Here are all the January 2024 Prepub Alerts in one place, plus a downloadable spreadsheet of all titles from every post.

Fiction

Mystery

Ailes, Kat. The Expectant Detectives. Minotaur. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250322708. $28. Downloadable. MYSTERY

Excited to have moved to a quaint village with partner Joe and expecting their first child, Alice is upended when a dead body is discovered at her prenatal class and she and her classmates are deemed suspects. So they join forces (along with Alice’s rambunctious dog, Helen) to discover the culprit. Cotswolds-based Ailes, who works in publishing as an editor, was short-listed for the Comedy Women in Print Prize for the opening chapters of this debut; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Brody, Kate. Rabbit Hole. Soho Crime. Jan. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781641294874. $25.95. MYSTERY

When Theodora “Teddy” Angstrom’s father dies by suicide, unreconciled to the long-ago disappearance of Teddy’s older sister Angie, Teddy learns that he’s been involved with a Reddit group obsessing over Angie and slides down the same rabbit hole herself. Soon, she’s losing all perspective, fixating on an amateur sleuth who wants to help her solve the case and determined to find Angie no matter what the cost. From debuter Brody.

Collins, Sarah-Jane. Radiant Heat. Berkley. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593550342. $27. MYSTERY

Having survived a forest fire that devastates the southeastern Australian state of Victoria by lying wrapped in wet woolen blankets on her bathroom floor, Alison stumbles outside to find a shiny red car in her driveway with a dead woman inside whose purse contains a crumbled piece of paper with Alison’s name and address. Alison doesn’t know her, but trouble will soon be coming her way. Award-winning Meanjin (Brisbane)–born, New York City–based writer/editor Collins looks promising; the publisher has bought up two of her titles.

Hastings, Anastasia. Of Hoaxes and Homicide. Minotaur. (Dear Miss Hermione, Bk. 2). Jan. 2023. 320p. ISBN 9781250848581. $28. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

In this follow-up to the nicely received Of Manners and Murder, Violet Manville, who’s taken over a popular Agony Aunt column written under the pseudonym Miss Hermione, receives a letter from a woman whose daughter has vanished into a cult called the Hermetic Order of the Children of Aed. What’s more, the daughter is best friends with Violet’s half-sister Sephora. With rumors of ghosts and human sacrifices and the very real poisoning of one of the cult members, Violet and Sephora get busy. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Parekh, Nishita. The Night of the Storm. Dutton. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593473375. $29. MYSTERY

With Hurricane Harvey sweeping toward Houston, single mom Jia Shah—already wringing her hands over her son’s recent school suspension—reluctantly agrees that they should shelter with her sister Seema and Seema’s overly familiar husband, Vipul, in their big house in upper crust Sugar Land. Vipul’s brother and sister-in-law soon arrive, and with the brothers’ bossy mom there, too, all that’s needed is a dead body to truly raise the stakes. Mumbai-born, Texas-based Parekh offers a debut.

Prose, Nita. The Mystery Guest. Ballantine. (Molly the Maid, Bk, 2). Nov. 2023. 304p. ISBN 9780593356180. $29. MYSTERY/COZY

In 2022, Prose debuted with The Maid, whose protagonist, Molly Gray, a neurodivergent young woman who struggles to read the world around her yet can take pride in her work at the Regency Grand Hotel. It went on to become a No. 1 New York Times best seller that boasted a Ned Kelly award and an Edgar short-listing. Now Molly is back as head maid, determined to solve the murder of celebrated mystery writer J.D. Grimthorpe, who’s tumbled over in the hotel’s sumptuous tearoom.

Robb, J.D. Random in Death. St. Martin’s. (Eve Dallas Novel, Bk. 58). Jan. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9781250289544. $30. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

In a futuristic New York, Jenna has finally made it to a popular club to hear the iconic band Avenue A and maybe give her demo to guitarist Jake Kincade. But moments after he gives her a smile, Jemma stumbles out to the alley, sick and trembling and very soon dead, having been jabbed with a needle that ultimately proves to have contained both toxins and infectious agents. Now Lt. Eve Dallas must figure out whether Jemma was the target or just the random victim of someone who might strike again. With a 750,000-copy first printing.

Literary Fiction

Bertino, Marie-Helene. Beautyland. Farrar. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780374109288. $28. LITERARY

As Voyager I is launched, a little girl named Adina Giorno is born in Philadelphia, the emissary of extraterrestrials seeking to understand humankind. The invention of the fax machine allows her to share directly with her home planets all the terrors and wonders of Earth. The O. Henry/Pushcart–winning Bertino (Parakeet) always reaches for the unusual. With a 25,000-copy first printing.

Cunningham, Michael. Day. Random. Nov. 2023. 288p. ISBN 9780399591341. $28. LITERARY

In 2019, Dan and Isabel’s marriage is cracking under the weight of their obsession with Isabel’s free-spirited younger brother, Robbie, himself stumbling because his latest boyfriend has decamped. By 2020, COVID has descended, the couple’s Brooklyn brownstone is shuttered tight, and even as their children rebel, Robbie is stranded in Iceland. By 2021, as they emerge from lockdown, the entire family must reassess. From the Pulitzer Prize–winning Cunningham.

Enrigue, Alvaro. You Dreamed of Empires. Riverhead. Jan. 2024. 240p. tr. from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. ISBN 9780593544792. $28. LITERARY

In 1519, Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, to meet the emperor Moctezuma and plan his conquest of a kingdom. But one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, is beginning to doubt that conquest is possible. Moctezuma’s use of hallucinogens frames the book’s shifting, feverish style. From the author of the Herralde/Barcelona–winning Sudden Death.

Gonzalez James, Elizabeth. The Bullet Swallower. S. & S. Jan. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9781668009321. $26.99. LITERARY

In 1895, when Antonio Sonoro crosses the U.S.-Mexico border from drought-ridden Dorado, Mexico, to rob a Houston-bound train, the younger brother who’s joined him is killed by Texas Rangers. In 1964, celebrated Mexican actor Jaime Sonoro discovers a book tracing his family’s misdeeds (it runs back to Cain and Abel) and realizes he may be the one to atone. And that means learning more about grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas (“the bullet swallower”). From the multi-Pushcart-nominated Gonzalez James (Mona at Sea).

Hummel, Maria. Goldenseal. Counterpoint. Jan. 2024. 240p. ISBN 9781640096066. $27. LITERARY

Once best friends, having met at summer camp and supported each other through public tumult and private pain with sparkling postwar Hollywood as backdrop, Lacey and Edith haven’t spoken in four decades. Now it’s 1990, Edith is waiting without warning in the lobby of reclusive Lucy’s luxury Los Angeles hotel, and the stories of both women unfold in this new work from the author of Still Lives, a Reese's Book Club X Hello Sunshine Selection.

Lefteri, Christy. The Book of Fire. Ballantine. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593497272. $28. Downloadable. $28. LITERARY

Musician Irini lives in an ancient Greek forest with artist husband Tasso and their daughter, and all’s well until a land speculator starts at small fire meant to clear a plot for building that instead sets the whole forest ablaze. Their home gone and Tasso’s hands so badly burned that he can’t paint, a distraught Irini stumbles across the speculator’s body—what killed him is unclear—and makes a life-changing decision. From the author of the Aspen prize-winning, internationally best-selling The Beekeeper of Aleppo.

Louis, Édouard. Change: A Method. Farrar. Jan. 2024. 240p. tr. from French by John Lambert. ISBN 9780374606800. $27. LITERARY

From The End of Eddy to A Woman’s Battles and Transformations, internationally best-selling author Louis writes blistering autofiction addressing homophobia and French working-class poverty. Here he homes in on his youth to assess the people he admired and emulated, the jobs he took to get by when he rose to attend two of France’s most distinguished schools, and the pain he cannot forget. With a 15,000-copy first printing.

McCormack, Mike. This Plague of Souls. Soho. Jan. 2024. 192p. ISBN 9781641295789. $27. LITERARY

In an existential noir following the Goldsmiths/Dublin Literary award–winning Solar Bones, Nealon, just out of prison, returns home to find his wife and children gone, then gets a phone call from a stranger saying that he will explain everything if Nealon consents to a meeting. Their conversation, with a terrorist attack as backdrop, ultimately links Nealon’s fraught life in rural Ireland to a series of international crimes meant to avenge the cruelties of the world.

Matar, Hisham. My Friends. Random. Jan. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9780812994841. $28. LITERARY

Having left behind the constraints of his native Libya to study at the University of Edinburgh, Khaled joins a protest against Qaddafi’s regime in London shattered by violence, leaving him badly injured. He can’t risk contacting his parents for their own safety but finds comfort and insight in a friendship he forms with Hosam Zowa, an author who influenced him as a child. Matar was Booker shortlisted for his novel In the Country of Men and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his memoir The Return.

Miller, Derek B. The Curse of Pietro Houdini. Avid Reader: S. & S. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781668020883. $28. LITERARY

Fleeing World War II Rome after his parents die in a U.S. bombing, Massimo is rescued by Pietro Houdini, who proclaims himself an artist and confidante of the Vatican. They repair to a cliff-clinging monastery, but as the front line shifts forward, they flee again, spiriting away three priceless Titians with the help of a renegade nurse, a murderous café owner, a German soldier, and two lovers and their mule. A John Creasey Dagger–winning author, an historical framework, BISACed as literary: something for everyone.

Min, Katherine. The Fetishist. Putnam. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780593713655. $28. LITERARY

Kyoko, a singer in a punk band, is finally visiting revenge upon Daniel, the unassuming violinist who charmed her mother when they played together in an orchestra and then dropped her, driving her to her death. Daniel’s kidnapping goes easily, but then nothing else happens as planned. The Pushcart Prize winner’s posthumously published novel.

Reid, Kiley. Come and Get It. Putnam. Jan. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780593328200. $29. lrg. prnt. CD. LITERARY

In 2017, Agatha, a commanding 38-year-old white woman with several books to her credit, arrives at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, to study attitudes toward weddings, then switches her focus to campus culture. She’s helped by 24-year-old Black resident assistant Millie, with whom she becomes dangerously involved. A study of power, responsibility, and the bad choices we sometimes make; following the multi-best-booked Such a Fun Age.

Literary Debuts

Akbar, Kaveh. Martyr! Knopf. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593537619. $28. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American poet and recovering alcoholic/addict (like his remarkable creator), seeks to untangle mysteries of his past that include an uncle who dressed as the Angel of Death to comfort the mortally wounded on Iran’s battlefields and a mysterious mother killed when her plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf. He’s guided by the voices of artists and kings to a terminally ill artist dwelling at the Brooklyn Museum. The award-winning Akbar is poetry editor of the Nation.

Blackburn, Venita. Dead in Long Beach, California. MCD: Farrar. Jan. 2024. 240p. ISBN 9780374602826. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

When Coral discovers her brother Jay dead by suicide in his shabby California apartment, she’s sufficiently undone by grief to do something unwise; she grabs his phone and starts responding to his texts as if he were still alive. Then she must keep up the charade. A debut novel following two story collections, including Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, an NYPL Young Lions finalist.

Chan, Vanessa. The Storm We Made. Marysue Rucci: Scribner. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781668015148. $27. LITERARY

In 1930s British-colonized Malaya, frustrated housewife Cecily Alcantara has a chance encounter with General Fujiwara and is persuaded to support what he calls the dream of Asia for Asians by spying for the Japanese. By 1945, with her son vanished, her younger daughter hidden in the basement, and her older daughter furious about the drunken Japanese soldiers she serves at the teahouse, Cecily recognizes that she made a dreadful choice. A frequently published short story writer goes longform.

Miller, Suzie. Prima Facie. Holt. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781250292209. $27.99. Downloadable. LITERARY

A tough-minded young woman who attended Cambridge on full scholarship, Tessa Ensler has triumphed at the bar, winning cases that include freeing men accused of rape or sexual assault. Then she kicks off a lighthearted relationship with a coworker from a posh family and ends up being raped herself. Does she take the stand, knowing full well the law is stacked against the victim? The author’s adaptation of her Olivier Award–winning play.

Rey Lescure, Aube. River East, River West. Morrow. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063257856. $30. LITERARY

In 1985 Qingdao, China, unassuming clerk Lu Fang, his dreams shredded by political realities, finds his world opening up when he meets a woman from the United States who challenges his assumptions. In 2007 Shanghai, teenaged Alva, raised by her ex-pat mother and unaware of her Chinese father, finds her world opening up when she enters the American School in Shanghai. The author's short fiction has achieved finalist and semifinalist status in numerous contests.

Roberts, Tara Karr. Wild and Distant Seas. Norton. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781324064886. $27.99. LITERARY

Evangeline Hussey has a gift for reshaping the recent memories of those around her, which comes in handy when she’s left managing a Nantucket inn when her husband is lost at sea. Then a dreamy sailor named Ishmael shows up, and after he heads off after a white whale, the narrative unfolds from Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho to visit four women touched by Evangeline’s story. One of the publisher’s top books for the spring.

Zarin, Cynthia. Inverno. Farrar. Jan. 2024. 144p. ISBN 9780374610135. $25. LITERARY

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning poet who also writes essays and children’s books, Zarin turns to adult fiction about a woman waiting in a snowy Central Park, New York, for Alastair, who may or may not come. As long as he doesn’t, anything could happen, and we revisit the pasts of both characters. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Thrillers: Names You Know

Hawkins, Rachel. The Heiress. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250280039. $29. CD. THRILLER

Kahler, Abbott. Where You End. Holt. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250873248. $27.99. Downloadable. THRILLER

Krentz, Jayne Ann. The Night Island. Berkley. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593639856. $29. THRILLER

Michaelides, Alex. The Fury. Celadon: Macmillan. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781250758989. $28.99. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Patterson, James & Adam Hamdy. Private: Missing Persons. Grand Central. Jan. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9781538754528. pap. $19.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER

Robotham, Michael. Before You Found Me. Scribner. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781668030998. $28. THRILLER

Taylor, Brad. Dead Man’s Hand. Morrow. (Pike Logan, Bk. 18). Jan. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9780063222052. $32. lrg. prnt. THRILLER

Willingham, Stacy. Only If You’re Lucky. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. 368p. ISBN 9781250887931. $29. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

In the latest from the New York Times best-selling Hawkins, Camden McTavish long ago rejected his inheritance from his adoptive mother, an Heiress kidnapped as a child and widowed four times, but returns home to North Carolina when his uncle’s death raises disturbing questions about his mother’s past (200,000-copy first printing). From Kahler, who previously wrote as Karen Abbott, Where You End features a young woman whose twin sister helps her rebuild her identity post-coma—except maybe the sister isn’t telling the truth (175,000-copy first printing). In the mega-best-selling Krentz’s Sleep No More, Pallas Llewellyn, Talia March, and Amelia Rivers developed mysterious powers on a night none of them can remember and launch a podcast called The Lost Night Files; now Pallas tracks a missing podcast informant to The Night Island. In The Fury, which follows up Michaelides’s first two thrillers, both New York Times best sellers, a reclusive former actress invites friends to celebrate Easter on her private Greek island—with the festivities disrupted by murder. In Patterson and Hamdy’s latest Private tale, the head of the eponymous investigation agency is asked by a wealthy businessman to find his missing daughter and grandchildren and ends up back in Afghanistan, where his career in the U.S. Marines blew up. The Steel Dagger–honored Robotham’s Before You Found Me revisits Evie Cormac and Cyrus Haven, the psychologist who has helped her since childhood, with the deliberate sinking of a boat carrying migrants possibly yielding clues to Evie’s mysterious past. In Taylor’s Dead Man’s Hand, Pike Logan is tasked with countering an assassin sent to decimate a bunch of breakout Ukrainian partisans working with anti-Putin forces inside Russian military intelligence to assassinate Putin; then it gets really complicated. In the New York Times best-selling Willingham’s Only If You’re Lucky, mousy Margot starts shrugging off her inhibitions when she’s picked by shining-star Lucy to room together with two other women during sophomore year, but by midyear the frat boy next door has been murdered and Lucy has disappeared (250,000-copy first printing).

Thrillers: Names To Know

Correa, Armando Lucas. The Silence in Her Eyes. Atria. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781982197506. $27. THRILLER

Leah has akinetopsia, or motion blindness. But she can still see, and her other senses are so acute that she can intuit the anxiety of her new neighbor in the apartment next door. After she hears a violent fight there, she learns that Alice has moved in to escape an abusive husband. Then Leah awakens with an intruder in her apartment whose scent lingers in the morning. What should she do? From the author of the internationally best seller The German Girl.

Elston, Ashley. First Lie Wins. Pamela Dorman: Viking. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593492918. $28. lrg. prnt. THRILLER

Evie Porter knows her job: she must charm her way into Ryan Sumner’s life, following instructions from her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith. But Evie’s beginning to like her quarry, and she can now envision a different kind of life for herself. Only she’s not really Evie Porter, and the one person who could spill her real identity has just arrived in town. YA novelist Elston makes the leap to adult novels.

Ferraro, Nicolás. My Favorite Scar. Soho Crime. Jan. 2024. 312p. tr. from Spanish by Mallory Craig-Kuhn. ISBN 9781641295154. $27.95. THRILLER

Ámbar would like to lead the life of an ordinary 15-year-old, with rock bands and boyfriends, but no such luck. Her father, Víctor Mondragón, is a notorious gangster, and when one of his associates is murdered, father and daughter must go on the run. From the Dashiell Hammett Award–winning Argentinean author Ferraro (Cruz).

Grumley, Michael C. Deep Freeze. Forge. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250898685. $26.99. Downloadable. THRILLER

In “Breakthrough” series author Grumley’s near-future thriller, Army veteran John Reiff knows he will die when the bus he’s on crashes precipitously into a freezing river. But when he wakes up in the hospital, the doctors breezily assure him that he’ll be fine. Something decidedly creepy is going on. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

McCulloch, Amy. Midnight: A Thriller. Anchor. Jan. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780593315521. $28. THRILLER

Olivia Campbell is thrilled to be sailing to Antarctica on the luxury ocean liner where her art-dealer boyfriend plans to hold an auction. She’s just a little bothered that the shipping company’s CEO and several flustered-looking employees are on board. After the first deaths, the bloodshed doesn’t seem accidental. From the author of Breathless, a BOMC hit.

Marshall, Kate Alice. No One Can Know. Flatiron: Macmillan. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250859914. $28.99. Downloadable. THRILLER

After their parents are murdered, sisters Emma, Juliette, and Daphne Palmer leave home, and 14 years elapse before a pregnant Emma returns to the house she and her estranged sisters still own. There are secrets to uncover, including her own—that night, she heard the whispered comment, “No one can know”—and the sisters are drawn together again. Following the multi-starred What Lies in the Woods; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Pe, Amy. Northwoods. Emily Bestler: Atria. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781668017265. $27. THRILLER

Drinking hard, bereft of career and marriage, and still haunted by his time in Afghanistan, Eli North holds a job in the sheriff’s office of his small Wisconsin town only because his mother is sheriff. Then a teenage boy is found dead, and a young FBI agent joins Eli and his mother in a hunt that leads to a wealthy pharmaceutical salesman’s enclave as the opioid crisis crashes like heavy waves around them. A debut from Wisconsin-based nurse practitioner Pease.

Wray, CJ. The Excitements. Morrow. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9780063337480. $30. THRILLER

British sisters Josephine and Penny Williamson are World War II veterans in their late nineties, lionized at home and heading to France to receive the Légion d’honneur for helping to liberate France. Ostensibly, they worked for the Royal Navy and the nursing corps, but actually Josephine was an intelligence operative and Penny a spy skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and while abroad they’re taking time out to settle a few scores and pull off a heist.

Reimagining: Historical Fiction

Billingsley, ReShonda Tate. The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel. Morrow. Jan. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780063291072. $30. HISTORICAL

Fredericks, Mariah. The Wharton Plot. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781250827425. $28. HISTORICAL

Goodwin, Daisy. Diva. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250279927. $29. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

In The Queen of Sugar Hill, the best-selling, multi-award-winning Billingsley reimagines the life of Hattie McDaniel, the first Black person ever to win an Academy Award. From two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–nominated Fredericks, who was inspired by real events, The Wharton Plot reimagines Edith Wharton—ready to ditch her publisher, her marriage, and the United States—trying to figure out who shot novelist David Graham Phillips outside the Princeton Club. New York Times best-selling author Goodwin’s Diva reimagines the love affair between opera star Maria Callas and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

SF/Fantasy/Horror

Blake, Olivie. The Atlas Complex. Tor. Jan. 2024. 496p. ISBN 9781250855138. $28.99. FANTASY

In The Atlas Six, a self-published debut that went viral and was subsequently republished by a major house, six chosen magicians compete for the right to study the secrets of the lost library of Alexandria. In this wrap-up to the trilogy, they are still competing, even as the outside world rallies against them and the Caretaker seeks to carry out his own devious plot.

Dickinson, Seth. Exordia. Tor.com. Jan. 2024. 544p. ISBN 9781250233011. $29.99. CD/downloadable. SF

A refugee and genocide survivor, now a put-upon office worker, Anna Sinjari joins a group of civilians, soldiers, and scientists investigating a terrible threat to the universe. Fantasy master Dickinson goes sf; you gotta love a book described as Gravity's Rainbow meets Marvel's Venom. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Esslemont, Ian C. Forge of the High Mage: A Novel of the Malazan Empire. Tor. Jan. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9781250788610. $30.99. CD. FANTASY

Just as the Malazan empire seems ready for peace and prosperity, the emperor decides to invade Falar in the far north and sends a ragtag bunch of soldiers to do the job. Alas, an ancient horror is arising to block their path, and the empire’s new High Mage doesn’t know what to do. Next in a best-selling series; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Fawcett, Heather. Emily Wilde’s Map of the Outerlands. Del Rey. (Emily Wilde, Bk. 2). Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593500194. $28. FAIRY TALES

In the LJ-starred, nationally best-selling Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Cambridge scholar Emily Wilde, who specializes in faerie folklore, learns that rival scholar Wendell Bambleby is actually a faerie king, exiled by his bloodthirsty mother and eager to return home. In this second book in the series, Bambleby has proposed marriage—Emily’s tempted—but then his mother sends assassins his way.

Golden, Christopher. The House of Last Resort. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250285898. $29. HORROR

When U.S. couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi move to the fading Italian town of Becchina, whose mayor is selling off houses for a euro apiece in a desperate attempt at revitalization, they end up in a spooky abode with rooms they didn’t know about and locked doors that swing open. Soon they learn that the Church once owned the house and that many people have died in its chapel. And that’s just the start of the horror. From the Bram Stoker award-winning Golden; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Khan, Shubnum. The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years. Viking. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780593653456. $28. GOTHIC

In a tumbledown boardinghouse on the South African coast that was once a grand mansion, curious tenant Sana begins exploring, finally discovering a room unopened for decades where the original owner’s second wife, Meena, died horribly. Sana doesn’t know it, but a djinn who loved Meena and mourns her still is watching from the corner. From an award-winning South African author making her U.S. debut.

Knútsdóttir, Hildur. The Night Guest. Tor Nightfire. Jan. 2024. 208p. tr. from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal. ISBN 9781250322043. $19.99. HORROR

Iðunn is constantly exhausted, but doctors can find no cause, and the anodyne advice of friends affords her no relief. Then she falls asleep with her watch on and discovers she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night. What’s going on, and why will no one believe her? From Icelandic author Knutsdottir; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

McGuire, Seanan. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known. Tor.com. Jan. 2024. 160p. ISBN 9781250848505. $22.99. Downloadable. FANTASY

When Antsy enters Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children, the resident mean girl—gifted with the ability to persuade anyone to do anything—wants to use Antsy’s locational gift to find forbidden doors. That put Antsy on the run with a group of friends to return to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go. Next in the Hugo and Nebula award-winning “Wayward Children” series; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Modesitt, L.E., Jr. From the Forest. Tor. Jan. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9781250877284. $30.99. FANTASY

Soon Alayiakal will be considered either a hero or a tyrant, but right now he’s just climbing the ranks of Cyador’s Mirror Lancers with the help of both ancient and never-before-seen weapons. Next in the durable “Saga of Recluse” series; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Pokwatka, Aimee. The Parliament. Tor.com. Jan. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9781250820976. $27.99. FANTASY

When tens of thousands of angry owls descend on the town library, Madigan Purdy is trapped there with her students, whom she tries desperately to distract. Leaving isn’t an option unless you want to be beak-and-taloned to death. What do the owls want? Following Self-Portrait with Nothing, a New York Times Best Fantasy; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Sunlit Man: A Cosmere Novel. Tor. Jan. 2024. (Secret Projects). 400p. ISBN 9781250899712. $29.99. FANTASY

Forever on the run from the Night Brigade, Nomad hopscotches from planet to planet in the Cosmere universe and finally ends up in a place where rebels are ranging themselves against a tyrant even as sunrise promises to melt the planet’s very stones. He can’t even understand the language, but he’s game to join the fight. The last of the New York Times best-selling author’s Kickstarter project; with a 300,000-copy first printing.

Shawl, Nisi. Kinning. Tor. Jan. 2024. 432p. ISBN 9781250212696. $28.99. ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

Published in 2016, Shawl’s attention-getting Everfair imagined a Fabian socialist sanctuary for Africans within 19th-century Africa maintained by steam-powered tools and airships. In this follow-up, infighting among the royal family threatens the country even as European countries struggle to hold onto their colonial holdings on the continent after World War I. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Weber, David & Chris Kennedy. To Challenge Heaven. Tor. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781250907394. 29.99. CD/downloadable. SF

Confounding news: apparently, the Shongairi attack on Earth, which wiped out half the population four decades ago, was not sanctioned but orchestrated behind the scenes by the ancient, evil Founders. Indeed, the battle against the Founders may require accepting the Shongairi as allies. From the New York Times best-selling military sf author Weber and self-published Kennedy; with a 125,000-copy first printing.

Atrek, Inci. Holiday Country. Flatiron: Macmillan. Jan. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9781250889461. $28.99. Downloadable. COMING OF AGE

Burns, Amy Jo. Mercury. Celadon: Macmillan. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250908568. $29. CD/downloadable. FAMILY LIFE

Burton, Tara Isabella. Here in Avalon. S. & S. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781982170097. $28.99. FAMILY LIFE

Frankel, Laurie. Family Family. Holt. Jan. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781250236807. $28.99. Downloadable. FAMILY LIFE

McCauley, Stephen. You Only Call When You’re in Trouble. Holt. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250296795. $27.99. Downloadable. FAMILY LIFE

Steel, Danielle. Upside Down. Delacorte. Jan. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9780593498378. $28.99. lrg. prnt. FAMILY LIFE

For California-based Ada, her mother’s family villa on the Turkish coast is just Holiday Country, yet she can’t help but wonder how her mother’s life might have turned out had she not left, especially when an intriguing man from her mother’s past shows up; from debuter Atrek (100,000-copy first printing). In Burns’s Mercury, following the acclaimed Shiner, teenage Marley West meets the Joseph brothers when she blows into a Pennsylvania river valley town and soon marries one while tending to them all; the discovery of a dead body in the church’s attic makes her wonder whether she should watch out for herself first (40,000-copy first printing). In Burton’s Here in Avalon, Rose is now steady on her feet after being raised by a heedless bohemian mother, while wild sister Cecilia returns to New York and immediately disappears into a mysterious cabaret troupe called the Avalon that travels by river; from the author of the multi-best-booked Social Creature. It’s all about Family Family in the New York Times best-selling Frankel’s latest; movie star India Allwood gets into boiling hot media water when she’s critical of her new film for purveying a limited view of adoption, but then she’s an adoptive mother herself who also gave up a baby as a teenager (100,000-copy first printing). In the nationally best-selling McCauley’s You Only Call When You’re in Trouble, an architect’s plans to build his masterpiece may be waylaid by the project's possibly vengeful client, the last woman he slept with before coming out; his sister, investing millions in a suspect wellness guru; and his beloved niece Cecily, trapped in a Title IX investigation at the college where she teaches (100,000-copy first printing). In Steel’s Upside Down, Academy Award–winning Ardith Law and her estranged daughter, Morgan, resentful that she always came second to her mother's career, rebuild their relationship when each has problems with an unconventional relationship.

Nonfiction

Current Events

Chayka, Kyle. Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Doubleday. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9780385548281. $28. POLITICS/TECHNOLOGY

From city grids to music playlists to the ads we see, our lives are ruled by algorithms, a network of mathematically determined choices that lend a decided homogeneity to our surroundings and challenge the notion that we are making choices for ourselves. Chayka, who writes about digital technology and its cultural impact for The New Yorker, limns the history of algorithms and questions the value of shareability over the messiness of creativity.

Green, Joshua. The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics. Penguin Pr. Jan. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9780525560241. $30. lrg. prnt. POLITICS

While Green’s Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Nationalist Uprising plumbed the roots of popular dissatisfaction on the right, his new book focuses on the 2008 financial crisis as the cause of popular dissatisfaction on the left, arguing that until then the left was essentially an outlier in a U.S. politics ruled by Wall Street’s market mentality. Among the players profiled her are Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Herold, Benjamin. Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs. Penguin Pr. Jan. 2024. 496p. ISBN 9780593298183. $32. POLITICS/SOCIAL SCIENCE

Short-listed for the Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, this work by education journalist Herold tracks the clash of history and aspiration in U.S. suburbia today. A middle-class Black family challenges the school system, a conservative white family can’t escape social change by moving to an affluent enclave, a multiracial mother joins a progressive challenge to her town’s liberal status quo, undocumented Latine parents hope a new school will help their gifted son, and Black mother Bethany Smith (who provides an epilogue) settles on the same street where the white author grew up.

Kagan, Robert. Everything Is at Stake: The Crisis of Our Lifetime. Knopf. Jan. 2024. 160p. ISBN 9780593535783. $25. POLITICS

Washington Post columnist Kagan considers the threat Donald Trump poses in the 2024 election (he would refuse to accept the outcome if he lost), how the country has come to this (it starts with the political compromises that engendered enslavement and runs through the cloaked fascism of the 1930s), and whether Trumpism represents the apotheosis of a single individual or a political movement that is here to stay.

Nguyen, Tina. The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Journey into the Heart of the Alt-Right and How I Got Out. One Signal: Atria. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781982189693. $28. POLITICS

Currently a national correspondent for Puck, Nguyen was a right-wing activist at Claremont McKenna College in 2008–12 and was consequently there at the creation and initial surge of the MAGA movement. She got out, as her subtitle states, and here draws on that early access to explain how the alt-right recruits and indoctrinates believers, building networks meant to bend the nation to its will.

Roy, Jessica. American Girls: One Woman’s Journey into the Islamic State and Her Sister’s Fight To Bring Her Home. Scribner. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9781982151317. $28. POLITICS

Raised in a Jehovah’s Witness community, Lori and older sister Sam remained close after marrying brothers. But while Lori left her abusive marriage, Sam was controlled by a husband who eventually turned jihadist and took the family to Syria, where he fought for Daesh. Digital director of Elle, Roy details Sam's sometimes horrific experiences and Lori's efforts to rescue her, finally relating the subjugation that women like the sisters experienced in the United States to the extremist patriarchal ideologies like the one preached by Daesh.

Scheyder, Ernest. The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives. One Signal: Atria. Jan. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781668011805. $30. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Notes Reuters senior correspondent Scheyder, the renewable energy economy we desire has demands of its own: lithium, copper, cobalt, rare earths, and nickel must be extracted from the earth, but that poses issues. Cobalt and nickel mining means disrupting Minnesota’s delicate wetlands, for instance, and rare earths mining in California meant to bring the United States minerals independence would still require cooperating with China for its expertise.

Shuster, Simon. The Fight Is Here: Volodymyr Zelensky and the War in Ukraine. Morrow. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063307421. $32.99. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

A senior correspondent at Times specializing in international affairs, Shuster offers a true insider’s account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since the outset, he’s been reporting from inside the presidential compound in Kyiv and has also traveled to the front with President Zelensky. Here, Shuster draws on unparalleled access to the president and his top aides, plus extensive interviews with his family, friends, and enemies; this report is forthright about Zelensky’s stumbles as well as his obvious heroism.

History & Biography

Blankfeld, Keren. Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story. Little, Brown. Jan. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9780316564779. $30. HISTORY

While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia fell in love, a passion they were able to sustain throughout their horrific stay there. But they lost track of each other upon the camp’s liberation. They finally met again nearly 70 years later, with Zippi revealing a secret that had assured David’s survival at the camp. From former Forbes staff writer Blankfeld.

Debreczeni, József. Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 256p. tr. from Hungarian by Paul Olchváry. ISBN 9781250290533. $28. Downloadable. HISTORY

A Hungarian-speaking journalist/poet who lived mostly in Yugoslavia, Debreczeni barely survived the gruesome selection process when he arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. After 12 months, he ended up in the so-called Cold Crematorium at the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution. He was saved when the Germans abandoned the camp as the Allies closed in. Published in 1950 but never translated, Debreczeni’s memoir is now appearing in 15 languages worldwide. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Gibson, Marion. Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials. Scribner. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781668002421. $28. HISTORY

A professor of renaissance and magical literatures at the University of Exeter, UK, Gibson chronicles the worldwide persecution of people—primarily women—for witchcraft over the last several centuries. Of course, events in colonial Salem, MA, figure here, but the 13 trials featured range from an indigenous Sami woman on Norway’s Vardø island being accused of murder in the 1620s to the execution of local leaders by British colonial authorities in 1948 Lesotho.

Jackson, Jenn M. Black Women Taught Us. Random. Jan. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9780593243336. $28. Downloadable. HISTORY

A popular Teen Vogue columnist and multi-award-winning Syracuse University professor focusing on Black, women’s, and gender studies, Jackson offers 13 original essays exploring Black women writers and activists, ranging from Harriet Jacobs to Audre Lorde. In particular, she wants to clarify how Black women have come together, thought through their lives, and built coalitions in the search for racial, gender, and sexual justice worldwide.

Johnston, Jake. Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle To Control Haiti. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781250284679. $30. HISTORY

A senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Johnston looks to history as he explains why Haiti is in near-collapse today. After liberating itself from France in 1825, Haitians spend more than a century and millions of dollars compensating their former French enslavers; to this day, both U.S. and European business interests (often backed by military force) have sought to keep Haiti a place of cheap labor, high profits, and quiescent leaders. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Rothenberg, Ben. Naomi Osaka: Her Journey to Finding Her Power and Her Voice. Dutton. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593472439. $32.50. BIOGRAPHY

A senior editor at Racquet magazine, sports journalist Rothenberg has been following Haitian American/Japanese player Naomi Osaka since she first emerged on the Women’s Tennis Association tour in 2014. Here he tracks a career that has included Osaka’s four Grand Slam singles championships and fierce advocacy of social justice and mental health issues.

Shatz, Adam. The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Farrar. Jan. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9780374176426. $32. BIOGRAPHY

The leading activist intellectual of the postcolonial era whose writings remain foundational to today’s worldwide racial liberation movement, Frantz Fanon gets a full-scale biography from Shatz, the U.S. editor of the London Review of Books. Shatz moves from Fanon’s leaving Martinique to fight with the French during World War II, being drawn to existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon, practicing a psychiatry of “dis-alienation” in rural France and Algeria, and joining the Algerian independence struggle while writing classics like The Wretched of the Earth. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Steil, Benn. The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. Avid Reader: S. & S. Jan. 2024. 816p. ISBN 9781982127824. $40. HISTORY

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s third-term vice president, progressive Henry Wallace lost his place on the 1944 Democratic ticket in an open convention that some observers have challenged as corrupt, even calling Harry Truman’s ascendancy to the presidency a catalyst to the Cold War. But Steil, author of the multi-award-winning The Marshall Plan, has dug through FBI, Soviet/Russian, and other archives to argue that Wallace was not as noble as his advocates proclaim, letting his self-obsession get in the way of good judgment.

White, Elizabeth B. & Joanna Sliwa. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust. S. & S. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781982189129. $28.99. HISTORY

While working as a welfare official in Lublin, Poland, during World War II, Jewish mathematician Josephine Janina Mehlberg used a Polish aristocrat’s identity papers to pass herself off as Countess Janina Suchodolska, thus rescuing more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by the Germans. Her story, partly drawn from her own unpublished memoir, is told by scholars White, recently retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and historian Sliwa of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Memoir

Buqué, Dr. Mariel. Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Dutton. Jan. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9780593472491. $30. SELF-HELP

Kennedy, Kate. One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250285126. $30. CD/downloadable. POP CULTURE

Klaas, Brian. Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. Scribner. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781668006528. $30. SELF-HELP

McCabe, Jessica. How To ADHD: An Insider’s Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It). Rodale: Random. Jan. 2024. 272p. ISBN 9780593578940. $26. SELF-HELP

Manne, Kate. Unshrinking: How To Face Fatphobia. Crown. Jan. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9780593593837. $28. MEMOIR/PHILOSOPHY

Menanno, Julie. Secure Love: Create a Relationship That Lasts a Lifetime. S. & S. Jan. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781668012864. $27.99. SELF-HELP

Sellerz-Jackson, Brandi. On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life’s Great Labors. Ballantine. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593496671. $27. SELF-HELP

Sutton, Robert I. & Huggy Rao. The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 304p. ISBN 9781250284419. $30. CD/downloadable. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

Leading trauma psychologist Buqué explains how an individual’s unaddressed trauma can affect family, friends, and community, eventually passing from generation to generation—and how to Break the Cycle. Kennedy may be One in a Millennial, but the busy pop culture commentator comments broadly on her generation’s experiences, registering how it has shaped her and how her cohort can deepen their lives (100,000-copy first printing). In Fluke, Atlantic contributor Klaas argues that small, random events can radically alter our lives—and history itself. Creator of the award-winning YouTube channel How To ADHD, McCabe was diagnosed with ADHD at age 12 and, having dropped out of college twice and changed jobs 15 times by age 32, finally sought out experts whose advice she shares here. Manne’s Unshrinking doesn’t just share intimate stories of her struggles with excess weight (and the mocking she’s been subjected to); as a Cornell philosophy professor, she aims for trenchant analysis of fatphobia as a key social justice issue. The couple’s therapist behind the popular Instagram account @TheSecureRelationship, which has one million followers, Menanno aims to show reader how to find Secure Love. Cofounder of Moms in Color, doula Sellerz-Jackson offers lessons On Thriving, focusing on self, self-care, mental health, and joy. With The Friction Project, organizational experts Sutton and Rao follow up their best-selling Scaling Up Excellence, explaining how workplaces can eliminate the annoying, time-consuming processes that are supposed to make employees more productive—but don’t.

STEM

Boyle, Rebecca. Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are. Random. Jan. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9780593129722. $28. Downloadable. SCIENCE

Herold, Eve. Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots. St. Martin’s. Jan. 2024. 256p. ISBN 9781250122209. $27. TECHNOLOGY

Howsare, Erika. The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors. Catapult. Jan. 2024. 368p. ISBN 9781646221349. $28. NATURE

Kitagawa, Kate & Timothy Revell. The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Mathematics. Morrow. Jan. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063206052. $32.99. MATHEMATICS

McNeil, Donald G. The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics. S. & S. 384p. ISBN 9781668001394. $28.99. DISEASES

Taubes, Gary. Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments. Knopf. Jan. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9780525520085. $35. HEALTH

A well-known Scientific American and Atlantic contributor, science journalist Boyle moves from the first days of the swirling universe to the Artemis launches to tell us everything we ever wanted to know about Our Moon. Director of Public Policy Research and Education at the Genetics Policy Institute, Herold lets us in on latest developments in robotics and artificial intelligence and signals what’s to come in Robots and the People Who Love Them (30,000-copy first printing). Howsare’s The Age of Deer probes our deep connection to the shy, sleek hoofed ruminant mammals of the family Cervidae, addressing mythology, biology, and coexistences issues alike. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, leading historian of mathematics Kitagawa and science journalist Revell move from the great female mathematician Hypatia to Arabic and Indian mathematicians to numerous Black mathematicians who challenged data-based methods of racial discrimination during the civil rights era to offer a new history of mathematics emphasizing marginalized voices. A Chancellor/Kennedy award–winning reporter, McNeil shares what he’s learned from 25 years of covering pandemics, from SARS to Zika to COVID, in The Wisdom of Plagues. (Librarians may want to note that in 2019 McNeil had a controversial parting with the New York Times after several decades’ work there.) Multi-award-winning science writer Taubes argues for a different approach to diabetes care, centering on diet (particularly, fewer carbohydrates and more fat) over a reliance on insulin in Rethinking Diabetes.