Literairyland: Feb. 27-March 4, 2024

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

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This week’s email includes 20 hot 🔥 new books.

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This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Fiction

Thriller

Dark Arena: The Frenchman Returns by Jack Beaumont

Logline: A high-stakes thriller that could be ripped from today's headlines--from the bestselling author of The Frenchman.

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Fantasy

A Fate Inked in Blood: Book One of the Saga of the Unfated by Danielle L. Jensen

Logline: A shield maiden blessed by the gods battles to unite a nation under a power-hungry king--while fighting her growing desire for his fiery son--in the first book of a Norse-inspired fantasy romance duology from the bestselling author of The Bridge Kingdom series.

Publisher: Del Rey Books

Where the Dark Stands Still by A.B. Prank

Logline: A girl with dangerous magic makes a risky bargain with a demon to be free of her monstrous power in this young adult fantasy perfect for fans of An Enchantment of Ravens and House of Salt and Sorrows.

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Romance

The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest

Logline: Two former high school sweethearts get a second chance in this marriage of convenience romance by Kristina Forest, author of The Neighbor Favor.

Publisher: Berkley Books

Right on Cue by Falon Ballard

Logline: From the beloved author of Just My Type and Lease on Love comes a new romantic comedy in which a former actress-turned-screenwriter finds herself back in the spotlight, only for her romantic lead to be the one man she can't stand.

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Historical

The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Logline: A gripping historical novel about a spirited girl who joins a sisterhood working to undermine the Confederates--from the award-winning author of We Cast a Shadow.

Publisher: One World

The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes

Logline: A "beautifully written" (Hilary Mantel) story of love, madness, sisterly devotion, and control, about the two beloved daughters of renowned 1700s English painter Thomas Gainsborough, who struggle to live up to the perfect image the world so admired in their portraits.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Literary

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Logline: A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Logline: An astonishing novel about a young microbiologist investigating an unfathomable deep vent in the ocean floor, leading her on a journey that will encompass the full trajectory of the cosmos and the passage of a single human life.

Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Logline: For fans of Never Let Me Go and The Giver, an elegant and exhilarating literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future, and a young girl who spots two elderly visitors from across the border: the grieving parents of the boy she loves.

Publisher: Atria Books

After Annie by Anna Quindlen

Logline: Anna Quindlen's trademark wisdom on family, friendship, and the ties that bind us are at the center of this novel about the power of love to transcend loss and triumph over adversity, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs and One True Thing.

Publisher: Random House

This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Nonfiction

Memoir

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley

Logline: Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley's memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.

Publisher: MCD

Whiskey Tender: A Memoir by Deborah Taffa

Logline: Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.

Publisher: Harper

American Negra: A Memoir by Natasha S. Alford

Logline: Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of Syracuse, NY.

Publisher: Harper

Reviews:
Kirkus

Social Science

Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm by Emmeline Clein

Logline: A personal and cultural look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating they've wrought.

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson

Logline: A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Biography

American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden by Katie Rogers

Logline: The first definitive exploration of the changing role of the twenty-first-century First Lady, painting a comprehensive portrait of Jill Biden--from a White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture by Tricia Romano

Logline: A rollicking history of America's most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers.

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn

Logline: The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America's greatest writers, based on newly available letters and journals.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Technology

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Logline: From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Bookish Trivia 🤔

A new biography of the writer Carson McCullers is out today. What was McCullers' name when she was born in 1917 in Columbus, Ga.?

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This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events

February 27

  • Kenneth Koch

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  • John Steinbeck

February 28

  • Calum McCann

  • Stephen Spender

  • Walter Tevis

February 29

  • Howard Nemerov

March 1

  • Richard Wright's Native Son is published (1940)

  • Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  • Nevada Barr

  • Jim Crace

  • Robert Hass

  • William Dean Howells

  • Robert Lowell

  • Richard Wilbur

March 2

  • Sholem Aleichem

  • John Jay Chapman

  • John Howard Finder

  • Theodor Geisel

  • John Irving

  • Peter Straub

  • Tom Wolfe

March 3

  • Stephen Budiansky

  • Ron Chernow

  • Artur Lundkvist

  • James Merrill

March 4

  • Takeo Arishima

  • Giorgio Bassani

  • Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

  • Katherine Center

  • Meindert DeJong

  • William Deverell

  • Jacques Dupin

  • James Ellroy

  • Barbara Newhall Follett

  • Khaled Hosseini

  • Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  • Francis King

  • Enrique Larreta

  • David Plante

  • Emilio Prados

  • Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo

  • Alan Sillitoe

  • Thomas Sigismund Stribling

  • Daniel Woodrell

  • Richard B. Wright

  • Johann Rudolf Wyss

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