Literairyland: March 19-25, 2024

This week's hottest new books, writer birthdays, and more

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This week’s email includes 21 hot 🔥 new books.

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This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Logline: For fans of Never Let Me Go and My Dark Vanessa, a powerful, provocative novel about the relationship between a female robot and her human owner, exploring questions of intimacy, power, autonomy, and control.

Publisher: Mariner Books

Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash

Logline: For readers of Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh comes a brilliant, deliriously entertaining novel from the acclaimed author of Honor Girl. Rainbow Black is part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story--set against the '90s Satanic Panic and spanning 20 years in the life of a young woman pulled into its undertow.

Publisher: Harper Perennial

The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian

Logline: THE PRINCESS IS FAKE. THE MURDERS ARE REAL - From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness, a Princess Diana impersonator and her estranged sister find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of money and murder in this twisting tale of organized crime, cryptocurrency, and family secrets on the Las Vegas strip.

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Science Fiction

Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

Logline: This cozy science fiction novel tells a story of misfits, rebels, found family--and a mystery that spans the stars.

Publisher: Daw Books

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley

Logline: A compulsively readable queer sci-fi novel about a marriage of convenience between a Mars politician and an Earth refugee.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Fantasy

The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

Logline: The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s Appalachia.

Publisher: Tor.com

Romance

Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle

Logline: From the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes a love story that will define a generation. Being single is like playing the lottery. There's always the chance that with one piece of paper you could win it all.

Publisher: Atria Books

Historical

The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird

Logline: A "delicious" (Rebecca Makkai) and "deeply compelling" (Lauren Groff) debut novel set at a 1950s Reno "divorce ranch," about the complex friendship between two women who dare to imagine a different future.

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Literary

The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

Logline: A startling, erotic novel about the need to balance care for others with care for one's self.

Publisher: Graywolf Press

James by Percival Everett

Logline: A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view - From the "literary icon" (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the basis for Cord Jefferson's critically acclaimed film American Fiction.

Publisher: Doubleday Books

The Morningside by Téa Obreht

Logline: From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, a sweeping novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and wondrous tales of a world both fallen and new.

Publisher: Random House

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko

Logline: The award-winning author of The Leavers offers a visionary novel of friendship, art, and ambition that asks: What is the value of a meaningful life?

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Young Adult and Coming of Age

Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Logline: In Where Sleeping Girls Lie -- a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades -- a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears.

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Logline: Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia--and self-expression as an act of survival--in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse.

Publisher: Candlewick Press

This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Nonfiction

Memoir

One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford

Logline: The compelling true story behind the testimony that awed the nation.

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Notes from the Henhouse: On Marrying a Poet, Raising Children and Chickens, and Writing by Elspeth Barker

Logline: A sharp and witty collection of autobiographical essays by the late Elspeth Barker--acclaimed journalist and author of the beloved modern classic O Caledonia.

Publisher: Scribner Book Company

Biography

Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr

Logline: From the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar Candy Darling.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Gender Studies

Who's Afraid of Gender? By Judith Butler

Logline: From a global icon, a bold, essential account of how a fear of gender is fueling reactionary politics around the world.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

African American Studies

The Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates

Logline: A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history.

Publisher: Penguin Press

Reviews:
Kirkus

Nature

Secrets of the Octopus by Sy Montgomery

Logline: Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature's most intelligent and complex animals.

Publisher: National Geographic Society

Religion

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon

Logline: The first definitive book that names the massive social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Poetry

A Year of Last Things: Poems by Michael Ondaatje

Logline: From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

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Bookish Trivia 🤔

Friday is poet Billy Collins's birthday. In what years did he serve as U.S. poet laureate?

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This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events

March 19

  • William Allingham

  • James Redfield

  • Philip Roth

  • Irving Wallace

March 20

  • Anne Bradstreet

  • Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  • Lois Lowry

  • Hugh MacLennan

  • David Malouf

  • Mary Roach

  • Rosemary Timperley

March 21

  • Michael Foreman

  • Phyllis McGinley

  • Jean Paul

  • David Wisniewski

March 22

  • Billy Collins

  • Louis L'Amour

  • Nicholas Monsarrat

  • James Patterson

  • Leslie Thomas

March 23

  • Virginia and Leonard Woolf start Hogarth Press (1917)

  • Louis Adamic

  • Josef Čapek

  • Roger Martin du Gard

  • Thakin Kodaw Hmaing

  • Kim Stanley Robinson

  • Frank Sargeson

  • Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  • Ahdaf Soueif

  • Gary Whitehead

March 24

  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  • Matilda Joslyn Gage

  • Donald Hamilton

  • Silas Hocking

  • Tabitha King

  • Olive Schreiner

  • Mary Stolz

March 25

  • Toni Cade Bambara

  • Susie Bright

  • Kate DiCamillo

  • Penelope Gilliatt

  • Stephen Hunter

  • Flannery O'Connor

  • Paul Scott

  • Mary Webb

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