In Karla’s Choice, author Nick Harkaway ably updates his father’s iconic George Smiley novels while lovingly preserving the tone and mood of the original novels.
There is a LOT going on in Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone’s holiday rom-com series, A Christmas Notch, and all of it is great. Ready? The setting is the titular little town in Vermont, host to a cottage industry of both squeaky-clean and gloriously dirty holiday movies. The heroine is Sunny Palmer, Christmas Notch’s jack-of-all-trades who’s just sold her very first screenplay. The hero is Isaac Kelly, widower and former member of Ink, the once-popular boy band that the previous two male leads of the series also belonged to. While helping each other work through their respective creative dry spells, Sunny and Isaac find that they also work together in other ways (wink, wink).
Charlotte Stein delighted us with her Roy Kent-coded rom-com, When Grumpy Met Sunshine, and her follow-up sounds just as charming, albeit with a paranormal twist. Billed as “What We Do in the Shadows with the small town feels of Gilmore Girls,” How to Help a Hungry Werewolf follows Cassie and Seth, two ex-best friends who reconnect when Seth reveals that he’s a werewolf and he needs help from Cassie and her burgeoning magical powers.
Anna Montague explores friendship, aging, grief, regret and love with both creative and contemplative depth in her noteworthy debut, How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
We named The Puppets of Spelhorst one of our Best Middle Grade Books of 2023—which is why we can’t wait for two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo to return to her Norendy Tales series with The Hotel Balzaar. While her mother does housekeeping work at the Hotel Balzaar, Marta listens to seven tales told by an enigmatic countess with a parrot companion, all the while searching for clues that might lead to the truth behind her father’s disappearance.
Heir offers a welcome blend of mystique and weightiness—plus a dollop of romance—that will delight anyone seeking more complexity in young adult fantasy.
Attica Locke’s language is precise, refreshing and often beautiful in Guide Me Home, the final installment in the literary triumph that is her Highway 59 mystery series.
The Grey Wolf is far and away Louise Penny’s most ambitious mystery to date, landing Gamache and his team squarely into the middle of an ecoterrorism plot.
In her plucky, intimate memoir, Glory Edim, the creator of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, tethers the books and authors she has found and loved to her own rocky journey of self-discovery—it’s reader catnip.
Based on Jewish mythology concerning the dybbuk, a disembodied spirit that inhabits the body of a living person, The Forbidden Book is a fantastic coming-of-age tale with resonant political themes.
George M. Johnson made waves with their critically acclaimed debut, All Boys Aren’t Blue, which became a bestseller—as well as the second-most challenged book in the United States in 2022 and 2023. Their new young adult nonfiction book, Flamboyants, spotlights queer Black icons from the 1920s such as Zora Neale Hurston and Josephine Baker. The biographies are accentuated by colorful illustrations from Charly Palmer, winner of the 2018 Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Award.
Anyone suspicious of the luster of capitalism and its promises will find much to mull over in Entitlement, Rumaan Alam’s slyly provocative fourth novel.
Tales of child stardom are always juicy, and Ashley Spencer’s Disney High promises to poke many bears. Spencer investigates The Disney Channel’s early aughts, when kid actors like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers became celebrities, and the corporate powers that be made millions off their work. Expect private feuds, public meltdowns, on-set disasters and shady dealings.
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