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- Literairyland: Feb. 6-12, 2024
Literairyland: Feb. 6-12, 2024
This week's hottest new books, writer birthdays, and more.
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 17 hot new books.
Hi There,
As someone born two weeks after his due date, I realize it isn't easy to pick a specific day to have a baby.
But if you want your kid to become a successful author, you might give it a shot and aim for Feb. 8. That's the birthday of five well-known writers: Elizabeth Bishop, Neal Cassady, John Grisham, Henry Roth, and Jules Verne.
Now, it's not uncommon for two or three renowned writers to share a birthday. But five? That's as rare as a short Stephen King novel.
As we do every week, below is a list of this week's writers' birthdays and notable literary historical events. And, of course, we have a list of this week's most talked about new books.
Thanks for reading,
Nick
Table of Contents
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
Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra
Logline: A razor-sharp thriller about a mother forced to the breaking point when her life and the lives of her children are threatened by an intruder.
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield
Logline: In the vein of Get Out and Razorblade Tears, a feast of noir fiction and probing social commentary that asks us to consider what would happen if reparations were finally charged and exacted.
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Science Fiction
Logline: A novel that celebrates radical queer survival and gleefully takes a hammer to false notions of success.
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Fantasy
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
Logline: A Holmes and Watson-style detective duo take the stage in this fantasy with a mystery twist, from the Edgar-winning, multiple Hugo-nominated Robert Jackson Bennett.
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Geekly
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by Gennarose Nethercott
Logline: From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us--or go monstrously wrong.
Publisher: Vintage
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Romance
A Love Song For Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Logline: In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art, and magic of Harlem.
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Literary
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca Reilly
Logline: For fans of Schitt's Creek and Sally Rooney's Normal People, an irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love.
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Logline: From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women--at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Redwood Court by Délana R.A. Dameron
Logline: A breathtaking debut about one unforgettable Southern Black family, seen through the eyes of its youngest daughter as she comes of age in the 1990s.
Publisher: Dial Press
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
Logline: From "one of the most original minds in contemporary literature" (Nick Hornby) the bestselling and award-winning author of Golden Hill delivers a noirish detective novel set in the 1920s that reimagines how American history would be different if, instead of being decimated, indigenous populations had thrived.
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Young Adult
Out of Body by Mia Davenport
Logline: A high-stakes, propulsive YA thriller with a body-swap twist thoughtfully exploring themes of friendship and identity, perfect for fans of Tiffany D. Jackson.
Publisher: HarperTeen
Reviews:
Kirkus
Anthology
Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel by Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, and The Authors Guild
Logline: Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice--from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.
Publisher: Harper
Reviews:
Kirkus
The Guardian
Datebook
This Week’s Hottest 🔥 New Nonfiction
Memoir
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker
Logline: The New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork takes readers on another fascinating, hilarious, and revelatory journey--this time burrowing deep inside the impassioned, secretive world of art and artists.
Publisher: Viking
Essays
Dinner on Monster Island: Essays by Tania de Rozario
Logline: In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Biography
Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid
Logline: The host of MSNBC's The ReidOut and New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Sold America traces the extraordinary lives and legacy of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers, situating Medgar Evers's assassination as a catalyzing moment in American history.
Publisher: Mariner Books
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Black Studies
Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation by Marcus Hunter
Logline: A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue.
Publisher: Amistad Press
Reviews:
Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
Bookish Trivia 🤔
Both Judy Blume's and Elizabeth Bishop's birthdays occur this week. In what Florida city does Blume live today, and where Bishop called home in the 1930s and 1940s? |
This Week’s Literary Birthdays & Events
February 6
Lothar-Günther Buchheim
Ugo Foscolo
Irmgard Keun
John Henry Mackay
Christopher Marlowe
José María de Pereda
Michael Pollan
Anne Spencer
Jin Yong
February 7
Charles Dickens publishes "Sketches by Boz" (1836)
A Swiss newspaper publishes Else Lasker-Schüler's “Mein blaues Klavier" ("My Blue Piano") (1943)
Ashok Banker
Charles Dickens
Karen Joy Fowler
Hazel Hall
David Ignatow
Sinclair Lewis
Emma McLaughlin
Sy Montgomery
Brian Morton
Ricardo Palma
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Gay Talese
February 8
Elizabeth Bishop
Neal Cassady
John Grisham
Henry Roth
Jules Verne
February 9
George Ade
Amy Lowell
Brendan Behan
Thomas Bernhard
J.M. Coetzee
Anthony Hope
Natsume Sōseki
James Stephens
Alice Walker
Vasily Zhukovsky
February 10
Alexander Pushkin killed in a duel (1837)
E.L. Konigsburg
Boris Pasternak
Howard Spring
Giuseppe Ungaretti
February 11
Elsa Beskow
Lydia Maria Child
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Daniel F. Galouye
Else Lasker-Schüler
Sidney Sheldon
Mo Willems
Jane Yolen
February 12
Judy Blume
Juanita Coulson
S. Foster Damon
Charles Darwin
R.F. Delderfield
Axel Jensen
George Meredith
Joan Murray
Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer
Janwillem van de Wetering
Jacqueline Woodson
Did you enjoy this issue of Literairyland? |