Literairyland: Feb. 13-19, 2024

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

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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

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

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

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

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

Short Stories

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

LGBT

No One Dies Yet by Kobby Ben Ben

Logline: A genre-breaking novel from a powerful new African voice.

Publisher: Europa Editions

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

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

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh

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

Bookish Trivia 🤔

Tomorrow is the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. To what U.S. state did Solzhenitsyn move after being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974?

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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

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