Literairyland: April 2-8, 2024

This weeks hot 🔥 new books, writer birthdays, and more

Author

Nicholas Barron
April 02, 2024

Welcome to Literairyland, your list of this week's hottest new books and writer birthdays. Subscribe today and get Literairyland in your inbox every Tuesday!

This week's email includes 19 hot new books.

Table of Contents

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This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Fiction

Mystery & Thriller

The Murder of Mr. Ma by SJ Rohan and John Shen Yen Nee

Logline: For fans of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, this stunning, swashbuckling series opener by a powerhouse duo of authors is at once comfortingly familiar and tantalizingly new.

Publisher: Soho Crime

Dystopian

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

Logline: A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times bestselling, award-winning and "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) author of Peace Like a River Leif Enger.

Publisher: Grove Press

Horror

The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories, edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell

Logline: A YA anthology of horror stories centering Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, and who survive to the end.

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Romance

Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun

Logline: The author of the "sexy, insightful, and utterly charming" (BuzzFeed) Kiss Her Once for Me returns with a new queer rom-com following once childhood best friends forced together to drive their former teacher across the country.

Publisher: Atria Books

The Rule Book by Sarah Adams

Logline: College exes break all the rules when they reunite years later in this enemies to lovers, second-chance romance, the highly anticipated companion novel to the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet--from the New York Times bestselling author of Practice Makes Perfect.

Publisher: Dell

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza

Logline: From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Jo Piazza, comes a transporting novel rooted in the author's own family history about a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect . . .

Publisher: Dutton

Literary

The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Logline: Literary icon Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Village Weavers by Myriam J.A. Chancy

Logline: From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families--forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets--and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken.

Publisher: Tin House Books

Short Stories

Table for Two by Amor Towles

Logline: From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories, including a novella featuring one of his most beloved characters.

Publisher: Viking

Coming of Age

A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke

Logline: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets Life of Pi in this dazzlingly epic debut that charts the incredible, adventurous life of one woman as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving.

Publisher: Avid Reader Press

This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Nonfiction

Memoir

We Loved It All: A Memory of Life by Lydia Millet

Logline: 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, her first nonfiction book, combines the precision of fact with the power of narrative to evoke our enmeshment with the more-than-human world.

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company

Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World by Rae Wynn-Grant

Logline: In this vulnerable and urgent memoir, Rae Wynn-Grant explores the ever-shifting relationship between humans, animals, and the earth through her personal journey to becoming a wildlife ecologist.

Publisher: Zando

Sociopath by Patric Gagne

Logline: A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the author's struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Essays

Like Love: Essays and Conversations by Maggie Nelson

Logline: A career-spanning collection of inspiring, revelrous essays about art and artists.

Publisher: Graywolf Press

History

Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Spies, Murder, and Justice in Northern Ireland by Henry Hemming

Logline: Four Shots in the Night is the story of a political murder: the killing of an IRA member turned British informant.

Publisher: PublicAffairs

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

Logline: The remarkable story of a hidden New Deal program that tried to change America and end the Great Depression using folk music, laying the groundwork for the folk revival and having a lasting impact on American culture.

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Public Policy

City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways by Megan Kimble

Logline: An eye-opening investigation into how our ever-expanding urban highways accelerated inequality and fractured communities--and a call for a more just, sustainable path forward.

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Astrophysics

Still As Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow by Christopher Cokinos

Logline: The remarkable story of a hidden New Deal program that tried to change America and end the Great Depression using folk music, laying the groundwork for the folk revival and having a lasting impact on American culture.

Publisher: Pegasus Books

Reviews:
Kirkus

This Week’s Hot 🔥 New Poetry

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón

Logline: Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by fifty of our most celebrated contemporary writers.

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Bookish Trivia 🤔

Monday is Nnedi Okorafor's birthday. What's the title of her debut novel?

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This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events

April 2

  • Hans Christian Andersen

  • Francisco Balagtas

  • Ed Dorn

  • George MacDonald Fraser

  • György Konrád

  • Scott Lynch

  • Daniel Okrent

  • J.C. Squire

  • Sue Townsend

  • Joan D. Vinge

  • Anne Waldman

  • Émile Zola

April 3

  • John Burroughs

  • Arlette Cousture

  • Dorothy Eden

  • Edward Everett Hale

  • George Herbert

  • Daniel Hoffman

  • Washington Irving

April 4

  • Winston Smith's first diary entry in 1984

  • Maya Angelou

  • Bettina von Arnim

  • Makhanlal Chaturvedi

  • Marguerite Duras

  • Remy de Gourmont

  • Paulette Jiles

  • Elizabeth Levy

  • Sigurd F. Olson

  • Thomas Mayne Reid

  • Johanna Reiss

  • Dan Simmons

  • György Spiró

  • William Strachey

  • Owen Suffolk

  • Đặng Thân

  • Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin

  • Ned Vizzini

  • Stanley G. Weinbaum

  • Emmett Williams

  • Malik Yusef

April 5

  • Robert Bloch

  • Hugo Claus

  • Richard Eberhart

  • Arthur Hailey

  • Anthony Horowitz

  • István Örkény

  • Richard Peck

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne

April 6

  • Oscar Wilde is arrested on indecency charges (1895)

  • Homero Aridjis

  • Graeme Base

  • Vince Flynn

  • Stanislas de Guaita

  • Douglas Hill

  • Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

  • Lowell Thomas

  • Aasmund Olavsson Vinje

April 7

  • Donald Barthelme

  • Robert Charroux

  • Herménégilde Chiasson

  • Iris Johansen

  • Raymond P. Holden

  • Henry Kuttner

  • Roger Lemelin

  • Gabriela Mistral

  • Julia Phillips

  • Johannes Mario Simmel

  • William Wordsworth

April 8

  • Margaret Ayer Barnes

  • John Fante

  • James Herbert

  • Seymour Hersh

  • Greg Iles

  • Momo Kapor

  • Barbara Kingsolver

  • Nnedi Okorafor

  • Glendon Swarthout

  • Peter Telep

  • Miller Williams

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