Local: A Memoir
by
Jessica Machado
Little A, 01/01/2023
Born and raised in Hawai'i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Biography/Memoir
Debut Author
16 & Pregnant: A Novel
by
LaLa Thomas
MTV Books, 01/03/2023
Erykah was looking forward to junior year at East Prep High. She has a cute boyfriend, gets good grades, and has the best bestie. Money is tight, ...
more
In the Time of Our History
by
Susanne Pari
Kensington Publishing, 01/03/2023
Inspired by her own family's experiences after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Susanne Pari explores the entangled lives of an Iranian American family ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility
by
Martha C. Nussbaum
Simon & Schuster, 01/03/2023
Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction,...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Night Wherever We Go: A Novel
by
Tracey Rose Peyton
Ecco, 01/03/2023
On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Debut Author
Picture in the Sand: A Novel
by
Peter Blauner
Minotaur Books, 01/03/2023
When Alex Hassan gets accepted to an Ivy League university, his middle-class Egyptian-American family is filled with pride and excitement. But that ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
The Blackhouse: A Novel
by
Carole Johnstone
Scribner, 01/03/2023
A remote village. A deadly secret. An outsider who knows the truth.
Robert Reid moved his family to Scotland's Outer Hebrides in the 1990s, driven ...
more
Better the Blood
by
Michael Bennett
Atlantic Monthly Press, 01/10/2023
A tenacious Māori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression
by
Tina Post
New York University Press, 01/10/2023
Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness,
Deadpan tracks instances and meanings of deadpan&...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Debut Author
Friday I'm in Love
by
Camryn Garrett
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 01/10/2023
Mahalia Harris wants.
She wants a big Sweet Sixteen like her best friend, Naomi.
She wants the super-cute new girl Siobhan to like her back.
She ...
more
Ghost Music
by
An Yu
Grove Press, 01/10/2023
For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She gave up on her ...
more
Ghost Season: A Novel
by
Fatin Abbas
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/10/2023
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Hell Bent: Alex Stern Book 2
by
Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron Books, 01/10/2023
Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
In the Upper Country
by
Kai Thomas
Viking, 01/10/2023
Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Liar, Dreamer, Thief
by
Maria Dong
Grand Central Publishing, 01/10/2023
Katrina Kim may be broke, the black sheep of her family, and slightly unhinged, but she isn't a stalker. Her obsession with her co-worker, Kurt, is ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Thrillers
Debut Author
No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era
by
Jacqueline Jones
Basic Books, 01/10/2023
Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation's hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, however, the city was far from a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics
by
Anastasia C. Curwood
The University of North Carolina Press, 01/10/2023
Chisholm spent her formative years moving between Barbados and Brooklyn, and the development of her political orientation did not follow the standard ...
more
Shubeik Lubeik
by
Deena Mohamed
Pantheon Books, 01/10/2023
Three wishes that are sold at an unassuming kiosk in Cairo link Aziza, Nour, and Shokry, changing their perspectives as well as their lives. Aziza ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Graphic Novels
Debut Author
Small World: A Novel
by
Laura Zigman
Ecco, 01/10/2023
A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she's developed a ...
more
The Dream Builders
by
Oindrila Mukherjee
Tin House Books, 01/10/2023
After living in the US for years, Maneka Roy returns home to India to mourn the loss of her mother and finds herself in a new world. The booming city ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World
by
James Crawford
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/10/2023
Since the earliest known marker denoting the edge of one land and the beginning of the next―a stone column inscribed with Sumerian cuneiform&#...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise
by
Pico Iyer
Riverhead Books, 01/10/2023
Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World
by
Suzie Sheehy
Knopf, 01/10/2023
Physics has always sought to deepen our understanding of the nature of matter and the world around us. But how do you conduct experiments with the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
The Survivalists: A Novel
by
Kashana Cauley
Soft Skull Press, 01/10/2023
In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life—success—until she falls ...
more
We Are All So Good at Smiling
by
Amber McBride
Feiwel & Friends, 01/10/2023
Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the ...
more
A Guest at the Feast: Essays
by
Colm Toibin
Scribner, 01/17/2023
"IT ALL STARTED WITH MY BALLS." So begins Colm Tóibín's fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for...
more
And Finally: Matters of Life and Death
by
Henry Marsh
St. Martin's Press, 01/17/2023
As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer.
And ...more
As You Walk On By
by
Julian Winters
Viking Books for Younger Readers, 01/17/2023
Seventeen-year-old Theo Wright has it all figured out. His plan (well, more like his dad's plan) is a foolproof strategy that involves exceling at his...
more
Black and Female: Essays
by
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Graywolf Press, 01/17/2023
In
Black and Female, Tsitsi Dangarembga examines the legacy of imperialism on her own life and on every aspect of black embodied African life.
This...
more
Decent People
by
De'Shawn Charles Winslow
Bloomsbury Publishing, 01/17/2023
In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina, in 1976, Marian, Marva, and Lazarus Harmon - three enigmatic siblings -&#...
more
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel
by
Benjamin Stevenson
Mariner Books, 01/17/2023
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is the ...
more
Forbidden Notebook: A Novel
by
Alba de Céspedes
Astra House, 01/17/2023
In this modern translation by acclaimed Elena Ferrante translator Ann Goldstein,
Forbidden Notebook centers the inner life of a dissatisfied housewife...
more
I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction
by
Kidada E. Williams
Bloomsbury USA, 01/17/2023
The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Independence: A Novel
by
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
William Morrow, 01/17/2023
India, 1947.
In a rural village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor.
Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Jellyfish Age Backwards: Nature's Secrets to Longevity
by
Nicklas Brendborg
Little Brown & Company, 01/17/2023
Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of aging across the animal kingdom, and our own timeless quest for the ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
by
Ilyon Woo
Simon & Schuster, 01/17/2023
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
One Last Shot: Based on a True Story of Wartime Heroism: The Story of Wartime Photographer Gerda Taro
by
Kip Wilson
Versify, 01/17/2023
The daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gerta Pohorylle doesn't quite fit in with her German classmates. While she's away at boarding school, ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy
by
Laurent Richard, Sandrine Rigaud
Henry Holt and Company, 01/17/2023
Pegasus is widely regarded as the most effective and sought-after cyber-surveillance system on the market. The system's creator, the NSO Group, a ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Rikers: An Oral History
by
Graham Rayman
Random House, 01/17/2023
What happens when you pack almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams with society's cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill purposefully hidden from ...
more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Love of My Life: A Novel
by
Rosie Walsh
Penguin Books, 01/17/2023
Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she'd do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie.
...
more
The Sense of Wonder: A Novel
by
Matthew Salesses
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 01/17/2023
An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the ...
more
The Words That Remain
by
Stênio Gardel
New Vessel Press, 01/17/2023
A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cícero. But having grown up in an...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Sundressed: Natural Fabrics and the Future of Clothing
by
Lucianne Tonti
Island Press, 01/19/2023
For conscious consumers, buying clothes has never been more complicated. Even as fashion brands tout their sustainability, the industry is plagued by ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System
by
Jeff Hobbs
Scribner, 01/24/2023
There has been very little written about juvenile detention and the path to justice. For many kids, a mistake made at age thirteen or fourteen—...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Fieldwork: A Forager's Memoir
by
Iliana Regan
Agate Midway, 01/24/2023
Not long after Iliana Regan's celebrated debut,
Burn the Place, became the first food-related title in four decades to become a National Book Award ...
more
How Medicine Works and When it Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy
by
F. Perry Wilson MD
Grand Central Publishing, 01/24/2023
We live in an age of medical miracles. Never in the history of humankind has so much talent and energy been harnessed to cure disease. So why does it ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust
by
Richard Hurowitz
Harper, 01/24/2023
Less than a century ago, the Second World War took the lives of more than fifty million people; more than six million of them were systematically ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Margot: A Novel
by
Wendell Steavenson
W.W. Norton & Company, 01/24/2023
It's the mid-1950s and Margot Thornsen is growing up between a Park Avenue apartment in New York and her family's sumptuous Oyster Bay estate as the ...
more
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe
by
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Knopf, 01/24/2023
We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the "Old World" encountered the "New", when Christopher Columbus "discovered...
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Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Birthday Party
by
Laurent Mauvignier
Transit Books, 01/24/2023
Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: ...
more
The Buried and the Bound: The Buried and the Bound Trilogy # 1
by
Rochelle Hassan
Roaring Brook Press, 01/24/2023
As the only hedgewitch in Blackthorn, Massachusetts―an uncommonly magical place―Aziza El-Amin has bargained with wood nymphs, rescued palm...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Debut Author
The Chinese Groove: A Novel
by
Kathryn Ma
Counterpoint Press, 01/24/2023
Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father's ...
more
The End of Drum-Time: A Novel
by
Hanna Pylväinen
Henry Holt and Company, 01/24/2023
In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer...
more
The Faraway World: Stories
by
Patricia Engel
Avid Reader Press, 01/24/2023
Two Colombian expats meet as strangers on the rainy streets of New York City, both burdened with traumatic pasts. In Cuba, a woman discovers her ...
more
The Guest Lecture
by
Martin Riker
Grove Press, 01/24/2023
In a hotel room in the middle of the night, Abby, a young feminist economist, lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she ...
more
The Last Pomegranate Tree
by
Ali Bachtyar
Archipelago Books, 01/24/2023
"Whenever he told lies, the birds would fly away. It had been that way since he was a child. Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen."
...
more
The Twyford Code: A Novel
by
Janice Hallett
Atria Books, 01/24/2023
Forty years ago, Steven "Smithy" Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange ...
more
What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner
by
Dan Levitt
Harper, 01/24/2023
Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth's deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you've got enough ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Science, Health and the Environment
Debut Author
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
by
Siddharth Kara
St. Martin's Press, 01/31/2023
Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Collected Works
by
Lydia Sandgren
Astra House, 01/31/2023
Martin Berg's wife, Cecilia, disappeared years ago. His memories of their carefree college days seem ever out of reach, and the intellectual ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Literary Fiction
Debut Author
Heart Bones: A Novel
by
Colleen Hoover
Atria Books, 01/31/2023
After a childhood filled with poverty and neglect, Beyah Grim finally has her hard-earned ticket out of Kentucky with a full ride to Penn State. But ...
more
Romance
Maame: A Novel
by
Jessica George
St. Martin's Press, 01/31/2023
Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman.
It's fair to say that Maddie's life in London is far from rewarding. With a...
more
My Father's House: The Rome Escape Line Trilogy #1
by
Joseph O’Connor
Europa Editions, 01/31/2023
September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. Gestapo boss Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. Hunger is widespread. Rumors fester...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Historical Fiction
Play the Game
by
Charlene Allen
Katherine Tegan Books, 01/31/2023
In the game of life, sometimes other people hold all the controls. Or so it seems to VZ. Four months have passed since his best friend Ed was killed ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Mysteries
Debut Author
Promise Boys
by
Nick Brooks
Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 01/31/2023
The Urban Promise Prep School vows to turn boys into men. As students, J.B., Ramón, and Trey are forced to follow the prestigious "program's" ...
more
Quiet: Poems
by
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Knopf, 01/31/2023
How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn't silence? Where does quiet exist—and what liberating ...
more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
Reckoning
by
V (formerly Eve Ensler)
Bloomsbury USA, 01/31/2023
The newest book from V (formerly Eve Ensler),
Reckoning invites you to travel the journey of a writer's and activist's life and process over forty ...
more
Tomb of Sand: A Novel
by
Geetanjali Shree
HarperVia, 01/31/2023
"A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are. This particular tale has a border and women who come and go as ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Vampire Weekend: A Novel
by
Mike Chen
Mira Books, 01/31/2023
Everything you've heard about vampires is a lie. They can't fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ...
more
Critics' Consensus:
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
