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- Literairyland: Feb. 13-19, 2024
Literairyland: Feb. 13-19, 2024
This week's hottest new books, writer birthdays, and more.
Nicholas Barron
February 13, 2024
Welcome to Literairyland, your list of this week's new books and writer birthdays. Subscribe today and get Literairyland in your inbox every Tuesday!
This week’s email includes 21 hot new books.
Table of Contents
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This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Fiction
Thriller
Kingpin by Mike Lawson
Logline: The latest pulse-pounding thriller from Edgar and Barry Award finalist Mike Lawson starring his beloved Washington DC "troubleshooter" Joe DeMarco.
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Reviews:
Kirkus
Historical
A Wild and Heavenly Place by Robin Oliveira
Logline: From the New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Mary Sutter comes a sweeping story of star-crossed lovers and the birth of Seattle.
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Romance
Sex, Lies and Sensibility by Nikki Payne
Logline: Two sisters roll up their sleeves to run a dilapidated inn but must learn to work with the locals in this deliciously spicy novel inspired by Sense and Sensibility.
Publisher: Berkley Books
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
PhDiva
Not Your Crush's Cauldron by April Asher
Logline: In April Asher's next Supernatural Singles novel, Not Your Crush's Cauldron, a buttoned-up witch takes a stroll on the wildish side, sparking an alert that lands her a familiar Guardian Angel.
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Fantasy
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
Logline: During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Projections by S.E. Porter
Logline: S. E. Porter, critically-acclaimed YA author of Vassa in the Night, bursts onto the adult fantasy scene with her adult novel that is sure to appeal to fans of Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville.
Publisher: Tor Books
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
Logline: In the long-awaited debut novel from bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle.
Publisher: Random House
Coming of Age/Young Adult
The Fortune Seller by Rachel Kapelke-Dale
Logline: Yellowjackets meets The Cloisters in this beguiling coming-of-age story about class, reinvention, and destiny, set against the backdrop of two mysterious deaths.
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
This Day Changes Everything by Edward Underhill
Logline: Dash & Lily meets Ferris Bueller's Day Off in Edward Underhill's new whirlwind rom-com about two queer teens who spend one life-changing day together in New York City.
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
BookPage
Literary
Leaving by Roxana Robinson
Logline: What risks would you be willing to take to fall in love again?
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks
Logline: How much of their lineage is one family willing to unearth in order to participate in the nation's first federal reparations program?
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
BookPage
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
Logline: Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking . . .
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
BookPage
Short Stories
Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver
Logline: A bold and haunting debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism from Diane Oliver, a missing figure in the canon of twentieth-century African American literature, with an introduction by Tayari Jones.
Publisher: Grove Press
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly
The Guardian
LGBT
No One Dies Yet by Kobby Ben Ben
Logline: A genre-breaking novel from a powerful new African voice.
Publisher: Europa Editions
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly
The Guardian
This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Nonfiction
Memoir
Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun
Logline: A gripping memoir of one woman's self-discovery inside a top Wall Street firm, and an urgent indictment of privilege, extreme wealth, and work culture.
Publisher: Penguin Press
Reviews:
Kirkus
I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante
Logline: An iconic writer's lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was.
Publisher: Penguin Press
What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life by Billy Dee Williams
Logline: A film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades--a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, from Brian's Song to Lando in the Star Wars universe--unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed.
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Sociology
The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor by Hamilton Nolan
Logline: A timely, in-depth, and vital exploration of the American labor movement and its critical place in our society and politics, from acclaimed labor reporter Hamilton Nolan.
Publisher: Hatchette Books
Immigration
A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging by Lauren Markham
Logline: 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 exclusion and demonization of migrants today?
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Film
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter
Logline: An award-winning writer reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the provocative play, the groundbreaking film it became, and how two iconic stars changed the image of marriage forever.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
History
Logline: Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family―the climax of a yearslong project.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Reviews:
Kirkus
The Washington Post
Bookish Trivia 🤔
This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events
February 13
Friedrich Christian Delius
Eleanor Farjeon
Leo Frankowski
Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Peter Heller
Ivan Krylov
Kate Roberts
Georges Simenon
William Sleator
February 14 ❤️
Zora Neale Hurston’s and Langston Hughes’s play "Mule Bone" opens in New York (1991)
Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn expelled from U.S.S.R. (1974)
Frederick Douglass
Frank Harris
A.M. Klein
Israel Zangwill
February 15
Jens Baggesen
Norman Bridwell
Jo Clayton
Jack Dann
Bruce Dawe
Gregory Mcdonald
Sax Rohmer
February 16
Aharon Appelfeld
Paul Bailey
Iain Banks
Richard Ford
Nigel Hamilton
Vyacheslav Ivanov
Nikolai Leskov
Octave Mirbeau
Hal Porter
Peter Porter
February 17
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
William Bronk
Sadegh Hedayat
Andre Norton
Chaim Potok
Ruth Rendell
Margaret Truman
Mo Yan
February 18
Sholem Aleichem
A.R. Ammons
Jean M. Auel
André Breton
Helen Gurley Brown
Hedwig Courths-Mahler
Nikos Kazantzakis
Audre Lorde
Toni Morrison
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Wallace Stegner
February 19 🇺🇸
Kay Boyle
Terry Carr
Stephen Dobyns
Helen Fielding
Laurell K. Hamilton
Havank
Homer Hickam
Jeff Kinney
Jonathan Lethem
Carson McCullers
Ryū Murakami
Yury Olesha
Giorgos Seferis
Frederick Seidel
Adolf Rudnicki
Amy Tan
See you next week!
