dies Yet
by Kobby Ben Ben
Europa Editions, 02/13/2024
 
It is 2019, The Year of Return. Ghana is inviting Black diasporans to return and get to know the land of their enslaved ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Paper Cage: A Novel
by Tom Baragwanath
Knopf, 02/13/2024
 
How far would you go to keep your family safe?

Lorraine Henry is generally content to keep her head down and get on with her work as a records ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without
by John Oakes
Avid Reader Press, 02/13/2024
 
We fast all the time, even when we're not conscious of doing so. A fast manifests the idea of holding back, resisting the animal impulse to charge ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
The Fortune Seller: A Novel
by Rachel Kapelke-Dale
St. Martin's Press, 02/13/2024
 
Middle-class Rosie Macalister has worked for years to fit in with her wealthy friends on the Yale equestrian team. But when she comes back from her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Fox Wife: A Novel
by Yangsze Choo
Henry Holt and Company, 02/13/2024
 
Manchuria, 1908.

In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Lede: Dispatches from a Life in the Press
by Calvin Trillin
Random House, 02/13/2024
 
I've been writing about the press almost as long as I've been in the game. At some point, it occurred to me that disparate pieces from various places ...more
The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America
by Michael J. Graetz
Princeton University Press, 02/13/2024
 
The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards—and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Warm Hands of Ghosts: A Novel
by Katherine Arden
Del Rey, 02/13/2024
 
January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life
by Billy Dee Williams
Knopf, 02/13/2024
 
Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
A Fire So Wild: A Novel
by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
Harper, 02/20/2024
 
As a wildfire threatens Berkeley, the city's inhabitants are forced to reckon with the cracks in the lives they've built.

Abigail, a wealthy ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
A Tempest of Tea: Blood and Tea # 1
by Hafsah Faizal
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/20/2024
 
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul
by Kurt Wagner
Atria Books, 02/20/2024
 
Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner takes you inside Twitter's everchanging headquarters, charting its rise from flippant 140-character posts to one of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York
by Ross Perlin
Atlantic Monthly Press, 02/20/2024
 
Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and—because many have never been recorded—when they're gone, it...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Otter Country: An Unexpected Adventure in the Natural World
by Miriam Darlington
Tin House Books, 02/20/2024
 
A plan formed in my mind. I would explore the places in this land that hid my grail. I would spend a whole year or longer, if that's what it took, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Ours: A Novel
by Phillip B. Williams
Viking, 02/20/2024
 
In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World
by Patrick Joyce
Scribner, 02/20/2024
 
"What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support." For over the past century and a half, and still more ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
River Mumma
by Zalika Reid-Benta
Erewhon Books, 02/20/2024
 
Alicia has been out of grad school for months. She has no career prospects and lives with her mom, who won't stop texting her macabre news stories and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him
by Laurence Ralph
Grand Central Publishing, 02/20/2024
 
In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York
by Barbara Weisberg
W.W. Norton & Company, 02/20/2024
 
What could possibly go wrong in a wealthy matriarch's country home when her dilettante son, his restless wife, and his widowed brother live there ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Sun of Blood and Ruin: A Novel
by Mariely Lares
Harper Voyager, 02/20/2024
 
A new legend begins…

In sixteenth-century New Spain, witchcraft is punishable by death, indigenous temples have been destroyed, and tales of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection
by Charles Duhigg
Random House, 02/20/2024
 
Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And...more
The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays
by Joan Acocella
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 02/20/2024
 
Joan Acocella, "one of our finest cultural critics" (Edward Hirsch), has the rare ability to examine literature and unearth the lives contained within...more
The Trouble with You: A Novel
by Ellen Feldman
St. Martin's Griffin, 02/20/2024
 
Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters
by Charan Ranganath
Doubleday, 02/20/2024
 
A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember, pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
After Annie: A Novel
by Anna Quindlen
Random House, 02/27/2024
 
When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Carson McCullers: A Life
by Mary V. Dearborn
Knopf, 02/27/2024
 
V. S. Pritchett called her "a genius." Gore Vidal described her as a "beloved novelist of singular brilliance...Of all the Southern writers, she is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm
by Emmeline Clein
Knopf, 02/27/2024
 
In Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein recounts her struggle with disordered eating alongside the stories of other women: historical figures, pop culture ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
Four Thousand Paws: Caring for the Dogs of the Iditarod: A Veterinarian's Story
by Lee Morgan
Liveright/W.W. Norton, 02/27/2024
 
Few sporting events attract as much attention, or create as much spectacle, as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Each March, despite subzero ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Grief Is for People
by Sloane Crosley
MCD, 02/27/2024
 
Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Kindling
by Traci Chee
HarperCollins Publishers, 02/27/2024
 
Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives.

...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There
by Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein
Atria Books, 02/27/2024
 
Have you ever noticed that what is thrilling on Monday tends to become boring on Friday? Even exciting relationships, stimulating jobs, and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
My Beloved Life: A Novel
by Amitava Kumar
Knopf, 02/27/2024
 
Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell's birthplace, Jadu's mother, while pregnant with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
by Gretchen Sisson
St. Martin's Press, 02/27/2024
 
Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Snowglobe: Snowglobe #1
by Soyoung Park
Delacorte Press, 02/27/2024
 
Enclosed under a vast dome, Snowglobe is the last place on Earth that's warm. Outside Snowglobe is a frozen wasteland, and every day, citizens face ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The American Daughters: A Novel
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
One World, 02/27/2024
 
Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
by Tricia Romano
Public Affairs, 02/27/2024
 
You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy
by Mohamad Jebara
St. Martin's Press, 02/27/2024
 
Over a billion copies of the Qur'an exist – yet it remains an enigma. Its classical Arabic language resists simple translation, and its non-...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Other Valley: A Novel
by Scott Alexander Howard
Atria Books, 02/27/2024
 
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decide who may cross her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Painter's Daughters: A Novel
by Emily Howes
Simon & Schuster, 02/27/2024
 
Peggy and Molly Gainsborough—the daughters of one of England's most famous portrait artists of the 1700s and the frequent subject of his work&#...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Wandering Stars: A novel
by Tommy Orange
Knopf, 02/27/2024
 
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Whiskey Tender: A Memoir
by Deborah Taffa
Harper, 02/27/2024
 
Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Inside the Mirror: A Novel
by Parul Kapur
University of Nebraska Press, 03/01/2024
 
In 1950s Bombay, Jaya Malhotra studies medicine at the direction of her father, a champion of women's education who assumes the right to choose his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
by James Kaplan
Penguin Press, 03/05/2024
 
The myth of the '60s depends on the 1950s being the "before times" of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
49 Days
by Agnes Lee
Levine Querido, 03/05/2024
 
Day 1

Gotta get up. Gotta keep moving. This map – it says I have to cross over here. Wait, what's that…?


And so begins a graphic ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A History of Women in 101 Objects
by Annabelle Hirsch
Crown, 03/05/2024
 
This is a neglected history. Not a sweeping, definitive, exhaustive history of the world but something quieter, more intimate and particular: a single...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
American Spirits
by Russell Banks
Knopf, 03/05/2024
 
A husband sells property to a mysterious, temperamental stranger, and is hounded on social media when he publicly questions the man's character. A ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Anita de Monte Laughs Last: A Novel
by Xochitl Gonzalez
Flatiron Books, 03/05/2024
 
1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn't. By ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Big Time: A Novel
by Ben H. Winters
Mulholland, 03/05/2024
 
What if time could be taken from us—the minutes, the hours, the years of our lives, extracted like organs taken for transplant? What would it ...more
Breathing Underwater
by Abbey Lee Nash
Holiday House, 03/05/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old Tess Cooper lives by three rules: train hard, study hard, work hard. Swimming is her best chance at a college scholarship. It's ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
But the Girl
by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
The Unnamed Press, 03/05/2024
 
Girl was born on the very day her parents and grandmother immigrated from Malaysia to Australia. The story goes that her mother held on tight to her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
by Travis Rieder
Dutton, 03/05/2024
 
In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Change: A Novel
by Édouard Louis
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/05/2024
 
One question took center stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines
by Carol Kino
Scribner, 03/05/2024
 
The McLaughlin twins were trailblazing female photographers, celebrated in their time as stars in their respective fields, but have largely been ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal
by Gretchen Schreiber
Wednesday Books, 03/05/2024
 
Ellie Haycock has always separated her life into sections: Ellie at home and Ellie at the hospital. At home, Ellie is a proud member of her high ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
by Tessa Hulls
MCD, 03/05/2024
 
In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother, Sun ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Fruit of the Dead: A Novel
by Rachel Lyon
Scribner, 03/05/2024
 
Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson
by James Marcus
Princeton University Press, 03/05/2024
 
More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Help Wanted: A Novel
by Adelle Waldman
W.W. Norton & Company, 03/05/2024
 
One of New York Magazine's "23 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2024" • One of VOGUE's Best Books of the Year So Far • One of ELLE...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Here After: A Memoir
by Amy Lin
Zibby Books, 03/05/2024
 
"When he dies, I fall out of time."

Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
House of Open Wounds: The Tyrant Philosophers # 2
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus, 03/05/2024
 
City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler
by Peter Pomerantsev
Public Affairs, 03/05/2024
 
In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Knife Skills: Shadows of Chicago Mystery
by Wendy Church
Severn House, 03/05/2024
 
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average ...more
Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—and How We Break Free
by Tricia Rose
Basic Books, 03/05/2024
 
In recent years, condemnations of racism in America have echoed from the streets to corporate boardrooms. At the same time, politicians and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Modern Poetry: Poems
by Diane Seuss
Graywolf Press, 03/05/2024
 
Diane Seuss's signature voice—audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude—has become one of the most ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Never Been Better
by Leanne Toshiko Simpson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/05/2024
 
Is she falling in love, or falling apart?

Dee, Misa, and Matt were the "three musketeers" of the psych ward. A year after discharge, Dee is eager ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Parasol Against the Axe: A Novel
by Helen Oyeyemi
Riverhead Books, 03/05/2024
 
In Helen Oyeyemi's joyous new novel, the Czech capital is a living thing—one that can let you in or spit you out.

For reasons of her own, ...more
Pelican Girls: A Novel
by Julia Malye
Harper, 03/05/2024
 
Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the ...more
Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Say Hello to My Little Friend: A Novel
by Jennine Capó Crucet
Simon & Schuster, 03/05/2024
 
Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
So You Wanna Run a Country?: A Novel
by Kevin Holohan
Akashic Books, 03/05/2024
 
So You Wanna Run a Country? is a satirical parable of the perils of authoritarianism, nationalism, and device-dependent group-think. After almost a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Extinction of Irena Rey
by Jennifer Croft
Bloomsbury Publishing, 03/05/2024
 
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Girls We Sent Away: A Novel
by Meagan Church
Sourcebooks, 03/05/2024
 
It's the 1960s and Lorraine Delford has it all - an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and a white picket fence home in North Carolina. Yet every...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Great Divide: A Novel
by Cristina Henriquez
Ecco, 03/05/2024
 
It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Hearing Test: A Novel
by Eliza Barry Callahan
Catapult, 03/05/2024
 
When the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
The Hunter: A Novel
by Tana French
Viking, 03/05/2024
 
It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. ...more
The Inmate
by Freida McFadden
Poisoned Pen Press, 03/05/2024
 
As a new nurse practitioner at a maximum-security prison, Brooke Sullivan is taught three crucial rules: 
  • Treat all prisoners with respect.
  • ...more
    Thrillers
    The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City
    by Kevin Baker
    Knopf, 03/05/2024
     
    Baseball is "the New York game" because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The No-Girlfriend Rule
    by Christen Randall
    Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 03/05/2024
     
    Hollis Beckwith isn't trying to get a girl—she's just trying to get by. For a fat, broke girl with anxiety, the start of senior year brings ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Silver Bone: The Kyiv Mysteries #1
    by Andrey Kurkov
    HarperVia, 03/05/2024
     
    Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions continue to vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the political ...more
    The Truth of the Aleke: The Forever Desert #2
    by Moses Ose Utomi
    Tor Teen, 03/05/2024
     
    The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.

    500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice
    by Alex Hortis
    Pegasus Crime, 03/05/2024
     
    On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    Waiting for the Monsoon
    by Rod Nordland
    Mariner Books, 03/05/2024
     
    For thirty years, Rod Nordland shadowed death. As one of his generation's preeminent war correspondents, he reported in over 150 countries, many of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    What Monstrous Gods
    by Rosamund Hodge
    Balzer + Bray, 03/05/2024
     
    Centuries ago, the heretic sorcerer Ruven raised a deadly briar around Runakhia's palace, casting the royal family into an enchanted sleep—and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    All Our Yesterdays
    by Joel H. Morris
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 03/12/2024
     
    Scotland, the 11th Century. Born in a noble household and granddaughter of a forgotten Scottish king, a young girl carries the guilt of her mother's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    An End to Inequality: Breaking Down the Walls of Apartheid Education in America
    by Jonathan Kozol
    The New Press, 03/12/2024
     
    When Jonathan Kozol's Death at an Early Age appeared in 1967, it rocked the education world. Based on the Rhodes Scholar's first year of teaching in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Ariel Crashes a Train
    by Olivia A. Cole
    Labyrinth Road, 03/12/2024
     
    Ariel is afraid of her own mind. She already feels like she is too big, too queer, too rough to live up to her parents' exacting expectations, or to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Becoming Madam Secretary
    by Stephanie Dray
    Berkley Books, 03/12/2024
     
    Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
    by Jessica J. Lee
    Catapult, 03/12/2024
     
    A seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Flight of the Wild Swan
    by Melissa Pritchard
    Bellevue Literary Press, 03/12/2024
     
    Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Fury: A Novel
    by Clyo Mendoza
    Seven Stories Press, 03/12/2024
     
    In a desert dotted with war-torn towns, Lázaro and Juan are two soldiers from opposing camps who abandon the war and, while fleeing, become ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Headshot: A Novel
    by Rita Bullwinkel
    Viking, 03/12/2024
     
    An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family's unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Mother Doll: A Novel
    by Katya Apekina
    The Overlook Press, 03/12/2024
     
    Zhenia is adrift in Los Angeles, pregnant with a baby her husband doesn't want, while her Russian grandmother and favorite person in the world is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Pride and Joy: A Novel
    by Louisa Onomé
    Atria Books, 03/12/2024
     
    Joy Okafor is overwhelmed. Recently divorced, a life coach whose phone won't stop ringing, and ever the dutiful Nigerian daughter, Joy has planned ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Reading Genesis
    by Marilynne Robinson
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/12/2024
     
    For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents, by various hands, expressing different factional ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans
    by Jane Marie
    Atria Books, 03/12/2024
     
    We've all heard of Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and LuLaRoe, but few know the nefarious way they and countless other multilevel marketing (MLM) ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Six Truths and a Lie
    by Ream Shukairy
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 03/12/2024
     
    As fireworks pop off at a rowdy Fourth of July bonfire party, an explosion off the California coast levels an oil rig—resulting in chaos and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Some Strange Music Draws Me In: A Novel
    by Griffin Hansbury
    W.W. Norton & Company, 03/12/2024
     
    It's the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Sunbringer: Fallen Gods #2
    by Hannah Kaner
    Harper Voyager, 03/12/2024
     
    But gods cannot be destroyed so easily, and Hseth's power threatens to reform with even greater strength and a thirst for vengeance. As tensions rise ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Hedgewitch of Foxhall
    by Anna Bright
    HarperTeen, 03/12/2024
     
    Magic is fading from Wales—choked off by King Offa's Dyke, the enemy earthworks that spans the entire border. Even the dragons have disappeared....more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Moon That Turns You Back: Poems
    by Hala Alyan
    Ecco, 03/12/2024
     
    A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    The Phoenix Bride: A Novel
    by Natasha Siegel
    Dell, 03/12/2024
     
    It is 1666, one year after plague has devastated England. Young widow Cecilia Thorowgood is a prisoner, trapped and isolated within her older sister's...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Sky Was Falling: A Young Surgeon's Story of Bravery, Survival, and Hope
    by Dr. Cornelia Griggs
    Gallery Books, 03/12/2024
     
    In the spring of 2020, many of us were sequestered in our homes, attempting to teach our children and learn to bake while the pings of news alerts and...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    The Swan's Nest: A Novel
    by Laura McNeal
    Algonquin Books, 03/12/2024
     
    On a bleak January day in 1845, a poet who had been confined to her room for four years by recurrent illness received a letter from a writer she ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Werewolf at Dusk: And Other Stories
    by David Small
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 03/12/2024
     
    Long celebrated as a modern master of graphic literature, David Small has elicited in his work comparisons to Stan Lee and even Alfred Hitchcock. His ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
    Annie Bot: A Novel
    by Sierra Greer
    Mariner Books, 03/19/2024
     
    Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Bad Animals: A Novel
    by Sarah Braunstein
    W.W. Norton & Company, 03/19/2024
     
    Now that her brilliant botanist daughter is off at college, buttoned-up Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at a quiet Maine public library more than ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Cancelled
    by Farrah Penn
    Viking Books for Younger Readers, 03/19/2024
     
    Not to brag, but Brynn Whittaker is basically killing her senior year. She's got the looks, the grades, and a thriving "flirt coach" business that ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Fervor: A Novel
    by Toby Lloyd
    Avid Reader Press, 03/19/2024
     
    Hannah and Eric Rosenthal are devout Jews living in North London with their three children and Eric's father Yosef, a Holocaust survivor. Both ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel
    by Allison Pataki
    Ballantine Books, 03/19/2024
     
    Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    In the Orbit of You
    by Ashley Schumacher
    Wednesday Books, 03/19/2024
     
    It's been years since Nova Evans last saw Sam. She was too young then to understand why he had to move away—and what it had to do with the cuts ...more
    James: A Novel
    by Percival Everett
    Doubleday, 03/19/2024
     
    When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    No Judgment: Essays
    by Lauren Oyler
    HarperOne, 03/19/2024
     
    In her writing for Harper's, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and ...more
    Rules for Rule Breaking
    by Talia Tucker
    Kokila, 03/19/2024
     
    Winter Park and Bobby Bae are Korean American high school juniors whose families have been friends since the kids were making crayon art. They, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Romance
     Debut Author
    Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
    by Jason De León
    Viking, 03/19/2024
     
    Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist's Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System
    by Dante Lauretta
    Grand Central Publishing, 03/19/2024
     
    On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an asteroid of immense scientific ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic
    by Daniel de Visé
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 03/19/2024
     
    "They're not going to catch us," Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. "We're on a mission from God." So opens...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Day Tripper: A Novel
    by James Goodhand
    Mira Books, 03/19/2024
     
    The right guy, the right place, the wrong time.

    It's 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Divorcees
    by Rowan Beaird
    Flatiron Books, 03/19/2024
     
    Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Hebrew Teacher
    by Maya Arad
    New Vessel Press, 03/19/2024
     
    When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life's work. Miriam, whose son ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Last Bloodcarver: The Last Bloodcarver Duology #1
    by Vanessa Le
    Roaring Brook Press, 03/19/2024
     
    Nhika is a bloodcarver. A coldhearted, ruthless being who can alter human biology with just a touch.

    In the harsh, industrial city of Theumas, she ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Mars House: A Novel
    by Natasha Pulley
    Bloomsbury USA, 03/19/2024
     
    In the wake of an environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London's Royal Ballet, has become a refugee in Tharsis, the terraformed ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Morningside: A Novel
    by Téa Obreht
    Random House, 03/19/2024
     
    There's the world you can see. And then there's the one you can't. Welcome to the Morningside.

    After being expelled from their ancestral home in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Mystery Writer: A Novel
    by Sulari Gentill
    Poisoned Pen Press, 03/19/2024
     
    When Theodosia Benton abandons her career path as an attorney and shows up on her brother's doorstep with two suitcases and an unfinished novel, she ...more
    The Princess of Las Vegas: A Novel
    by Chris Bohjalian
    Doubleday, 03/19/2024
     
    Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Tree Doctor: A Novel
    by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
    Graywolf Press, 03/19/2024
     
    When the unnamed narrator of Marie Mutsuki Mockett's stirring second novel returns to Carmel, California, to care for her mother, she finds herself ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Understory
    by Saneh Sangsuk
    Deep Vellum Publishing, 03/19/2024
     
    The lovable, yarnspinning monk Luang Paw Tien, now in his nineties, is the last person in his village to bear witness to the power and plenitude of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Under This Red Rock
    by Mindy McGinnis
    Katherine Tegan Books, 03/19/2024
     
    Neely's monsters don't always follow her rules, so when the little girl under her bed, the man in her closet, and the disembodied voice that shadows ...more
    Where Sleeping Girls Lie
    by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
    Feiwel & Friends, 03/19/2024
     
    It's like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again...

    Sade Hussein is starting her third year of ...more
    Who's Afraid of Gender?
    by Judith Butler
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 03/19/2024
     
    Judith Butler, the groundbreaking thinker whose iconic book Gender Trouble redefined how we think about gender and sexuality, confronts the attacks on...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality
    by Venki Ramakrishnan
    William Morrow, 03/19/2024
     
    The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live most of our lives in denial of it. Throughout human history—from the immortal afterlife of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Wild Houses
    by Colin Barrett
    Grove Press, 03/19/2024
     
    With his acclaimed and award-winning collections Young Skins and Homesickness Colin Barrett cemented his reputation as one of contemporary Irish ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Wolf at the Table
    by Adam Rapp
    Little Brown & Company, 03/19/2024
     
    As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, Myra Larkin, thirteen, the oldest child of a large Catholic family, meets a young man she believes ...more
    Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability
    by Michael Kimmage
    Oxford University Press, 03/22/2024
     
    In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Great Country: A Novel
    by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
    Mariner Books, 03/26/2024
     
    Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America
    by Matthew Stewart
    W.W. Norton & Company, 03/26/2024
     
    This is a story about a dangerous idea―one which ignited revolutions in America, France, and Haiti; burst across Europe in the revolutions of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
    by Keith O'Brien
    Pantheon Books, 03/26/2024
     
    Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Chronically Dolores
    by Maya Van Wagenen
    Dutton for Young Readers, 03/26/2024
     
    Dolores Mendoza is not thriving. She was recently diagnosed with a chronic bladder condition called interstitial cystitis. The painful disease isn't ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Glorious Exploits: A Novel
    by Ferdia Lennon
    Henry Holt and Company, 03/26/2024
     
    On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    How to Solve Your Own Murder: Castle Knoll Files #1
    by Kristen Perrin
    Dutton, 03/26/2024
     
    It's 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances's night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    Icarus
    by K. Ancrum
    HarperTeen, 03/26/2024
     
    Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries. For years, one man—the wealthy Mr. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Like Happiness: A Novel
    by Ursula Villarreal-Moura
    Celadon, 03/26/2024
     
    It's 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner, Vera, she spends her days ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Lost Man's Lane: A Novel
    by Scott Carson
    Emily Bestler Books (Atria), 03/26/2024
     
    For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true—particularly since the PI is ...more
    Perris, California: A Novel
    by Rachel Stark
    Penguin Books, 03/26/2024
     
    Abandoned first by her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Pieces of a Girl
    by Stephanie Kuehnert
    Dutton for Young Readers, 03/26/2024
     
    Told in varied narrative styles, including journal entries, original illustration, and pages torn from her actual diaries and zines, this is the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Rabbit Heart: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story
    by Kristine S. Ervin
    Counterpoint Press, 03/26/2024
     
    Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words
    by Anne Curzan
    Crown, 03/26/2024
     
    Our use of language naturally evolves and is a living, breathing thing that reflects who we are. Says Who? offers clear, nuanced guidance that goes ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power
    by Timothy W. Ryback
    Knopf, 03/26/2024
     
    In the summer of 1932, the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse. One in three Germans was unemployed. Violence was rampant. Hitler's National ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
    by Jonathan Haidt
    Penguin Books, 03/26/2024
     
    In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    The Boy Lost in the Maze
    by Joseph Coelho
    Candlewick Press, 03/26/2024
     
    Theo, a seventeen-year-old London schoolboy with a single mother, is desperate to track down the father who left them, whom he scarcely remembers. At ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Worry: A Novel
    by Alexandra Tanner
    Scribner, 03/26/2024
     
    It's March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
    by Madhumita Murgia
    Picador, 03/28/2024
     
    On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    No Son of Mine: A Memoir (Appalachian Futures Black Native & Queer Voices)
    by Jonathan Corcoran
    University Press of Kentucky, 04/01/2024
     
    Born and raised in rural West Virginia, Jonathan Corcoran was the youngest and only son of three siblings in a family balanced on the precipice of ...more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression-One Song at a Time
    by Sheryl Kaskowitz
    Pegasus Books, 04/02/2024
     
    In 1934, the Great Depression had destroyed the US economy, leaving residents poverty-stricken. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt urged President Roosevelt...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Good Happy Girl: A Novel
    by Marissa Higgins
    Catapult, 04/02/2024
     
    Helen, a jittery attorney with a self-destructive streak, is secretly reeling from a disturbing crime of neglect that her parents recently committed. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    A Short Walk Through a Wide World: A Novel
    by Douglas Westerbeke
    Avid Reader Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
    by Becca Rothfeld
    Metropolitan Books, 04/02/2024
     
    In her debut essay collection, "brilliant and stylish" (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Essays
     Debut Author
    Ash Dark as Night: A Harry Ingram Mystery
    by Gary Phillips
    Soho Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts...more
    Mysteries
    City in Ruins: Danny Ryan Trilogy #3
    by Don Winslow
    William Morrow, 04/02/2024
     
    Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love.

    Danny Ryan is rich.

    Beyond his wildest dreams rich.

    The former dock ...more
    City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways
    by Megan Kimble
    Crown, 04/02/2024
     
    Every major American city has a highway tearing through its center. Seventy years ago, planners sold these highways as progress, essential to our ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Clear: A Novel
    by Carys Davies
    Scribner, 04/02/2024
     
    John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Every Time You Hear That Song
    by Jenna Voris
    Viking Books for Younger Readers, 04/02/2024
     
    They say never meet your idols. But nothing about digging up their deepest secrets.

    Seventeen-year-old aspiring journalist Darren Purchase has been...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Spies, Murder, and Justice in Northern Ireland
    by Henry Hemming
    Public Affairs, 04/02/2024
     
    The search for justice for this one man's death—his body found in broad daylight, with tape over his eyes, an undisguised hit—would ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Habitations: A Novel
    by Sheila Sundar
    Little Simon, 04/02/2024
     
    Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery
    by Earl Swift
    Mariner Books, 04/02/2024
     
    On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    I Cheerfully Refuse
    by Leif Enger
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 04/02/2024
     
    A storyteller "of great humanity and huge heart" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like a River which ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves
    by J. Drew Lanham
    Hub City Press, 04/02/2024
     
    In gorgeous and timely pieces, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a lush journey into wildness and Black being. Lanham notices nature through ...more
    Like Love: Essays and Conversations
    by Maggie Nelson
    Graywolf Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson's brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, ...more
    Made Glorious
    by Lindsay Eagar
    Candlewick Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Rory is an antihero for the ages. Like Shakespeare's Richard III, she confides in her audience, telling us exactly the lengths she'll go to to secure ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets
    by Clair Wills
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/02/2024
     
    When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a mother-and-baby home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    One by One
    by Freida McFadden
    Poisoned Pen Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Claire Matchett needs this trip. It will be a break from work and raising children. A chance to repair her damaged marriage. A week of hiking and hot ...more
    Thrillers
    Something Kindred
    by Ciera Burch
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 04/02/2024
     
    Welcome to Coldwater. Come for the ghosts, stay for the drama.

    Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Still As Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow
    by Christopher Cokinos
    Pegasus Books, 04/02/2024
     
    "When the Moon rises between buildings or over trees, it's not just a beautiful light: It's an archive of human longing, fear and adventure. The Moon ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Table for Two: Fictions
    by Amor Towles
    Viking, 04/02/2024
     
    Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories
    by Desiree S. Evans
    Flatiron Books, 04/02/2024
     
    Be warned, dear reader: The Black girls survive in this one.

    Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Breakup Lists
    by Adib Khorram
    Dial Books, 04/02/2024
     
    Jackson Ghasnavi is a lot of things—a techie, a smoothie afficionado, a totally not obsessive list-maker—but one thing he's not is a ...more
    The Cemetery of Untold Stories: A Novel
    by Julia Alvarez
    Algonquin Books, 04/02/2024
     
    Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Father She Went to Find: A Novel
    by Carter Wilson
    Poisoned Pen Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That's par for the course when you're a savant—one of less than one hundred in the world. But ...more
    The House on Biscayne Bay
    by Chanel Cleeton
    Berkley Books, 04/02/2024
     
    With the Great War finally behind them, many Americans flock to South Florida with their sights set on making a fortune. When wealthy industrialist ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
    by Stefanos Geroulanos
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 04/02/2024
     
    Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Murder of Mr. Ma
    by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan
    Soho Press, 04/02/2024
     
    Two unlikely allies race through the cobbled streets of 1920s London in search of a killer targeting Chinese immigrants.

    London, 1924. When shy ...more
    The Night in Question: A Novel
    by Susan Fletcher
    Union Square & Co., 04/02/2024
     
    Florrie Butterfield—eighty-seven, one-legged, and of cheerful disposition—believes there can't be any more adventures or surprises in life...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Sicilian Inheritance: A Novel
    by Jo Piazza
    Dutton, 04/02/2024
     
    Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Stone Home: A Novel
    by Crystal Hana Kim
    William Morrow, 04/02/2024
     
    In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a stranger: a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife—a knife Eunju hasn't seen ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Titanic Survivors Book Club: A Novel
    by Timothy Schaffert
    Doubleday, 04/02/2024
     
    For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Village Weavers
    by Myriam JA Chancy
    Tin House Books, 04/02/2024
     
    In 1940s' Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    We Loved It All: A Memory of Life
    by Lydia Millet
    W.W. Norton & Company, 04/02/2024
     
    Across more than a dozen acclaimed works of fiction, readers have become intimate with Lydia Millet's distinctive voice and sly wit. We Loved It All, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Canto Contigo: A Novel
    by Jonny Garza Villa
    Wednesday Books, 04/09/2024
     
    In a twenty-four-hour span, Rafael Alvarez led North Amistad High School's Mariachi Alma de la Frontera to their eleventh consecutive first-place win ...more
    Daughter of Mine: A Novel
    by Megan Miranda
    Marysue Rucci Books, 04/09/2024
     
    When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake's longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she's warily drawn back to the town&#...more
    Death in the Details: A Novel
    by Katie Tietjen
    Crooked Lane Books, 04/09/2024
     
    Maple Bishop is ready to put WWII and the grief of losing her husband, Bill, behind her. But when she discovers that Bill left her penniless, Maple ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    Dragonfruit
    by Makiia Lucier
    Clarion, 04/09/2024
     
    In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person's greatest sorrow. An unwanted ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Fi: A Memoir of My Son
    by Alexandra Fuller
    Grove Press, 04/09/2024
     
    "Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday." And so begins Alexandra Fuller's open, vivid new memoir, Fi. It's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Grey Dog
    by Elliott Gish
    ECW Press, 04/09/2024
     
    The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd — spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist — accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Ian Fleming: The Complete Man
    by Nicholas Shakespeare
    Harper, 04/09/2024
     
    Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
    by Kathleen DuVal
    Random House, 04/09/2024
     
    Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Rangikura: Poems
    by Tayi Tibble
    Knopf, 04/09/2024
     
    Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up. Barbed and erotic, vulnerable and searching, Rangikura asks ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Somehow: Thoughts on Love
    by Anne Lamott
    Riverhead Books, 04/09/2024
     
    "Love is our only hope," Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. "It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the ...more
    The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
    by Amanda Montell
    Atria Books, 04/09/2024
     
    Utilizing the linguistic insights of her "witty and brilliant" (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The British Booksellers
    by Kristy Cambron
    Thomas Nelson, 04/09/2024
     
    A tenant farmer's son had no business daring to dream of a future with an earl's daughter, but that couldn't keep Amos Darby from his secret ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Familiar: A Novel
    by Leigh Bardugo
    Flatiron Books, 04/09/2024
     
    In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Garden: A Novel
    by Clare Beams
    Doubleday, 04/09/2024
     
    In 1948, Irene Willard, who's had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now ...more
    The House of Broken Bricks: A Novel
    by Fiona Williams
    Henry Holt and Company, 04/09/2024
     
    Tess is a Londoner whose relationship with Richard transports her from a Jamaican diaspora in the city to the English countryside, where predatory ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Limits: A Novel
    by Nell Freudenberger
    Knopf, 04/09/2024
     
    From Mo'orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia's imperiled coral reefs sends her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Sleepwalkers: A Novel
    by Scarlett Thomas
    Simon & Schuster, 04/09/2024
     
    Still reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It's the end of the season and a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
    by Hampton Sides
    Doubleday, 04/09/2024
     
    On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Widow Spy: A Novel
    by Megan Campisi
    Atria Books, 04/09/2024
     
    Kate Warne is many things: the country's first female detective, a Pinkerton agent, and a union spy.

    It's August 1861, and her latest assignment ...more
    Thrillers
    The Wives: A Memoir
    by Simone Gorrindo
    Gallery/Scout Press, 04/09/2024
     
    When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia—a town so ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age
    by Norman Ohler
    Mariner Books, 04/09/2024
     
    Berlin 1945. Following the fall of the Third Reich, drug use—long kept under control by the Nazis' strict anti-drug laws—is rampant ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Kind of Madness
    by Uche Okonkwo
    Tin House Books, 04/16/2024
     
    A teenage girl from a poor family is dazzled by her rich, vivacious friend, but as the friend's behavior grows unstable and dangerous, she must decide...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations (Turning Points in Ancient History # 2)
    by Eric H. Cline
    Princeton University Press, 04/16/2024
     
    At the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
    by Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger
    St. Martin's Press, 04/16/2024
     
    For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. But ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
    by Alua Arthur
    Mariner Books, 04/16/2024
     
    For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country's leading death ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever
    by Rachel Lance
    Dutton, 04/16/2024
     
    This is the previously classified story of one group of scientific researchers—men and women—who exposed themselves to extraordinary risks...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder's Lens
    by José Vadi
    Soft Skull Press, 04/16/2024
     
    Chipping a board—where small pieces of deck and tape break off around the nose and tail—is a natural part of skateboarding. Novice or pro,...more
    Close to Death: A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery #5
    by Anthony Horowitz
    Harper, 04/16/2024
     
    Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, ...more
    Dear Wendy
    by Ann Zhao
    Feiwel & Friends, 04/16/2024
     
    Sophie Chi is in her first year of college (though her parents wish she'd attend a "real" university rather than a liberal arts school) and has long ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir
    by Genevieve Kingston
    Marysue Rucci Books, 04/16/2024
     
    Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston was just eleven years old when her mother passed away, leaving behind a chest filled with gifts and letters to celebrate the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World
    by Will Cockrell
    Gallery Books, 04/16/2024
     
    Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Henry Henry
    by Allen Bratton
    The Unnamed Press, 04/16/2024
     
    Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere...

    It's London, 2014, and Hal Lancaster, son and heir of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, is in a holding ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Honey: A Novel
    by Victor Lodato
    Harper, 04/16/2024
     
    As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father's circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
    by Sofia Samatar
    Tor Books, 04/16/2024
     
    The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out among the stars. His whole world changes—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Alternatives: A Novel
    by Caoilinn Hughes
    Riverhead Books, 04/16/2024
     
    The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties—all single, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Book of Secrets: A Personal History of Betrayal in Red China
    by Xinran Xue
    Bloomsbury Continuum, 04/16/2024
     
    Following the lives of military intelligence officer Jie and his wife Moon, The Book of Secrets weaves recently found material into a narrative that ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Evolution of Annabel Craig: A Novel
    by Lisa Grunwald
    Random House, 04/16/2024
     
    I had never questioned a miracle, witnessed a gunfight, or seen a dead body... . I had thought I knew exactly what I wanted and what I didn't. Before ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Spoiled Heart: A Novel
    by Sunjeev Sahota
    Viking, 04/16/2024
     
    Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She's returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
    by Adam Moss
    Penguin Books, 04/16/2024
     
    What is the work of art? In this guided tour inside the artist's head, Adam Moss traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    This Part Is Silent: A Life Between Cultures
    by SJ Kim
    W.W. Norton & Company, 04/16/2024
     
    Born in Korea, raised in the American South, and trying her best to survive British academia, SJ Kim probes her experiences as a writer, a scholar, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Essays
     Debut Author
    Weird Black Girls: Stories
    by Elwin Cotman
    Scribner, 04/16/2024
     
    A rural town finds itself under the authoritarian sway of a tree that punishes children. A pair of old friends navigate their fraught history as ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Black Bell
    by Alison C. Rollins
    Copper Canyon Press, 04/23/2024
     
    Inspired by the nineteenth century image of an enslaved woman wearing iron horns and bells, Alison C. Rollins's Black Bell continues an exploration of...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
     Debut Author
    Dark Parts of the Universe
    by Samuel Miller
    Katherine Tegan Books, 04/23/2024
     
    In Calico Springs, Willie's life has been defined by two powerful forces: God and the river. The "miracle boy" died for five minutes as a young child,...more
    Extinction: A Novel
    by Douglas Preston
    Forge Books, 04/23/2024
     
    Erebus Resort, occupying a magnificent, hundred-thousand acre valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly ...more
    Homebody
    by Theo Parish
    HarperAlley, 04/23/2024
     
    Combining traditional comics with organic journal-like interludes, Theo takes us through their experiences with the hundred arbitrary and unspoken ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Huddud's House: A Novel
    by Fadi Azzam
    Interlink Books, 04/23/2024
     
    How far is love willing to travel in search of its own lost voice?

    When tyranny unleashes destructive forces that threaten to overwhelm a country, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
    by Nell Irvin Painter
    Doubleday, 04/23/2024
     
    Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. ...more
    Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
    by Anne Higonnet
    W.W. Norton & Company, 04/23/2024
     
    Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Lucky: A Novel
    by Jane Smiley
    Knopf, 04/23/2024
     
    Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals
    by Bill Wasik
    Knopf, 04/23/2024
     
    Over just a few decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a moral revolution on behalf of animals. Before the Civil ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Reboot: A Novel
    by Justin Taylor
    Pantheon Books, 04/23/2024
     
    David Crader is a has-been. A former child actor from the hit teen drama Rev Beach, he now rotates between his new roles as deadbeat dad, recovering ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent
    by Judi Dench
    St. Martin's Griffin, 04/23/2024
     
    - Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...
    - Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...
    - Acting ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Song of the Six Realms
    by Judy I. Lin
    Feiwel & Friends, 04/23/2024
     
    Xue, a talented young musician, has no past and probably no future. Orphaned at a young age, her kindly poet uncle took her in and arranged for an ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power
    by Dana Mattioli
    Little Brown & Company, 04/23/2024
     
    In 2017, Lina Khan published a paper that accused Amazon of being a monopoly, having grown so large, and embedded in so many industries, it was akin ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Flower Sisters
    by Michelle Collins Anderson
    A John Scognamiglio Book, 04/23/2024
     
    Drawing on the little-known true story of one tragic night at an Ozarks dance hall in the author's Missouri hometown, this beautifully written, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union
    by Stephen Puleo
    St. Martin's Griffin, 04/23/2024
     
    In the tempestuous mid-19th century, as slavery consumed Congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart–when the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters
    by Susan Page
    Simon & Schuster, 04/23/2024
     
    Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Sky Was Ours: A Novel
    by Joe Fassler
    Penguin Books, 04/23/2024
     
    It's 2005, and 24-year-old Jane is miserable. Overworked, buried in debt, she senses the life she wanted slipping away—while the world around ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found
    by Sylvia Brownrigg
    Counterpoint Press, 04/23/2024
     
    When Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Wings Upon Her Back
    by Samantha Mills
    Tachyon Publications, 04/23/2024
     
    Zenya was a teenager when she ran away from home to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Wild Dreamers
    by Margarita Engle
    Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 04/23/2024
     
    Ana and her mother have been living out of their car ever since her militant father became one of the FBI's most wanted. Leandro has struggled with ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Cracking the Nazi Code: The Untold Story of Agent A12 and the Solving of the Holocaust Code
    by Jason Bell
    Pegasus Books, 04/30/2024
     
    In public life, Dr. Winthrop Bell was a Harvard philosophy professor and wealthy businessman.

    As an MI6 spy—known as secret agent A12—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Crow Talk: A Novel
    by Eileen Garvin
    Dutton, 04/30/2024
     
    Frankie O'Neill and Anne Ryan would seem to have nothing in common. Frankie is a lonely ornithologist struggling to salvage her dissertation on the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    I'll Be Waiting for You
    by Mariko Turk
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 04/30/2024
     
    Natalie and Imogen are inseparable, and wildly different—Imogen is infuriatingly humble and incredibly intelligent, while Natalie is brave, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    In Universes: A Novel
    by Emet North
    Harper, 04/30/2024
     
    Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Not Like Other Girls
    by Meredith Adamo
    Bloomsbury YA, 04/30/2024
     
    When Jo-Lynn Kirby 's former best friend-pretty, nice Maddie Price-comes to her claiming to be in trouble, Jo assumes it's some kind of joke. After ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Only the Brave: A Novel
    by Danielle Steel
    Delacorte Press, 04/30/2024
     
    Sophia Alexander, the beautiful daughter of a famous surgeon in Berlin, has had to grow up faster than most young women. When her mother falls ill, ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Profiles in Mental Health Courage
    by Patrick J. Kennedy
    Dutton, 04/30/2024
     
    Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation's&...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Real Americans: A Novel
    by Rachel Khong
    Knopf, 04/30/2024
     
    Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
    by Erik Larson
    Crown, 04/30/2024
     
    On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Funeral Cryer: A Novel
    by Wenyan Lu
    Hanover Square Press, 04/30/2024
     
    The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History
    by Karen Valby
    Pantheon Books, 04/30/2024
     
    At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Lydia Abarca was a Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company—the Dance Theatre ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    What's Eating Jackie Oh?
    by Patricia Park
    Crown Books for Young Readers, 04/30/2024
     
    Jackie Oh is done being your model minority.

    She's tired of perfect GPAs, PSATs, SATs, all of it. Jackie longs to become a professional chef. But...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Nest of Vipers: A Bangalore Detectives Club Mystery
    by Harini Nagendra
    Pegasus Crime, 05/02/2024
     
    This latest novel in the Bangalore Detectives Club mystery series takes the reader deep into the historical era surrounding the visit by Edward, ...more
    A Lonesome Place for Dying: A Novel
    by Nolan Chase
    Crooked Lane Books, 05/07/2024
     
    In the quiet seaside town of Blaine, Washington, the most serious police work involves dealing with stray coyotes or ticketing speeders along the I-5....more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    América del Norte
    by Nicolás Medina Mora
    Soho Press, 05/07/2024
     
    Sebastián lived a childhood of privilege in Mexico City. Now in his twenties, he has a degree from Yale, an American girlfriend, and a slot in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Beastly Beauty
    by Jennifer Donnelly
    Scholastic, 05/07/2024
     
    What makes a girl "beastly?" Is it having too much ambition? Being too proud? Taking up too much space? Or is it just wanting something, anything, too...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Cinema Love: A Novel
    by Jiaming Tang
    Dutton, 05/07/2024
     
    For over thirty years, Old Second and Bao Mei have cobbled together a meager existence in New York City's Chinatown. But unlike other couples, these ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Berkley Books, 05/07/2024
     
    Daughters are the Ang family's curse.

    In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Death's Country
    by R. M. Romero
    Peachtree Publishers, 05/07/2024
     
    Andres Santos of São Paulo was all swinging fists and firecracker fury, a foot soldier in the war between his parents, until he drowned in the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Early Sobrieties: A Novel
    by Michael Deagler
    Astra House, 05/07/2024
     
    Don't worry about what Dennis Monk did when he was drinking. He's sober now, ready to rejoin the world of leases and paychecks, reciprocal friendships...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Eyes Open
    by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
    Carolrhoda Books, 05/07/2024
     
    She'll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Zé Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    How It Works Out: A Novel
    by Myriam Lacroix
    The Overlook Press, 05/07/2024
     
    When Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in a run-down punk house, their relationship begins to unfold through a series of hypotheticals. What ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    How Nietzsche Came in From the Cold: Tale of a Redemption
    by Philipp Felsch
    Polity, 05/07/2024
     
    It was only when two ambitious antifascist Italians, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, began to comb through the archives that anyone warmed to the...more
    Biography/Memoir
    How to Read a Book: A Novel
    by Monica Wood
    Mariner Books, 05/07/2024
     
    Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Hunted
    by Abir Mukherjee
    Mulholland, 05/07/2024
     
    In London, the police storm Heathrow Airport to bring in a father for questioning about his missing daughter.

    In Florida, a mother makes a ...more
    I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv
    by Illia Ponomarenko
    Bloomsbury USA, 05/07/2024
     
    In late February 2022, a series of missiles and rocket strikes began falling upon Ukraine, as the Russian military barreled over the border and fanned...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World
    by Eric Jay Dolin
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 05/07/2024
     
    In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin―"one of today's finest writers about ships and the sea" (American Heritage)―tells the true story of a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Loneliness & Company
    by Charlee Dyroff
    Bloomsbury USA, 05/07/2024
     
    Lee knows she's the best. A professor favorite and fellowship winner, there's no doubt she'll land one of the coveted jobs at a Big Five corporation. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Long Island: Eilis Lacey Series #2
    by Colm Toibin
    Scribner, 05/07/2024
     
    Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants
    by Jacob Kushner
    Grand Central Publishing, 05/07/2024
     
    Not long after the Berlin Wall fell, three teenagers became friends in the East German town of Jena. It was a time of excitement, but also of economic...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir
    by Nina St. Pierre
    Dutton, 05/07/2024
     
    Ten years before Nina was born, her mother lit herself on fire in a dual suicide attempt. During her recovery in the burn-unit, a nurse initiated her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Mother Knows Best: Tales of Homemade Horror (A Women in Horror Anthology)
    by Lindy Ryan
    Black Spot, 05/07/2024
     
    From mama trauma to smother mother, this all-new women in horror anthology features stories about the scariest monster of them all—our mothers.
    Short Stories
    Phantom Orbit: A Thriller
    by David Ignatius
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/07/2024
     
    David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline. In Phantom Orbit, he ...more
    Queerceañera
    by Alex Crespo
    HarperTeen, 05/07/2024
     
    Joaquin Zoido is out and proud of it. And while he knew his dad and sister, Carmen, would be super supportive, he wasn't quite ready for them to ...more
    Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire
    by Paula Yoo
    Norton Young Readers, 05/07/2024
     
    In the spring of 1992, after a jury returned not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged in the brutal beating of a Black man, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Sipsworth
    by Simon Van Booy
    David R. Godine, 05/07/2024
     
    Following the loss of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    skin & bones: a novel
    by Renée Watson
    Little Brown & Company, 05/07/2024
     
    At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Body Farm: Stories
    by Abby Geni
    Counterpoint Press, 05/07/2024
     
    The body cannot tell any lies. From birth to death, and through all the transitions in between, the body stores our knowledge and history, our ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Lady Waiting: A Novel
    by Magdalena Zyzak
    Riverhead Books, 05/07/2024
     
    One bright Los Angeles day, a young Polish émigré named Viva is driving along the freeway when she's flagged down by a dazzling, disheveled ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
    by Zoë Schlanger
    Harper, 05/07/2024
     
    It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    The Ministry of Time: A Novel
    by Kaliane Bradley
    Avid Reader Press, 05/07/2024
     
    In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she'll be working on. A recently ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Stolen Child: A Novel
    by Ann Hood
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/07/2024
     
    For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he'd befriended thrust both her...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface
    by Glenn Kenny
    Hanover Square Press, 05/07/2024
     
    An unflinching confrontation of humanity's dark side, Brian De Palma's crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Their Divine Fires: A Novel
    by Wendy Chen
    Algonquin Books, 05/07/2024
     
    In 1917, at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution, Yunhong grows up in the southern China countryside and falls deeply in love with the son of a wealthy ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    This Book Won't Burn
    by Samira Ahmed
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 05/07/2024
     
    After her dad abruptly abandons her family and her mom moves them a million miles from their Chicago home, Noor Khan is forced to start the last ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Trippy: The Peril and Promise of Medicinal Psychedelics
    by Ernesto Londoño
    Celadon, 05/07/2024
     
    When he signed up for a psychedelic retreat run by a mysterious Argentine woman deep in Brazil's rainforest in early 2018, Ernesto Londoño, a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Whale Fall: A Novel
    by Elizabeth O'Connor
    Pantheon Books, 05/07/2024
     
    In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Women and Children First: A Novel
    by Alina Grabowski
    Zando, 05/07/2024
     
    Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town's industries for ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The North Wind
    by Alexandria Warwick
    Simon & Schuster, 05/09/2024
     
    Wren of Edgewood is no stranger to suffering. Her parents are gone. Survival is all she knows. For three hundred years, the land known as the Gray has...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Downloaded
    by Robert J. Sawyer
    Shadowpaw Press, 05/11/2024
     
    In 2059 two very different groups have their minds uploaded into a quantum computer in Waterloo, Ontario.

    One group consists of astronauts ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery
    by Lawrence Ingrassia
    Henry Holt and Company, 05/14/2024
     
    Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    All Fours: A Novel
    by Miranda July
    Riverhead Books, 05/14/2024
     
    A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    American Bloods: The Untamed Dynasty That Shaped a Nation
    by John Kaag
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 05/14/2024
     
    The Bloods were one of America's first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Another Word for Love: A Memoir
    by Carvell Wallace
    MCD, 05/14/2024
     
    In Another Word for Love, Carvell Wallace excavates layers of his own history, situated in the struggles and beauty of growing up Black and queer in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Blue Ruin: A Novel
    by Hari Kunzru
    Knopf, 05/14/2024
     
    Once, Jay was an artist. After graduating from art school in London, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career taking shape before him. That was...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
    by Adam Higginbotham
    Avid Reader Press, 05/14/2024
     
    On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Every Time We Say Goodbye: A Novel
    by Natalie Jenner
    St. Martin's Press, 05/14/2024
     
    In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies
    by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
    Princeton University Press, 05/14/2024
     
    It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn't it always been so? When evolutionary science came along, it...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Liquid, Fragile, Perishable
    by Carolyn Kuebler
    Melville House, 05/14/2024
     
    May has arrived in the tiny hamlet of Glenville, Vermont, bringing with it currents of rejuvenation and rebirth. For 3 families, though, the year ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Long After We Are Gone: A Novel
    by Terah Shelton Harris
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 05/14/2024
     
    "Don't let the white man take the house."

    These are the last words King Solomon says to his son before he dies. Now all four Solomon siblings must ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
    by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
    Tiny Reparations, 05/14/2024
     
    Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother's story,...more
    My First Book
    by Honor Levy
    Penguin Press, 05/14/2024
     
    Walking the wire between imagination and confession, My First Book marks the arrival of an electric new talent. Honor Levy's uniquely riveting voice ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
     Debut Author
    Oye: A Novel
    by Melissa Mogollon
    Hogarth Books, 05/14/2024
     
    "Yes, hi, Mari. It's me. I'm over my tantrum now and calling you back ... But first—you have to promise that you won't tell Mom or Abue any of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Rednecks: A Novel
    by Taylor Brown
    St. Martin's Press, 05/14/2024
     
    Rednecks is a tour de force, big canvas historical novel that dramatizes the 1920 to 1921 events of the West Virginia Mine Wars—from the Matewan...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Rise of a Killah
    by Ghostface Killah
    St. Martin's Press, 05/14/2024
     
    Dennis Coles—aka Ghostface Killah—is a co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, a legendary hip hop group who established themselves by breaking ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Road Home
    by Rex Ogle
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/14/2024
     
    When Rex was outed the summer after he graduated high school, his father gave him a choice: he could stay at home, find a girlfriend, and attend ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Road to Ruin: Magebike Courier #1
    by Hana Lee
    Other Press, 05/14/2024
     
    Jin-Lu has the most dangerous job in the wasteland. She's a magebike courier, one of the few who venture outside the domed cities on motorcycles ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World
    by Caroline Alexander
    Viking, 05/14/2024
     
    In April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army steamrolled through Burma, capturing the only ground route from India to China. Supplies to this critical ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Spitting Gold: A Novel
    by Carmella Lowkis
    Atria Books, 05/14/2024
     
    Paris, 1866. When Baroness Sylvie Devereux receives a house call from Charlotte Mothe, the sister she disowned, she fears her shady past as a spirit ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories
    by Colombe Schneck
    Penguin Press, 05/14/2024
     
    At fifty years old, while taking swimming lessons, I finally realized that my body was not actually as incompetent as I'd thought. My physical ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Blue Maiden
    by Anna Noyes
    Grove Press, 05/14/2024
     
    It's 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island's women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Brightwood Code
    by Monica Hesse
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 05/14/2024
     
    Seven months ago, Edda was on the World War I front lines as one of two hundred "Hello Girls," female switchboard operators employed by the US Army. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History
    by John Vasquez Mejias
    Union Square & Co., 05/14/2024
     
    Rendered in gorgeously carved wood blocks and buffeted with historical supplemental material, John Vasquez Mejias's The Puerto Rican War tells the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    The Silence of the Choir
    by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
    Europa Editions, 05/14/2024
     
    Seventy-two men arrive in the middle of the Sicilian countryside. They are "immigrants," "refugees" or "migrants." But in Altino, they're called the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Witches of Bellinas: A Novel
    by J. Nicole Jones
    Catapult, 05/14/2024
     
    Tansy and her husband Guy are the newest arrivals in Bellinas, a lush oasis tucked into the coast of northern California where a reclusive, creative ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Worst Perfect Moment
    by Shivaun Plozza
    Holiday House, 05/14/2024
     
    Tegan Masters is dead.

    She's sixteen and she's dead and she's standing in the parking lot of the Marybelle Motor Lodge, the single most ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms
    by Mike Hixenbaugh
    Mariner Books, 05/14/2024
     
    Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Thirsty: A Novel
    by Jas Hammonds
    Roaring Brook Press, 05/14/2024
     
    It's the summer before college and eighteen-year-old Blake Brenner and her girlfriend, Ella, have one goal: join the mysterious and exclusive Serena ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    This Strange Eventful History: A Novel
    by Claire Messud
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/14/2024
     
    Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state―separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    We Were the Universe: A Novel
    by Kimberly King Parsons
    Knopf, 05/14/2024
     
    The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit's best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Wives Like Us: A Novel
    by Plum Sykes
    Harper, 05/14/2024
     
    If you think the English countryside is all green wellies, muddy Land Rovers and grey-haired ladies in tweed, then you've never visited 'The Bottoms.'...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Gentleman from Japan: The Untold Story of an Incredible Journey from Asia to Queen Elizabeth's Court
    by Thomas Lockley
    Hanover Square Press, 05/21/2024
     
    On November 12, 1588, five young Asian men—led by a twenty-one-year-old called Christopher—traveled up the River Thames to meet Queen ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    A Northern Light in Provence: A Novel
    by Elizabeth Birkelund
    Ballantine Books, 05/21/2024
     
    Ilse Erlund is a translator who lives in a house on stilts along the west coast of Greenland. Isolated and restless in her world by the sea, she ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873
    by Alan Taylor
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/21/2024
     
    In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Butcher: A Novel
    by Joyce Carol Oates
    Knopf, 05/21/2024
     
    In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, "Father of Gyno-Psychiatry," as he ascends ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir
    by Zoë Bossiere
    Abrams Press, 05/21/2024
     
    Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë's world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Cecilia
    by K-Ming Chang
    Coffee House Press, 05/21/2024
     
    Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor's office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Exhibit: A Novel
    by R. O. Kwon
    Riverhead Books, 05/21/2024
     
    At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Faraway the Southern Sky: A Novel
    by Joseph Andras
    Verso, 05/21/2024
     
    Fleeing persecution in Indochina, the young Ho Chi Minh arrived in Paris as World War I was sputtering to a close. A painfully shy twentysomething who...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Goddess of the River
    by Vaishnavi Patel
    Redhook, 05/21/2024
     
    A mother and a son. A goddess and a prince. A curse and an oath. A river whose course will change the fate of the world.

    Ganga, joyful goddess of...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying: Dark Lord Davi #1
    by Django Wexler
    Orbit, 05/21/2024
     
    Davi has done this all before. She's tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she's rallied humanity and made ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    I Hope This Finds You Well: A Novel
    by Natalie Sue
    William Morrow, 05/21/2024
     
    Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife
    by Sebastian Junger
    Simon & Schuster, 05/21/2024
     
    For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    In Tongues: A Novel
    by Thomas Grattan
    MCD, 05/21/2024
     
    It's 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon―handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction―takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Lies and Weddings: A Novel
    by Kevin Kwan
    Doubleday, 05/21/2024
     
    Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Mind Games: A Novel
    by Nora Roberts
    St. Martin's Press, 05/21/2024
     
    As they do each June, the Foxes have driven the winding roads of Appalachia to drop off their children for a two-week stay at their grandmother's. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Mood Swings: A Novel
    by Frankie Barnet
    Astra House, 05/21/2024
     
    Everyone knows something's off, but nobody can agree on just what it is. Maybe it's the weather; maybe everyone's just so damn sensitive these days. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Still Waters: A Novel
    by Matt Goldman
    Forge Books, 05/21/2024
     
    Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom are estranged siblings who haven't seen each other in years, but that's about to change when they receive a rare call from their...more
    The Incorrigibles: A Novel
    by Meredith Jaeger
    Dutton, 05/21/2024
     
    1890, San Francisco. Seduced by her employer's nephew, Annie Gilmurray, an Irish maid, is accused of stealing the ring he promised her. Sentenced to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Last Murder at the End of the World: A Novel
    by Stuart Turton
    Sourcebooks, 05/21/2024
     
    Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

    Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, ...more
    Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022
    by Zachary Small
    Knopf, 05/21/2024
     
    In 2021, when the gavel fell at Christie's on the sale of Mike Winkelmann's Everydays series—a compilation of five thousand digital artworks&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
    by Shefali Luthra
    Doubleday, 05/21/2024
     
    On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2023, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    When We Were Silent: A Novel
    by Fiona McPhillips
    Flatiron Books, 05/21/2024
     
    Louise Manson is the newest student at Highfield Manor, Dublin's most exclusive private school. It seems nearly perfect: the high arched window ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The Lockmaster: The German List
    by Christoph Ransmayr
    Seagull Books, 05/27/2024
     
    A longboat plummets over the Great Falls, drowning the five passengers on board. The Lockmaster, the heir to an ancient title and responsible for ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    A Question of Belonging: Crónicas
    by Hebe Uhart
    Archipelago Books, 05/28/2024
     
    Uhart reinvigorates our desire to connect with other people, to love the world, to laugh in the face of bad intentions, and to look again, more ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico
    by Noé Álvarez
    Catapult, 05/28/2024
     
    Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure:...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Allow Me to Introduce Myself: A Novel
    by Onyi Nwabineli
    Graydon House, 05/28/2024
     
    Anuri Chinasa has had enough. And really, who can blame her? She was the unwilling star of her stepmother's social media empire before "momfluencers" ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War
    by Tom Steyer
    Spiegel & Grau, 05/28/2024
     
    The climate is changing more rapidly than scientists predicted even a few years ago, with extreme weather already touching our everyday lives. At the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Cry of the Wild: Eight animals under siege
    by Charles Foster
    Doubleday, 05/28/2024
     
    A fox, grown strong on pepperoni pizza from the dustbins of the East End, dances along a railway track towards Essex, the territory of wild foxes and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier
    by Robert G. Parkinson
    W.W. Norton & Company, 05/28/2024
     
    We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Housemates: A Novel
    by Emma Copley Eisenberg
    Hogarth Books, 05/28/2024
     
    When Bernie replies to Leah's ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Look on the Bright Side
    by Kristan Higgins
    Berkley Books, 05/28/2024
     
    Lark Smith has always had a plan for her life: find a fantastic guy, create a marriage as blissful as her parents', pop out a couple of kids and build...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Nero: A Novel (The Nero Trilogy)
    by Conn Iggulden
    Pegasus Books, 05/28/2024
     
    The story begins with a hand curled around another man's throat.

    This is Roman justice: Emperor Tiberius first dispatches a traitor—a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Southern Man: Penn Cage #7
    by Greg Iles
    William Morrow, 05/28/2024
     
    Fifteen years after the events of the Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, ...more
    Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle
    by Michael Andor Brodeur
    Beacon Press, 05/28/2024
     
    Michael Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity--a concept in which many men are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Goddess of Warsaw: A Novel
    by Lisa Barr
    Harper, 05/28/2024
     
    Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood's latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
    by James Shapiro
    Penguin Press, 05/28/2024
     
    From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Safekeep
    by Yael van der Wouden
    Avid Reader Press, 05/28/2024
     
    A house is a precious thing...

    It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Winner: A Novel
    by Teddy Wayne
    Harper, 05/28/2024
     
    In this oceanfront paradise, however, new clients prove hard to come by, and Conor has bills to pay. Then a sharp-tongued divorcée appears, ...more
    Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America
    by Amir Alexander
    University Of Chicago Press, 05/29/2024
     
    Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
    by Shannon Vallor
    Oxford University Press, 06/03/2024
     
    They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome―not by us, but by our machines.

    Yet rather than open new ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Awakening the Spirit of America: FDR's War of Words With Charles Lindbergh and the Battle to Save Democracy
    by Paul M. Sparrow
    Pegasus Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Franklin Roosevelt awoke at 2:50 a.m. on September 1, 1939 to the news that Germany had invaded Poland, signaling the start of World War II. The ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Better Must Come
    by Desmond Hall
    Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 06/04/2024
     
    Deja is a "barrel girl"—one of the Jamaican kids who get barrels full of clothes, food, and treats shipped to them from parents who have moved ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Blessings: A Novel
    by Chukwuebuka Ibeh
    Doubleday, 06/04/2024
     
    Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Blood in the Cut: A Novel
    by Alejandro Nodarse
    Flatiron Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Iggy must earn his father's lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity
    by Ruth Whippman
    Harmony Books, 06/04/2024
     
    "Rapist, school-shooter, incel, man-child, interrupter, mansplainer, boob-starer, birthday forgetter, frat boy, dude-bro, homophobe, self-important ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Bright and Tender Dark
    by Joanna Pearson
    Bloomsbury USA, 06/04/2024
     
    Days after the dawn of Y2K, beautiful, charismatic nineteen-year-old Karlie Richards is found brutally murdered in her campus apartment. Two decades ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Burn It All: A Novel
    by Maggie Auffarth
    Crooked Lane Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Marley Henderson is having the worst year of her life. First, a drunken mistake costs her everything, including her engagement and her closest friend,...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania
    by Kathryn Hughes
    The Johns Hopkins University Press, 06/04/2024
     
    In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation
    by Edward Robert McClelland
    Pegasus Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas are a misunderstood duo. History remembers them as antagonists, and for most of the years the two men knew each ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Daughter of the Merciful Deep
    by Leslye Penelope
    Redhook, 06/04/2024
     
    "Our home began, as all things do, with a wish."

    Jane Edwards hasn't spoken since she was eleven years old, when armed riders expelled her family...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Enlightenment: A Novel
    by Sarah Perry
    Mariner Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive
    by James Parker
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/04/2024
     
    Our politics are broken; our world is melting; the next catastrophe looms. Enter James Parker, who for years now has been writing odes of appreciation...more
    Godwin: A Novel
    by Joseph O'Neill
    Pantheon Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Hall of Mirrors: A Judy Nightingale and Philippa Watson Mystery
    by John Copenhaver
    Pegasus Crime, 06/04/2024
     
    In May 1954, Lionel Kane witnesses his apartment engulfed in flames with his lover and writing partner, Roger Raymond, inside. Police declare it a ...more
    Mysteries
    Holy City
    by Henry Wise
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 06/04/2024
     
    After a decade of exile precipitated by the tragic death of his mother, Will Seems returns home from Richmond to rural Southern Virginia, taking a job...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    I've Tried Being Nice: Essays
    by Ann Leary
    Marysue Rucci Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Having arrived at a certain age (her prime), Ann Leary casts a wry backward glance at a life spent trying—and often failing—to be nice. ...more
    If You Can't Take the Heat
    by Michael Ruhlman
    Penguin Books, 06/04/2024
     
    When high school football star Theo Claverback breaks his leg just weeks after a devastating break-up, he's forced to call an audible on his summer ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    In the Hour of Crows: A Novel
    by Dana Elmendorf
    Mira Books, 06/04/2024
     
    When called upon, she can talk the death out of the dying and save their lives—only once, never twice. But this truly unique gift comes at a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Lockjaw
    by Matteo L. Cerilli
    Tundra Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Chuck Warren died tragically at the old abandoned mill, but Paz Espino knows it was no accident — there's a monster under the town, and she's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Looking for Smoke
    by K. A. Cobell
    Heartdrum, 06/04/2024
     
    When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren's missing sister, Mara thinks she'll finally make some friends ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Louder Than Words
    by Ashley Woodfolk, Lexi Underwood
    Scholastic, 06/04/2024
     
    When Jordyn Jones transfers to Edgewood High, it's her opportunity to forget everything that happened at her old school. To forget what she and her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Malas: A Novel
    by Marcela Fuentes
    Viking, 06/04/2024
     
    More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father's moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Mirrored Heavens: Between Earth and Sky #3
    by Rebecca Roanhorse
    Simon & Schuster, 06/04/2024
     
    Even the sea cannot stay calm before the storm. —Teek saying

    Serapio, avatar of the Crow God Reborn and the newly crowned Carrion King, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius
    by Carrie Courogen
    St. Martin's Press, 06/04/2024
     
    After performing their Broadway smash An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Elaine set out on her own. She toiled unsuccessfully on Broadway ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Old King: A Novel
    by Maxim Loskutoff
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/04/2024
     
    In the summer of 1976, Duane Oshun finds himself stranded in a remote Montana town beset by a series of strange and menacing events. He takes a job as...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Shelterwood: A Novel
    by Lisa Wingate
    Ballantine Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn't have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States
    by J. Albert Mann
    HarperCollins Publishers, 06/04/2024
     
    Long before the first labor unions were formed, workers still knew what exploitation looked like. It looked like the enslavement of Black people. It ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water
    by Amorina Kingdon
    Crown, 06/04/2024
     
    For centuries, humans ignored sound in the "silent world" of the ocean, assuming that what we couldn't perceive, didn't exist. But we couldn't have ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Soldier Sailor: A Novel
    by Claire Kilroy
    Scribner, 06/04/2024
     
    Claire Kilroy takes readers deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Kilroy ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Spilled Ink
    by Nadia Hashimi
    Quill Tree Books, 06/04/2024
     
    When Yalda hears that her twin brother, Yusuf, will be performing with his band at a local venue, she lets her friends convince her to sneak out to ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Such a Bad Influence
    by Olivia Muenter
    Quirk Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Hazel Davis is drifting: she's stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Swift River
    by Essie Chambers
    Simon & Schuster, 06/04/2024
     
    But that's not the only reason Diamond stands out: she's teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop's been gone, she is the only Black person...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Tell Me Who You Are: A Novel
    by Louisa Luna
    MCD, 06/04/2024
     
    Brooklyn psychiatrist Dr. Caroline Strange is certain she knows what's best for her patients, her family, and pretty much everyone else, but that all ...more
    The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye: A Novel
    by Briony Cameron
    Atria Books, 06/04/2024
     
    In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ...more
    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Borrowed Hills: A Novel
    by Scott Preston
    Scribner, 06/04/2024
     
    In early 2001, a lethal disease breaks out on the hill farms of northern England, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke as ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets
    by Thomas R. Cech
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/04/2024
     
    For over half a century, DNA has dominated science and the popular imagination as the "secret of life." But over the last several decades, a quiet ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    The Coast Road: A Novel
    by Alan Murrin
    HarperVia, 06/04/2024
     
    Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women—Izzy Keaveney, a housewife, and Colette Crowley, a poet. Colette has left her husband ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Deep Dark: A Graphic Novel
    by Molly Knox Ostertag
    Graphix, 06/04/2024
     
    Everyone has secrets. Mags's has teeth.

    Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious ...more
    The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America
    by Elizabeth Dias
    Flatiron Books, 06/04/2024
     
    In June 2022, Americans watched in shock as the Supreme Court reversed one of the nation's landmark rulings. For nearly a half century, Roe was ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The God and the Gumiho
    by Sophie Kim
    Del Rey, 06/04/2024
     
    Kim Hani has retired from a life of devouring souls. She is, simply put, too full. Once known as the infamous Scarlet Fox, she now spends her days ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Last Twelve Miles: A Novel
    by Erika Robuck
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 06/04/2024
     
    1926. Washington, D.C.

    The Coast Guard is losing the Prohibition Rum War, but they have a new, secret weapon to crack smuggler codes, intercept ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower
    by Michel Paradis
    Mariner Books, 06/04/2024
     
    On June 6, 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower addressed the thousands of American troops preparing to invade Normandy, exhorting them to embrace the "...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports
    by Michael Waters
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/04/2024
     
    In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women's sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Pecan Children
    by Quinn Connor
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 06/04/2024
     
    How long will you hold on when your world is gone?

    In a small southern pecan town, the annual harvest is a time of both celebration and heartbreak....more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Road to the Country: A Novel
    by Chigozie Obioma
    Hogarth Books, 06/04/2024
     
    Set in Nigeria in the late 1960s, The Road to the Country is the epic story of a shy, bookish student haunted by long-held guilt who must go to war to...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Secret Keeper of Main Street: A Novel
    by Trisha R. Thomas
    William Morrow, 06/04/2024
     
    1954: In the quaint town of Mendol, Oklahoma, Bailey Dowery is a Black dressmaker for the wives and daughters of local oil barons. She earns a ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
    by Zeke Hernandez
    St. Martin's Press, 06/04/2024
     
    Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder
    by Alan Townsend PhD
    Grand Central Publishing, 06/04/2024
     
    A decade ago, Dr. Alan Townsend's family received two unthinkable, catastrophic diagnoses: his 4-year-old daughter and his brilliant scientist wife ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Tidal Creatures: Alchemical Journeys #3
    by Seanan McGuire
    Tor Books, 06/04/2024
     
    New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Triumph of the Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation
    by Tom McGrath
    Grand Central Publishing, 06/04/2024
     
    By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Vicious and Immoral: Homosexuality, the American Revolution, and the Trials of Robert Newburgh
    by John Gilbert McCurdy
    The Johns Hopkins University Press, 06/04/2024
     
    On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Wafers
    by Seong-nan Ha
    Open Letter, 06/04/2024
     
    A best-seller in Korea, Ha Seong-nan is one of the stars of contemporary short fiction, writing edgy, socially conscious stories that bring to mind ...more
    Short Stories
    We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
    by Kellie Carter Jackson
    Seal Press, 06/04/2024
     
    Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolence and Malcolm X's "by any ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Welcome to Glorious Tuga
    by Francesca Segal
    Chatto & Windus, 06/06/2024
     
    Passionate about conservation and fleeing an argument with her mother, newly qualified London vet Charlotte Walker has taken up a fellowship on the ...more
    Literary Fiction
    A Talent for Murder: A Novel
    by Peter Swanson
    William Morrow, 06/11/2024
     
    Martha Ratliff conceded long ago that she'd likely spend her life alone. She was fine with it, happy with her solo existence, stimulated by her job as...more
    All Friends Are Necessary: A Novel
    by Tomas Moniz
    Algonquin Books, 06/11/2024
     
    Efren "Chino" Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Consent: A Memoir
    by Jill Ciment
    Pantheon Books, 06/11/2024
     
    In this unflinching account of the ardent love affair between the author and her painting teacher, which began in the 1970s, when she was a teenager ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation
    by Hugh Warwick
    Bloomsbury USA, 06/11/2024
     
    Across the world, invasive species pose a danger to ecosystems. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity ranks them as a major threat to biodiversity...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Getting to Know Death: A Meditation
    by Gail Godwin
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 06/11/2024
     
    Ingmar Bergman once said that an artist should always have one work between himself and death. When renowned author Gail Godwin tripped and broke her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Gretel and the Great War: A Novel
    by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
    FSG Originals, 06/11/2024
     
    Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down―and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Hip-Hop Is History
    by Questlove
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/11/2024
     
    When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn't expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
    by Peter S. Goodman
    Mariner Books, 06/11/2024
     
    How does the wealthiest country on earth run out of protective gear in the middle of a public health catastrophe? How do its parents find themselves ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Margo's Got Money Troubles: A Novel
    by Rufi Thorpe
    William Morrow, 06/11/2024
     
    As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she'd have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Middletide: A Novel
    by Sarah Crouch
    Atria Books, 06/11/2024
     
    One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the ...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    One of Our Kind: A Novel
    by Nicola Yoon
    Knopf, 06/11/2024
     
    Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Swan Song
    by Elin Hilderbrand
    Little Brown & Company, 06/11/2024
     
    Chief of Police Ed Kapenash is about to retire. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce. But when a 22-million-dollar summer home is purchased by the ...more
    Tehrangeles: A Novel
    by Porochista Khakpour
    Pantheon Books, 06/11/2024
     
    There's Violet, the big-hearted aspiring model; Roxanna, the chaotic influencer; Mina, the chronically-online overachiever; and the impressionable ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Color of a Lie
    by Kim Johnson
    Random House Books for Younger Readers, 06/11/2024
     
    Calvin knows how to pass for white. He's done it plenty of times before. For his friends in Chicago, when they wanted food but weren't allowed in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir
    by Griffin Dunne
    Penguin Press, 06/11/2024
     
    At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
    by Boyce Upholt
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/11/2024
     
    The Mississippi River lies at the heart of America, an undeniable life force that is intertwined with the nation's culture and history. Its watershed ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Unnamed Press, 06/11/2024
     
    After years of estrangement, Minah, Sarah, and Esther have been forced together again. Called to their father's deathbed, the sisters must confront a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Sons of El Rey
    by Alex Espinoza
    Simon & Schuster, 06/11/2024
     
    Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Stardust Grail: A Novel
    by Yume Kitasei
    Flatiron Books, 06/11/2024
     
    Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations―until a disastrous...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Stars Too Fondly: A Novel
    by Emily Hamilton
    Harper Voyager, 06/11/2024
     
    So, here's the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn't mean to steal this spaceship.

    They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Throne: The Machiavelli Trilogy #1
    by Franco Bernini
    Europa Editions, 06/11/2024
     
    October 1502. As Cesare Borgia sets out to invade the Florentine Republic, Niccolò Machiavelli is sent to spy on him and to glean details of his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir
    by Cory Leadbeater
    Ecco, 06/11/2024
     
    As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
    by Ann Powers
    Dey Street Books, 06/11/2024
     
    For decades, Joni Mitchell's life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal
    by Melissa B. Jacoby
    The New Press, 06/11/2024
     
    Bankruptcy is the busiest federal court in America. In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance
    by Mara Kardas-Nelson
    Metropolitan Books, 06/11/2024
     
    In the mid-1970s, Muhammad Yunus, an American-trained Bangladeshi economist, met a poor female stool maker who needed money to expand her business. In...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    What Fire Brings: A Thriller
    by Rachel Howzell Hall
    Thomas & Mercer, 06/11/2024
     
    Bailey Meadows has just moved into the remote Topanga Canyon home of thriller author Jack Beckham. As his writer-in-residence, she's supposed to help ...more
    1974: A Personal History
    by Francine Prose
    Harper, 06/18/2024
     
    During her twenties, Francine Prose lived in San Francisco, where she began an intense and strange relationship with Tony Russo, who had been indicted...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell Us About the World and Ourselves
    by Tamsin Mather
    Hanover Square Press, 06/18/2024
     
    In this captivating book from one of the most influential geochemists in the field, Tamsin Mather takes us along on her globe-spanning excursions from...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women
    by Maggie Mertens
    Algonquin Books, 06/18/2024
     
    Despite women proving their abilities on the track time and again, men in the medical establishment, media, and athletic associations have fought to ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones: A Memoir
    by Priyanka Mattoo
    Knopf, 06/18/2024
     
    Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Caledonian Road: A Novel
    by Andrew O'Hagan
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/18/2024
     
    Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and fêted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
    by Ananda Lima
    Tor Books, 06/18/2024
     
    At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
     Debut Author
    Death in the Air: A Novel
    by Ram Murali
    Harper, 06/18/2024
     
    Ro Krishna is the American son of Indian parents, educated at the finest institutions, equally at home in London's poshest clubs and on the squash ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls
    by Susan Seidelman
    St. Martin's Press, 06/18/2024
     
    Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    End of Active Service
    by Matt Young
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 06/18/2024
     
    What was it like? It's the only thing anyone wants to know about war-and the last thing Corporal Dean Pusey wants to talk about, at least not with one...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Four Squares
    by Bobby Finger
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/18/2024
     
    In 1992, on his thirtieth birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer: A Novel
    by Joseph Earl Thomas
    Grand Central Publishing, 06/18/2024
     
    Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Hood Wellness: Tales of Communal Care from People Who Drowned on Dry Land
    by Tamela J. Gordon
    Row House Publishing, 06/18/2024
     
    Hood Wellness is also a deep exploration of people forced to overcome harrowing circumstances with little more than communal support and the will to ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Jackie: A Novel
    by Dawn Tripp
    Random House, 06/18/2024
     
    The world has divided my life into three:

    Life with Jack

    Life with Onassis

    Life as a woman who goes to work because she wants to.

    ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Love & Whiskey: The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest
    by Fawn Weaver
    Melcher Media, 06/18/2024
     
    This book is a vibrant exploration set in the present day, delving into the life and legacy of Nearest Green, the African American distilling genius ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Middle of the Night: A Novel
    by Riley Sager
    Dutton, 06/18/2024
     
    The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh's backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend ...more
    Thrillers
    Parade: A Novel
    by Rachel Cusk
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/18/2024
     
    Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Pets and the City: True Tales of a Manhattan House Call Veterinarian
    by Dr. Amy Attas
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 06/18/2024
     
    When a pet is sick, people—even the rich and famous—are at their most authentic and vulnerable. They could have a Monet on the wall and an...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
    by Brea Baker
    One World, 06/18/2024
     
    To understand the contemporary racial wealth gap, we must first unpack the historic attacks on Indigenous and Black land ownership. From the moment ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Rules for Camouflage
    by Kirstin Cronn-Mills
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 06/18/2024
     
    Evvie Chambers is doing her best to skate through the last month of high school to graduation. The only thing standing in her way is a biology report ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Same As It Ever Was: A Novel
    by Claire Lombardo
    Doubleday, 06/18/2024
     
    Same As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Sandwich: A Novel
    by Catherine Newman
    Harper, 06/18/2024
     
    For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Glassmaker: A Novel
    by Tracy Chevalier
    Viking, 06/18/2024
     
    It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Memo: A Novel
    by Rachel Dodes, Lauren Mechling
    Harper Perennial, 06/18/2024
     
    Do you ever feel like your life doesn't measure up to everyone else's—and wonder if you just didn't get the memo helping you make the right ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Next Mrs. Parrish: A Novel
    by Liv Constantine
    Bantam Books, 06/18/2024
     
    Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way. Hard work and immaculate planning turned her from invisible wallflower to prominent socialite, though ...more
    The Witchstone
    by Henry H. Neff
    Blackstone Publishing, 06/18/2024
     
    Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell's least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
    by John Ganz
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/18/2024
     
    With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a "kinder, gentler America." Instead, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Where Wolves Don't Die
    by Anton Treuer
    Levine Querido, 06/18/2024
     
    But Ezra hates the dirty, polluted snow around them. He hates being away from the rez at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation. And he hates the local ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    With Love, Miss Americanah
    by Jane Igharo
    Feiwel & Friends, 06/18/2024
     
    17-year-old Enore Adesuwa doesn't dive into things, she walks in carefully. So when she, her mother, and her sister move from Nigeria to America ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Romance
     Debut Author
    A Daughter of Fair Verona: Daughter of Montague #1
    by Christina Dodd
    A John Scognamiglio Book, 06/25/2024
     
    Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended (hint: badly). Only here's the thing: That's not ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue
    by Dean Jobb
    Algonquin Books, 06/25/2024
     
    A skilled con artist and one of the most successful burglars in history, Arthur Barry was adept at slipping in and out of bedrooms undetected, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    All the Colors of the Dark
    by Chris Whitaker
    Crown, 06/25/2024
     
    1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China
    by Edward Wong
    Viking, 06/25/2024
     
    The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Bear: A Novel
    by Julia Phillips
    Hogarth Books, 06/25/2024
     
    They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.

    Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life
    by Ferris Jabr
    Random House, 06/25/2024
     
    One of humanity's oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV
    by Emily Nussbaum
    Random House, 06/25/2024
     
    In this revelatory, deeply reported account of the rise of "dirty documentary"—from its contentious roots in radio to the ascent of Donald Trump...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Dancing on My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy
    by Simon Wu
    Harper, 06/25/2024
     
    In Robyn's 2010 track Dancing on My Own, the Swedish pop-singer chronicles a night on the dance floor in the shadow of a former lover. She is bitter, ...more
    Don't Let the Devil Ride: A Novel
    by Ace Atkins
    William Morrow, 06/25/2024
     
    Hell is empty…and Addison McKellar's husband is missing.

    Addison McKellar isn't clueless—she knows she and her husband Dean don't have ...more
    Foul Days: The Witch's Compendium of Monsters #1
    by Genoveva Dimova
    Tor Books, 06/25/2024
     
    As a witch in the walled city of Chernograd, Kosara has plenty of practice treating lycanthrope bites, bargaining with kikimoras, and slaying ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Girls Like Her
    by Melanie Sumrow
    Balzer + Bray, 06/25/2024
     
    A wealthy businessman is dead, and fifteen-year-old Ruby Monroe is in a Dallas jail awaiting trial for his murder. Ruby has no one she can count on&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory
    by Solomon J. Brager
    William Morrow, 06/25/2024
     
    Solomon Brager grew up with accounts of their great-grandparents' escape from Nazi Germany, told over and over until their understanding of self was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Hey, Zoey
    by Sarah Crossan
    Little Brown & Company, 06/25/2024
     
    43-year-old Dolores O'Shea is logical, organized, and prepared to handle whatever comes her way. She keeps up with her job and housework, takes care ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Hombrecito: A Novel
    by Santiago Jose Sanchez
    Riverhead Books, 06/25/2024
     
    In this groundbreaking novel, Santiago Jose Sanchez plunges us into the heart of one boy's life. His mother takes him and his brother from Colombia to...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Honey: A Novel
    by Isabel Banta
    Celadon, 06/25/2024
     
    It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It's a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    How the Light Gets In: A Novel
    by Joyce Maynard
    William Morrow, 06/25/2024
     
    Following the death of her former husband, Cam, fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Husbands & Lovers: A Novel
    by Beatriz Williams
    Ballantine Books, 06/25/2024
     
    New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Joe Hustle: A Novel
    by Richard Lange
    Mulholland, 06/25/2024
     
    Joe Hustle is a survivor. A Gulf War vet and ex-con always one stumble away from catastrophe, he manages to scrape together enough money from various ...more
    Last Date in El Zapotal
    by Mateo García Elizondo
    Charco Press, 06/25/2024
     
    This is a ghost story. A junkie has gone to El Zapotal to die – to rent a room in this crumbling backwater, melt into one last fix, and not...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Moral Injuries: A Novel
    by Christie Watson
    Harper, 06/25/2024
     
    When you're trained to protect the lives of others, how far will you go to protect your own?

    Ruthlessly ambitious Olivia, anxious perfectionist ...more
    Practice: A Novel
    by Rosalind Brown
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 06/25/2024
     
    Rosalind Brown's Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Russian Gothic
    by Aleksandr Skorobogatov
    Rare Bird, 06/25/2024
     
    Russian Gothic is a dark tale of the descent into paranoia and violence of Nikolai, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. When a mysterious figure,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Shanghai: A Novel
    by Joseph Kanon
    Scribner, 06/25/2024
     
    After the violence of Kristallnacht (1938), European Jews, now desperate to emigrate, found the consular doors of the world closed to them. Only one ...more
    Sleep Like Death
    by Kalynn Bayron
    Bloomsbury YA, 06/25/2024
     
    Princess Eve was raised with one purpose: to destroy the Knight. Far too many of subjects of Queen's Bridge have been devastated by this evil sorcerer...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water
    by Vicki Valosik
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 06/25/2024
     
    If you're not strong enough to swim fast, you're probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty,'" said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
    by Olivia Laing
    W.W. Norton & Company, 06/25/2024
     
    In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an 18th century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Lions' Den: A Novel
    by Iris Mwanza
    Graydon House, 06/25/2024
     
    When young queer dancer Wilbess "Bessy" Mulenga is arrested by corrupt police, fresh-from-the-village rookie lawyer Grace Zulu takes up his cause in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
    by Ray Kurzweil
    Viking, 06/25/2024
     
    Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near and its vision of an exponential future have spawned a worldwide movement...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Trust Her: A Novel
    by Flynn Berry
    Viking, 06/25/2024
     
    Three years after they narrowly escaped the IRA's worst punishment for informing, Northern Irish sisters Tessa and Marian Daly have built a new life ...more
    Woman of Interest: A Memoir
    by Tracy O'Neill
    HarperOne, 06/25/2024
     
    In 2020, Tracy O'Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Curse of the Flores Women: A Novel
    by Angélica Lopes
    Amazon Crossing, 07/01/2024
     
    Eighteen-year-old Alice Ribeiro is constantly fighting―against the status quo, female oppression in Brazil, and even her own mother. But when a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Last Time I Saw You
    by Jo Leevers
    Lake Union Publishing, 07/01/2024
     
    Weeks away from the birth of her first child, Georgie should be enjoying the peace of her new life in the country, but boredom has settled in and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Sea Full of Turtles: The Search for Optimism in an Epoch of Extinction
    by Bill Streever
    Pegasus Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Everyone alive today is witnessing a mass extinction event caused by the more than eight billion humans who share this planet. At times, it seems ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Age 16
    by Rosena Fung
    Annick Press, 07/02/2024
     
    Guandong, 1954 Sixteen-year-old Mei Laan longs for a future of freedom, and her beauty may be the key to getting it. Can an arranged marriage in Hong ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Big in Sweden: A Novel
    by Sally Franson
    Mariner Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Paulie Johansson has never put much stock in the idea of family: she has her long-term boyfriend Declan and beloved best friend Jemma, and that's more...more
    Literary Fiction
    Break to You
    by Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, Michelle Knowlden
    Quill Tree Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Briefly Very Beautiful: A Novel
    by Roz Dineen
    The Overlook Press, 07/02/2024
     
    In a land destabilized by unsafe air, wildfires, floods, viruses, supply shortages, and homegrown terror, Cass is raising three small children by ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Concerning the Future of Souls
    by Joy Williams
    Tin House Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Concerning the Future of Souls balances the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, as Azrael―transporter of souls and the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Evenings and Weekends: A Novel
    by Oisín McKenna
    Mariner Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked drunks and stoners, the bachelorette parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Joined at the Joints
    by Marissa Eller
    Holiday House, 07/02/2024
     
    Chronically ill seventeen-year-old Ivy has stayed in watching the Food Network all summer—pies are better than people, and they don't trigger ...more
    Romance
    Masquerade
    by O.O. Sangoyomi
    Forge Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Òdòdó's hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland, and living conditions for the women in her...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Midnight Rooms: A Novel
    by Donyae Coles
    Amistad, 07/02/2024
     
    England, 1840. Orabella Mumthrope spies an unexpected visitor in her uncle's parlor. Scruffy in appearance yet claiming to be the scion of a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A Novel
    by Satoshi Yagisawa
    Harper Perennial, 07/02/2024
     
    Set again in the beloved Japanese bookshop and nearby coffee shop in the Jimbochi neighborhood of Toyko, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop deepens ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Not About a Boy
    by Myah Hollis
    HarperTeen, 07/02/2024
     
    Amélie Cœur has never known what it truly means to be happy.

    She thought she'd found happiness once, in a love that ended in tragedy ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    On the Bright Side
    by Anna Sortino
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 07/02/2024
     
    Ellie's Deaf boarding school just shut down, forcing her to leave the place she considered home and return to her hearing family. But being ...more
    Rise
    by Freya Finch
    Disney Editions, 07/02/2024
     
    For seventeen-year-old Bryn, being the youngest, messiest, most rebellious sister in a family of valkyries isn't easy. Especially considering home is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change
    by Debra Hendrickson
    Simon & Schuster, 07/02/2024
     
    Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson's clinic tells another story of this strange and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    The Education Wars, Jack Schneider: A Citizen's Guide and Defense Manual
    by Jennifer C. Berkshire, Jack Schneider
    The New Press, 07/02/2024
     
    Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Entire Sky: A Novel
    by Joe Wilkins
    Little Brown & Company, 07/02/2024
     
    With his long hair and penchant for guitar, teenage Justin is the spitting image of his idol, Kurt Cobain—a resemblance that has often marked ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Expat: A Novel
    by Hansen Shi
    Pegasus Crime, 07/02/2024
     
    At twenty-six, Princeton grad Michael Wang is trapped. Stifled under the bamboo ceiling at General Motors, he's working quietly on a breakthrough in ...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The God of the Woods: A Novel
    by Liz Moore
    Riverhead Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn't just any ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Lion Women of Tehran
    by Marjan Kamali
    Gallery Books, 07/02/2024
     
    In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Moonlight Market: A Novel
    by Joanne Harris
    Pegasus Books, 07/02/2024
     
    Deep in the heart of London, a photographer walks the streets and captures whatever catches his eye: an old man drinking coffee; a beautiful woman ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Night of Baba Yaga
    by Akira Otani
    Soho Crime, 07/02/2024
     
    Tokyo, 1979. Yoriko Shindo, a workhorse of a woman who has been an outcast her whole life, is kidnapped and dragged to the lair of the Naiki-kai, a ...more
    The Night the River Wept: A Novel
    by Lo Patrick
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 07/02/2024
     
    Arlene has lived in a small town on the edge of nowhere Georgia her whole life. Now married to her long-time high school sweetheart, Tommy, Arlene is ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Piano Player of Budapest: A True Story of Survival, Hope, and Music
    by Roxanne de Bastion
    Pegasus Books, 07/02/2024
     
    When her father died, singer-songwriter Roxanne de Bastion inherited a piano she knew had been in her family for over a hundred years. But it is only ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    The Second Chance of Darius Logan
    by David F. Walker
    Scholastic, 07/02/2024
     
    Darius Logan is far from a hero. Since his parents were killed, he has spent most of his life navigating foster homes and shelters, abandoned ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The World After Alice: A Novel
    by Lauren Aliza Green
    Viking, 07/02/2024
     
    When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they're aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    We Don't Have Time for This
    by Brianna Craft
    Disney-Hyperion, 07/02/2024
     
    What's more romantic than saving the earth?

    Two presidents. One club. A sizzling connection.

    Isa Brown wishes her life would slow down. She ...more
    Romance
    Napalm in the Heart
    by Pol Guasch
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/04/2024
     
    In a near future devastated by war and unspecified natural disaster, a young man and his mother cling to survival at the edge of a forest. Society is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    A Thousand Times Before: A Novel
    by Asha Thanki
    Viking, 07/09/2024
     
    Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she's long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated ...more
    Literary Fiction
    All This and More: A Novel
    by Peng Shepherd
    William Morrow, 07/09/2024
     
    One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

    Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her ...more
    Thrillers
    Bury Your Gays
    by Chuck Tingle
    Tor Nightfire, 07/09/2024
     
    But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Come to the Window: A Novel
    by Howard Norman
    W.W. Norton & Company, 07/09/2024
     
    It's l9l8. The war in Europe grinds on, and the Spanish flu seems to be on an insatiable killing spree. But in the small fishing village of Parrsboro,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Daughters of Chaos: A Novel
    by Jen Fawkes
    The Overlook Press, 07/09/2024
     
    In 1862, after a tragedy at home, twenty-two-year-old Sylvie Swift parts ways with her twin brother to trace the origins of an enigmatic playscript ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Daughters of Olympus: A Novel
    by Hannah Lynn
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 07/09/2024
     
    Demeter: a goddess of life, living half of one.

    Demeter did not always live in fear. Once, she loved the world and the humans who inhabited it. ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Die Hot with a Vengeance: Essays on Vanity
    by Sable Yong
    Dey Street Books, 07/09/2024
     
    The beauty industry has a single mandate: be hot.

    In the same week that you might be encouraged to try curtain bangs, contouring, bleached ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Essays
     Debut Author
    Elevator in Saigon
    by Thuân
    New Directions Publishing, 07/09/2024
     
    A young Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Saigon for her estranged mother's funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Grown Women: A Novel
    by Sarai Johnson
    Harper, 07/09/2024
     
    Erudite Evelyn, her cynical daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte's optimistic daughter Corinna see the world very differently. Though they love each ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    It's Elementary
    by Elise Bryant
    Berkley Books, 07/09/2024
     
    Mavis Miller is not a PTA mom. She has enough on her plate with her feisty seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, an exhausting job at a nonprofit, and the ...more
    Romance
    Let Me Liberate You: A Novel
    by Andie Davis
    Little A, 07/09/2024
     
    Dark, lanky, and bald, New York–raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can't tell if she's highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Long Island Compromise: A Novel
    by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
    Random House, 07/09/2024
     
    "Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?"

    In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Madoff: The Final Word
    by Richard Behar
    Avid Reader Press, 07/09/2024
     
    Some $68 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff's epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme's exposure....more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Mourning a Breast
    by Xi Xi
    New York Review Books, 07/09/2024
     
    In 1989, the Hong Kong cult classic writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer and began writing in order to make sense of her diagnosis and ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    My Parents' Marriage: A Novel
    by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
    Amistad, 07/09/2024
     
    Determined to avoid the pain and instability of her parents' turbulent, confusing marriage, Kokui marries a man far different from her loving, ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Navola: A novel
    by Paolo Bacigalupi
    Knopf, 07/09/2024
     
    "You must be as sharp as a stilettotore's dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Our Kind of Game: A Novel
    by Johanna Copeland
    Harper, 07/09/2024
     
    2019. Stella Parker has the life she's always wanted: a loving husband, two happy children that she gave up her thriving law career to raise, and a ...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories
    by Jan Carson
    Scribner, 07/09/2024
     
    In "A Certain Degree of Ownership," a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In "Grand So," the ghost...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Quincas Borba: A Novel
    by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 07/09/2024
     
    Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America's greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    State of Paradise: A Novel
    by Laura van den Berg
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/09/2024
     
    Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Sunrise Nights
    by Jeff Zentner, Brittany Cavallaro
    Quill Tree Books, 07/09/2024
     
    Jude loves photography, and he's good at it, too. Between his parents' divorce and his anxiety, being behind a camera is the only time his mind is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Tell It to Me Singing: A Novel
    by Tita Ramirez
    Simon & Schuster, 07/09/2024
     
    Monica Campo is pregnant with her first child when, moments before being wheeled into emergency heart surgery, her mother confesses a long-held secret...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Anthropologists
    by Aysegül Savas
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 07/09/2024
     
    As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Briar Club: A Novel
    by Kate Quinn
    William Morrow, 07/09/2024
     
    Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation's ...more
    The Coin: A Novel
    by Yasmin Zaher
    Catapult, 07/09/2024
     
    The Coin's narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Dallergut Dream Department Store: A Novel
    by Miye Lee
    Hanover Square Press, 07/09/2024
     
    In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there's a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Heart in Winter: A Novel
    by Kevin Barry
    Doubleday, 07/09/2024
     
    October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The History of Sound: Stories
    by Ben Shattuck
    Viking, 07/09/2024
     
    In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora
    by Wendy Pearlman
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 07/09/2024
     
    In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry
    by Stacey D'Erasmo
    Graywolf Press, 07/09/2024
     
    How do we keep doing this―making art? Stacey D'Erasmo had been writing for twenty years and had published three novels when she asked herself ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Sky on Fire
    by Jenn Lyons
    Tor Books, 07/09/2024
     
    Anahrod lives only for survival, forging her own way through the harsh jungles of the Deep with her titan drake by her side. Even when an adventuring ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Unforgettable Loretta Darling: A Novel
    by Katherine Blake
    HarperPaperbacks, 07/09/2024
     
    It's 1950 and Loretta Reynolds is newly arrived in Hollywood, fresh off a con that brought her from England to the sunny shores of California. She's ...more
    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Toward Eternity: A Novel
    by Anton Hur
    HarperVia, 07/09/2024
     
    In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body's cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It
    by Genevieve Guenther
    Oxford University Press, 07/10/2024
     
    Weaving this analysis through fascinating critical histories of the terms that dominate the language of climate politics―the words we, alarmist,...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Rose by Any Other Name
    by Mary McMyne
    Redhook, 07/16/2024
     
    My name has only been whispered, heretofore…

    England, 1591. Rose Rushe's passion for life runs deep—she loves mead and music, meddles...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Banal Nightmare: A Novel
    by Halle Butler
    Random House, 07/16/2024
     
    Margaret Anne "Moddie" Yance had just returned to her native land in the Midwestern town of X, to mingle with the friends of her youth, to get back in...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Beep: A Novel
    by Bill Roorbach
    Algonquin Books, 07/16/2024
     
    In this immensely enjoyable and wise novel, it takes a sweet and personable squirrel monkey, Beep, to help us see the world we live in more ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Bright Objects
    by Ruby Todd
    Simon & Schuster, 07/16/2024
     
    Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Desperation Reef: A Novel
    by T. Jefferson Parker
    Forge Books, 07/16/2024
     
    Jen Stonebreaker hasn't entered into a big-wave surfing competition since witnessing her husband's tragic death twenty-five years ago at the Monsters ...more
    Grief in the Fourth Dimension: A Novel
    by Jennifer Yu
    Amulet Books, 07/16/2024
     
    In life, high school classmates Caroline Davison and Kenny Zhou existed in separate universes—Caroline in one of softball practices and family ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    House of Shades: A Novel
    by Lianne Dillsworth
    Harper, 07/16/2024
     
    London, 1833.

    Doctress Hester Reeves has been offered a life-changing commission.

    But it comes at a price. She must leave behind her husband...more
    Historical Fiction
    Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-than-Human World
    by Brandon Keim
    W.W. Norton & Company, 07/16/2024
     
    Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Portrait of a Shadow
    by Meriam Metoui
    Henry Holt and Company, 07/16/2024
     
    Inez is missing, but missing things can always be found.

    Mae knows this as a fact, even though the police investigation has come to a standstill,...more
    Mysteries
     Debut Author
    Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch
    by Andrea Freeman
    Metropolitan Books, 07/16/2024
     
    In 1779, to subjugate Indigenous nations, George Washington ordered his troops to "ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more....more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Smothermoss
    by Alisa Alering
    Tin House Books, 07/16/2024
     
    In 1980s Appalachia, sisters Sheila and Angie couldn't be more different. While their mother works long shifts at the nearby asylum, Sheila does her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur
    by Lev Grossman
    Viking, 07/16/2024
     
    A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he's too late. The king died two ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Lucky Ones: A Memoir
    by Zara Chowdhary
    Crown, 07/16/2024
     
    In 2002, Zara Chowdhary is sixteen years old and living with her family in Ahmedabad, one of India's fastest-growing cities, when a gruesome train ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA
    by Jesse Katz
    Astra House, 07/16/2024
     
    The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang's shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
    by Brad Watson
    W.W. Norton & Company, 07/16/2024
     
    "Here is a generous portion of the work of a swiftly passing lifetime. Bountiful is the deserving page," Joy Williams writes in her introduction to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Trouble in Queenstown: A Mystery
    by Delia Pitts
    Minotaur Books, 07/16/2024
     
    Evander "Vandy" Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father's expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now ...more
    What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World's Ocean
    by Helen Scales
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 07/16/2024
     
    No matter where we live, "we are all ocean people," Helen Scales emphatically observes in her bracing yet hopeful exploration of the future of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America
    by James Tejani
    W.W. Norton & Company, 07/23/2024
     
    The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobiles, and much more...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune
    by Noliwe Rooks
    Penguin Press, 07/23/2024
     
    When Mary McLeod Bethune died, tributes in newspapers around the country said the same thing: she should be on the Mount Rushmore of Black American ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Becoming Marlow Fin: A Novel
    by Ellen Won Steil
    Lake Union Publishing, 07/23/2024
     
    Marlow Fin is as famous for her beauty and success as she is infamous for her past, some of which is a mystery even to her. Is the public ready for ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861
    by Robert W. Merry
    Simon & Schuster, 07/23/2024
     
    The Mexican War brought vast new territories to the United States, which precipitated a growing crisis over slavery. The new territories seemed ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    I Will Never Leave You
    by Kara A. Kennedy
    Delacorte Press, 07/23/2024
     
    Maya has always belonged to Alana. After four years of dating, and on the precipice of graduating high school, Maya has been too terrified to consider...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Liars: A Novel
    by Sarah Manguso
    Hogarth Books, 07/23/2024
     
    A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I'd always known that. But I'd never suspected how easily I'd fall into one anyway.

    When Jane, an ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Nicked: A Novel
    by M. T. Anderson
    Pantheon Books, 07/23/2024
     
    The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian port city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Our Beautiful Darkness: A Graphic Novel
    by (n/a) Ondjaki
    Unruly, 07/23/2024
     
    The light goes out suddenly. And in this absence of light, a pair of teenagers bare their souls. Into the warm silence of the night, they share a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown
    by Gabe Fowler
    Pantheon Books, 07/23/2024
     
    On April 1, 2020, the Instagram account of Desert Island, Brooklyn's celebrated alternative comics shop, put out a call. By then Desert Island had ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera
    by Ricky Ian Gordon
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 07/23/2024
     
    At eight years old, Ricky Ian Gordon pulled The Victor Book of Opera off his piano teacher's bookshelf, and his world shifted on its axis. Though ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Slow Dance: A Novel
    by Rainbow Rowell
    William Morrow, 07/23/2024
     
    Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together ... everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

    They were just friends. Best ...more
    Romance
    The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement
    by Susannah Gibson
    W.W. Norton & Company, 07/23/2024
     
    In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Dissonance: A Novel
    by Shaun Hamill
    Pantheon Books, 07/23/2024
     
    "You can never go home again," the saying goes—but Hal, Athena, and Erin have to. In high school, the three were students of the eccentric ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Faculty Lounge: A Novel
    by Jennifer Mathieu
    Dutton, 07/23/2024
     
    With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows readers a different side of school life. It all starts when an ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky
    by Josh Galarza
    Henry Holt and Company, 07/23/2024
     
    Ever since cancer invaded his adoptive mother's life, Brett feels like he's losing everything, most of all control. To cope, Brett fuels all of his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia: A novel
    by Juliet Grames
    Knopf, 07/23/2024
     
    Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Lost Souls of Benzaiten
    by Kelly Murashige
    Soho Teen, 07/23/2024
     
    "I wish to become one of those round vacuum cleaner robots." That's what Machi prays for at the altar of Japanese goddess Benzaiten. Ever since her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Modern Fairies: A Novel
    by Clare Pollard
    Avid Reader Press, 07/23/2024
     
    Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love
    by India Holton
    Berkley Books, 07/23/2024
     
    Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, stealing both her bird and her...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
    by Jesselyn Cook
    Crown, 07/23/2024
     
    The QAnon conspiracy theories—which posit that a nefarious cabal of elites is secretly ruling our society, poisoning our bodies, and harming our...more
    Biography/Memoir
    The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl
    by Bart Yates
    A John Scognamiglio Book, 07/23/2024
     
    "Each day is a story, whether or not that story makes any damn sense or is worth telling to anyone else."

    At the age of ninety-six, Isaac Dahl sits...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Wrong Hands: Detective Miller Novels #2
    by Mark Billingham
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 07/23/2024
     
    Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Well, two problems. First, there's his dead wife and her yet-to-be-solved murder. He really ...more
    Thrillers
    Time and Time Again
    by Chatham Greenfield
    Bloomsbury YA, 07/23/2024
     
    Phoebe Mendel's day is never ending--literally.

    On August 6th, she woke up to find herself stuck in a time loop. And for nearly a month of August...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen
    by Jon M. Chu
    Random House, 07/23/2024
     
    Long before he directed Wicked, In The Heights, or the groundbreaking film Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu was a movie-obsessed first-generation Chinese...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Finding Famous: A Mashad Family Novel
    by Candice Jalili
    Disney-Hyperion, 07/30/2024
     
    Ever since her mom died, Josie Lawrence has been content with her safe, predictable life. She hangs out with exactly two people: her best (and only) ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere
    by Rob Jackson
    Scribner, 07/30/2024
     
    Climate change is here. From the millions displaced by the floods in Pakistan to Californian and Canadian towns incinerated by wildfires, we are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    My Mother Cursed My Name: A Novel
    by Anamely Salgado Reyes
    Atria Books, 07/30/2024
     
    For generations, the Olivares women have sought to control their daughters' destinies, starting with their names. In life, Olvido constantly clashed ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Off the Books: A Novel
    by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
    Henry Holt and Company, 07/30/2024
     
    Recent Dartmouth dropout Mei, in search of a new direction in life, drives a limo to make ends meet. Her grandfather convinces her to allow her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Pearl: A Novel
    by Siân Hughes
    Knopf, 07/30/2024
     
    Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing.

    Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Someone Like Us: A novel
    by Dinaw Mengestu
    Knopf, 07/30/2024
     
    After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity
    by Timothy C. Winegard
    Dutton, 07/30/2024
     
    Timothy C. Winegard's The Horse is an epic history unlike any other. Its story begins more than 5,500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World
    by Daisy Dunn
    Penguin Books, 07/30/2024
     
    Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Most
    by Jessica Anthony
    Little Brown & Company, 07/30/2024
     
    It is an unseasonably warm Sunday in November 1957. Katheen, a college tennis champion turned Delaware housewife, decides not to join her flagrantly ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Wedding People: A Novel
    by Alison Espach
    Henry Holt and Company, 07/30/2024
     
    It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards
    by Jessica Waite
    Atria Books, 07/30/2024
     
    In the midst of mourning her husband's sudden death, writer Jessica Waite discovered shocking secrets that undermined everything she thought she knew ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Woman Who Lied: A Novel
    by Claire Douglas
    Harper, 07/30/2024
     
    Emilia has a dream life. But someone knows the truth ...

    Emilia Ward lives in suburban London with her husband, their young son, and a teenager ...more
    Thrillers
    We Burn Daylight: A Novel
    by Bret Anthony Johnston
    Random House, 07/30/2024
     
    Waco, Texas, 1993. People from all walks of life have arrived to follow the Lamb's gospel—signing over savings and pensions, selling their homes...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Daughter of Fire: A Novel
    by Sofia Robleda
    Amazon Crossing, 08/01/2024
     
    Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Thirteenth Husband: A Novel
    by Greer Macallister
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 08/01/2024
     
    Based on a real woman from history, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets The Haunting of Hill House in this fictional tell-all ...more
    Historical Fiction
    A Mask of Flies
    by Matthew Lyons
    Tor Nightfire, 08/06/2024
     
    THE PAST HAS TEETH

    In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family's cabin...more
    A Sorceress Comes to Call
    by T. Kingfisher
    Tor Books, 08/06/2024
     
    Cordelia knows her mother is ... unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms―there are no secrets in this house―and her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
    by Tia Levings
    St. Martin's Press, 08/06/2024
     
    Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    A World of Hurt
    by Mindy Mejia
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/06/2024
     
    Kara Johnson always knew she'd die young and violently. It didn't matter who delivered the final blow, she would deserve it—her years spent ...more
    And So I Roar: A Novel
    by Abi Daré
    Dutton, 08/06/2024
     
    When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Better Left Buried
    by Mary E. Roach
    Disney-Hyperion, 08/06/2024
     
    Lucy Preston just wants to go on vacation. But being the daughter of a famous private detective means that sometimes, your beach vacay goes off the ...more
    Death at Morning House
    by Maureen Johnson
    HarperTeen, 08/06/2024
     
    The fire wasn't Marlowe Wexler's fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in ...more
    Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.
    by Mark Graham
    Bloomsbury USA, 08/06/2024
     
    Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Five-Star Stranger: A Novel
    by Kat Tang
    Scribner, 08/06/2024
     
    Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?

    In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Great Fear on the Mountain
    by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
    Archipelago Books, 08/06/2024
     
    Teeming with tension, this immersive, rhapsodic story transports readers to the Swiss mountainside, bringing to mind the writing of Thomas Mann while ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir
    by Lola Milholland
    Spiegel & Grau, 08/06/2024
     
    Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Both her parents threw open their rambling house in Portland, Oregon, to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Hello, Horse
    by Richard Kelly Kemick
    Biblioasis, 08/06/2024
     
    A teenager's job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch
    by Codie Crowley
    Disney-Hyperion, 08/06/2024
     
    Murdered bad girl Annie Lane is back from the grave and hellbent on revenge ... she just has to figure out who killed her.

    Between her careless mom...more
    Hum: A Novel
    by Helen Phillips
    Marysue Rucci Books, 08/06/2024
     
    In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India
    by Rollo Romig
    Penguin Books, 08/06/2024
     
    When Gauri Lankesh, an outspoken journalist in the South Indian city of Bangalore, was assassinated in September 2017 outside her home, it wasn't just...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Jellyfish Have No Ears: A Novel
    by Adèle Rosenfeld
    Graywolf Press, 08/06/2024
     
    After an audiology test shows that almost all her hearing is gone, her doctor suggests getting a cochlear implant. The operation will be irreversible,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence
    by Sara Imari Walker
    Riverhead Books, 08/06/2024
     
    What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    Paris 1944: Occupation, Resistance, Liberation: A Social History
    by Patrick Bishop
    Pegasus Books, 08/06/2024
     
    The fall of Paris to the Nazis on June 14th, 1940, was one of the darkest days of World War II. And the liberation of the city on August 25th, 1944, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Plays Well with Others: A Novel
    by Sophie Brickman
    William Morrow, 08/06/2024
     
    It takes a village...just not this one. 

    Annie Lewin is at the end of her rope. She's a mother of three young children, her workaholic ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems
    by Carl Phillips
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/06/2024
     
    Carl Phillips's Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that's...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    The Age of Loneliness: Essays
    by Laura Marris
    Graywolf Press, 08/06/2024
     
    She asks: how do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what's missing in the landscapes closest to us?

    Filled ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Essays
     Debut Author
    The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
    by Evan Friss
    Viking, 08/06/2024
     
    Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany
    by Pamela D. Toler
    Beacon Press, 08/06/2024
     
    We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie: Infinite Identities around the World (Queer History Project)
    by Lee Wind
    Zest Books, 08/06/2024
     
    While many people identify as men or women, that is not all there is. The idea that all humans fall into one of two gender categories is largely a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The In Crowd: Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp
    by Charlotte Vassell
    Doubleday, 08/06/2024
     
    Early one morning, a men's rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing ...more
    The Mercy of Gods: The Captive's War #1
    by James S. A. Corey
    Orbit, 08/06/2024
     
    The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy.  ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Outlier
    by Elisabeth Eaves
    Random House, 08/06/2024
     
    Cate Winter, at 34, is a wildly successful neuroscientist and entrepreneur who has invented a cure for Alzheimer's that will improve the lives of ...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The Rich People Have Gone Away: A Novel
    by Regina Porter
    Hogarth Books, 08/06/2024
     
    Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Rose Arbor: A Novel
    by Rhys Bowen
    Lake Union Publishing, 08/06/2024
     
    London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl's disappearance captivates the city. If Liz ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Truth According to Ember
    by Danica Nava
    Berkley Books, 08/06/2024
     
    Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Romance
     Debut Author
    There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories
    by Ruben Reyes Jr.
    Mariner Books, 08/06/2024
     
    An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he's a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
     Debut Author
    This Ravenous Fate
    by Hayley Dennings
    Sourcebooks Fire, 08/06/2024
     
    It's 1926 and reapers, the once-human vampires with a terrifying affliction, are on the rise in New York. But the Saint family's thriving reaper-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America
    by Stephanie Kiser
    Sourcebooks, 08/06/2024
     
    When Stephanie Kiser moves to New York City after college to pursue a career in writing, she quickly learns that her entry-level salary won't cover ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Wordhunter: A Novel
    by Stella Sands
    HarperPaperbacks, 08/06/2024
     
    Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The ...more
    Yr Dead
    by Sam Sax
    McSweeney's Books, 08/06/2024
     
    Unfolding in fragments of memory, Ezra dissolves into the family, religion, desire, losses, pains and joys that made them into the person that's ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    by Carrie Rickey
    W.W. Norton & Company, 08/13/2024
     
    Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) wrote and directed some of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    A Great Marriage: A Novel
    by Frances Mayes
    Ballantine Books, 08/13/2024
     
    A great marriage is an elusive thing, and only a few know the secret to making one.

    Dara Willcox, in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Ash's Cabin
    by Jen Wang
    First Second, 08/13/2024
     
    Ash has always felt alone.

    Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash's age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
    Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans
    by Bill Schutt
    Algonquin Books, 08/13/2024
     
    In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a surprising case: it is teeth that are responsible for the long-term success of vertebrates. The appearance of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Burn: A novel
    by Peter Heller
    Knopf, 08/13/2024
     
    Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist
    by Jane Rosenberg
    Hanover Square Press, 08/13/2024
     
    For over forty years, Jane Rosenberg has been at the heart of the news cycle, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Everything We Never Knew: A Novel
    by Julianne Hough
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 08/13/2024
     
    On stage at an awards banquet is the last place Lexi Cole expected to drown. But as she accepts the award for top-seller at her realty firm, something...more
    Literary Fiction
    Ginster
    by Siegfried Kracauer
    New York Review Books, 08/13/2024
     
    Siegfried Kracauer's Ginster is the great World War I novel you've never heard of. Here, the sheer horrors are kept offstage, as in Greek tragedy, and...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery
    by Theodore H. Schwartz
    Dutton, 08/13/2024
     
    We've all heard the phrase "it's not brain surgery." But what exactly is brain surgery? It's a profession that is barely a hundred years old and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Hera: A Novel
    by Jennifer Saint
    Flatiron Books, 08/13/2024
     
    When the immortal goddess Hera and her brother Zeus overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side. But as they establish their ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Highway Thirteen: Stories
    by Fiona McFarlane
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/13/2024
     
    In the small town of Barrow, Australia, people go about their ordinary lives. They drive to work through the dense state forest. They raise their ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother's Secret Life
    by Sadiya Ansari
    House of Anansi Press, 08/13/2024
     
    Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    In France Profound: The Long History of a House, a Mountain Town, and a People
    by T.D. Allman
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/13/2024
     
    When T. D. Allman purchased an 800-year-old house in the mountain village of Lauzerte in southwestern France, he aimed to find refuge from the world's...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: A Novel
    by Andrey Kurkov
    HarperVia, 08/13/2024
     
    Strange, almost magical, things are afoot in Lviv. Seagulls circle overhead while the passing breeze carries a briny whiff, even though the coast is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Kent State: An American Tragedy
    by Brian VanDeMark
    W.W. Norton & Company, 08/13/2024
     
    On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Lady Macbeth: A Novel
    by Ava Reid
    Bantam Doubleday Dell, 08/13/2024
     
    The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men.

    The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake
    by Komail Aijazuddin
    Abrams Press, 08/13/2024
     
    What do you do when you're too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and you're ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Medusa
    by Nataly Gruender
    Grand Central Publishing, 08/13/2024
     
     The only mortal daughter of two sea gods, and a priestess of Athena, Medusa was a woman who thought she had found her place in the world. But ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Medusa of the Roses
    by Navid Sinaki
    Grove Press, 08/13/2024
     
    Anjir and Zal are childhood best friends turned adults in love. The only problem is they live in Iran, where being openly gay is criminalized, and the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir
    by Anna Marie Tendler
    Simon & Schuster, 08/13/2024
     
    In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Mina's Matchbox: A Novel
    by Yoko Ogawa
    Pantheon Books, 08/13/2024
     
    In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Mistress of Lies: The Age of Blood #1
    by K. M. Enright
    Orbit, 08/13/2024
     
    The daughter of a powerful but disgraced Blood Worker, Shan LeC laire has spent her entire life perfecting her blood magic, building her network of ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Mothballs
    by Sole Otero
    Fantagraphics Books, 08/13/2024
     
    San Martín, Argentina, 2001. Upon her estranged grandmother Vilma's death, 19-year-old Rocío moves into a house haunted by memories. Seeking...more
    Graphic Novels
    Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History
    by Anthony E. Kaye
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/13/2024
     
    In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life
    by Sofia Samatar
    Soft Skull Press, 08/13/2024
     
    In a series of compressed, dynamic prose pieces, Samatar blends letters from her friend with notes on literature, turning to Édouard Glissant to ...more
    Our Narrow Hiding Places: A Novel
    by Kristopher Jansma
    Ecco, 08/13/2024
     
    Eighty-year-old Mieke Geborn's life is one of quiet routine. Widowed for many years, she enjoys the view from her home on the New Jersey shore, visits...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Peggy: A Novel
    by Rebecca Godfrey
    Random House, 08/13/2024
     
    Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She's in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Silken Gazelles: A Novel
    by Jokha Alharthi
    Catapult, 08/13/2024
     
    Raised as sisters, Ghazaala is devastated when her friend Asiya is forced to leave their small mountainside village following a tragic circumstance. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Avian Hourglass
    by Lindsey Drager
    Dzanc Books, 08/13/2024
     
    The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Dark We Know
    by Wen-yi Lee
    Zando, 08/13/2024
     
    Growing up in Slater, Isadora Chang never felt at ease in the repressive small town, even before she realized she was bisexual―but after the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Fertile Earth: A Novel
    by Ruthvika Rao
    Flatiron Books, 08/13/2024
     
    Vijaya and Sree are the daughters of the Deshmukhs of Irumi. Hailing from a lineage of ancestral aristocrats, their family's social status and power ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Hivemind Swarmed: Conversations on Gamergate, the Aftermath, and the Quest for a Safer Internet
    by David Wolinsky
    Beacon Press, 08/13/2024
     
    With The Hivemind Swarmed, oral historian and documentary researcher David Wolinsky invites readers to sit in on a series of urgent, intimate ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Italy Letters
    by Vi Khi Nao
    Melville House, 08/13/2024
     
    The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America's best-kept secrets. Long an underground favorite, visionary ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Maid and the Crocodile: A Novel in the World of Raybearer
    by Jordan Ifueko
    Amulet Books, 08/13/2024
     
    The smallest spark can bind two hearts...or start a revolution.

    In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, Small Sade needs a job—...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Palace of Eros: A Novel
    by Caro De Robertis
    Atria Books, 08/13/2024
     
    Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist's Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life
    by Nathalie A. Cabrol
    Scribner, 08/13/2024
     
    We are in a golden age in astronomy, living on the cusp of breakthroughs that will revolutionize our understanding of our place in the cosmos in. Yet ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    The Story Collector
    by Evie Woods
    HarperCollins Publishers, 08/13/2024
     
    One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Stranger at the Wedding: A Novel
    by A. E. Gauntlett
    Henry Holt and Company, 08/13/2024
     
    Annie never much believed in love. That is, until meeting Mark. After crossing paths on morning commutes, they connect at a group counseling session ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Through the Mist: A Novel
    by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
    Lake Union Publishing, 08/13/2024
     
    It's winter 1947 when newlyweds Ellen and Tony Wylde move into an abandoned Cornish farmhouse overlooking the sea. For both, it's a new beginning in ...more
    Thrillers
    Under the Surface
    by Diana Urban
    G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 08/13/2024
     
    Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.

    Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their ...more
    A Pair of Wings: A Novel
    by Carole Hopson
    Henry Holt and Company, 08/20/2024
     
    A few years after the Wright brothers' first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    A Survivor's Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don't Tell
    by Joy Neumeyer
    Public Affairs, 08/20/2024
     
    On a picturesque campus in the springtime, a young woman is shoved backwards down a concrete stairway by her partner. This follows months of slowly ...more
    True Crime
    An Echo in Time: A Novel
    by Boo Walker
    Lake Union Publishing, 08/20/2024
     
    Unable to catch a break in life or love as she approaches thirty, Charli Thurman sees red lights at every crossroads. And given the Thurman family's ...more
    Mysteries
    Anima: A Wild Pastoral
    by Kapka Kassabova
    Graywolf Press, 08/20/2024
     
    Following her three previous books set in the Balkans, and with an increasinging interest in the degraded state of our planet and culture, Kassabova ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Asunder
    by Kerstin Hall
    Tor Books, 08/20/2024
     
    Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being―three-faced, hundred-winged, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home
    by Chris La Tray
    Milkweed Editions, 08/20/2024
     
    Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Black Butterflies: A Novel
    by Priscilla Morris
    Knopf, 08/20/2024
     
    Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect makeshift barricades, splitting the city into ethnic enclaves. Each morning, the people who...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Bluff: Poems
    by Danez Smith
    Graywolf Press, 08/20/2024
     
    This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    By Any Other Name: A Novel
    by Jodi Picoult
    Ballantine Books, 08/20/2024
     
    Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Devil in the Stack: A Code Odyssey
    by Andrew Smith
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/20/2024
     
    Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the technology transforming our ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Falling Wisteria: A Novel
    by Laila Ibrahim
    Lake Union Publishing, 08/20/2024
     
    Kay Lynn Brooke is a wife and mother in Berkeley, California, building a solid future with her husband and family. Then on December 7, 1941, the ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Follow the Stars Home
    by Diane C. McPhail
    A John Scognamiglio Book, 08/20/2024
     
    It's a journey that most deem an insane impossibility. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt—daughter of one of the architects of ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Freedom Is a Feast
    by Alejandro Puyana
    Little Brown & Company, 08/20/2024
     
    There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Interpretations of Love
    by Jane Campbell
    Grove Press, 08/20/2024
     
    It's the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's only daughter's wedding, and each of the eleven attendees of the small family gathering is bringing their own ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Love Requires Chocolate: Love in Translation
    by Ravynn K. Stringfield
    Joy Revolution, 08/20/2024
     
    Whitney Curry is primed to have an epic semester abroad. She's created the perfect itinerary and many, many to-do lists after collecting every detail ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Romance
     Debut Author
    My Salty Mary
    by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows
    HarperTeen, 08/20/2024
     
    Don't call this mermaid "little"—call her "captain," unless you want to walk the plank.

    Mary is in love with the so-called prince of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Planes Flying over a Monster: Essays
    by Daniel Saldaña París
    Catapult, 08/20/2024
     
    In ten intimate essays, Daniel Saldaña París explores the cities he has lived in, each one home to a new iteration of himself. In Mexico ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Travel & Adventure
    Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets
    by Carol Mithers
    Counterpoint Press, 08/20/2024
     
    In Los Angeles's most underserved communities, Lori Weise is known as the Dog Lady, the woman who's spent decades caring for people in poverty and the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Rules for Ghosting: A Novel
    by Shelly Jay Shore
    Dell, 08/20/2024
     
    Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather's ghost didn't give him ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Scrap: A Novel
    by Calla Henkel
    The Overlook Press, 08/20/2024
     
    Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the...more
    Thrillers
    She Who Knows
    by Nnedi Okorafor
    DAW Books, 08/20/2024
     
    When there is a call, there is often a response.

    Najeeba knows.

    She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
    by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/20/2024
     
    We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Swallow the Ghost: A Novel
    by Eugenie Montague
    Mulholland, 08/20/2024
     
    Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She's making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel
    by Mai Mochizuki
    Ballantine Books, 08/20/2024
     
    In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Naturalist's Daughter
    by Tea Cooper
    Harper Muse, 08/20/2024
     
    1808 Agnes Banks, NSW

    Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Silence Factory: A Novel
    by Bridget Collins
    William Morrow, 08/20/2024
     
    1820: Sophia Ashmore-Percy reluctantly accompanies her husband James to a remote Greek island, where he searches for rare biological specimens. Once ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country
    by Rosie Schaap
    Mariner Books, 08/20/2024
     
    Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Unicorn Woman
    by Gayl Jones
    Beacon Press, 08/20/2024
     
    Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Volcano Daughters: A Novel
    by Gina María Balibrera
    Pantheon Books, 08/20/2024
     
    El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Other
     Debut Author
    There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel
    by Elif Shafak
    Knopf, 08/20/2024
     
    From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

    In ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    We Love the Nightlife
    by Rachel Koller Croft
    Berkley Books, 08/20/2024
     
    London 1979. Two women with a deep love for disco meet one fateful night on the dance floor, changing the course of both their lives forever.

    ...more
    Thrillers
    When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History and Perilous Future
    by Paul Bierman
    W.W. Norton & Company, 08/20/2024
     
    In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    You Will Never Be Me
    by Jesse Q. Sutanto
    Berkley Books, 08/20/2024
     
    Influencer Meredith Lee didn't teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became ...more
    Christopher Isherwood Inside Out
    by Katherine Bucknell
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/26/2024
     
    The story of Christopher Isherwood's life is one of pilgrimage: away from the constraints of inheritance and empire and toward authenticity and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    A Termination
    by Honor Moore
    Public Space, 08/27/2024
     
    In 1969, Honor Moore was twenty-three, a theater student yearning for love and working for radical change, but studying administration and keeping ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Bridge Across the Sky
    by Freeman Ng
    Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
     
    Tai Go and his family have crossed an ocean wider than a thousand rivers, joining countless other Chinese immigrants in search of a better life in the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Confounding Oaths: The Mortal Follies #2
    by Alexis Hall
    Del Rey, 08/27/2024
     
    It is the year 1815, and Mr. John Caesar is determined to help his sister, Mary, successfully navigate the marriage mart. A high-stakes endeavor at ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Everything We Never Had
    by Randy Ribay
    Kokila, 08/27/2024
     
    Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World
    by Casey Michel
    St. Martin's Griffin, 08/27/2024
     
    For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Fyrebirds
    by Kate J. Armstrong
    Nancy Paulsen Books, 08/27/2024
     
    The Nightbirds were once their city's best-kept secret, but now the secret's out. What's more, they can do feats of magic no one has seen in centuries...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Hotline: A Novel
    by Dimitri Nasrallah
    Other Press, 08/27/2024
     
    It's 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She ...more
    Literary Fiction
    I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
    by Daniel J. Levitin
    W.W. Norton & Company, 08/27/2024
     
    Music is one of humanity's oldest medicines. From the Far East to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and the pre-colonial Americas, many cultures ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Kayfabe
    by Chris Koslowski
    McSweeney's Books, 08/27/2024
     
    As his body breaks down and his star power fades, he must invent a new gimmick before he loses the only job he's ever known. Meanwhile, Dom's 17-year-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Libertad
    by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
    Dial Books, 08/27/2024
     
    As the contentious 2017 presidential election looms and protests rage across every corner of the city, life in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, churns louder ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Long Live Evil: Time of Iron #1
    by Sarah Rees Brennan
    Orbit, 08/27/2024
     
    When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    My Child, the Algorithm: An Alternatively Intelligent Book of Love
    by Hannah Silva
    Soft Skull Press, 08/27/2024
     
    My Child, the Algorithm describes encounters between a single parent, a curious, verbal toddler, and a language-producing algorithm. Like a male ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Our Shouts Echo
    by Jade Adia
    Disney-Hyperion, 08/27/2024
     
    Survival Tip #1: The world is going to shit. Whatever you do, don't fall in love.

    Sixteen-year old Niarah Holloway's only goal in life is to get ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Sunderworld, Vol. I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry
    by Ransom Riggs
    Dutton for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
     
    Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry is seeing weird things around Los Angeles. A man who pops a tooth into a parking meter. A glowing trapdoor in a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Sync
    by Ellen Hopkins
    Nancy Paulsen Books, 08/27/2024
     
    Seventeen-year-old twins Storm and Lake have always been in perfect sync. They faced the worst a parent could do and survived it together. In the wake...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    The Bookshop of Hidden Dreams: Dove Pond Series #4
    by Karen Hawkins
    Gallery Books, 08/27/2024
     
    Tay is still reeling from a romantic betrayal, so she's relieved to refocus her energies on her latest project: a biography of her great-great-...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois
    by Ryan Graudin
    Redhook, 08/27/2024
     
    Once, Céleste Artois had dreams of being an artist. But when the creative elite of Paris dashed those plans, she turned her talents to forgery ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler--How War Made Them and How They Made War
    by Phillips Payson O'Brien
    Dutton, 08/27/2024
     
    In The Strategists, Professor Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    With Love, Echo Park
    by Laura Taylor Namey
    Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
     
    Seventeen-year-old Clary is set to inherit her family's florist shop, La Rosa Blanca—one of the last remnants of the Cuban business district ...more
    A Good Indian Girl: A Novel
    by Mansi Shah
    Prospect Park Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Jyoti is the "perfect" Indian American daughter: She stayed out of trouble, looked after her younger sisters, and married a man her parents approved ...more
    Literary Fiction
    A Second Chance on Earth
    by Juan Vidal
    Holiday House, 09/03/2024
     
    Have you ever encountered a book that KO'd you, Iron Mike Tyson style? One that hit you square in the face and heart like some abracadabra casting a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Babe in the Woods: or, The Art of Getting Lost
    by Julie Heffernan
    Algonquin Books, 09/03/2024
     
    One summer day, a young artist with a newborn—sleep-deprived, desperate to escape her hot, cramped apartment and her oblivious husband—...more
    Graphic Novels
    Becoming Elizabeth Arden: The Woman Behind the Global Beauty Empire
    by Stacy A. Cordery
    Viking, 09/03/2024
     
    Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt's Journey to His Musical Language
    by Joonas Sildre
    Plough, 09/03/2024
     
    Based on years of research and close collaboration with Arvo Pärt himself, Joonas Sildre paints an atmospheric portrait of a restless artist who ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us toward the Good Life
    by Carlos Alberto Sánchez
    Oxford University Press, 09/03/2024
     
    When we think of philosophy that can guide us in our everyday lives, we are more likely to think of Ancient Greece or Rome than we are 20th-century ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them
    by Porter Fox
    Little Brown & Company, 09/03/2024
     
    Here is the story of the largest storms on earth and how those storms are growing bigger and stronger. The tale of extreme weather doesn't begin with ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America
    by Sasha Abramsky
    Bold Type Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Donald Trump's November 2016 electoral victory was the beginning of four years of demagogy, presidential name-calling, and—ten months into a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette
    by Tyler Mahan Coe
    Simon & Schuster, 09/03/2024
     
    By the early 1960s nearly everybody paying attention to country music agreed that George Jones was the greatest country singer of all time. After ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Colored Television: A Novel
    by Danzy Senna
    Riverhead Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. After a long, precarious stretch bouncing among sketchy rentals and sublets, she and her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Compound Fracture
    by Andrew Joseph White
    Peachtree Teen, 09/03/2024
     
    On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a ...more
    Creation Lake: A Novel
    by Rachel Kushner
    Scribner, 09/03/2024
     
    Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Death at the Sign of the Rook: Jackson Brodie Series
    by Kate Atkinson
    Doubleday, 09/03/2024
     
    In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Facing Suicide: Understanding Why People Kill Themselves and How We Can Stop Them
    by James Barrat
    Avery, 09/03/2024
     
    Suicide has reached epidemic proportions in America, claiming over 45,000 lives each year—more than car accidents or homicides. For every person...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America
    by Rebecca L. Davis
    W.W. Norton & Company, 09/03/2024
     
    Our era is one of sexual upheaval. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, school systems across the country are banning books with LGBTQ+ ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Guide Me Home: Highway 59 #3
    by Attica Locke
    Little Brown & Company, 09/03/2024
     
    Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn't sure he's been a good cop, but believes he's got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the ...more
    Haunt Sweet Home
    by Sarah Pinsker
    Tor Books, 09/03/2024
     
    "Don't talk to day about what we do at night."

    When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Herscht 07769
    by László Krasznahorkai
    New Directions Publishing, 09/03/2024
     
    The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler's adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that...more
    Literary Fiction
    Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life
    by Richard Beck
    Crown, 09/03/2024
     
    For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness
    by Jamil Zaki
    Grand Central Publishing, 09/03/2024
     
    Cynicism is an understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, it is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    I Don't Care
    by Ágota Kristóf
    New Directions Publishing, 09/03/2024
     
    Written immediately before her masterful trilogy (The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie), Kristof's short fictions oscillate between parable, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    If Only
    by Vigdis Hjorth
    Verso, 09/03/2024
     
    A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Immortal Dark
    by Tigest Girma
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 09/03/2024
     
    It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

    Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Infinite Life: The Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution, and Life on Earth
    by Jules Howard
    Pegasus Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Eggs are the origins of 90 percent of the Earth's organisms. They can be found as far apart as deep-sea volcanoes and in space. Yet despite their ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Letters to Forget: Poems
    by Kelly Caldwell
    Knopf, 09/03/2024
     
    With searing intelligence and great sensitivity, the poems of Kelly Caldwell—many addressed to the poet Cass Donish, her partner in the years ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
     Debut Author
    Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company
    by Alice Driver
    One Signal, 09/03/2024
     
    On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Lovely One: A Memoir
    by Ketanji Brown Jackson
    Random House, 09/03/2024
     
    With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family's ascent from segregation to ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    May Our Joy Endure
    by Kevin Lambert
    Biblioasis, 09/03/2024
     
    But instead of the triumph she anticipates in finally bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is excoriated by critics, who ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust
    by Chris Heath
    Schocken Books, 09/03/2024
     
    No Road Leading Back is the remarkable story of a dozen prisoners who escaped from the site where more than 70,000 Jews were shot in the Lithuanian ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    One Last Chance to Live
    by Francisco X. Stork
    Scholastic Press, 09/03/2024
     
    Nico has always believed in his dreams. Especially the dream he has of becoming a writer; it's the reason why he started taking a creative writing ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests
    by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
    Random House Canada, 09/03/2024
     
    As the last child in Ireland to receive a full Druidic education, Diana Beresford-Kroeger has brought an unusual and ancient holistic attitude to the ...more
    Essays
    Rebel Fire: Rebel Skies #2
    by Ann Sei Lin
    Tundra Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Kurara has barely escaped the grasp of Princess Tsukimi. Reeling from her Crafter mentor's grim betrayal, Kurara and her friends are desperate to ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Scotland Yard: A History of the London Police Force's Most Infamous Murder Cases
    by Simon Read
    Pegasus Crime, 09/03/2024
     
    The idea of "Scotland Yard" is steeped in atmospheric stories of foggy London streets, murder by lamplight, and fiendish killers pursued by gentleman ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    Small Rain: A Novel
    by Garth Greenwell
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/03/2024
     
    A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Songlight: The Torch Trilogy #1
    by Moira Buffini
    HarperCollins Publishers, 09/03/2024
     
    We're two songs joined. And there's a word for that. A harmony.

    Elsa is used to hiding the most important parts of herself—her feelings for...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The English Chemist: The Story of Rosalind Franklin: A Novel
    by Jessica Mills
    Pegasus Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Rosalind Franklin knows that to be a woman in a man's world is to be invisible. In the 1950s, science is a gentleman's profession and in the years ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Haunting of Moscow House
    by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
    Berkley Books, 09/03/2024
     
    It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva's ancestral home in Moscow, a stately mansion ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Life Impossible: A Novel
    by Matt Haig
    Viking, 09/03/2024
     
    When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Loss of the Burying Ground
    by J. Anderson Coats
    Candlewick Press, 09/03/2024
     
    When the Burying Ground goes down in neutral waters, it sends the delegations from two warring nations—and the peace treaty they were about to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Night Guest
    by Hildur Knutsdottir
    Tor Nightfire, 09/03/2024
     
    Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The Salt Thief: Gandhi's Heroic March to Freedom
    by Neal Bascomb
    Scholastic Focus, 09/03/2024
     
    Scholastic Focus is the premier home of thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and thoughtfully designed works of narrative nonfiction aimed at ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Unfinished
    by Cheryl Isaacs
    Heartdrum, 09/03/2024
     
    When small-town athlete Avery's morning run leads her to a strange pond in the middle of the forest, she awakens a horror the townspeople of Crook's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    The Whisper Sister: A Novel
    by Jennifer S. Brown
    Lake Union Publishing, 09/03/2024
     
    The streets of New York in 1920 are most certainly not paved with gold, as Minnie Soffer learns when she arrives at Ellis Island. Her father, who left...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Whitewashed Tombs: Emma Djan Investigations #4
    by Kwei Quartey
    Soho Crime, 09/03/2024
     
    Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ+ activist, is butchered one night after being lured on a dating app to a deserted building site. With ...more
    The World She Edited: Katharine S. White
    by Amy Reading
    Mariner Books, 09/03/2024
     
    In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Two Wheels to Freedom: The Story of a Young Jew, Wartime Resistance, and a Daring Escape
    by Arthur J. Magida
    Pegasus Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Though Cioma Schonhaus was only 11 years old when the Nazis first came to power, his cleverness and resourcefulness eventually made him an unlikely ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Under the Eye of the Big Bird: A Novel
    by Hiromi Kawakami
    Soft Skull Press, 09/03/2024
     
    In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany
    by Harald Jähner
    Basic Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Out of the ashes of the First World War, Germany launched an unprecedented political project: its first democratic government. The Weimar Republic, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    We'll Prescribe You a Cat
    by Syou Ishida
    Berkley Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in...more
    Literary Fiction
    We're Alone: Essays
    by Edwidge Danticat
    Graywolf Press, 09/03/2024
     
    Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat's childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We're Alone include ...more
    What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust: A Flavia de Luce Novel
    by Alan Bradley
    Bantam Books, 09/03/2024
     
    Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother....more
    Where They Last Saw Her: A Novel
    by Marcie R. Rendon
    Bantam Books, 09/03/2024
     
    All they heard was her scream.

    Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look ...more
    Your Dazzling Death: Poems
    by Cass Donish
    Knopf, 09/03/2024
     
    In Your Dazzling Death, Cass Donish courageously summons the poems to witness their own state of "obliteration," widowed by suicide and isolated as a ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men: The Forgotten British Special Operations Soldiers of World War II
    by Shannon Monaghan
    Viking, 09/10/2024
     
    There have always been special warriors; Achilles and his Myrmidons are the obvious classical examples. What we now think of as "special operations," ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Way to Be Happy
    by Caroline Adderson
    Biblioasis, 09/10/2024
     
    On New Year's Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery
    by Diane K. Boyd
    Greystone Books, 09/10/2024
     
    Called the Jane Goodall of wolves, world-renowned wildlife biologist Diane Boyd has spent four decades studying and advocating for wolves in the wilds...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class
    by Sarah Smarsh
    Scribner, 09/10/2024
     
    In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times—class division,...more
    Bright I Burn: A Novel
    by Molly Aitken
    Knopf, 09/10/2024
     
    In thirteenth-century Ireland, a woman with power is a woman to be feared.

    Alice, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper in Kilkenny, grows up ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
    by Rebecca Nagle
    Harper, 09/10/2024
     
    Before 2020, American Indian reservations made up roughly 55 million acres of land in the United States. Nearly 200 million acres are reserved for ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    Death at the Sanatorium: A Mystery
    by Ragnar Jonasson
    Minotaur Books, 09/10/2024
     
    1983

    At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland, now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir ...more
    Einstein's Tutor: The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics
    by Lee Phillips
    Public Affairs, 09/10/2024
     
     Emmy Noether is one of the most important figures in the history of science and mathematics.

    Noether's mathematical genius enabled Einstein...more
    Biography/Memoir
    First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream
    by Jessica Hoppe
    Flatiron Books, 09/10/2024
     
    In this deeply moving and lyrical memoir, Hoppe shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm. For readers...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir
    by Paul Rousseau
    Harper Horizon, 09/10/2024
     
    At some point in the course of Paul and Mark's friendship, Mark acquired—legally and with required permits—five firearms. Those weapons ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up
    by Sonia Patel
    Dial Books, 09/10/2024
     
    It's eighteen-year-old Gita Desai's first year at Stanford, and the fact that she's here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Here One Moment
    by Liane Moriarty
    Crown, 09/10/2024
     
    If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

    Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People ...more
    Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses
    by M. G. Sheftall
    Dutton, 09/10/2024
     
    In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    How to Lose a Best Friend
    by Jordan K. Casomar
    MTV Books, 09/10/2024
     
    For as long as anyone can remember, Zeke Ladoja and Imogen Parker have been best friends. Their classmates, their parents, and even the school ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    I Remember Fallujah: A Novel
    by Feurat Alani
    Other Press, 09/10/2024
     
    As a young man in the early 1970s, Rami fled his home to escape Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. In France, he built a new life and had a family, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Ida, in Love and in Trouble
    by Veronica Chambers
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 09/10/2024
     
    Before she became a warrior, Ida B. Wells was an incomparable flirt with a quick wit and a dream of becoming a renowned writer. The first child of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Katharine, the Wright Sister: A Novel
    by Tracey Enerson Wood
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 09/10/2024
     
    It all started with two boys and a bicycle shop. Wilbur and Orville Wright, both unsuited to college and disinclined to leave home, jumped on the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour's Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco
    by Alison Owings
    Beacon Press, 09/10/2024
     
    In Mayor of the Tenderloin, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco's Tenderloin to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Nature, Culture, and Inequality: A Comparative and Historical Perspective
    by Thomas Piketty
    Other Press, 09/10/2024
     
    In this unique work, Thomas Piketty presents a synthesis of his historical and comparative research on inequality. He challenges the idea that there ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
    by Yuval Noah Harari
    Random House, 09/10/2024
     
    For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Olive Days
    by Jessica Elisheva Emerson
    Counterpoint Press, 09/10/2024
     
    Rina Kirsch is a young mother and Modern Orthodox Jew in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles. Dutifully keeping to the formidable ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Once More from the Top: A Novel
    by Emily Layden
    Mariner Books, 09/10/2024
     
    Everyone in America knows Dylan Read, or at least has heard her music. Since releasing her debut album her senior year of high school, Dylan's spent ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Ordinary Disasters: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority
    by Anne Anlin Cheng
    Pantheon Books, 09/10/2024
     
    Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history, Anne Anlin Cheng's original essays focus on art, politics, and popular culture. Through personal ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Passiontide: A Novel
    by Monique Roffey
    Knopf, 09/10/2024
     
    The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora ...more
    Mysteries
    Quarterlife: A Novel
    by Devika Rege
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 09/10/2024
     
    "In the fashion of the big novels by Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh" (Biblio), Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant ... and Completely Over It
    by Lester Fabian Brathwaite
    Tiny Reparations, 09/10/2024
     
    One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem: "You into race play?" Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote
    by Michael Eric Dyson, Marc Favreau 
    Little Brown & Company, 09/10/2024
     
    One of the most important and least understood true stories of our nation, the fight for representation is an ongoing and epic quest to build the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification
    by Melissa Petro
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/10/2024
     
    For millions of women, shame is a vicious predator. It tells us we are less than, that we are unworthy. We try everything to escape shame—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Sky Full of Elephants: A Novel
    by Cebo Campbell
    Simon & Schuster, 09/10/2024
     
    One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Still Life: A Novel
    by Katherine Packert Burke
    W.W. Norton & Company, 09/10/2024
     
    Everything in Edith's life is approaching disaster. Her writing career is stagnant. Her love life is a mess. Her ex, Tessa, is marrying a man. Her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
    by Arlie Russell Hochschild
    The New Press, 09/10/2024
     
    For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Story of a Heart: Two Families, One Heart, and the Medical Miracle that Saved a Child's Life
    by Rachel Clarke
    Scribner, 09/10/2024
     
    The first of our organs to form and the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of what makes us human; as long as it continues to...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
    by Parmy Olson
    St. Martin's Press, 09/10/2024
     
    It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Tell Me Everything: A Novel
    by Elizabeth Strout
    Random House, 09/10/2024
     
    With her "extraordinary capacity for radical empathy" (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Devil By Name: Fever House Duology #2
    by Keith Rosson
    Random House, 09/10/2024
     
    Five years after the event that drove most of the global population to madness, the world is overrun with the "fevered"—once-human, zombielike ...more
    The Examiner: A Novel
    by Janice Hallett
    Atria Books, 09/10/2024
     
    Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University's new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom...more
    The Mesmerist: A Novel
    by Caroline Woods
    Doubleday, 09/10/2024
     
    Before hypnotism, there was Mesmerism. And in 1894 Minneapolis, in the wake of a national financial crisis, spiritualism of every stripe is all the ...more
    The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
    by Roland Allen
    Biblioasis, 09/10/2024
     
    We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Shadow Key: A Novel
    by Susan Stokes-Chapman
    Harper, 09/10/2024
     
    Dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital, Dr. Henry Talbot has little choice but to accept a mysterious offer of employment as a ...more
    Mysteries
    The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
    by Dan Slepian
    Celadon, 09/10/2024
     
    In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC's Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
     Debut Author
    The Sky Beneath Us
    by Fiona Valpy
    Lake Union Publishing, 09/10/2024
     
    1927. Violet Mackenzie-Grant is embarking on her dream of studying at the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women. She doesn't yet know that it's a ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Witch of Colchis: A Novel
    by Rosie Hewlett
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 09/10/2024
     
    A disgraced daughter. A fearsome witch. 

    A woman more myth than mortal.

    Medea, princess of Colchis, longs for a different life. Since ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Women Behind the Door: A Novel
    by Roddy Doyle
    Viking, 09/10/2024
     
    At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Train to Oblivion: A Novel
    by Moira Millán
    Amazon Crossing, 09/10/2024
     
    Llankaray's grandmother left a rich inheritance: her medicine, an undefeatable spirit, and the stories of her Mapuche ancestors. These tales are ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Two-Step Devil
    by Jamie Quatro
    Grove Press, 09/10/2024
     
    The "fearless" (New Yorker) author of I Want to Show You More and Fire Sermon—whose recently published stories in The New Yorker and The Paris ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe
    by Dr. Curtis Boyd MD, Glenna Halvorson-Boyd PhD RN
    Disruption, 09/10/2024
     
    Their stories begin in the 1960s, as Curtis opens a clandestine abortion practice while breaking with the beliefs of his Baptist family and Glenna ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation
    by Bill Ayers
    Beacon Press, 09/10/2024
     
    Blending history and political theory and weaving in examples from literature, social movements, and his personal life, this book is a useful resource...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir
    by Mary L. Trump PhD
    St. Martin's Press, 09/10/2024
     
    Mary Trump grew up in a family divided by its patriarch's relentless drive for money and power. The daughter of Freddy Trump, the highly accomplished,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    William
    by Mason Coile
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 09/10/2024
     
    Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career—he's created an ...more
    You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America
    by Amanda Becker
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 09/10/2024
     
    When the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization- overturning the constitutional right to abortion care-the country was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    A Muzzle for Witches
    by Dubravka Ugresic
    Open Letter, 09/17/2024
     
    But the book is more than a simple interview: It's a roadmap of the literary world, exploring the past century and all of its violence and turmoil&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    A Sunny Place for Shady People: Stories
    by Mariana Enriquez
    Hogarth Books, 09/17/2024
     
    On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Alien Clay
    by Adrian Tchaikovsky
    Orbit, 09/17/2024
     
    The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health
    by Marty Makary M.D.
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 09/17/2024
     
    More Americans have peanut allergies today than at any point in history. Why? In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a strict ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
    by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac
    Penguin Press, 09/17/2024
     
    The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Connie: A Memoir
    by Connie Chung
    Grand Central Publishing, 09/17/2024
     
    Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Elaine
    by Will Self
    Grove Press, 09/17/2024
     
    Will Self is one of the most inimitable contemporary writers in the English language, dubbed "the most daring and delightful novelist of his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Entitlement: A Novel
    by Rumaan Alam
    Riverhead Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Brooke wants. She isn't in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World
    by Marijam Did
    Verso, 09/17/2024
     
    Everything To Play For asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Frighten the Horses
    by Oliver Radclyffe
    Roxane Gay Books, 09/17/2024
     
    From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Health and Safety: A Breakdown
    by Emily Witt
    Pantheon Books, 09/17/2024
     
    In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    I Dreamed of Falling: A Novel
    by Julia Dahl
    Minotaur Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Roman Grady is the sole reporter for the local newspaper in a tiny Hudson Valley town - a town so small that every store opening and DUI is considered...more
    If Anything Happens To Me
    by Luanne Rice
    Scholastic Press, 09/17/2024
     
    It's been eight months since the body of Eloise Parrish was found in the woods.

    Eloise's surviving sister, Oli, is numb with grief and shock. But...more
    Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
    by Sonia Purnell
    Viking, 09/17/2024
     
    When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, the obituaries that followed were predictably scathing – and many were downright sexist. Written ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success
    by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig
    Penguin Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life "has not been easy for ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    My Lesbian Novel
    by Renee Gladman
    Dorothy, a publishing project, 09/17/2024
     
    The narrator of My Lesbian Novel is Renee Gladman, an artist and writer who has produced the same acclaimed body of experimental art and prose as real...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman: A Mother's Story
    by Abi Maxwell
    Knopf, 09/17/2024
     
    Abi Maxwell grew up in rural New Hampshire, one of eight kids in a poor town abutting a wealthier lakeside village. As a young couple, Maxwell and her...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Overstaying
    by Ariane Koch
    Dorothy, a publishing project, 09/17/2024
     
    "I don't see my writing as chronological or classically narrative, but as spatial—a kind of architecture. I keep adding rooms, and readers can ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Question 7
    by Richard Flanagan
    Knopf, 09/17/2024
     
    By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West's affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Rejection: Fiction
    by Tony Tulathimutte
    William Morrow, 09/17/2024
     
    Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Remember, You Are a Wiley
    by Maya Wiley
    Grand Central Publishing, 09/17/2024
     
    Born in a country that has repeatedly traumatized her and her loved ones, Maya Wiley grew up in a household that prioritized activism, hope, and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Ruin Road
    by Lamar Giles
    Scholastic Press, 09/17/2024
     
    Cade Webster lives between worlds. He's a standout football star at the right school but lives in the wrong neighborhood — if you let his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Scaffolding: A Novel
    by Lauren Elkin
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/17/2024
     
    After a miscarriage and a breakdown, Anna, a psychoanalyst, finds herself unable to return to work, obsessing instead over a kitchen renovation and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Stench: The Making of the Thomas Court and the Unmaking of America
    by David Brock
    Knopf, 09/17/2024
     
    Public confidence in the Supreme Court has plummeted to new lows in the last few years—and for good reason. In the past three decades, six ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy
    by Jessica Pishko
    Dutton, 09/17/2024
     
    The figure of the American sheriff has loomed large in popular imagination, though given the outsize jurisdiction sheriffs have over people's lives, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Lantern of Lost Memories
    by Sanaka Hiiragi
    Grand Central Publishing, 09/17/2024
     
    The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Lies We Conjure
    by Sarah Henning
    Tor Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Ruby and her sister, Wren, are normal, middle-class Colorado high school students working a summer job at the local Renaissance Fest to supplement ...more
    The Night We Lost Him: A Novel
    by Laura Dave
    Marysue Rucci Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Liam Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was ...more
    The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts
    by Louis Bayard
    Algonquin Books, 09/17/2024
     
    In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening
    by Elizabeth Rosner
    Counterpoint Press, 09/17/2024
     
    Third Ear braids together personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening to build interpersonal empathy and social ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Transfarmation: The Movement to Free Us from Factory Farming
    by Leah Garcés
    Beacon Press, 09/17/2024
     
    In Transfarmation, president and CEO of Mercy For Animals Leah Garcés explains how food and farming policies have failed over decades and offers ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Ultra 85
    by Logic
    Simon & Schuster, 09/17/2024
     
    In the year 2115, when the Earth is no longer inhabitable, the remainder of humanity lives in Babel, a giant space station. Two pilots, Quentin and ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Us Fools
    by Nora Lange
    Two Dollar Radio, 09/17/2024
     
    Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents' volatile relationship and mounting ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    We Are Hunted
    by Tomi Oyemakinde
    Feiwel & Friends, 09/17/2024
     
    Experience paradise, reimagined.

    When 17-year-old Femi Fatona and his older brother are forced to accompany their dad to an island resort, Femi ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    We Solve Murders: A Novel
    by Richard Osman
    Pamela Dorman Books, 09/17/2024
     
    Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar routines: the pub quiz, his ...more
    What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures
    by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
    One World, 09/17/2024
     
    Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    A Borrowed Path
    by Imogen Clark
    Lake Union Publishing, 09/24/2024
     
    Eve has always had a tricky relationship with her mother, Agatha, and returning to Fox House, the family home, hasn't made it any easier. When Eve's ...more
    Historical Fiction
    A Cure for Sorrow: A Novel
    by Jen Wheeler
    Lake Union Publishing, 09/24/2024
     
    Convention-flouting Nora Harris is a determined young medical student in Gilded Age Manhattan. A surgeon's daughter, she always leads with her head&#...more
    Historical Fiction
    A Reason to See You Again: A Novel
    by Jami Attenberg
    Ecco, 09/24/2024
     
    The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone's lives ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle
    by Raja Shehadeh
    Other Press, 09/24/2024
     
    Raja Shehadeh's great-great-uncle Najib Nassar, a journalist born in 1865, spent the first 4 decades of his life under the Ottoman Empire. Ruled by a ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War
    by H. W. Brands
    Doubleday, 09/24/2024
     
    Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 launched a momentous period of decision-making for the United States. With fascism rampant abroad, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Bad Liar: A Novel
    by Tami Hoag
    Dutton, 09/24/2024
     
    Small-town labels are hard to shake. Hometown hero. Fallen angel. Can anyone ever escape their past?

    A murder victim dumped at the dead end of a ...more
    Before the Mango Ripens
    by Afabwaje Kurian
    Dzanc Books, 09/24/2024
     
    In Rabata, everyone has secrets—especially since the arrival of the white American missionaries.

    Twenty-year-old Jummai is a beautiful and ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
    by Elyse Graham
    Ecco, 09/24/2024
     
    At the start of WWII, the US found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America
    by Paola Ramos
    Pantheon Books, 09/24/2024
     
    Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
    by Abbott Kahler
    Crown, 09/24/2024
     
    At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    Everything Glittered
    by Robin Talley
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 09/24/2024
     
    It's 1927 and the strict laws of prohibition have done little to temper the roaring 20s nightlife, even in the nation's capitol. Everyone knows the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Final Cut
    by Charles Burns
    Pantheon Books, 09/24/2024
     
    As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make sci-fi films in their yards, convincing their friends to star as victims of grisly murders, smearing...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known
    by George M. Johnson
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/24/2024
     
    In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured ...more
    Essays
    Graveyard Shift: A Novella
    by M. L. Rio
    Flatiron Books, 09/24/2024
     
    Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel ...more
    Thrillers
    Hill of Secrets: A Novel
    by Galina Vromen
    Lake Union Publishing, 09/24/2024
     
    Los Alamos, 1943. The US Army has gathered scientists to create the world's first nuclear weapon. Their families, abruptly moved to the secret desert ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    In the Garden of Monsters: A Novel
    by Crystal King
    MIRA, 09/24/2024
     
    Italy, 1948

    Julia Lombardi is a mystery even to herself. The beautiful model can't remember where she's from, where she's been or how she came to...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Intermezzo: A Novel
    by Sally Rooney
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 09/24/2024
     
    Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

    Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties―...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Intervals
    by Marianne Brooker
    Fitzcarraldo Editions, 09/24/2024
     
    What makes a good death? A good daughter? In 2009, with her forties and a harsh wave of austerity on the horizon, Marianne Brooker's mother was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Monet: The Restless Vision
    by Jackie Wullschläger
    Knopf, 09/24/2024
     
    Drawing on thousands of never-before-translated letters and unpublished sources, this biography reveals dramatic new information about the life and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark
    by Leigh Ann Henion
    Algonquin Books, 09/24/2024
     
    Night Magic is a glorious celebration of the dark! New York Times bestselling nature writer Leigh Ann Henion makes the case for embracing ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Playground: A Novel
    by Richard Powers
    W.W. Norton & Company, 09/24/2024
     
    Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Queen Macbeth
    by Val McDermid
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 09/24/2024
     
    Britain's reigning "Queen of Crime" (The Scotsman), Val McDermid has ensnared audiences worldwide for over thirty years with her thrilling and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
    by Isabella Hammad
    Grove Press, 09/24/2024
     
    Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text ...more
    Essays
    Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love
    by Sarah Leavitt
    Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited, 09/24/2024
     
    In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt's partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Sweetest Darkness
    by Leslie Lutz
    Holiday House, 09/24/2024
     
    Everyone in Gypsum, Texas knows the Hotel Alvarado changes at night—especially Quinn. A teenage clairvoyant, he's been having dreams about it&#...more
    The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
    by Wright Thompson
    Penguin Press, 09/24/2024
     
    Wright Thompson's family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    True Crime
    The Burning Earth: A History
    by Sunil Amrith
    W.W. Norton & Company, 09/24/2024
     
    In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
    by Olga Tokarczuk
    Riverhead Books, 09/24/2024
     
    September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Forest of Lost Souls
    by Dean Koontz
    Thomas & Mercer, 09/24/2024
     
    Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves ...more
    Thrillers
    The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence
    by Peter Schwartzstein
    Island, 09/24/2024
     
    Schwartzstein has visited ravaged Iraqi towns where ISIS used drought as a recruiting tool and weapon of terror. In Bangladesh, he has interviewed ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    The Hitchcock Hotel
    by Stephanie Wrobel
    Berkley Books, 09/24/2024
     
    Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the ...more
    The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette's
    by Hanna Alkaf
    Salaam Reads, 09/24/2024
     
    For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette's, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.

    ...more
    The Last Dream
    by Pedro Almodóvar
    HarperVia, 09/24/2024
     
    With this debut collection, film legend Pedro Almodóvar delivers a tantalizing glimpse into his world, formed by twelve stories carefully ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Last Secret: A Novel
    by Maia Caron
    Doubleday Canada, 09/24/2024
     
    Ukraine, 1944

    As the world around her is ripped apart by war and infiltrated by Nazi soldiers, Savka Ivanets works as a medic for the Ukrainian ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Lightning Bottles
    by Marissa Stapley
    Simon & Schuster, 09/24/2024
     
    He was the troubled face of rock 'n' roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

    Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock 'n' ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Naming Song
    by Jedediah Berry
    Tor Books, 09/24/2024
     
    There's nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing.

    When the words went away, the world changed.

    All meaning was lost, and every border fell. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Repeat Room: A Novel
    by Jesse Ball
    Catapult, 09/24/2024
     
    In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Road Is Good: How a Mother's Strength Became a Daughter's Purpose
    by Uzo Aduba
    Viking, 09/24/2024
     
    The actress Uzo Aduba came of age grappling with a master juggling act: as one of few Black families in their white Massachusetts suburb, she and her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    This Fatal Kiss
    by Alicia Jasinska
    Peachtree Teen, 09/24/2024
     
    Cursed to haunt the river running through the magical spa town where she drowned, Gisela is a water nymph who dreams of returning to the living world ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church
    by Hahrie Han
    Knopf, 09/24/2024
     
    In 2016, even as Ohio helped deliver victory to presidential candidate Donald Trump, Cincinnati voters also passed a ballot initiative for universal ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    When the World Tips Over
    by Jandy Nelson
    Dial Books, 09/24/2024
     
    The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Song to Drown Rivers: Deluxe Edition
    by Ann Liang
    St. Martin's Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Her beauty hides a deadly purpose.

    Xishi's beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue―convinced that the best fate for a girl is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win
    by Jessica Valenti
    Crown, 10/01/2024
     
    In her most urgent book yet, New York Times bestselling author Jessica Valenti shines a light on the conservative assault on women's freedom, cutting ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Coup de Grâce
    by Sofia Ajram
    Titan Books, 10/01/2024
     
    Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after ...more
    Heir
    by Sabaa Tahir
    G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
     
    An orphan.
    An outcast.
    A prince.
    And a killer who will bring an empire to its knees.

    Growing up in the Kegari slums, AIZ has seen ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King
    by Dan Jones
    Viking, 10/01/2024
     
    Henry V reigned over England for only nine years and four months and died at the age of just thirty-five, but he looms over the landscape of the late ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music
    by Inc National Public Radio
    HarperOne, 10/01/2024
     
    Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    I Will Do Better: A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love
    by Charles Bock
    Abrams Press, 10/01/2024
     
    The novelist Charles Bock was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of a writing career. But...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Killer House Party
    by Lily Anderson
    Henry Holt and Company, 10/01/2024
     
    Red Solo cups? Check. Snacks? Check. Abandoned mansion full of countless horrors that won't let you leave? Check.

    The Deinhart Manor has been a ...more
    Load in Nine Times: Poems
    by Frank X. Walker
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/01/2024
     
    For decades, Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry: from Medgar Evers in Turn Me Loose, ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Model Home: A Novel
    by Rivers Solomon
    MCD, 10/01/2024
     
    The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Mojave Ghost
    by Forrest Gander
    New Directions Publishing, 10/01/2024
     
    Mojave Ghost initiates an unusually tender bond with the reader as it chronicles an intimate relationship with arresting honesty and vividness.&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Night Side of the River
    by Jeanette Winterson
    Grove Press, 10/01/2024
     
    In this delightfully chilling collection, the iconic Jeanette Winterson turns her fearless gaze to the realm of ghosts, interspersing her own ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Nothing Like the Movies
    by Lynn Painter
    Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
     
    For a few beautiful months, Wes had his dream girl: strong-willed girl-next-door Liz. But right as the two were about to set off to UCLA to start ...more
    Romance
    Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
    by Wim Carton, Andreas Malm
    Verso, 10/01/2024
     
    It might soon be far too hot on this planet. What do we do then? In the era of "overshoot," schemes abound for turning down the heat–not now, ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Ros Demir Is Not the One
    by Leyla Brittan
    Holiday House, 10/01/2024
     
    Sixteen-year-old Ros is a go-getter. When she wants something, she makes sure she gets it.

    But a lingering rumor (and maybe some ambivalence ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation
    by Paul Peart-Smith
    Beacon Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's influential New York Times bestseller exposed the brutality of this nation's founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Salvage: Readings from the Wreck
    by Dionne Brand
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
     
    In Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, Dionne Brand's first major book of nonfiction since her classic A Map to the Door of No Return, the acclaimed ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Season of the Swamp: A Novel
    by Yuri Herrera
    Graywolf Press, 10/01/2024
     
    New Orleans, 1853. A young exile named Benito Juárez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp. Years later, he will become the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    Grove Press, 10/01/2024
     
    It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    New Directions Publishing, 10/01/2024
     
    It's hard to believe there could be a more enjoyable novel than Scattered All Over the Earth―Yoko Tawada's rollicking, touching, cheerfully ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Take a Sad Song
    by Ona Gritz
    West 44 Books, 10/01/2024
     
    Jane awaits her hearing with hope, but instead she is sentenced to a yearlong stay at the New York State Training School for Girls. She faces bullying...more
    Romance
    Tasmania: A Novel
    by Paolo Giordano
    Other Press, 10/01/2024
     
    In late 2015, Paolo feels his life coming apart: While his wife, Lorenza, has decided to give up on pregnancy after years of trying, he clings to the ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Ballerina of Auschwitz: Young Adult Edition of The Choice
    by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
    Atheneum, 10/01/2024
     
    Edie is a talented dancer and a skilled gymnast with hopes of making the Olympic team. Between her rigorous training and her struggle to find her ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America
    by Aaron Robertson
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
     
    How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister
    Counterpoint Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Boyfriend
    by Freida McFadden
    Poisoned Pen Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She's seen it all: men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick...more
    Thrillers
    The City in Glass
    by Nghi Vo
    Tordotcom, 10/01/2024
     
    The demon Vitrine―immortal, powerful, and capricious―loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Crescent Moon Tearoom: A Novel
    by Stacy Sivinski
    Atria Books, 10/01/2024
     
    Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix, and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Dark Becomes Her
    by Judy I. Lin
    Rick Riodan Presents, 10/01/2024
     
    Ruby Chen has always played the part of the dutiful eldest daughter: excelling in school; excelling in piano lessons; excelling at keeping her younger...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Drowned: Strafford and Quirke #4
    by John Banville
    Hanover Square Press, 10/01/2024
     
    "He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten."

    1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. ...more
    The Glass Girl
    by Kathleen Glasgow
    Delacorte Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Everyone in fifteen-year-old Bella's life needs something from her. Her mom needs her to help around the house, her dad needs her to not make waves, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Great When: A Long London Novel
    by Alan Moore
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/01/2024
     
    Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Kiss of the Nightingale
    by Adi Denner
    Tundra Books, 10/01/2024
     
    1890, Lutèce: In this city, Talents are everything: precious gems that gift unrivalled skills to their owners. The most coveted, Elite Talents, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Last Dangerous Visions
    by Harlan Ellison
    Blackstone Publishing, 10/01/2024
     
    In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Life and Death of Rose Doucette
    by Harry Hunsicker
    Oceanview Publishing, Inc, 10/01/2024
     
    Dallas private investigator Dylan Fisher hasn't seen his ex-wife, Rose, in three years—which is why he's surprised when she asks him to meet her...more
    Thrillers
    The Magic You Make
    by Jason June
    Melissa de la Cruz Studio, 10/01/2024
     
    Still reeling from their deadly encounter with the Knife and the revelation that the Culling was unnecessary, soulmates Nigel and Ori have been thrust...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Message
    by Ta-Nehisi Coates
    One World, 10/01/2024
     
    Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic "Politics and the English Language," but ...more
    The Mighty Red: A Novel
    by Louise Erdrich
    Harper, 10/01/2024
     
    History is a flood. The mighty red ...

    In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. 

    Gary Geist, a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Only Sound Is the Wind: Stories
    by Pascha Sotolongo
    W.W. Norton & Company, 10/01/2024
     
    In the tradition of narrativa de lo inusual (narrative of the unusual), The Only Sound Is the Wind combines the fantastic with the everyday, weaving ...more
    Short Stories
     Debut Author
    The Plot Against Native America: The Fateful Story of Native American Boarding Schools and the Theft of Tribal Lands
    by Bill Vaughn
    Pegasus Books, 10/01/2024
     
    When Europeans came to the Americas centuries ago, too many of them brought racism along with them. Even presidents such as George Washington, Thomas ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies
    by Deborah Levy
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/01/2024
     
    Deborah Levy's vital literary voice speaks about many things.

    On footwear: "It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes ...more
    The Sequel: The Book Series #2
    by Jean Hanff Korelitz
    Celadon, 10/01/2024
     
    Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she's taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to...more
    The Third Realm: A Novel
    by Karl Ove Knausgaard
    Penguin Press, 10/01/2024
     
    Shapeshifting visitors, unsolved murders in the forest, black metal bands and an online bank of thousands of people's dreams—the star is back. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Wild Huntress
    by Emily Lloyd-Jones
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/01/2024
     
    Every five years, two kingdoms take part in a Wild Hunt. Joining is a bloody risk, and even the most qualified hunters can suffer the deadliest fates....more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Ukraine: Remember Also Me: Testimonies from the War
    by George Butler
    Candlewick Studio, 10/01/2024
     
    While reporting on the war in Ukraine, George Butler has created striking and intimate illustrations to introduce us to the people behind the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Beggar's Bedlam
    by Nabarun Bhattacharya
    Seagull Books, 10/04/2024
     
    Beggar's Bedlam is a surreal novel that unleashes the chaos of the carnival on the familiar. Part literary descendent of Bulgakov's The Master and ...more
    Literary Fiction
    A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World's First National Park
    by Randall K. Wilson
    Counterpoint Press, 10/08/2024
     
    It has been called Wonderland, America's Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America's best idea. But how did this faraway ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Travel & Adventure
    Childish Literature
    by Alejandro Zambra
    Penguin Books, 10/08/2024
     
    Childish Literature is a charming and wide-ranging collection of short stories, essays, and even a couple of poems produced under the influence of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Crisis Averted: The Hidden Science of Fighting Outbreaks
    by Caitlin Rivers PhD
    Viking, 10/08/2024
     
    An outbreak does not grow into an epidemic. A child does not go hungry. A would-be smoker never lights up. In this fascinating window into the secret ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
     Debut Author
    Diet Soda Club
    by Chaz Hayden
    Candlewick Press, 10/08/2024
     
    Have you ever made all the wrong choices for all the right reasons?

    Reed Beckett's little sister, Beatrice, has never been awakened by the smell ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Divine Mortals
    by Amanda Helander
    Disney-Hyperion, 10/08/2024
     
    Blessed by the gods, Mona Arnett has the unique ability to divine soulmates, but she refuses to seek out her own—until she learns the king is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Echoes of Us: A Novel
    by Joy Jordan-Lake
    Lake Union Publishing, 10/08/2024
     
    In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and a German POW forge a connection that endures―against all ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves
    by Andrea Currie
    Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited, 10/08/2024
     
    Otipemisiwak is a Plains Cree word describing the Métis, meaning "the people who own themselves."

    Andrea Currie was born into a Métis ...more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Fledgling: The Keeper's Records of Revolution
    by S. K. Ali
    Kokila, 10/08/2024
     
    Would you trade love for peace?

    Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence. Ever dutiful, she accepts her father's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir
    by Lisa Marie Presley
    Random House, 10/08/2024
     
    In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.

    A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land
    by Russell Cobb
    Beacon Press, 10/08/2024
     
    In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the "American Century," few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Giddy Barber Explodes in 11
    by Dina Havranek
    Peachtree Teen, 10/08/2024
     
    Giddy Barber knows with certainty she's going to become a mechanical engineer. What she doesn't know is the last time she smiled.

    With her ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals
    by Maurice Casey
    Footnote Press, 10/08/2024
     
    Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O'Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    John Lewis: A Life
    by David Greenberg
    Simon & Schuster, 10/08/2024
     
    Born into poverty in rural Alabama, Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Love Can't Feed You: A Novel
    by Cherry Lou Sy
    Dutton, 10/08/2024
     
    Love Can't Feed You is a stunning, heartbreaking, and compressed look at coming of age, shifting notions of home, and the disintegration of the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Melvill
    by Rodrigo Fresan
    Open Letter, 10/08/2024
     
    His son, still a child, sits at the foot of the bed, attentively collecting these final, hallucinated words.

    ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    Mindless: The Human Condition in the Machine Age
    by Robert Skidelsky
    Other Press, 10/08/2024
     
    Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning. Automation, which promised relief from toil, has reactivated the long-standing fear of job ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East
    by Robert Fisk
    Harper360, 10/08/2024
     
    From the Arab uprisings and the Syrian civil war to Israel's conflicts with Palestine and Lebanon, Fisk condemns the West's ongoing hypocrisy and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer
    by Richard Bernstein
    Knopf, 10/08/2024
     
    Al Jolson, born Asa Yoelson, immigrated from a shtetl in Lithuania to the United States in 1894 after his father secured a job as a rabbi in ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Our Evenings: A Novel
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Random House, 10/08/2024
     
    Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems: 1961-2023
    by Margaret Atwood
    Knopf, 10/08/2024
     
    Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Shock Induction
    by Chuck Palahniuk
    Simon & Schuster, 10/08/2024
     
    In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Slaveroad
    by John Edgar Wideman
    Scribner, 10/08/2024
     
    John Edgar Wideman's "slaveroad" is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    The Book of George: A Novel
    by Kate Greathead
    Henry Holt and Company, 10/08/2024
     
    If you haven't had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He's a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Dividing Sky
    by Jill Tew
    Joy Revolution, 10/08/2024
     
    In 2460, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    The Door in Lake Mallion: The Brindlewatch Quintet #2
    by S.M. Beiko
    ECW Press, 10/08/2024
     
    Dunstan has had big ambitions his entire life — bigger than the small lakeside town of Knockum — imagining himself heading a chorus line ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car
    by Witold Rybczynski
    Doubleday, 10/08/2024
     
    In this lively and entertaining work, Witold Rybczynski―hailed as "one of the best writers on design working today" by Publishers Weekly―...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science
    by Dava Sobel
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/08/2024
     
    "Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist most people can name," writes Dava Sobel at the opening of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
    by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
    Riverhead Books, 10/08/2024
     
    A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens' rights. Beneath, above, and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Last One at the Wedding: A Novel
    by Jason Rekulak
    Flatiron Books, 10/08/2024
     
    Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would ...more
    Thrillers
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern: A Novel
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    St. Martin's Press, 10/08/2024
     
    On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs―an active senior ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Murderess: A Novel
    by Laurie Notaro
    Little A, 10/08/2024
     
    It's October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a ...more
    The Paris Maid
    by Ella Carey
    Grand Central Publishing, 10/08/2024
     
     Louise Basset works as a housemaid at The Ritz Hotel, home to the most powerful Nazis in France. As she changes silk sheets and scrubs sumptuous...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Puzzle Box: A Novel
    by Danielle Trussoni
    Random House, 10/08/2024
     
    It is the Year of the Wood Dragon, and the ingenious Mike Brink has been invited to Tokyo, Japan, to open the legendary Dragon Box.

    The box was ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    Amistad, 10/08/2024
     
    On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients' ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The River Knows My Name
    by Mortada Gzar
    Amazon Crossing, 10/08/2024
     
    Fifteen-year-old Charlotte is restlessly coming of age in early twentieth-century Basra, Iraq. The daughter of a Seattle doctor and missionary, ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Schubert Treatment: A Story of Music and Healing
    by Claire Oppert
    Greystone Books, 10/08/2024
     
    When Claire Oppert plays the cello, miracles happen. Children with profound autism, patients in extreme pain and distress, even people on the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    The Terrifying Tales of Vivian Vance
    by Josh Ulrich
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 10/08/2024
     
    It's just a bedtime story….right?

    Parents in Pensmouth tell their children a devious bedtime tale—their beloved town is riddled with ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
    The Trade Off: A Novel
    by Samantha Greene Woodruff
    Lake Union Publishing, 10/08/2024
     
    Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers. With her father, she studies the burgeoning Wall Street market's stocks and patterns in the financial ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Witches of El Paso: A Novel
    by Luis Jaramillo
    Primero Sueno Press, 10/08/2024
     
    If you call to the witches, they will come.

    1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    This Cursed House
    by Del Sandeen
    Berkley Books, 10/08/2024
     
    In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago—and the spirits she has always been able to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Twenty-Four Seconds from Now ...: A LOVE Story
    by Jason Reynolds
    Atheneum, 10/08/2024
     
    Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?: Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times
    by Dana Frank
    Beacon Press, 10/08/2024
     
    Drawing on little-known stories of working people, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? amplifies voices that have been long omitted from ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Wild Chocolate: Across the Americas in Search of Cacao's Soul
    by Rowan Jacobsen
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/08/2024
     
    When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Travel & Adventure
    Wolfpack
    by Amelia Brunskill
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/08/2024
     
    Nine girls bound together
    in beautiful, virtuous Havenwood,
    a refuge from an unsafe world.

    Then there are eight
    one of them gone&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    All the Hearts You Eat
    by Hailey Piper
    Titan Books, 10/15/2024
     
    What really happened to Cabrina Brite?

    Ivory's life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning...more
    American Rapture
    by CJ Leede
    Tor Nightfire, 10/15/2024
     
    A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.

    Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Blame My Virgo Moon
    by Freja Nicole Woolf
    Walker Books US, 10/15/2024
     
    Life should be Gucci gooseberry gorgeous for Cat Phillips now that she's got the girl: swoon-worthy, green-haired Morgan Delaney. Except Cat's friends...more
    Literary Fiction
    Blood Test: A Comedy
    by Charles Baxter
    Pantheon Books, 10/15/2024
     
    In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Blue Light Hours
    by Bruna Dantas Lobato
    Grove Press, 10/15/2024
     
    In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Catherine the Ghost
    by Kathe Koja
    CLASH, 10/15/2024
     
    Cathy Earnshaw. Catherine Linton. Mother. Daughter. They never saw each other alive. In Catherine the Ghost these two young women confront loss, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Clean: A Novel
    by Alia Trabucco Zerán
    Riverhead Books, 10/15/2024
     
    A young girl has died and the family's maid is being interrogated. She must tell the whole story before arriving at the girl's death.

    Estela came...more
    Dogs and Monsters: Stories
    by Mark Haddon
    Doubleday, 10/15/2024
     
    Greek myths have fascinated people for millenia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Don't Be a Stranger: A Novel
    by Susan Minot
    Knopf, 10/15/2024
     
    Ivy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Forest of Noise: Poems
    by Mosab Abu Toha
    Knopf, 10/15/2024
     
    Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
    by John Grisham, Jim McCloskey
    Doubleday, 10/15/2024
     
    John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it's his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Girlmode
    by Magdalene Visaggio
    HarperCollins Publishers, 10/15/2024
     
    The last thing Phoebe Zito wants is to be noticed. The newest kid at Sally Ride High School, newly arrived in Los Angeles, and newly transitioned, she...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
    Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self-Discovery
    by Christine Mari
    Little, Brown Ink, 10/15/2024
     
    Christine has always felt she is just half: Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    I Was Told There Would Be Romance
    by Marie Arnold
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/15/2024
     
    Fifteen-year-old Fancy Augustine is a Haitian American girl with simple desires. She'd like to trade in her floppy, oversize boobs for cute, perky ...more
    In the Distance
    by Hernan Diaz
    Riverhead Books, 10/15/2024
     
    A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos
    by Dr. Kelsey Johnson
    Basic Books, 10/15/2024
     
    Humans have learned a lot about the world around us and the universe beyond. We have made powerful insights and created profound theories about the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Januaries: Stories of Love, Magic & Betrayal
    by Olivie Blake
    Tor Books, 10/15/2024
     
    Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a wish-granting spirit rapidly approaches burnout. Meanwhile, a banished fairy answers a Craigslist ad, a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Libby Lost and Found: A Novel
    by Stephanie Booth
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 10/15/2024
     
    Meet Libby Weeks, author of the mega-best-selling fantasy series, The Falling Children―written as "F.T. Goldhero" to maintain her privacy. ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
    by Julie Sedivy
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/15/2024
     
    If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is language: written, spoken, signed, understood, and misunderstood, in all its infinite ...more
    Mad Wife: A Memoir
    by Kate Hamilton
    Beacon Press, 10/15/2024
     
    In this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslit victim to furious feminist with ...more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Mama: A Queer Black Woman's Story of a Family Lost and Found
    by Nikkya Hargrove
    Algonquin Books, 10/15/2024
     
    Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother—addicted to cocaine and just out of prison—...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Midnight and Blue: An Inspector Rebus Novel
    by Ian Rankin
    Mulholland, 10/15/2024
     
    A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell deep in the heart of Scotland's most infamous prison. Sleeping in a cell across the floor lies John ...more
    Mysteries
    Tangleroot
    by Kalela Williams
    Feiwel & Friends, 10/15/2024
     
    When Dr. Castine takes a job as the president of the prestigious Stonepost College in rural Virginia, Noni is forced to leave her New England home and...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Ancients: A Novel
    by John Larison
    Viking, 10/15/2024
     
    A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Dreaming Path: Indigenous Wisdom, Meditations, and Exercises to Live Our Best Stories
    by Paul Callaghan
    HarperOne, 10/15/2024
     
    Dr. Paul Callaghan belongs to the land of the Worimi people who live north of Sydney along the east coast of Australia. Raised to live the western way...more
    Advice
    The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America
    by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz
    Flatiron Books, 10/15/2024
     
    Who is Indian enough?

    To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
    by Noam Chomsky
    Penguin Press, 10/15/2024
     
    The Myth of American Idealism offers a timely and comprehensive introduction to the incisive critiques of U.S. power that have made Noam Chomsky a "...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The Treasure Hunters Club: A Mystery
    by Tom Ryan
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 10/15/2024
     
    Welcome to Maple Bay, Nova Scotia.

    For nearly a century, people have ventured to the idyllic seaside town of Maple Bay in search of a legendary ...more
    The Waiting: Ballard and Bosch #6
    by Michael Connelly
    Little Brown & Company, 10/15/2024
     
    Renée Ballard and the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer ...more
    Under the Heron's Light
    by Randi Pink
    Feiwel & Friends, 10/15/2024
     
    "Four thousand six hundred forty-two steps in," Grannylou interrupted. "You remember that now, Baby. Four-thousand six hundred forty-two steps to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Valley So Low: One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe
    by Jared Sullivan
    Knopf, 10/15/2024
     
    For more than 50 years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee, burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually creating ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Wild: Poems
    by Ben Okri
    Other Press, 10/15/2024
     
    Freedom is the most precious commodity in the world. In this powerful collection, the celebrated novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet Ben Okri ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Women's Hotel: A Novel
    by Daniel M. Lavery
    HarperVia, 10/15/2024
     
    The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    A Deathly Compendium of Poisonous Plants: Wicked Weeds and Sinister Seeds
    by Rebecca E. Hirsch
    Zest Books, 10/22/2024
     
    "Should you encounter any of the plants in this book, do not treat them lightly. They can kill you. Or cause you unbearable agony. Or land you in jail...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Absolution: The Southern Reach Series #4
    by Jeff VanderMeer
    MCD, 10/22/2024
     
    When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Comforting Myths: Concerning the Political in Art
    by Rabih Alameddine
    University of Virginia Press, 10/22/2024
     
    In this concisely argued and illuminating book, the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning author Rabih Alameddine takes the subject of politics and art ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)
    by Bethany Joy Lenz
    Simon & Schuster, 10/22/2024
     
    In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Dis//Integration: 2 Novelas & 3 Stories & a Little Play
    by William Melvin Kelley
    Vintage, 10/22/2024
     
    The linked "2 novelas, 3 stories, and a little play" that make up Dis//Integration follow the life journeys of Charles "Chig" Dunford from his Nanny ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Disturbing the Bones
    by Andrew Davis, Jeff Biggers
    Melville House, 10/22/2024
     
    Chicago detective Randall Jenkins has not been back home to the historic Civil Rights hotspot of Cairo, Illinois since the disappearance of his mother...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    Eurotrash: A Novel
    by Christian Kracht
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/22/2024
     
    From "the great German-language writer of his generation" (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Kracht's career narrated by an eponymous "Christian...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Find Me as the Creature I Am: Poems
    by Emily Jungmin Yoon
    Knopf, 10/22/2024
     
    Find Me as the Creature I Am is a book full of tenderness and violence, longing and love. Ranging from inherited family tales to meditations on the ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Greta: A Novel
    by Manon Steffan Ros
    Amazon Crossing, 10/22/2024
     
    Greta Pugh is dead.

    The small village of Bethesda, Wales, is no stranger to tragedy. Once a thriving, prosperous community, the town has been ...more
    Thrillers
    Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People
    by Emily Herring
    Basic Books, 10/22/2024
     
    At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?: A Novel
    by Anna Montague
    Ecco, 10/22/2024
     
    Most days, Magda is fine. She has her routines. She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits. She has her longtime...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster: A Novel
    by Muriel Leung
    W.W. Norton & Company, 10/22/2024
     
    Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building,...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Karla's Choice: A John le Carré Novel
    by Nick Harkaway
    Viking, 10/22/2024
     
    It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has ...more
    Lightborne: A Novel
    by Hesse Phillips
    Pegasus Books, 10/22/2024
     
    Christopher Marlowe: playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Memorials
    by Richard Chizmar
    Gallery Books, 10/22/2024
     
    1983: Three students from a small college embark on a week-long road trip to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies class...more
    Metal from Heaven
    by August Clarke
    Erewhon Books, 10/22/2024
     
    He who controls ichorite controls the world.

    A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute
    by Nicholas Fox Weber
    Knopf, 10/22/2024
     
    In the early 1920s, surrounded by the roaring streets of avant-garde Paris, Piet Mondrian began creating what would become some of the most ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Monstrous Nights: The Witch's Compendium of Monsters #2
    by Genoveva Dimova
    Tor Books, 10/22/2024
     
    With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara's life should finally be back to normal―but, of course, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir
    by Sarah Moss
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/22/2024
     
    My Good Bright Wolf is a memoir about thinking and reading, eating and not eating, privilege and scarcity, the relationships that form us and the long...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    My Pisces Heart: A Black Immigrant's Search for Home Across Four Continents
    by Jennifer Neal
    Catapult, 10/22/2024
     
    I've never seen home as a permanent concept; it is an image crafted from untempered glass that threatens to shatter with lack of care.

    Jennifer ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir
    by Sarah LaBrie
    Harper, 10/22/2024
     
    On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie's mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Patriot: A Memoir
    by Alexei Navalny
    Knopf, 10/22/2024
     
    Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Pillars of Creation: How the James Webb Telescope Unlocked the Secrets of the Cosmos
    by Richard Panek
    Little Brown & Company, 10/22/2024
     
    Pillars of Creation tells the story of one of the greatest scientific achievements in the history of civilization, a $10 billion instrument with a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Science, Health and the Environment
    Roman Year: A Memoir
    by André Aciman
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 10/22/2024
     
    In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank
    by Justene Hill Edwards
    W.W. Norton & Company, 10/22/2024
     
    In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Spatriati: A Novel
    by Mario Desiati
    Other Press, 10/22/2024
     
    I never understood, of the two of us, which one was warm and which cold, but I consider myself lucky to have met my opposite front in Claudia Fanelli,...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Children of Jocasta: A Novel
    by Natalie Haynes
    Harper, 10/22/2024
     
    When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced ... Because ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    The Heartbeat Library: A Novel
    by Laura Imai Messina
    The Overlook Press, 10/22/2024
     
    On the peaceful Japanese island of Teshima there is a library of heartbeats, a place where the heartbeats of visitors from all around the world are ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Sweetness Between Us
    by Sarah Winifred Searle
    First Second, 10/22/2024
     
    After health problems wiped out their first few weeks of school, Perley and Amandine are both starting their Junior year behind their classmates, and ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
    The Wood at Midwinter
    by Susanna Clarke
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 10/22/2024
     
    'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

    Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Thief of the Heights
    by Son M.
    HarperAlley, 10/22/2024
     
    Lifelong friends Basem, Mustafa, and Aarfah have carved out a place for themselves in their corner of Muqadas, where they dream of climbing from their...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Graphic Novels
     Debut Author
    We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me
    by Elliot Mintz
    Dutton, 10/22/2024
     
    In 1972, Elliot Mintz installed a red light in his bedroom in Laurel Canyon. When it started flashing, it meant that either John Lennon or Yoko Ono&#...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    When We Chased the Light: A Novel
    by Emily Bleeker
    Lake Union Publishing, 10/22/2024
     
    Christie's auction house, Beverly Hills. The effects of Hollywood icon Vivian Snow are up for bid. In the collection is a set of hand-drawn postcards ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Where the Dead Brides Gather
    by Nuzo Onoh
    Titan Books, 10/22/2024
     
    Bata, a young girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin's door. Her cousin is to get ...more
    Canoes
    by Maylis De Kerangal
    Archipelago Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Ricocheting off of the book's exhilarating central novella and 7 short stories, the women we meet in Canoes are by turns indelibly witty, insightful, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah
    by Charles King
    Doubleday, 10/29/2024
     
    George Frideric Handel's Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Biography/Memoir
    Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop
    by Serene Khader
    Beacon Press, 10/29/2024
     
    After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism, political ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    For She Is Wrath
    by Emily Varga
    Wednesday Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Three hundred and sixty-four days.
    Framed for a crime she didn't commit, Dania counts down her days in prison until she can exact revenge on ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions
    by Nalo Hopkinson
    Tachyon Publications, 10/29/2024
     
    In Nalo Hopkinson's first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke out a living in a future waterworld; two scientists ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    Just Until
    by Joseph Moldover
    Margaret Ferguson Books, 10/29/2024
     
    17-year-old Hannah Lynn has just one goal: to get out of Evans Beach, Maine. It's where she lost her mother to cancer. Where her estranged sister, ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Like Mother, Like Mother: A Novel
    by Susan Rieger
    Dial Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Masquerade
    by Mike Fu
    Tin House Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Newly single Meadow Liu is house-sitting for his friend, artist Selma Shimizu, when he stumbles upon The Masquerade, a translated novel about a masked...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Miss Kim Knows: And Other Stories
    by Cho Nam-joo
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 10/29/2024
     
    A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Short Stories
    The Berry Pickers: A Novel
    by Amanda Peters
    Catapult, 10/29/2024
     
    July 1962. A Mi'kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Blue Hour: A Novel
    by Paula Hawkins
    Mariner Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.

    ...more
    The Paris Escape: A Novel
    by James Tucker
    Lake Union Publishing, 10/29/2024
     
    When Laura Powell and Henry Salter travel to Paris in 1938, neither considers the other very good company. Laura is a shallow, spoiled heir to a ...more
    Historical Fiction
    This Motherless Land: A Novel
    by Nikki May
    Mariner Books, 10/29/2024
     
    Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    An Age of Winters: A Novel
    by Gemma Liviero
    Lake Union Publishing, 11/01/2024
     
    In 1625, the Franconian village of Eisbach has been plagued by disease, famine, heinous crimes, and a merciless winter. Katarin Jaspers is the ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Most Powerful Court in the World: A History of the Supreme Court of the United States
    by Stuart Banner
    Oxford University Press, 11/04/2024
     
    Will abortion be legal? Should people of the same sex be allowed to marry? May colleges prefer black applicants over white ones? These are among the ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    All the Truth I Can Stand
    by Mason Stokes
    Calkins Creek, 11/05/2024
     
    Juniper, Wyoming, high school student Ash is still reeling from his mother's death and ostracization by his friends when his father signs him up to ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Before We Forget Kindness: Before the Coffee Gets Cold #6
    by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
    Hanover Square Press, 11/05/2024
     
    - The father who could not allow his daughter to get married
    - A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one
    - A boy...more
    Literary Fiction
    Don't Build, Rebuild: The Case for Imaginative Reuse in Architecture
    by Aaron Betsky
    Beacon Press, 11/05/2024
     
    As climate change has escalated into a crisis, the reuse of existing structures is the only way to even begin to preserve our wood, sand, silicon, and...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Eleanore of Avignon: A Novel
    by Elizabeth DeLozier
    Dutton, 11/05/2024
     
    Provence, 1347. Eleanore (Elea) Blanchet is a young midwife and herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she learned the day her mother died, the most...more
    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Lost and Lassoed: A Rebel Blue Ranch Novel
    by Lyla Sage
    Dial Press, 11/05/2024
     
    Teddy Andersen doesn't have a plan. She's never needed one before. She's always been more of a go-with-the-flow type of girl, but for some reason, the...more
    Romance
    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch
    Berkley Books, 11/05/2024
     
    Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with the...more
    Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers: Her Life, the Imperial Ideal, and the Politics and Turmoil That Shaped Her Extraordinary Reign
    by Anne Somerset
    Knopf, 11/05/2024
     
    It is generally accepted that Queen Victoria reigned but did not rule. This couldn't be more wrong. A passionate and opinionated leader, Victoria was ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Religion Is Not Done with You: Or, the Hidden Power of Religion on Race, Maps, Bodies, and Law
    by Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
    Beacon Press, 11/05/2024
     
    Religion lurks in the floorboards of our daily lives, whether we want it to or not. A departure from more traditional approaches to "Religion 101," ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Streetlight People
    by Charlene Thomas
    Dutton, 11/05/2024
     
    For most, Streetlight is a dot on the map you pass on your way to somewhere else. But if you live there, you're either a Have-Not, like Kady, or a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Author's Guide to Murder: A Novel
    by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White
    William Morrow, 11/05/2024
     
    There's been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. ...more
    The Autumn of Ruth Winters: A Novel
    by Marshall Fine
    Lake Union Publishing, 11/05/2024
     
    Ruth Winters is retired, widowed, and resigned to spending the rest of her life alone in her suburban home. She likes her routine and uses it to avoid...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    The Beggar Student
    by Osamu Dazai
    New Directions Publishing, 11/05/2024
     
    A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Donut Prince of New York
    by Allen Zadoff
    Holiday House, 11/05/2024
     
    Eugene would just as soon spend the year playing small, but that's hard to do when you're the biggest kid in your class.

    Things change when he ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Improvisers: A Murder and Magic Novel
    by Nicole Glover
    Harper, 11/05/2024
     
    Velma Frye is many things. A pilot, a former bootlegger, a well-seasoned traveler, a jazz pianist…and a wielder of celestial magic. She's also a...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Lake of Lost Girls: A Novel
    by Katherine Greene
    Crooked Lane Books, 11/05/2024
     
    It's 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina, but freshman Jessica Fadley, once a bright and ...more
    Thrillers
    The Memory Dress
    by Jade Beer
    Berkley Books, 11/05/2024
     
    England, 2018: Jayne is quiet. She keeps to herself and has no grand expectations for her days. But after a chance encounter with her elderly neighbor...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.: A Biography
    by Peter Ames Carlin
    Doubleday, 11/05/2024
     
    In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    The Teller of Small Fortunes
    by Julie Leong
    Ace Books, 11/05/2024
     
    Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
     Debut Author
    Where the Library Hides: Secrets of the Nile #2
    by Isabel Ibañez
    Wednesday Books, 11/05/2024
     
    Inez Olivera traveled across the world to Egypt, seeking answers into her parents' recent and mysterious deaths. But all her searching led her down a ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Cabinet of Curiosities: A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre
    by Aaron Mahnke
    St. Martin's Griffin, 11/12/2024
     
    The podcast, Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Dead Girls Don't Dream
    by Nino Cipri
    Henry Holt and Company, 11/12/2024
     
    Except for Riley Walcott. 

    Riley knows better than to stray from the trail in the woods behind her uncle Toby's house. But her little sister...more
    Thrillers
    Every Arc Bends Its Radian: A Novel
    by Sergio De La Pava
    Simon & Schuster, 11/12/2024
     
    Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find reprieve. Running away from an unspeakable event surrounding ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Far District: Poems
    by Ishion Hutchinson
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/12/2024
     
    Crafting an impressionistic portrait of his youth in Jamaica, Ishion Hutchinson explores the West Indian distrust of European literature and mythology...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Games Untold: The Inheritance Games #5
    by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
    Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 11/12/2024
     
    There is nothing frivolous about the way a Hawthorne man loves.

    An amnesiac playboy and the woman with every reason to hate him. A ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist
    by Richard Munson
    W.W. Norton & Company, 11/12/2024
     
    Benjamin Franklin was one of the preeminent scientists of his time. Driven by curiosity, he conducted cutting-edge research on electricity, heat, ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Lazarus Man: A Novel
    by Richard Price
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/12/2024
     
    East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Leap
    by Simina Popescu
    Roaring Brook Press, 11/12/2024
     
    Ana has been studying contemporary dance since she was little, but her heart isn't in it anymore. Instead her focus is on Carina―a beautiful, ...more
    Graphic Novels
     Debut Author
    Midnights With You
    by Clare Osongco
    Disney-Hyperion, 11/12/2024
     
    "Where were you thinking of going?"
    "Nowhere."
    "Great," he says lightly, putting the car in gear. "Then we'll go there."

    Seventeen-year...more
    Romance
     Debut Author
    Munichs: A Novel
    by David Peace
    W.W. Norton & Company, 11/12/2024
     
    In 1958, Manchester United was flying high: the best-known soccer team in the world and reigning English champions, the team was led by a bright young...more
    Historical Fiction
    Naples 1343: The Unexpected Origins of the Mafia
    by Amedeo Feniello
    Other Press, 11/12/2024
     
    1343: there is famine in Naples. After nightfall, a Genoese ship loaded with wheat is attacked by members of two local clans who brutally kill several...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
     Debut Author
    Only Here, Only Now: A Novel
    by Tom Newlands
    HarperVia, 11/12/2024
     
    In the blazing hot summer of 1994, there's nothing for Cora Mowat to do but hang around in empty parking lots. Stuck in her Mom's small house and ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    Open Minded: A Novel
    by Chloe Seager
    William Morrow, 11/12/2024
     
    After nine years of dating, Holly is sure her boyfriend Will is going to propose. But instead of popping the question, he shocks her by suggesting ...more
    Romance
    Rani Choudhury Must Die
    by Adiba Jaigirdar
    Feiwel & Friends, 11/12/2024
     
    Meghna Rahman is tired of constantly being compared to her infuriatingly perfect ex best friend now rival. Everyone, except, at least, her boyfriend ...more
    Romance
    Revolution by Fire: New York's Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, a Graphic Novel
    by David Lester, Marcus Rediker
    Beacon Press, 11/12/2024
     
    Rebel fugitive John Gwin was previously introduced in Under the Banner of King Death and this graphic novel continues his adventures. Revolution by ...more
    Graphic Novels
    Shy Creatures: A Novel
    by Clare Chambers
    Mariner Books, 11/12/2024
     
    In all failed relationships there is a tipping point. It goes unnoticed at the time but can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Burrow
    by Melanie Cheng
    Tin House Books, 11/12/2024
     
    Big-hearted and moving, Melanie Cheng's The Burrow brings together a family trying to find their way forward in the wake of a devastating loss. ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Co-op: A Novel
    by Tarah DeWitt
    St. Martin's Griffin, 11/12/2024
     
    LaRynn Lavigne and Deacon Leeds had one short and contentious summer fling when they were teens―certainly nothing to build a foundation on. But ...more
    Romance
    The Starlets
    by Lee Kelly
    Harper, 11/12/2024
     
    Summer, 1958. Vivienne Rhodes thinks she's finally landed her break playing Helen of Troy in Apex Pictures' big-budget epic, A Thousand Ships, an ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World ...: Essays
    by David Graeber
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/12/2024
     
    There are converging political, economic, and ecological crises, and yet our politics is dominated by either business as usual or nostalgia for a ...more
    Essays
    They Just Need to Get a Job: 15 Myths on Homelessness
    by Mary Brosnahan
    Beacon Press, 11/12/2024
     
    Conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute disseminate anti-homeless myths in the media, legislatures, and the larger culture, claiming ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    Those Opulent Days: A Mystery
    by Jacquie Pham
    Atlantic Monthly Press, 11/12/2024
     
    Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond have been best friends since childhood. Now, as young men running their families' formidable businesses, they make up ...more
    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures
    by Katherine Rundell
    Doubleday, 11/12/2024
     
    The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Water Finds a Way: A novel
    by Meghan Perry
    Delphinium Books, 11/12/2024
     
    Determined to conceal her secrets and losses, she soon finds herself dragged into others' lives when she takes a job on a boat owned by a notorious ...more
    Literary Fiction
     Debut Author
    An Earthquake is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth: A Novel
    by Anna Moschovakis
    Soft Skull Press, 11/19/2024
     
    After a seismic event leaves the world shattered, an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career struggles to regain the ability to walk ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Anzuelo
    by Emma Ríos
    Image Comics, 11/19/2024
     
    The Sea, secretly more complex than anyone imagined, rises one day. The horizon folds as the Sea absorbs the world and transforms everything that's ...more
    Graphic Novels
    Briarcliff Prep: Sophomore Year
    by Brianna Peppins
    Disney-Hyperion, 11/19/2024
     
    Avielle LeBeau is beginning her second year at Briarcliff Prep, and she's got big dreams. Top of the list? Starting her own student life magazine and ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Citizen: My Life After the White House
    by Bill Clinton
    Knopf, 11/19/2024
     
    On January 20, 2001, after nearly thirty years in politics—eight of them as president of the United States—Bill Clinton was suddenly a ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    Is She Really Going Out with Him?
    by Sophie Cousens
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 11/19/2024
     
    Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of...more
    Romance
    Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future
    by Vince Beiser
    Riverhead Books, 11/19/2024
     
    An Australian millionaire's plan to mine the ocean floor. Nigerian garbage pickers risking their lives to salvage e-waste. A Bill Gates-backed ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    Serpent Sea: Spice Road #2
    by Maiya Ibrahim
    Delacorte Press, 11/19/2024
     
    Imani is a magic-wielding warrior sworn to protect her land from the monsters that roam the desert. But an even worse enemy now threatens the Sahir. ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Shell Games: A Novel
    by Bonnie Kistler
    Harper, 11/19/2024
     
    Julie's mother Kate is a force of nature – a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, ...more
    Thrillers
    Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
    by Edwin Frank
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/19/2024
     
    "How can we live differently?" a young woman urgently demands in Virginia Woolf's novel The Years. It is the 1930s, war and death are in the air, but ...more
    History, Current Affairs and Religion
    The City and Its Uncertain Walls: A Novel
    by Haruki Murakami
    Knopf, 11/19/2024
     
    The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his readers will remember, a place where a Dream Reader ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Collaborators
    by Michael Idov
    Scribner, 11/19/2024
     
    Combining realistic thrills with sophisticated spycraft and witty dialogue, The Collaborators delivers a gut-punch answer to the biggest geopolitical ...more
    Thrillers
    The Mirror: The Lost Bride Trilogy #2
    by Nora Roberts
    St. Martin's Press, 11/19/2024
     
    When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
    by Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Scribner, 11/19/2024
     
    As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of ...more
    Science, Health and the Environment
    The Songbird & the Heart of Stone: The Shadowborn Duet #1 (Crowns of Nyaxia #3)
    by Carissa Broadbent
    Tor Books, 11/19/2024
     
    In the descent to the underworld, a bride of the sun must choose between the light of her redemption… or a dark love that defies the gods ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Time of the Child
    by Niall Williams
    Bloomsbury Publishing, 11/19/2024
     
    Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Visitations
    by Corey Egbert
    Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 11/19/2024
     
    Corey's mom has always made him feel safe. Especially after his parents' divorce, and the dreaded visitations with his dad begin. But as Corey grows ...more
    Graphic Novels
    Water, Water: Poems
    by Billy Collins
    Random House, 11/19/2024
     
    In this collection of sixty new poems, Billy Collins writes about the beauties and ironies of everyday experience. A poem is best, he feels, when it ...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation
    by Jim O'Heir
    William Morrow, 11/19/2024
     
    For seven seasons, Leslie Knope and the Parks and Recreation gang charmed millions of viewers with their quirky antics and unwavering positivity. The ...more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    When Mimi Went Missing
    by Suja Sukumar
    Soho Press, 11/19/2024
     
    Shy, nerdy Tanvi has always thought of her perfect cousin Mimi as her sister. Not only did Mimi's family raise Tanvi after the tragic death of her ...more
    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    City of Night Birds: A Novel
    by Juhea Kim
    Ecco, 11/26/2024
     
    On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident that stalled her career. ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Darkly
    by Marisha Pessl
    Delacorte Press, 11/26/2024
     
    Arcadia "Dia" Gannon has been obsessed with Louisiana Veda, the game designer whose obsessive creations and company, Darkly, have gained a cultlike ...more
    Thrillers
    Daughters of Bronze: A Novel of Troy
    by A. D. Rhine
    Dutton, 11/26/2024
     
    Lost between the timeless lines of Homer's epic, the women of Troy finally stand to be counted. Their story is one you've never encountered, and it ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Mothers and Sons: A Memoir
    by Theodor Kallifatides
    Other Press, 11/26/2024
     
    Theodor Kallifatides, an acclaimed Greek author exiled in Sweden for more than 4 decades at age 68, visits his 92-year-old mother, who still resides ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
    by Naomi Wood
    Mariner Books, 11/26/2024
     
    A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their ...more
    Short Stories
    Trial by Ambush: Murder, Injustice, and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham
    by Marcia Clark
    Thomas & Mercer, 12/01/2024
     
    Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse―offering ...more
    True Crime
    White Mulberry: A Novel
    by Rosa Kwon Easton
    Lake Union Publishing, 12/01/2024
     
    1928, Japan-occupied Korea. Eleven-year-old Miyoung has dreams too big for her tiny farming village near Pyongyang: to become a teacher, to avoid an ...more
    Historical Fiction
     Debut Author
    A History of the Big House: A Novel
    by Charif Majdalani
    Other Press, 12/03/2024
     
    At the end of the 19th century, a man is forced to flee his village after a quarrel. Starting over with nothing, the banished, audacious Wakim Nassar ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Alter Ego: A Novel
    by Alex Segura
    Flatiron Books, 12/03/2024
     
    Annie Bustamante is a cultural force like none other: an acclaimed filmmaker, an author, a comic book artist known for one of the all time best ...more
    Thrillers
    Apartment Women: A Novel
    by Gu Byeong-mo
    Hanover Square Press, 12/03/2024
     
    When Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she's ready for a fresh start. Located on the ...more
    Literary Fiction
    Bellevue: A Medical Thriller
    by Robin Cook
    G.P. Putnam's Sons, 12/03/2024
     
    Twenty-three-year-old Michael "Mitt" Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly three-hundred-year-old, iconic ...more
    Thrillers
    CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman
    by Patrick Hutchison
    St. Martin's Press, 12/03/2024
     
    Wit's End isn't just a state of mind. It's the name of a gravel road, the address of a run-down off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-...more
    Biography/Memoir
     Debut Author
    Dust: A Novel
    by Alison Stine
    Wednesday Books, 12/03/2024
     
    After her father has a premonition, Thea and her family move to the Bloodless Valley of southern Colorado, hoping to make a fresh start. But the ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film
    by Julie Gilbert
    Pantheon Books, 12/03/2024
     
    The stupendous publication of Edna Ferber's Giant in 1952 set off a storm of protest over the novel's portrayal of Texas manners, money and mores with...more
    Biography/Memoir
    I Might Be in Trouble
    by Daniel Aleman
    Grand Central Publishing, 12/03/2024
     
    A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Thrillers
     Debut Author
    In Our Midst
    by Nancy Jensen
    Dzanc Books, 12/03/2024
     
    Nina and Otto Aust, along with their teenage sons, feel the foundation of their American lives crumbling when, in the middle of the annual St. Nikolas...more
    Historical Fiction
    Kingdom of No Tomorrow
    by Fabienne Josaphat
    Algonquin Books, 12/03/2024
     
    Nettie Boileau joins the Black Panthers' Free Health Clinics in Oakland in 1968 and is soon swept up in an all-consuming love affair with Melvin ...more
    Historical Fiction
    Rental House: A Novel
    by Weike Wang
    Riverhead Books, 12/03/2024
     
    Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru's strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection ("To use...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    Sister Snake: A Novel
    by Amanda Lee Koe
    Ecco, 12/03/2024
     
    Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Literary Fiction
    The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever
    by Lydia Reeder
    St. Martin's Press, 12/03/2024
     
    After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to ...more
    Biography/Memoir
    The Memory Library
    by Kate Storey
    Avon Books, 12/03/2024
     
    For forty-two years, Sally Harrison has been building a library.

    Each year, on her daughter's birthday, she adds a new book to her shelves –...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Peculiar Garden of Harriet Hunt: A Novel
    by Chelsea Iversen
    Sourcebooks Landmark, 12/03/2024
     
    Harriet Hunt is completely alone. Her father disappeared months ago, leaving her to wander the halls of Sunnyside house, dwelling on a past she'd ...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Rivals: A Novel
    by Jane Pek
    Vintage, 12/03/2024
     
    Claudia Lin—mystery novel superfan and, until recently, clichéd underemployed English major—has scored her dream job: co-running ...more
    Mysteries
    The Shutouts: A Novel
    by Gabrielle Korn
    St. Martin's Press, 12/03/2024
     
    The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    The Voyage Home: Women of Troy #3
    by Pat Barker
    Doubleday, 12/03/2024
     
    I never saw Cassandra as a victim. I saw a woman as focused on a single aim as any raptor stooping to its prey; but then, I had more opportunities to ...more
    Historical Fiction
    The World With Its Mouth Open
    by Zahid Rafiq
    Tin House Books, 12/03/2024
     
    From a shopkeeper's encounter with a mannequin, to an expectant mother walking on a precarious road, to a young boy wavering between dreams and ...more
    Short Stories
     Debut Author
    This Plague of Souls
    by Mike McCormack
    Soho Press, 12/03/2024
     
    Nealon returns from prison to his house in the West of Ireland to find it empty. No heat or light, no sign of his wife or child. It is as if the world...more
    Thrillers
    When the Mapou Sings
    by Nadine Pinede
    Candlewick Press, 12/03/2024
     
    Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to...more
    Poetry & Novels in Verse
    Woo Woo: A Novel
    by Ella Baxter
    Catapult, 12/03/2024
     
    Woo Woo follows Sabine, a conceptual artist on the verge of a photo exhibition she hopes will be pivotal, as she plunges deeper into her neuroses and ...more
    Literary Fiction
    A Monsoon Rising: A Novel
    by Thea Guanzon
    Harper Voyager, 12/10/2024
     
    After a lifetime of war, Alaric and Talasyn were thrust into an alliance between their homelands that was supposed to end the fighting; however, being...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    No Place to Bury the Dead: A Novel
    by Karina Sainz Borgo
    HarperVia, 12/10/2024
     
     In an unnamed Latin American country, a mysterious plague quickly spreads, erasing the memory of anyone infected. Angustias Romero flees with ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Door-to-Door Bookstore: A Novel
    by Carsten Henn
    Hanover Square Press, 12/10/2024
     
    Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff delivers his books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Prisoner of Ankara: A Novel
    by Suat Dervis
    Other Press, 12/10/2024
     
    Dreaming of a better life for her son, Vasfi's mother encourages him to attend medical school, so he can become a great doctor. But Vasfi's ...more
    Literary Fiction
    The Rest Is Memory: A Novel
    by Lily Tuck
    Liveright/W.W. Norton, 12/10/2024
     
    First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy's motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines...more
    Critics' Consensus:

    Historical Fiction
    What the Woods Took: A Novel
    by Courtney Gould
    Wednesday Books, 12/10/2024
     
    Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it ...more
    Thrillers
    How to Be Heard
    by Roxane Gay
    Harper, 12/15/2024
     
    All writing advice is terrible, Roxane Gay states early in How to Be Heard. And still, with her latest book, she steps forward with practical writing ...more
    Essays
    After the Ocean
    by Lauren E. Rico
    Kensington Publishing, 12/24/2024
     
    Thirty years ago, musicians Emilia Oliveras and Paul Winstead were married in Puerto Rico. Forty-eight hours later, Paul vanished from their honeymoon...more
    Literary Fiction
    Heavenly Tyrant: Iron Widow #2
    by Xiran Jay Zhao
    Tundra Books, 12/24/2024
     
    After suffering devastating loss and making drastic decisions, Zetian finds herself on the seat of power in Huaxia, but she has also learned that her ...more
    Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
    Knife Skills for Beginners
    by Orlando Murrin
    Kensington Publishing, 12/24/2024
     
    "Some people are natural dancers, others marvelous in bed, but—not wishing to boast—I'm good with a knife. Most chefs are."

    The ...more
    Mysteries
     Debut Author
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