Books

Window Shopping

Tessa Bailey already releases two books a year (we loved both of 2024’s offerings), but demand for the rom-com queen’s work is so fervent that Avon has had to start printing the author’s previously self-published works to keep up! Those who fell in love with Window Shopping in 2021 will soon be able to snag an adorable new edition, and newcomers to decorator Stella’s romance with a dashing department store owner should prepare to be swept away.

Women’s Hotel

By Daniel M. Lavery

Through sentences of remarkable elegance, humor and complexity of phrase, former Slate advice columnist and cofounder of The Toast Daniel M. Lavery vividly imagines a 1960s women’s hotel in his debut novel.

When the World Tips Over

By Jandy Nelson

Beloved for The Sky is Everywhere (which received an A24-produced film adaptation in 2022) and I’ll Give You the Sun, Printz Award-winner Jandy Nelson is back with When the World Tips Over, which brings readers to California wine country, where the three Fall siblings, still affected by the loss of their father years prior, have a life-changing encounter with a mysterious rainbow-haired girl.

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

By Alan Bradley

In Alan Bradley’s 11th mystery starring preteen sleuth Flavia de Luce, the chemistry prodigy faces murder by mushroom and her own impending adulthood.

The Wedding Witch

By Erin Sterling

Erin Sterling’s two previous witchy love stories are some of the most acclaimed of the current paranormal romance boom. Her highly anticipated third romance, The Wedding Witch, will provide a welcome bit of spooky fun amid the annual blizzard of holiday romances. Taking place during a (literal) Yuletide wedding at an isolated Welsh estate, The Wedding Witch follows Bowen Penhallow and Tamsyn Bligh, two guests who are accidentally transported back to 1958 when a spell goes wrong. That’s right: It’s a witchy, midcentury, Christmas rom-com! Bless you, Erin Sterling.

Want

By Gillian Anderson

Gillian Anderson asked women to send her their sexual fantasies. The result is a provocative, original volume that will help women and genderqueer people feel more empowered and less ashamed.

Under Loch and Key

By Lana Ferguson

Here’s the thing about Lana Ferguson: She can take tropes and concepts that seemingly belong only in the more scandalous corners of BookTok, and somehow make them seem like the most natural thing in the world. This is the woman who made a romance between a nanny and her boss into an ode to sex positivity and emotional maturity, the genius who decided to make an omegaverse fake-dating rom-com. Ferguson turning her particular set of skills to what looks for all the world to be a Loch Ness Monster-shifter romance? The exact sort of insane perfection we’ve come to expect.

Twenty-Four Seconds from Now . . .

By Jason Reynolds

The National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature from 2020-2022 and winner of the Kirkus Prize (among countless other accolades), Jason Reynolds promises to charm readers with his usual sweet, exuberant prose in the story of Neon, a teenager facing his first time. Judy Blume has already chimed in to give her approval, calling this novel “fresh from start to finish.”

To Kill a Badger

By Shelly Laurenston

It has been three long years since one of Shelly Laurenston’s gleefully deranged, gloriously violent shifter romances graced shelves, and at long last, a new honey badger heroine awaits us. Nelle Zhao might not be as outgoing as her fellow honey badger shifters, but she’s just as chaotic and indomitable. So even though tiger shifter Keane Malone has announced that he’s going to take on a trafficking ring all by himself, Nelle’s definitely going with him, no matter what he says.

The Thirteenth Child

By Erin A. Craig

Erin A. Craig is a master at developing her characters, giving them real-world obstacles to work through while adding a hint of magic to keep readers on their toes.

There Are Rivers in the Sky

By Elif Shafak

In Elif Shafak’s spellbinding novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, a single drop of water falls and regenerates and falls again across continents and centuries, touching four lives linked by the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Spectacular

Illustrated by Rosie Fowinkle

Stephanie Garber gives fans of the wildly popular Caraval series plenty to rejoice over this holiday season with Spectacular, a novella that brings back beloved characters as they prepare to celebrate the Great Holiday. Garber promises whimsy and magic in this new adventure illustrated by Rosie Fowinkle.