The 50 Best New Books of 2022 That You Won't Be Able to Put Down

Wondering what you should be reading this year? Our list includes romance novels, non-fiction best-sellers, thrillers and so much more.

30 best new books to read in 2022 so far

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And this year's crop of new releases will do all of that, and more. Some of your favorite authors have new books out that rival their previous releases (peep that new Jennifer Egan!) and a whole host of debut authors also came out with stellar reads that will leave you hungry for their next one before you reach the last page. These are the best and most-anticipated books we've found so far, with something for fans of every genre and style. Of course, we have to acknowledge that "best" might mean something different to everyone. There are as many reading appetites as there are readers, so if your favorite book of 2022 doesn't make our list, don't despair. Let us know in the comments, and you might just inspire someone else to pick it up, too.

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho

Fiona and Jane are best friends, navigating their tumultuous teenage years together, as well as their family histories and all that comes with them. But when Fiona moves across the country, their bond weakens and threatens to break. This novel about the power of female friendship will give you a gorgeous peek into both women's perspectives on a shared story that has as many facets as they do.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamin Chan

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamin Chan

Frida's daughter Harriet is everything to her. But when she makes a terrible one-time mistake, the state decides that she has to prove her ability to be a good mother in order to remain one at all. This scarily prescient novel that's reminiscent of Orwell and Vonnegut explores the depths of parents' love, how strictly we judge mothers and each other and the terrifying potential of government overreach.

30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani

30 Things I Love About Myself by Radhika Sanghani

Newly single freelance writer Nina isn’t exactly flourishing, especially after she has to move back in with her depressed brother and her overbearing mother. But when she finds herself reading a self-help book in jail on her 30th birthday (long story), she embarks on a journey toward self-love, learning lessons most of us could stand to hear, too.

Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories by Gwen E. Kirby

Shit Cassandra Saw: Stories by Gwen E. Kirby

Just because Cassandra can see the future doesn't mean she's sharing what she finds there. In this wildly inventive collection of stories, Kirby explores the power of feminity in its many forms – including as brazen witches, virgins who can't be sacrificed and even cockroaches who catcallers fear. It's laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes brightly painful, thought-provoking and completely original.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

When an archaeologist witnesses the unleashing of a long-buried plague, it changes the course of history. This hauntingly beautiful story focuses on how the human spirit perseveres through it all. With everything from a cosmic search for home to a theme park for terminally ill kids and a talking pig, it’s a lyrical adventure that feels fantastical yet familiar.

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

Serial killer Ansel Packer is going to die for his crimes in 12 hours. But as the clock ticks down, we get to know the women who passed through his life, including his desperate mother and the homicide detective who became obsessed with his case. It’s a chilling, surprisingly tender tale of how each tragedy ripples through many lives.

RELATED: 25 Best True Crime Books of All Time to Unleash Your Inner Sherlock

Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier

Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier

The rich live differently than the rest of us, and that's never more evident than this chilling account of one family that plays a sick and twisted game with their tenants. When one (an interloper herself) decides that she's not just a pawn, nobody wins – or do they?

Devil House by John Darnielle

Devil House by John Darnielle

Fans of true crime, police procedurals and books that stick with you for weeks after you reach the last page, don't sleep on the latest from the multitalented Mountain Goats singer. It follows a true crime writer who's trying to figure out what really happened at a dilapidated former porn store where locals (and lore) say the Satanic panic resulted in death, but the truth goes so much deeper than that.

Don't Say We Didn't Warn You by Ariel Delgado Dixon

Don't Say We Didn't Warn You by Ariel Delgado Dixon

Two sisters' paths repeatedly diverge and intersect through this story about trauma and reckoning with it. Through life in an abandoned warehouse just outside NYC, stints at a wilderness rehabilitation center and a scrabble to find their footing as young adults, this is a sharp and unsettling story of two girls' ongoing search for their own place in the world and how their history shapes who they become.

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

Midwesterners, New Englanders and anyone from small town America will recognize the contours in this quietly beautiful novel about what it feels like to grow up an outsider. It's a starkly lyrical exploration of the darkness that lies underneath a lily white community with an emotional resonance that sneaks up on you and won't let go.

Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

In a little mountain town hit hard by poverty and the opioid epidemic, there's a chance at escape. Magical doors appear to some people as a way out, but once they step through, there's no turning back. This fantastically real, absorbing novel explores what it would feel like to have an escape hatch from the hardships of life, and the agonizing decision whether to leave everyone you love behind.

The Last Suspicious Holdout by Ladee Hubbard

The Last Suspicious Holdout by Ladee Hubbard

From the author of The Rib King comes a collection of stories about the Black residents of a southern suburb in the years between the beginning of the Clinton administration and Obama's election. It's about racism, the war on drugs, class and struggle, but at its heart, it's a portrait of a community. While it doesn't flinch away from the hard truth, it's also filled with love and a steely kind of hope.

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

This eerily magical, richly atmospheric novel follows Darwin, a devout Rastafarian whose poverty forces him to cast off his religion to become a gravedigger, and Yejide, one of a line of women who have the power to usher the dead into the afterlife. Darwin gets mixed up in some funny business and Yejide is looking for a way out of the life she's been handed. When they're drawn together, they discover whether their love can rival the forces working against them.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Ingrid has hit a wall in her PhD research on poet Xiao-Wen Chou when she comes across something that suggests he may not have been who he seems. Before she knows it, Ingrid has blown open a scandal that threatens her relationship with her fiancé and her best friend, her academic department and even her own self-knowledge. This is a fresh, hilarious and thoughtful satire that'll make you think about cultural identity in a whole new way.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

If you loved Station Eleven , you'll adore this dystopian novel that's about time travel as much as it is about love and family, and what happens when we lose sight of what's truly important. It takes the reader from a plague-ravaged earth to moon colonies, from 1912 to the near future in a triumph of science fiction for those who think they hate science fiction.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

You don't have to read A Visit From the Goon Squad to love this sibling novel to Egan's stellar hit. The revolutionary technology Own Your Unconscious allows users to store and access their memories – and other people's. Through complex and intimate intertwining narratives, it follows a cast of characters' experiences with Bouton's creation, and how its consequences echo through the decades.

End of the World House: A Novel by Adrienne Celt

End of the World House: A Novel by Adrienne Celt

What do you get when you take Groundhog Day, add a dash of the apocalypse, a little French obsession and mix in female friendship and romantic entanglement? This firecracker of a book that gets weirder and more bizarrely funny the more pages you turn.

Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories by Leigh Newman

Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories by Leigh Newman

The Alaskan wilderness is unforgiving, and so is life for the people who live there. In this arresting collection of stories, we meet people who are fighting not only the snowy tundra, but addiction, heartbreak, complicated families and the demons so many of us carry with us, regardless of when or where we live.

When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley

When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley

Min can’t believe his Korean girlfriend Yu-jin died by suicide, right before graduation. As he embarks on a quest to uncover the truth, he learns more about Yu-jin’s life as the daughter of a high-ranking government official, the true nature of her bond with her roommate So-ra, and his own bi-racial identity. This compelling, propulsive novel is as complex as the characters it follows.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

A sharply original novel about love, friendship and the journey grief takes, this one will ring true for so many of us these days. Five years after losing the love of her life, Feyi's BFF, Joy, wants her to get back out there, but when she does, Feyi finds herself thrown into her future without a net. For anyone who's been feeling a little lost, let this book give you some inspiration.

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40 Most Anticipated Books of 2022

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JAN. 11, 2022

by Xochitl Gonzalez

Atmospheric, intelligent, and well informed: an impressive debut. Full review >

new book reviews 2022

by Chantal James

A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice. Full review >

TO PARADISE

by Hanya Yanagihara

Gigantic, strange, exquisite, terrifying, and replete with mystery. Full review >

DEVIL HOUSE

JAN. 25, 2022

by John Darnielle

An impressively meta work that delivers the pleasures of true-crime while skewering it. Full review >

LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

FEB. 1, 2022

A powerful collection that demonstrates Fu’s range and skill. Full review >

MOON WITCH, SPIDER KING

FEB. 15, 2022

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

by Marlon James

The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor. Full review >

BOOTH

MARCH 8, 2022

by Karen Joy Fowler

The similarities to today are riveting and chilling. Full review >

YOUNG MUNGO

APRIL 5, 2022

by Douglas Stuart

Romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful. What a writer. Full review >

THE CANDY HOUSE

by Jennifer Egan

A thrilling, endlessly stimulating work that demands to be read and reread. Full review >

SEARCH

APRIL 26, 2022

by Michelle Huneven

Like the lamb shank at the cafeteria: tender, salty, and worthy of note. Full review >

THE ZEN OF THERAPY

by Mark Epstein

Empathetic and persuasive—one of the better books on psychotherapy and meditation in recent years. Full review >

MANIFESTO

JAN. 18, 2022

by Bernardine Evaristo

A beautiful ode to determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest writers. Full review >

HOW WE CAN WIN

by Kimberly Jones

Demanding better, Jones provides a wise, measured look at the economic and social landscape of America. Full review >

THE NINETIES

FEB. 8, 2022

by Chuck Klosterman

A fascinating examination of a period still remembered by most, refreshingly free of unnecessary mythmaking. Full review >

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

by Jessie Singer

An eye-opening, urgent book that demands an end to inequality as a matter of life and death. Full review >

WATERGATE

by Garrett M. Graff

Now the best and fullest account of the Watergate crisis, one unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon. Full review >

COACH K

FEB. 22, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

by Ian O'Connor

A sharpshooting account worthy of a champion. Full review >

WHAT IT TOOK TO WIN

MARCH 1, 2022

by Michael Kazin

This should be today’s go-to book on its subject. Full review >

THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM

by Meghan O'Rourke

Emotionally compelling and intellectually rich, particularly for those with a personal connection to the issue. Full review >

WHOLE EARTH

MARCH 22, 2022

by John Markoff

A sturdy, readable study of a fellow who’s had considerable press devoted to him—but who can still surprise. Full review >

AIN'T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT

by Jason Reynolds ; illustrated by Jason Griffin

Artful, cathartic, and most needed. Full review >

THE GAPS

by Leanne Hall

Hauntingly riveting. Full review >

BITTER

by Akwaeke Emezi

A compact, urgent, and divine novel. Full review >

IRONHEAD, OR, ONCE A YOUNG LADY

by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem ; translated by Kristen Gehrman

Vivid and brutal—but not without a sliver of hope. Full review >

THE RACE OF THE CENTURY

by Neal Bascomb

An impressive addition to the sports history catalog. Full review >

MESSY ROOTS

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

by Laura Gao ; illustrated by Laura Gao with Weiwei Xu

A nuanced representation of being Asian and transnational in the contemporary U.S. Full review >

LAKELORE

by Anna-Marie McLemore

A beauty both bright and deep. Full review >

KISS & TELL

by Adib Khorram

An absolute bop; Khorram’s best yet. Full review >

MURDER AMONG FRIENDS

MARCH 29, 2022

by Candace Fleming

Erudite, readable, and appalling. Full review >

THE COLOR OF THE SKY IS THE SHAPE OF THE HEART

by Chesil ; translated by Takami Nieda

Enigmatic and powerful. Full review >

CHILDREN'S

PINK

JAN. 4, 2022

by Virginia Zimmerman ; illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma

A timely nod to female empowerment that knits together generations of girls and women and raises a hat to activists... Full review >

EYES THAT SPEAK TO THE STARS

by Joanna Ho ; illustrated by Dung Ho

A beautifully validating book that builds on the necessary work of its predecessor. Full review >

TÍA FORTUNA'S NEW HOME

by Ruth Behar ; illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

A nostalgic glimpse at a little-known but rich culture within the broader Jewish American community. Full review >

OMAR RISING

by Aisha Saeed

A powerful tale about a preteen pushing back against systemic injustice. Full review >

I BEGIN WITH SPRING

by Julie Dunlap ; illustrated by Megan Elizabeth Baratta

A marvelous life survey of a perennially relevant historical figure. Full review >

POWWOW DAY

by Traci Sorell ; illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight

A heartwarming picture book about the roles of courage, culture, and community in the journey of personal healing. Full review >

BEAUTY WOKE

by NoNieqa Ramos ; illustrated by Paola Escobar

This bold manifesto of cultural awareness reaches out to awaken the sleepwalkers among us. Full review >

LET'S DO EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

by Julia Kuo ; illustrated by Julia Kuo

A quiet book with a loud message about the everyday things that create constancy in a world of ephemeral pleasures. Full review >

THE OGRESS AND THE ORPHANS

by Kelly Barnhill

Combines realistic empathy with fantastical elements; as exquisite as it is moving. Full review >

WILD BEINGS

APRIL 19, 2022

by Dorien Brouwers ; illustrated by Dorien Brouwers

An invitation to cultivate our wild selves and our inextricable bond with the natural world. Full review >

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The Best Books of 2022

If you want to read about spaceships, talking pigs, or supervillains, you’ve come to the right place.

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Check back with us in the new year, when we'll start rounding up our favorite books of 2023. In the meantime, happy reading!

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, by James Hannaham

Hannaham’s buoyant sophomore novel introduces us to the unforgettable Carlotta Mercedes, an Afro-Latinx trans woman released from a men’s prison after serving two decades. Returning home to Brooklyn, she encounters a gentrified city she doesn’t recognize, as well as a host of new stressors; life on the outside soon involves an unforgiving parole process and a family that struggles to recognize her transition. Over the course of one zany Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta descends into Brooklyn’s roiling underbelly on a quest to stand in her truth. Angry, saucy, and joyful, Carlotta is a true survivor—one whose story shines a disinfecting light on the injustices of our world.

Harry Sylvester Bird, by Chinelo Okparanta

The title character of Okparanta’s gutsy new novel is a white teenager born to xenophobic parents, but everything changes for young Harry Sylvester Bird on a safari in Tanzania, when he develops an enduring fascination with Blackness. Harry soon escapes to college in Manhattan and begins to identify as Black, joining a “Transracial-Anon” support group and longing for “racial reassignment.” When he falls in love with Maryam, a student from Nigeria, a study-abroad trip to Ghana’s Gold Coast puts both their romance and his identity to the test. Outlandish and arresting, Harry’s miseducation is a deft satire of prejudice and allyship.

Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart

When his Shuggie Bain took home the Booker Prize in 2020, readers were desperate to see what this astounding debut novelist would do next. It will come as no surprise that Stuart’s second effort soars—and socks you right in the belly. Set in the tenements of Glasgow during the 1990s, Young Mungo is the wrenching story of the doomed and forbidden love between two teenage boys, one Catholic and the other Protestant. Insecure, self-loathing Mungo is forever changed by the calming influence of tender-hearted James, but in a stratified society such as this one, their bond can’t be allowed to stand. When the adults in their lives intervene, James and Mungo learn heartbreaking lessons about how boys become men. In a world where hope and despair coexist, Young Mungo is both brutal and breathtaking.

Time Is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong

Vuong’s second collection of poetry is a bruising journey through the devastating aftershocks of his mother’s death. Like Orpheus descending into the underworld, Vuong takes us to the white-hot limits of his grief, writing with visionary fervor about love, agony, and time. Without his mother, Vuong must remake his understanding of the world: what is identity when its source is gone? What is language without the cultural memory of our elders? Aesthetically ambitious and ferociously original, Time Is A Mother interrogates these impossibilities. “Nobody’s free without breaking open,” Vuong writes in one searing poem. Here, he breaks open and rebuilds.

Trust, by Hernan Diaz

In 2018, Diaz came close to the Pulitzer Prize with In the Distance , a probing western honored as a finalist; now, with Trust , he may finally take home the gold. Trust is the story of a Wall Street tycoon and his brilliant wife, who become outlandishly wealthy in Prohibition-era New York. In this puzzle box of stories-within-a-story, the mystery of their affluence becomes the subject of a novel, a memoir, an unfinished manuscript, and finally, a diary. Each layer builds and recontextualizes Diaz's riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed. The result is a mesmerizing metafictional alchemy of grand scope and even grander accomplishment.

Liarmouth, by John Waters

Waters takes his first bow as a novelist with this "perfectly perverted feel-bad romance” about Marsha “Liarmouth” Sprinkle, a con woman caught up in a bad romance with Darryl, the degenerate loser with whom she steals suitcases from airport luggage carousels. Marsha has promised Darryl sex for his services after one year of employment, but when she skips out without paying up, Darryl is out for revenge. In the acknowledgments, Waters aptly describes this novel as “fictitious anarchy.” That’s as good a description as any for this campy, raunchy, surreal story, rife with ribald pleasures. Read an interview with Waters here at Esquire.

Butts: A Backstory, by Heather Radke

This crackling cultural history melds scholarship and pop culture to arrive at a comprehensive taxonomy of the female bottom. From 19th-century burlesque to the eighties aerobics craze to Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking backside, Radke leaves no stone unturned. Her sources range from anthropological scholarship to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” making for a vivacious blend, but Butts isn’t all fun and games. Radke explores how women’s butts have been used “as a means to create and reinforce racial hierarchies,” acting as locuses of racism, control, and desire. Lively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction—the kind that forces you to see something ordinary through completely new eyes. Read an interview with the author here at Esquire.

Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, by Kim Kelly

With a galvanizing groundswell of unionization efforts rocking mega-corporations like Amazon and Starbucks, there’s never been a better time to learn about the history of the American labor movement. Fight Like Hell will be your indispensable guide to the past, present, and future of organized labor. Rather than structure this comprehensive history chronologically, Kelly organizes it into chapter-sized profiles of different labor sectors, from sex workers to incarcerated laborers to domestic workers. Each chapter contains capsule biographies of working-class heroes, along with a painstaking focus on those who were hidden or dismissed from the movement. So too do these chapters illuminate how many civil rights struggles, like women’s liberation and fair wages for disabled workers, are also, at their core, labor struggles. After reading Fight Like Hell , you’ll never look at American history the same way again—and you may just be inspired to organize your own workplace. Read an interview with Kelly here at Esquire.

Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library, by Amanda Oliver

Library-goers have long labored under a romanticized portrait of libraries as sacred spaces. In Overdue , a former librarian explores the importance of demanding better from what we love. Through the lens of her time as a librarian in one of Washington D.C.’s most impoverished neighborhoods, Oliver illuminates how libraries have long been vectors for some of our biggest social ills, from segregation to racism to inequality. Now, as unhoused patrons take refuge in libraries and librarians are trained to administer Narcan, our overlapping mental healthcare and opioid crises come to a head in these spaces. At once a love letter and a call to action, Overdue dispels mythology and demands a better future. You’ll never see libraries the same way again.

Woman, Eating, by Claire Kohda

My Year of Rest and Relaxation meets Milk Fed in this slacker comedy about Lydia, a multiracial Gen Z vampire suffering an identity crisis. Fresh out of art school and eager to make a new life for herself in London, Lydia soon gets a harsh reality check: her gallery internship is unfulfilling, her crush is dating someone else, and her supply of pig's blood is running dangerously low. Ravenous and lonesome, she becomes addicted to watching #WhatIEatInADay videos, desperate for the embodied connection to food and life that humans experience. But for this yearning young vampire, self-acceptance won’t come until she finds something (or someone) to eat. Thoughtful and thrilling, Woman, Eating makes a meal of themes like cultural alienation, disordered eating, and the growing pains of adulthood.

The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy

After sixteen years of characteristic seclusion, McCarthy returns with a one-two punch: The Passenger , out in October, and Stella Maris , a companion volume set to follow in November. In The Passenger , the stronger of the two works, we meet Bobby Western, a salvage diver and mathematical genius reckoning with his troubled personal history. Western is tormented by the legacy of his father, who worked on the atomic bomb, and the suicide of his sister, who suffered from schizophrenia. Told in meandering form, The Passenger is an elegiac meditation on guilt, grief, and spirituality. Packed with textbook McCarthy hallmarks, like transgressive behaviors and cascades of ecstatic language, it’s a welcome return from a legend who’s been gone too long.

Fen, Bog and Swamp, by Annie Proulx

The legendary author of “Brokeback Mountain” and The Shipping News delivers an enchanting history of our wetlands, a vitally important but criminally misunderstood landscape now imperiled by climate change. As Proulx explains, fens, bogs, swamps, and estuaries preserve our environment by storing carbon emissions. Roving through peatlands around the world, Proulx weaves a riveting history of their role in brewing diseases and fueling industrialization. Imbued with the same reverence for nature as Proulx’s fiction, Fen, Bog, and Swamp is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action. Read an exclusive interview with the author here at Esquire.

Because Our Fathers Lied, by Craig McNamara

How do we reckon with the sins of our parents? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. At once a loving and neglectful parent, the elder McNamara’s controversial lies about the war ultimately estranged him from his son, who hung Viet Cong flags in his childhood bedroom as a protest. The pursuit of a life unlike his father’s saw the younger McNamara drop out of Stanford and travel through South America on a motorcycle, leading him to ultimately become a sustainable walnut farmer. Through his own personal story of disappointment and disillusionment, McNamara captures an intergenerational conflict and a journey of moral identity.

A Ballet of Lepers, by Leonard Cohen

A Ballet of Lepers collects never-before-seen early works from beloved singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, including short stories, a novel, and a radio play. The titular novel, Cohen believed, was “probably a better novel” than his celebrated book The Favorite Game . These recovered gems traffic in the themes that would always obsess their author, like shame, desire, and longing. Cohen’s life and art have been dissected for years, but as this revealing volume proves, there are still new shades of him to discover.

Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schultz

Eighteen months before Schultz’s father died after a long battle with cancer, she met the love of her life. It’s this painful dichotomy that sets the foundation for Lost & Found , a poignant memoir about how love and loss often coexist. Braiding her personal experiences together with psychological, philosophical and scientific insight, Schultz weaves a taxonomy of our losses, which can “encompass both the trivial as well as the consequential, the abstract and the concrete, the merely misplaced and the permanently gone.” But so too does she celebrate the act of discovery, from finding what we’ve mislaid to lucking into lasting love. Penetrating and profound, Lost & Found captures the extraordinary joys and sorrows of ordinary life.

Less Is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer

In 2018, Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Less , an unforgettable comic novel about aging writer Arthur Less and his international misadventures. Less is back for more in this beguiling sequel, bursting with just as much absurdity, heartache, and laugh-out-loud joy as its predecessor. Dogged by financial crisis and the death of his former lover, Less sets out across the American landscape with nothing but a rusty camper van, a somber pug, and a zigzagging itinerary of literary gigs. Our reluctant hero blunders his way into a cascade of disasters, but the more lost Less gets, the closer he is to being found. Rambunctious and life-affirming, Less is Lost is a winsome reminder of all that fiction can do and be. As Greer writes of novelists, “Are we not that fraction of old magic that remains?” Read an exclusive interview with the author here at Esquire.

Fairy Tale, by Stephen King

The master of horror turns his talents to coming-of-age fantasy in this spellbinding tale about seventeen-year-old Charlie Reade, a resourceful teenager who inherits the keys to a parallel world. It all starts when Charlie meets Mr. Bowditch, a local recluse living in a spooky house with his lovable hound. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive stockpile of gold, and the keys to a locked shed containing a portal to another world. But as Charlie soon discovers, that parallel world is full of danger, dungeons, and time travel—and it has the power to imperil our own universe. Packed with glorious flights of imagination and characteristic tenderness about childhood, Fairy Tale is vintage King at his finest. Read an exclusive excerpt here at Esquire.

The Furrows, by Namwali Serpell

Fresh off the stratospheric achievement of The Old Drift , Serpell’s sophomore novel is a wrenching examination of grief, memory, and reality. When Cassandra Williams was twelve years old, her seven-year-old brother Wayne drowned off the Delaware coast. Or did he? While the first half of The Furrows examines the long half-life of Cassandra’s grief, the second half gets slippery, exploring the possibility that Wayne survived. As the blurry boundaries between what’s true and what’s possible collapse, Serpell resets her novel again and again, like a scratched record skipping back to the beginning. Old wounds never heal, and Cassandra can’t stop revisiting them. Let this breathtaking novel roll over you in waves.

The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li

Time and time again, Li has proven herself a master storyteller obsessed with the nature of storytelling. In her latest novel, she takes that obsession to spectacular new heights. Set in the ruined countryside of post-WWII France, The Book of Goose centers on the friendship between shy Agnès and rebellious Fabienne. Fabienne devises a game: she will imagine a lurid story, and Agnès, with her perfect penmanship, will write it. When the book becomes a runaway bestseller credited to Agnès alone, it propels the girls on a trajectory of fame and fortune that threatens to sever their friendship. Fans of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels will love this gripping tale of art, power, and intimacy.

Liberation Day, by George Saunders

The godfather of the contemporary short story is back and better than ever in Liberation Day , his first collection of short fiction in nearly a decade. In one memorable story set in a near future police state, a grandfather explains how Americans lost their freedoms through small concessions to an authoritarian government. In another standout, vulnerable Americans are brainwashed and reprogrammed as political protestors, with their services available to the highest bidder. The rousing title novella sees the poor enslaved to entertain the rich, forced to recreate scenes from American history. In these powerful and perceptive stories, Saunders conjures a nation in moral and spiritual decline, where acts of kindness wink through like lights in the darkness.

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These are the 12 most anticipated books of 2022, according to Goodreads members

new book reviews 2022

Maybe your New Year's resolution is to go on more walks or eat healthier foods — or maybe it's as simple as reading more. Since you've got the next 12 months ahead of you, you might find a few good recommendations to be helpful when it comes to adding to your reading list .

So, we tapped Goodreads to see what new titles everyone wants to get their hands on this year. Goodreads found 12 books set to release this year that its members (more than 125 million of them) can't wait for. These new releases sit atop members' "want-to-read" shelves.

While not all of these books are available right now — most of them are available for pre-order until their expected release date, so you can have your monthly read planned ahead of time.

From mystery novels to romance reads, these are the most anticipated books of 2022, according to Goodreads members.

What to read in 2022

"to paradise," by hanya yanagihara.

"To Paradise"

"To Paradise"

This book starts out in an alternate version of America in 1893, but by the time you've reached the end, it has spanned three centuries. As you read, you'll find that each of the characters in each of the three different Americas in this book, despite living different lives, is united by the same things that have tested them. You'll find similar themes of love, wealth, family and paradise. This pick hits shelves on Jan. 11.

"Violeta," by Isabel Allende

"Violeta"

"Violeta"

New York Times-bestselling author Isabel Allende's newest novel is set to release on Jan. 25. It centers around Violeta, the first girl in a family of five boys, whose life is marked by "extraordinary events" such as the Spanish flu and the Great Depression. It is written in the form of letters to someone she loves, an inspiring and emotional detailed account of her life, and the joys and losses she has experienced.

"Black Cake," by Charmaine Wilkerson

"Black Cake," by Charmaine Wilkerson

"Black Cake"

Byron and Benny are left with a lot of questions after the death of their mother, Eleanor Bennett. Mainly, questions about the inheritance she left behind: a traditional Caribbean black cake. She also leaves them with a voice message that tells the story of her life in pieces — and they're left to put them together and share the cake "when the time is right." You can read this book on Feb. 1.

"The Paris Apartment," by Lucy Foley

"The Paris Apartment"

"The Paris Apartment"

New York Times-bestselling author Lucy Foley's new novel will debut on Feb. 22. It tells the story of Jess, who needs a fresh start and leans on her half-brother, Ben, who lives in Paris, for a place to stay. When she arrives at his apartment, however, he's not there. Although she comes to the city of lights to escape the past that has been plaguing her, she finds herself digging into Ben's future.

"Young Mungo," by Douglas Stuart

"Young Mungo"

"Young Mungo"

Douglas Stuart's " Shuggie Bain " won the 2020 Booker Prize. Stuart's next novel, "Young Mungo," is the love story of Mungo and James — a Protestant and Catholic, respectively. The hyper-masculine environment around them forces them to hide their true selves, and they eventually find themselves apart. They'll have to do everything they can to find their way together again. It will release on April 5.

"The Candy House," by Jennifer Egan

"The Candy House"

"The Candy House"

Bix Bouton is 40, the successful head of a tech company, the father of four kids and hungry for new ideas. After he stumbles into a conversation group, he gets his big new idea: “Own Your Unconscious.” With this technology, you can access every memory you've ever had — and exchange them for the memories of others. Centering around characters whose lives have all intersected at one point, this story tells the tale of love, human connection and privacy. You can find this book on shelves on April 5.

"Memphis," by Tara M. Stringfellow

"Memphis"

"Memphis"

After Joan discovers she has the power to change her family's legacy, she finds a way to heal with all of the trauma that they have been through — with her paintbrush. Her art becomes a way for her to understand the sacrifices those who came before her made. The story itself spans 70 years, touching upon the generational experiences and the complexities of life that we face both as individuals and as a country. This title will officially be released on April 5.

"Sea of Tranquility," by Emily St. John Mandel

"Sea of Tranquility"

"Sea of Tranquility"

In the latest from the author of " Station Eleven ," Edwin St. Andrew has crossed the Atlantic at just 18 years old and finds himself entering a forest when he reaches land. He hears a violin echoing in an airship terminal and is spooked. Two centuries later, a writer features a passage in a book that seems a little too familiar: A man plays his violin in an airship terminal as a forest rises around him. A detective is later hired to unearth the story of this occurrence, and what he finds is nothing short of extraordinary. It will be released on April 5.

"Book Lovers," by Emily Henry

"Book Lovers," by Emily Henry

"Book Lovers"

Another read from New York Times-bestselling author Emily Henry, "Book Lovers" centers around bookworm Nora Stephens and editor Charlie Lastra, who've met on more than one occasion (and it's never gone well). While they keep bumping into each other in the small town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, where Nora has escaped to for the summer, they can't help but wonder if it keeps happening for a reason. "Book Lovers" will be available on May 3.

"South to America," by Imani Perry

"South to America"

"South to America"

Imani Perry's book is built on the idea that the history of America is more linked to the South than you think and that if you want to understand the country as a whole, you might want to start by understanding this region. In this story, a native Alabaman returns home and looks at her state with fresh eyes — and learns about the stories and experiences of others she's met along the way. By weaving these stories together, Perry has crafted a book that takes you not only below the Mason-Dixon line but also through the country as a whole. It will be available starting Jan. 25.

"The It Girl," by Ruth Ware

"The It Girl"

"The It Girl"

New York Times-bestselling author Ruth Ware is back with a mystery about one woman's search to find answers about her friend's murder. The convicted killer might be innocent — and now Hannah must search for the truth all over again, which might hit closer to home than she expects. You can start reading this pick on July 12.

For more stories like this, check out:

  • Want to read more in 2022? Here are 4 books to get you started
  • Jenna Bush Hager picks 'captivating' dystopian drama for January 2022
  • 5 books to read after 'Bright Burning Things' by Lisa Harding

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new book reviews 2022

Jillian Ortiz is a Production Associate at Shop TODAY. 

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Best fiction of 2022

Dazzling invention from Jennifer Egan, a state-of-the nation tale from Jonathan Coe and impressive debut novels and short stories are among this year’s highlights

The best books of 2022

S ome of the year’s biggest books were the most divisive. In her follow-up to A Little Life, To Paradise (Picador), Hanya Yanagihara split the critics with an epic if inconclusive saga of privilege and suffering in three alternative Americas: a genderqueered late 19th century, the Aids-blasted 1980s, and a totalitarian future degraded by waves of pandemics. I was impressed by its vast canvas and portrayal of individual psychic damage set against seismic historical change.

There were mixed reactions, too, to Cormac McCarthy’s jet-black brace of novels The Passenger and Stella Maris (Picador), his first in 16 years; and to Ian McEwan’s Lessons (Cape), seen as both baggily self-indulgent and richly humane. Setting the protagonist’s life against the arc of postwar politics from the cold war to Brexit, and grappling with issues from the nature of creativity to the legacy of sexual abuse, it can be read as an indictment of the boomer generation who “ate all the cream”.

Also asking how we got here is Bournville by Jonathan Coe (Viking). With his third novel in four years, Coe is on a roll; he tracks the fortunes of a family through snapshots of communal experiences, from the Queen’s coronation through the 1966 World Cup to pandemic lockdown, in a moving, compassionate portrait of individual and national change.

Ali Smith Companion Piece

Ali Smith’s response to lockdown was typically playful and profound; Companion Piece (Hamish Hamilton) sees the outside world impinge on one woman’s careful isolation, in a novel about the importance of making connections between words, eras and people. Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House (Corsair), meanwhile, harnesses a near-future technological advance – the ability to upload and share memories – to reflect on current concerns around surveillance and privacy with dazzling inventiveness. Mohsin Hamid’s fable The Last White Man (Hamish Hamilton) interrogates race, community and the meaning of the other in a society where skin colour is changing. And I loved Joy Williams’s menacing and madcap Harrow (Tuskar Rock), set in a surreal future of environmental breakdown and human exhaustion, a kind of Alice in Wonderland of the apocalypse.

Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo

Radical invention characterises Percival Everett’s devastatingly absurdist The Trees (Influx): focusing on a string of gruesome murders in Mississippi, it weaponises the genres of horror, comedy and detective fiction to lay open the history of lynching. In her rambunctious satire of Robert Mugabe’s fall, Glory (Chatto), NoViolet Bulawayo braids the allegory of Animal Farm with an oral storytelling tradition and a social media chorus decrying dictatorship and repression around the world. Selby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho (Galley Beggar) is another novel that plays with form, reclaiming hidden lesbian stories by tumbling together biography, scholarship and poetic flights of fancy in sketches of modernist artists and writers from Virginia Woolf to Colette and Josephine Baker. This one-of-a-kind book channels a spirit of righteous anger as well as lyrical freedom and joy.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

Other standout novels illuminating the past include Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses (Bloomsbury), set in Northern Ireland during the 70s. Based around a dangerous affair between a young Catholic woman and an older Protestant man, it combines gorgeously direct and acute prose with an incisive eye for social detail. Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker prize with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of), a blistering murder-mystery-cum-ghost-story set amid the carnage of Sri Lanka’s civil war that similarly focuses on the effort to preserve ordinary life in the face of sectarian violence. Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy (Europa) is an excellent investigation of communal guilt and obliviousness to Nazi atrocities, while in Trust (Picador) Hernan Diaz deconstructs capitalist excess and the illusion of money through different perspectives on the story of a New York financier. Maggie O’Farrell’s follow-up to Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait (Tinder), is a glittering Renaissance fable of a girl caught up in Italian aristocratic intrigue, and Kate Atkinson is on deliciously acerbic form in Shrines of Gaiety (Doubleday), exposing the underbelly of London nightlife in the roaring 20s. Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter (W&N, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel), in which a “clinic for the past” treats Alzheimer’s patients, plays with ideas of history and nostalgia to explore Europe’s 20th century and current confusion with wit and warmth.

It was a good year for unhappy families. Charlotte Mendelson skewers narcissistic control in The Exhibitionist (Mantle), a darkly witty portrait of an artist on the slide who has spent decades squashing the life and creative energies out of his wife and children. Rebecca Wait’s I’m Sorry You Feel That Way (Riverrun) is a very funny, emotionally wise story of sibling rivalry and difficult mothers. There are no laughs, however, in Sarah Manguso’s chilling Very Cold People (Picador), an uncomfortable, deeply impressive account of how silence, snobbery and repression in a New England town allow the poison of abuse to trickle down the decades.

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

Ross Raisin has quietly become one of Britain’s most interesting novelists: A Hunger (Cape) explores the conflict between ambition and duty as a chef takes on a caring role when her husband develops dementia. Namwali Serpell’s second novel, The Furrows (Hogarth), brilliantly dramatises the psychic dislocations of grief over a lifetime through the story of a woman haunted by the memory of her younger brother, who died under her care in childhood. Douglas Stuart followed Booker winner Shuggie Bain with a tough and tender story of family dysfunction and first love in Young Mungo (Picador). And in Amy & Lan (Chatto), set on a ramshackle farm commune, Sadie Jones gives us a wonderfully achieved child’s-eye view of messy family interactions and the up-close life-and-death drama of the natural world.

Three hard-hitting debut novels shone out. An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie (Wildfire) portrays a young Black man’s struggle to define what success might look like in a Bristol neighbourhood in the grip of gentrification. The book delves deep into faith, violence, addiction, ambition and love with power and grace. Jon Ransom’s The Whale Tattoo (Muswell), focusing on a gay working-class man in watery rural Norfolk, is lyrical, atmospheric and brutal by turns. And Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan (Rough Trade Books) punctures the bubbles of social media in a fierce tale of obsession and power dynamics.

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When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Sola

Set in the Pyrenees and giving voice to everything from mountains to storms, mushrooms to dogs, English-language debut When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà (Granta, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem) is a playful, polyphonic triumph. Closer to home, poet Clare Pollard’s fiction debut, Delphi (Penguin), is an ingenious response to Covid, combining ancient Greek prophecy with the daily frustrations of lockdown to face up to our fears for the future. Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (Picador), a provocative post-MeToo morality tale about a female professor’s crush on a younger man, is sharp and deliciously readable; as is the huge hit Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday), which brings bite as well as charm to the tale of a super-rational scientist navigating sexism in early 60s America.

Send Nudes by Saba Sams Send Nudes: stories Hardcover – 20 Jan. 2022 by Saba Sams (Author)

Three notable debut short-story collections introduced fresh, contemporary new voices. Saba Sams’s unsettling, full-throated Send Nudes (Bloomsbury) captures girls and young women on the brink of change; Jem Calder’s Reward System (Faber) smartly anatomises contemporary life in the relentless glare of the smartphone; and Gurnaik Johal’s We Move (Serpent’s Tail) delicately traces relationships and disconnections across a British-Punjabi community. Short-story virtuoso George Saunders returned to the form with Liberation Day (Bloomsbury), tragicomic allegories of try-hard regular folk caught up in hells beyond their understanding.

Emmanuel Carrère continues to spin his fascinating web of social observation and self-inquiry in Yoga (Cape, translated from French by John Lambert), charting personal and psychic upheaval in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. Yiyun Li’s richly mysterious The Book of Goose (4th Estate) marks a departure from her recent autofiction; but this tale of a passionate friendship between two young peasant girls in postwar France, and how they parse their shared will to create and to act upon the world, seems to hold many layers of truth about art, love and self-creation. Lastly, a small miracle from another genre-hopper: in Marigold and Rose (Carcanet), Nobel-winning poet Louise Glück presents the first year in the life of twin baby girls with formal and philosophical sleight of hand. This wry, read-in-a-sitting delight channels the myriad possibilities of fiction with a huge sense of fun.

  • Best books of the year
  • Best books 2022

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The 22 best books published in 2022 so far, according to Goodreads

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  • Reviewers have already found some of their favorite new books released this year.
  • We turned to Goodreads reviewers to rank the most popular books of 2022 so far.
  • For more books, check out the most anticipated new books of 2022.

Insider Today

Although there are quite literally hundreds of books on my "to-be-read" list, I can't help but gravitate towards the latest releases that fellow readers are already predicting to be the best books of the year. Whether it's a new work from a favorite author or debuts that have been picked up by celebrity book clubs, readers are already finding their favorites of 2022 so far. 

To make this list, we looked at the most popular books on Goodreads . Goodreads is the world's largest online platform for readers to rate, review, and recommend their favorite books to friends and the community. All of these recommendations have been published in 2022 and are ranked by how often they've been added to readers' "Want To Read" shelves. 

Whether you're looking for a great new read to kick off your upcoming vacation or relax with in the morning, here are the 22 most popular books of 2022 so far.

The 22 best books of 2022 so far, according to Goodreads:

"reminders of him" by colleen hoover.

new book reviews 2022

"Reminders of Him" by Colleen Hoover, available at Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.22

In Colleen Hoover's latest fan-favorite novel, Kenna Rowan is looking to prove herself so she can reunite with her four-year-old daughter, having just been released from her five-year prison sentence. Shut out by nearly everyone in her and her daughter's life, Kenna connects with Ledger Ward, a local bar owner, but as the romance between the two grows, Kenna risks everything to absolve her past and create a new future. You can find more of Colleen Hoover's most popular books here .

"The Paris Apartment" by Lucy Foley

new book reviews 2022

"The Paris Apartment" by Lucy Foley, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.16

When Jess is in need of a fresh start, she reaches out to her half-brother, Ben, to stay with him for a bit in his Paris apartment. Ben didn't seem thrilled about the arrangement, but when Jess arrives to find a shockingly stunning apartment, she finds that he is nowhere to be found. As this gripping thriller unfolds, Jess begins to look into Ben's strange and unfriendly neighbors, each of whom is a suspect with a secret. 

"The Maid" by Nita Prose

new book reviews 2022

"The Maid" by Nita Prose, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.90

"The Maid" is about Molly Gray, a 25-year-old hotel maid who is left struggling to fend for herself socially after her grandmother's passing. When Molly discovers Charles Black dead in a terribly ravished hotel room, the police immediately target her as a lead suspect until her friends step in to prove her innocence in this exciting thriller that's described as a "Clue"-like, locked-room mystery.

"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry

new book reviews 2022

"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.96

Emily Henry's "Beach Read" and "People We Meet on Vacation" have already captured countless readers' hearts, so it's no surprise her latest release has already done the same. "Book Lovers" stars Nora Stephens, a literary agent whose love life is anything but a romance novel. When Nora's sister plans a trip for the two of them to a picture-perfect little town with a list of "to-do"s to live out the plot of a romance novel all their own, Nora finds herself not with a storybook prince, but a brooding editor from the city with whom she's had plenty of terrible run-ins in the past. 

"House of Sky and Breath" by Sarah J. Maas

new book reviews 2022

"House of Sky and Breath" by Sarah J. Maas, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $ 17.74

After saving Crescent City, Bryce Quinlan and Hunt Athalar are ready to slow down and find some normalcy once again, but as the ruler's threat grows, the two are slowly pulled into the rebel's plans. "House of Sky and Breath" is the sequel to "House of Earth and Blood" , a fan-favorite fantasy/romance featuring demons, angels, and fae.

"A Flicker in the Dark" by Stacy Willingham

new book reviews 2022

A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.29

One of readers' favorite new thrillers this year is "A Flicker in the Dark," which follows Chloe Davis 20 years after her father's arrest for the serial murder of six teenage girls in her small town. As Chloe prepares for her wedding, teenage girls begin to go missing once again and Chloe isn't sure if she's just paranoid or nearing a killer for the second time in her life. 

"Hook, Line, and Sinker" by Tessa Bailey

new book reviews 2022

"Hook, Line, and Sinker" by Tessa Bailey, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.38

Fox Thornton has a reputation as a flirt but his new roommate, Hannah, seems entirely impervious to his flirtatious ways and insists they'll just be friends. In town for work, Hannah has her eye on a coworker and asks for Fox's help. But as they spend more time together, she can't help but fall for him as he tries to prove that he wants more with Hannah than just a short fling.

"Book of Night" by Holly Black

new book reviews 2022

"Book of Night" by Holly Black, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.76

Holly Black has written incredible fantasy young adult novels but makes her adult debut with "Book of Night," an urban fantasy that became a 2022 favorite before it was even published. Charlie Hall is trying to lay low in her shadowy, magical world when a figure from her past returns and thrusts her into a chaotic spin of murder, secrets, magic, and a fight for survival. 

"The Book of Cold Cases" by Simone St. James

new book reviews 2022

"The Book of Cold Cases" by Simone St. James, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $20.49

Shea Collins runs a popular true-crime website, a passion ignited after she was almost abducted as a child. When she runs into Beth Greer, an infamous suspect in an unsolved double homicide from 40 years prior, Shea asks for an interview, meeting Beth regularly at her alluring but uncomfortable mansion. As Shea and Beth grow closer, Shea's unease refuses to subside in this suspenseful thriller, perfect for those who love true crime.

"One Italian Summer" by Rebecca Serle

new book reviews 2022

"One Italian Summer" by Rebecca Serle, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.08

Just before their once-in-a-lifetime trip to Positano, Katy's mother tragically passes away, leaving Katy reeling and facing their adventure alone. Katy decides to take the trip anyway and as she walks the cliffsides of the Amalfi Coast, she magically sees her mother at 30 years old. Over the course of a beautiful summer, Katy gets to know her mother, her history, and her memories in a way she never could have imagined. 

"Black Cake" by Charmaine Wilkerson

new book reviews 2022

"Black Cake" by Charmaine Wilkerson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.81

In the wake of their mother's passing, Byron and Benny are left with a voice recording and the family recipe for a traditional Caribbean black cake. As their mother's story unfolds, the siblings are set off on a journey of family history, inheritance, and relationships that reshapes their understanding of their mother, their family, and themselves. 

"Daughter of the Moon Goddess" by Sue Lynn Tan

new book reviews 2022

"Daughter of the Moon Goddess" by Sue Lynn Tan, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $23.49

"Daughter of the Moon Goddess" is a new young adult fantasy novel inspired by the legend of Chang'e, the Chinese moon goddess. Xingyin has grown up on the moon, hidden from the Celestial Emperor, but when her magic is discovered, she's forced to leave her mother and her home behind and embark on a legendary but dangerous journey to save her mother and the realm.

"The War of Two Queens" by Jennifer L. Armentrout

new book reviews 2022

"The War of Two Queens" by Jennifer L. Armentrout, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.87

Loved for its strong main characters, fast-paced action, and intense romances, Jennifer L. Armentrout's "Blood and Ash" series' latest book continues as Poppy determinedly sets out to destroy the Blood Crown and create a future where both kingdoms can rule in peace. Together, Poppy and Casteel know that there is far more than a war to face as they uncover what began eons ago.

"Gallant" by V.E. Schwab

new book reviews 2022

"Gallant" by V.E. Schwab, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.95

Olivia Prior has spent much of her young life at Merilance School for girls until the day she receives a letter inviting her home to Gallant, a large, strange family house. When Olivia crosses a ruined wall at the home at just the right moment, she finds herself in a crumbling and mysterious version of Gallant and searches for the secrets her family has held for generations. 

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel

new book reviews 2022

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.25

In a propulsive novel that spans from 1912 Vancouver Island to a futuristic colony on the moon, Emily St. John Mandel's latest work follows three main characters through time and space as their lives are upended around various events. As Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic and arrives in the Canadian wilderness, Olive Llewellyn writes a pandemic novel during a pandemic, and detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts investigates their strange stories, along with one of a childhood friend, their metaphysical and intertwining lives create an enchanting science fiction read. 

"The School for Good Mothers" by Jessamine Chan

new book reviews 2022

"The School for Good Mothers" by Jessamine Chan, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $18.19

Frida is struggling in nearly all aspects of her life when everything suddenly takes a turn for the worst when a lapse in judgment lands her in the hands of government officials who will determine if she must go to an institution that will measure her success and devotion as a mother. In this dystopian sci-fi novel, Frida must prove that she meets the standards of being a good mother or risk losing her daughter.

"The Golden Couple" by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

new book reviews 2022

"The Golden Couple" by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.68

From bestselling author duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen comes a new, twisty domestic thriller about successful therapist Avery Chambers who lost her license because of her controversial methods. When Marissa and Mathew Bishop turn to Avery after Marissa's infidelity threatened to end their marriage, this suspenseful novel takes off on a collision course of dangerous secrets. 

"To Paradise" by Hanya Yanagihara

new book reviews 2022

"To Paradise" by Hanya Yanagihara, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $20.01

"To Paradise" spans three centuries and three versions of the American experiment: 1893, where New York is part of the Free States; 1993 Manhattan in the height of the AIDS epidemic; and 2093, in a society torn apart by plagues and totalitarian rule. In each of these sections, family, lovers, and strangers are torn apart and come together over what makes us uniquely human in a new, powerful piece of literary fiction by the same author of "A Little Life."

"Violeta" by Isabel Allende

new book reviews 2022

"Violeta" by Isabel Allende, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $22.84

"Violeta" is a sweeping, century-spanning novel about a woman, born in 1920 to a family full of sons, whose life is continuously marked by historical events, crises, and life-changing love. Told in the form of a letter, Violeta recounts her early years in South America through decades of joy and loss and across a lifetime of emotional and inspiring events. 

"Reckless Girls" by Rachel Hawkins

new book reviews 2022

"Reckless Girls" by Rachel Hawkins, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $22.49

Set on an isolated Pacific island, this new thriller takes off with Lux, her boyfriend, Nico, and the two women who hired them to sail to Meroe Island, despite its eerie history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and murder. When the four meet another couple on the island, they settle into a relaxing rhythm until a single stranger arrives and throws off the group's balance, uncovering cracks in their seemingly-perfect dynamics. 

"The Cartographers" by Peng Shepherd

new book reviews 2022

"The Cartographers" by Peng Shepherd, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $23.93

When Nell Young's legendary cartographer father is found dead in his office with a seemingly worthless map, her investigation reveals its incredibly valuable and rare nature, as well as the plot of a mysterious collector, determined to destroy every last copy. In this fantastical upcoming thriller, Nell's subsequent and remarkably dangerous journey reveals her family's darkest secrets and the power of the map. 

"The Christie Affair" by Nina de Gramont

new book reviews 2022

"The Christie Affair" by Nina de Gramont, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.33

"The Christie Affair" is a fascinating historical fiction account of the real-life 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie. Told from Miss Nan O'Dea's point of view, Agatha's husband's mistress, this novel transports readers to 1925 London as Nan slowly lures Archie away from his wife, Agatha simply disappears, and one of the greatest manhunts of all time ensues.

new book reviews 2022

  • Main content

Book reviews: 47 of the best novels of 2022

New releases include The Singularities by John Banville and Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

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1. The Singularities by John Banville

2. saha by cho nam-joo (trans. jamie chang), 3. bournville by jonathan coe.

  • 4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

5. Darling by India Knight

6. the passenger by cormac mccarthy, 7. demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver, 8. liberation day by george saunders, 9. lucy by the sea by elizabeth strout, 10. the romantic by william boyd, 11. the marriage portrait by maggie o’farrell, 12. carrie soto is back by taylor jenkins reid, 13. lessons by ian mcewan, 14. the ink black heart by robert galbraith, 15. haven by emma donoghue, 16. trust by hernan diaz, 17. the last white man by mohsin hamid, 18. a hunger by ross raisin, 19. acts of service by lillian fishman, 20. the twilight world by werner herzog, 21. the exhibitionist by charlotte mendelson, 22. vladimir by julia may jonas, 23. to paradise by hanya yanagihara, 24. joan by katherine j. chen, 25. the house of fortune by jessie burton, 26. the seaplane on final approach by rebecca rukeyser, 27. the young accomplice by benjamin wood, 28. the sidekick by benjamin markovits, 29. nonfiction: a novel by julie myerson, 30. you have a friend in 10a by maggie shipstead, 31. very cold people by sarah manguso, 32. trespasses by louise kennedy, 33. elizabeth finch by julian barnes, 34. the candy house by jennifer egan, 35. companion piece by ali smith, 36. young mungo by douglas stuart, 37. sell us the rope by stephen may, 38. french braid by anne tyler, 39. good intentions by kasim ali, 40. the school for good mothers by jessamine chan, 41. pure colour by sheila heti, 42. a previous life by edmund white, 43. a class of their own by matt knott, 44. our country friends by gary shteyngart, 45. scary monsters by michelle de kretser, 46. free love by tessa hadley, 47. the fell by sarah moss.

As the author of three trilogies, John Banville is “no stranger to using recurring characters”, said Ian Critchley in Literary Review . But The Singularities takes this to extremes: so stuffed is it with “old Banville protagonists” that it is close to being a “literary greatest-hits collection”. The setting is Arden House – the crumbling Irish country house from Banville’s 2009 work The Infinities . Various characters from that work are joined by William Jaybey (from The Newton Letter ) and Freddie Montgomery (from The Book of Evidence ), among others. One doesn’t begrudge Banville his “game with his readers”: The Singularities is a “pleasure to read”.

With its “assembly of characters” and country house setting, this novel seems to have the “makings of a whodunnit”, said Tom Ball in The Times . But “no one dies”, or even falls out; and, in fact, little of consequence happens. Fortunately, “you don’t read Banville for his taut plots”. You read him because, every few pages, there’s a sentence “so perfectly contrived it stops you for a moment, achingly, like a beautiful stranger passing in the street”.

Knopf 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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The South Korean writer Cho Nam-Joo is best known for her 2016 novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 , said Ellen Peirson-Hagger in The i Paper . A story of “everyday sexism”, it sold more than a million copies in South Korea and sparked a national conversation about the status of women. Cho’s latest novel, Saha , is “just as political” – though this time the focus is on class. Set in a dystopian future, the novel follows a disparate group of characters who live in some dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of “Town”, a fiercely hierarchical “privatised city-nation” where all aspects of life are tightly controlled. Offering a powerful critique of “plutocracy, systemic inequality” and “gendered violence”, the novel is “utterly captivating”.

Cho’s dystopia is “not particularly original”, and her plotting can be “surprisingly loose”, said Mia Levitin in The Daily Telegraph . But the novel’s characterisation is “touching” – and its themes are certainly powerful. At a time of rising global inequality – South Korea’s economy is dominated by “mega-corporations” – this is a book that “resonates widely”.

Scribner 240pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state-of-the-nation novel,” said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman . But one who can is Jonathan Coe. His latest charts 75 years of British history, following the lives of a single family, headed by matriarch Mary Lamb, who live on the outskirts of Birmingham, near the Bournville factory. Coe covers so much ground in just 350 pages by alighting only on key moments: VE Day in 1945; the Queen’s coronation; the 1966 World Cup; the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The result is a “piercing” satire on Englishness that is “designed to make you think by making you laugh”. This is a warm and comforting book, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times – like a “mug of hot chocolate”.

The final section, set during Covid-19, is very moving, said J.S. Barnes in Literary Review . But much of this novel is “flat and formulaic”. The use of hindsight is clunky: when Mary visits The Mousetrap in 1953, she thinks: “I imagine it will be closing before very long.” It feels like a “procession through well-worn territory”, rather than something designed to “excite or entertain”.

Viking 368pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

Anthony Quinn is a “fine prose stylist, able to evoke the past with vivid immediacy”, said Alex Preston in The Observer . His ninth novel is a sweeping epic that consists of three interlinked sections. In the 1780s, Laura Merrymount – daughter of the Gainsborough-esque portraitist William Merrymount – strives to escape from her father’s shadow and become a painter herself. In Chelsea a century later, we meet the young artist Paul Stransom and his sister Maggie – who abandoned her own dreams of becoming an artist to care for their dying mother. And finally, in 1980s Kentish Town another artist, Nell Cantrip, suddenly acquires late-career fame. Marked by its “intricate”, immaculate plotting, this novel is a “rollicking read”.

I found the plotting a bit predictable, and the characterisation heavy-handed, said Imogen Hermes Gowar in The Guardian . But the book has interesting things to say “about women’s work and talent, and the life cycle of art”; and it is deftly put together by a writer who delights in the “granular details of an era”, while also understanding its broad sweep.

Abacus 432pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

India Knight’s new book is a “contemporary reimagining” of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love , said Christina Patterson in The Sunday Times . Updating “such a beloved novel” certainly isn’t easy – but Knight has pulled off the task with aplomb. In her version, the four Radlett children – Linda, Louisa, Jassy and Robin – are not the progeny of an English lord, but of an ageing and reclusive rock star. Desperate to protect his children from “modern life”, he has purchased a “vast Norfolk estate” – and it’s there that we first encounter Linda and her siblings, through the eyes of their cousin Franny. The narrative tracks their passage to adulthood, and their romantic entanglements – centred on “Linda’s pursuit of love”.

Darling works because, as in Mitford’s original, the details are so “bang on”, said Emma Beddington in The Spectator . Sometimes, Knight artfully tweaks them: she replaces hunting with swimming, and gives her adult characters jobs (Linda runs a café in Dalston). Mitford “diehards can rest easy: your blood vessels are safe with this faithful, fiercely funny homage”.

Fig Tree 288pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 16 years explores “the very boundaries of human understanding”, said Nicholas Mancusi in Time . Investigating a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, diver Bobby Western discovers that one passenger is missing; soon he is being harassed by government agents. But the pretence that this is a thriller doesn’t last long: chapters in which Bobby discusses the meaning of life alternate with ones in which his maths genius sister Alice experiences schizophrenic hallucinations. It’s a deeply weird book, held together by “chuckle-out-loud” humour. A companion novel, Stella Maris , focusing on Alice, does little to explain it – but together they are “staggering”.

Sorry, said James Walton in The Times , but I can’t remember a recent novel so wildly indifferent to what its readers might enjoy, or even understand. The conversations that make up the bulk of it, ranging from nuclear physics to Kennedy’s assassination, are a complete ragbag. McCarthy’s gift for description and dialogue remains undiminished, but there’s no escaping the sense that The Passenger is “a big old mess”.

Picador 400pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel is a retelling of David Copperfield , transposed to the “valleys of southwest Virginia at the height of America’s opioid crisis”, said James Riding in The Times . Demon Copperhead, the “rambunctious hero”, is “born in a trailer to a teenage single mother”, and grows up in a world of neglectful child protection services and dubious guardians. The characters are all recognisable from the Dickens novel – but appear in new guises: “Steerforth becomes Fast Forward, a pill-popping quarterback; Uriah Heep is U-Haul, a football coach’s errand boy”. Daring and entertaining, Demon Copperhead is “shockingly successful” – “like Dickens directed by the Coen brothers”.

It’s a promising premise, not least because in its extreme inequality, post-industrial America resembles Victorian England, said Jessa Crispin in The Daily Telegraph . Yet while Kingsolver closely cleaves to the story of the original, she “breaks the most important rule of working in the Dickensian mode”: the need to “show the reader a good time”. Hers is a retelling “beset by earnestness” – and as a result it falls flat.

Faber 560pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Besides being a Booker Prize winner with his only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo , George Saunders is “routinely hailed as the world’s best short story writer”, said James Walton in The Daily Telegraph . The American’s dazzling new collection – his first since 2013’s Tenth of December – shows why he garners such acclaim. As is customary in a Saunders collection, quite a few of the tales are “deeply strange”: in the title story, three people are kept permanently “pinioned to a wall”, enacting scenes from American history; another story is set in a theme park that has never received any visitors. Around half the tales, however, explore “recognisable social and political dilemmas”: two employees clashing at work; a mother’s despair about the state of America after her son is pushed over by a tramp. And whether Saunders is engaging with contemporary reality, or “taking us somewhere else entirely”, he never forgets that the most important duty of a writer is to make his work “winningly readable”.

Tenth of December was a “marvellous” collection, but unfortunately Liberation Day doesn’t hit the same heights, said Charles Finch in the Los Angeles Times . Although “the standard of Saunders’ writing remains astronomically high”, there are times here when he seems almost on auto-pilot, reprising themes and situations he has previously explored. It’s true that if you’ve read Saunders before, then parts of Liberation Day will sound “like self-parody”, said John Self in The Times . But then again, “it’s churlish to knock a true original for repeating himself”. When he’s at his best, Saunders’ “oblique, farcical, tragic” view of the world still has the ability to “take the top of your head off”.

Bloomsbury 256pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

“Elizabeth Strout is writing masterpieces at a pace you might not suspect from their spaciousness and steady beauty,” said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian . Lucy by the Sea is the third sequel to her acclaimed bestseller My Name is Lucy Barton . It takes place early during the pandemic, when Lucy and her ex-husband, William, leave New York for a friend’s empty beach house in Maine – for “just a few weeks”, he says. It is “a study of a later-life reunion between a man and woman who married in their 20s”. It isn’t “a tender tale”, as William isn’t an easy man to like, but it is “as fine a pandemic novel as one could hope for”.

Over the course of three Lucy Barton books, Strout has “created one of the most quizzical characters in modern fiction”, said Claire Allfree in The Times . Still, even this “avid fan” found herself wondering whether this instalment is “surplus to requirements”. This, sadly, is a novel that “mistakes simplistic observation for subtle insight, bathos for pathos”, and Lucy herself is “downright annoying”. I disagree entirely, said Julie Myerson in The Observer . Lucy by the Sea is a wonderful evocation of lockdown life. It is “her most nuanced – and intensely moving – Lucy Barton novel yet”.

Viking 304pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

William Boyd’s 17th novel – his first set in the 19th century – is an “old-fashioned bildungsroman” that follows its “hero, Cashel Greville Ross, through a long and peripatetic life”, said Lucy Atkins in The Sunday Times .

After growing up in Ireland and Oxford, Cashel “impulsively joins the army” and finds himself “facing the French bayonets at the Battle of Waterloo”. He subsequently “hangs out” with Byron and Shelley in Italy, spends time in east India and New England, and becomes an opium addict, an author and a diplomat. Although the authorial winks can be groan-inducing – “Shelley can barely swim”, a friend of the poet declares – it is a “masterclass” in narrative construction and its ending is “genuinely poignant”.

Boyd is “as magically readable as ever”, said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph . But amid the non-stop action and “endless verbal anachronisms”, Cashel never quite emerges as a fully rounded character. Compared with Boyd’s previous “whole life novels”, such as Any Human Heart and Sweet Caress , The Romantic feels “glaringly synthetic”.

Viking 464pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, the brilliant Hamnet , “fleshed out” the lives of Shakespeare’s children, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Daily Telegraph . Her latest brings another neglected historical figure into the light – the noblewoman Lucrezia de’ Medici. In 1560, a 16-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso d’Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Within a year, she was dead”; it was rumoured Alfonso had killed her. Taking these “suggestive details” as inspiration (as Robert Browning did in his famous poem My Last Duchess ), O’Farrell “constructs a convincing human drama”.

O’Farrell is a master of visual description, said Claire Allfree in The Times . A tiger moves “like honey dripping from a spoon”; through a window, the sound of sobbing drifts upwards “like smoke”. Yet the “headily perfumed” prose proves oddly dulling: rather than “springing forth messily alive”, Lucrezia seems “trapped beneath the weight” of the “relentless” description. Although it sets out to bring Lucrezia back to life, it ends up being a “bloodless book”.

Tinder Press 438pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a TikTok phenomenon, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . Thanks in part to BookTok – the social media app’s books community – her novels about glamorous women finding fame and fortune have sold in their millions. Continuing with that “winning strategy”, her latest centres on a “hotshot American tennis pro”.

Carrie Soto is a former world No. 1, who has won a record 20 grand slams. Now in her late 30s, she mounts an “unlikely comeback”, prompted by the emergence of a new star, Londoner Nicki Chan. This is a “compulsive, soapy page-turner” with “more substance than the average beach read”. In short, it’s an “ace” of an “escapist romp”.

Jenkins Reid has a “nose for a cultural moment”, said Susie Goldsbrough in The Times . And so this book’s appearance so soon after the retirement of Serena Williams – clearly an inspiration for Carrie – is “coincidental but not surprising”. Don’t expect “psychological depth”; “fundamentally, this is a sports story”, with whole chapters devoted to single matches. But it’s certainly very “fun to read”.

Hutchinson Heinemann 384pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Ian McEwan’s novels are often “lean, controlled enquiries” into specific historical moments, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman : 1950s Germany in The Innocent ; the Thatcherite 1980s in A Child in Time . But his 18th is very different – “baggier and more protean” than any of its predecessors. It’s also, “to my mind, McEwan’s best novel in 20 years”. His protagonist, Roland Baines, is a baby boomer who bears a strong resemblance to his creator, were his creator “not a hugely successful novelist”. Roland spends his childhood in Libya, then “attends a state-run boarding school” in England. And like McEwan, he discovers as an adult that he has a long-lost brother. Yet his life is notable for its lack of direction: he “scratches out a living as a hotel lounge pianist, an occasional tennis coach and a hack”. Humble and wise, Lessons is “an intimate but sprawling story about an ordinary man’s reckoning with existence”.

As is often the case for McEwan’s protagonists, Roland’s life “hinges” on a single traumatic episode, said Edmund Gordon in the TLS . Aged 14, he begins an affair with his piano teacher, Miss Cornell – a relationship which, while he “isn’t exactly a reluctant participant”, nonetheless wounds him. A second trauma follows in his 30s, when Roland’s German-born wife, Alissa, abandons him and their baby son to pursue her ambition of becoming a novelist, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . While Roland is left a single parent, Alissa – somewhat implausibly – becomes “Germany’s greatest writer”. As the decades pass, the “social and domestic cavalcade of Roland’s life” plays out against the backdrop of “momentous global happenings” – from 9/11 to the Covid lockdowns. A “vividly detailed lifetime chronicle”, Lessons is a “tour de force”.

Yet it has its problems, said Claire Lowdon in The Spectator . This is a novel full of dropped storylines and non sequiturs, and McEwan can’t resist those “overbearing news bulletins” that have peppered his recent work (“The Profumo affair was only a year away” etc.). Still, Lessons is consistently enjoyable, and there’s something to be said for the “novelty” of reading a McEwan novel that feels more like “a Jonathan Franzen”. At the age of 74, his desire to try new things is impressive. “Despite the rambling and the rushed patches, here is a whole, unruly life between the covers of a single book: a literary feat of undeniable majesty.”

Cape 496pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

This new crime novel by J.K. Rowling, using her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, has Cormoran Strike, her Afghan-War-veteran-turned-private detective, getting to grips with the world of online trolls, said Joan Smith in The Sunday Times .

Strike and his partner Robin are called to investigate the stabbing to death of a woman named Edie. She was the co-creator of a YouTube cartoon featuring “ghoulish” characters cavorting in a cemetery, and the finger of suspicion falls on a gamer known as “Anomie”, who had subjected Edie to a “torrent of lurid accusation” after claiming that she’d ripped off his ideas.

While the novel works as a “superlative piece of crime fiction”, its subject matter also feels highly pointed: Rowling has herself faced accusations of plagiarism, and she has been subjected to savage online abuse for arguing that aspects of trans ideology lead to the “erasure of the word ‘woman’”.

Sphere 1,024pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Emma Donoghue’s latest novel is set in early 7th century Ireland, and centres on a trio of monks who build a monastic community on a tiny island, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post . The men set out in their “precarious boat” after their leader Artt – a “legendary holy man” – has a “vision of an island in the western sea”. When they reach a “large rock” covered in “birds, guano and little else”, Artt is convinced it’s the place from his dream – and resolves that he and his companions will never leave. Haven may sound like a work that “few readers have been praying for”, but it proves “transporting, sometimes unsettling and eventually shocking”.

There are some “striking formal similarities” between this novel and Donoghue’s 2010 bestseller Room , inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, said Paraic O’Donnell in The Guardian . Both are works of “radical minimalism”, about people who “struggle to preserve their humanity in utter isolation”. Although Haven is “created in a muted palette”, this is a work of impressive “narrative sustenance” – and is “crowded with quietly beautiful details”.

Picador 272pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated first novel, In the Distance, centred on a “penniless young Swedish immigrant” in California, said Jonathan Lee in The Guardian . His second concerns a “character at the other end of the economic scale” – a “Gatsby-like tycoon in 1920s New York” named Andrew Bevel. Rather than tell Bevel’s story straight, Diaz embeds it in four “interconnected narratives”: a fictionalised novel based on Bevel’s life; Bevel’s unfinished autobiography; a memoir by his ghostwriter; and fragments from his wife’s “long-withheld diary”. It sounds tricksy, but it’s surprisingly readable – like a “brilliantly twisted mix” of Borges and J.M. Coetzee, with “a dash” of Italo Calvino.

The “knotty ingenuity” of this novel makes it deserving of its place on this year’s Booker longlist, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily Telegraph . It is “destined to be known as one of the great puzzle-box novels”. I doubt that, said John Self in The Times . Parts are “original and surprising”, but overall it’s “well behaved and dull”, and consumed by its own cleverness. Like the tycoon at its centre, it’s “all smart, no heart”.

Picador 416pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel begins with a transformation, said Alex Preston in The Observer : Anders wakes up one morning to find his skin has changed from white to black. This metamorphosis is not explained; instead, the focus is on its impact on the people around Anders. When he goes out, he feels “vaguely menaced”; his boss tells him he’d have killed himself had it happened to him. But then Anders finds that similar transfor­mations are taking place across the US, until eventually there is “just one white man left”. Written in “incantatory” sentences, The Last White Man is a “strange, beautiful allegorical tale”.

Mysterious transformations can be “fertile terrain” for fiction, said Houman Barekat in The Times : one thinks, most obviously, of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. But while that work resists easy interpretation, Hamid’s aims are all too obvious: this is “yet another liberal parable” about the “psychic underpinnings of racial prejudice”. Ultimately, it’s a book that says more about the “publishing industry’s anxious scrabble for topicality” than about “the human condition”.

Hamish Hamilton 192pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

Most books billed as telling us “what it means to be human” really do no such thing, said John Self in The Observer . Ross Raisin’s A Hunger is an exception. The tale of a London “sous chef in her mid-50s”, this is the fourth novel by this talented writer – and it is his most “ambitious” yet, encompassing “work and family, desires and appetites, responsibility and identity”.

Raisin has always excelled at portraying working lives, said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian : Waterline , his second novel, centred on a Clyde shipbuilder; A Natural , his third, was about a lower league footballer. Here, he captures the rhythms of kitchen life so skilfully that it “makes one realise the degree to which work is still under-charted territory in literary fiction”. Yet the novel is about much more than cooking: Patrick, Anita’s husband of 30 years, has recently developed early-onset dementia, forcing her to combine the stresses of her job with a new role as a carer “changing incontinence pads”. The result is a “deeply thought out and beautifully unshowy” novel about the “conflicting demands of work and care”.

I wasn’t impressed, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Although Raisin’s gifts for “startling descriptive prose” are evident – notably in a bravura opening set in a walk-in fridge – the novel overall is let down by “wooden dialogue”, characters who don’t seem real, and a clumsy structure in which Anita’s present-day travails are juxtaposed with “rushed and skimpy” scenes from her early life. It may not be perfect, but this is a deft exploration of “the guilt that accompanies female ambition”, said Amber Medland in the FT . Daring in what it sets out to achieve, A Hunger is equally “impressive in its execution”.

Jonathan Cape 464pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

Lillian Fishman’s debut is one of the most “searching and enthralling” novels about sex I’ve read in years, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman . “Eve is a 28-year-old barista from Brooklyn in a long-term relationship with Romi, a paediatrician.” Although Eve considers herself a lesbian, she has fantasies about sleeping with a “wild number of people”. When she posts nude pictures of herself online, they catch the attention of an artist called Olivia – who proves to be acting on behalf of a “tall, wealthy man in his 30s” named Nathan, who makes Eve his sexual “toy”. “Part erotic Bildungsroman, part melancholy comedy of manners”, Acts of Service is “startlingly accomplished”.

Well, I found it thoroughly tedious, said Jessa Crispin in The Times – less a novel than a crude allegory. Nathan is “basically Christian Grey from Fifty Shades rendered in marginally better prose”. Fishman’s reflections on the corrupting effects of “patriarchy” and “capitalism” have been far better expressed elsewhere. Overhyped and unoriginal, this is a disappointing addition to the “library of endless want”.

Europa Editions 224pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

For 29 years after the end of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda held out on a small island in the Philippines, believing his comrades were still fighting, said Anthony Gardner in The Mail on Sunday . Now the great film director Werner Herzog, who befriended Onoda in 1997, has written an imaginative reconstruction of his experiences. Steeped in the atmosphere of the jungle, it’s an “enthralling” novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery.

Onoda’s single-minded intransigence makes him an archetypal Herzog hero, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph , and this “Hemingwayesque” novella is highly cinematic, with short chapters and vivid scene-setting. But its refined prose gives it a sculptural quality too: its descriptions of the natural world are radiant. Herzog manages to inhabit the soldier’s mind, and to create a “visionary” narrative, said Peter Carty in The i Paper. Moral issues – Onoda killed a number of islanders – are somewhat sidelined, but this beautifully crafted book is a “literary jewel” nevertheless.

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Charlotte Mendelson’s “riotous, prize-winning novels” tend to be about messy, dysfunctional families, said Leyla Sanai in The Spectator . Her fifth centres on a “monstrous” artist named Ray Hanrahan and his downtrodden wife, Lucia. Narcissistic, abusive and controlling, Ray has “quashed” Lucia’s own artistic ambitions for decades, forcing her to minister to his needs and look after their (now grown-up) children.

With an “ostentatious private view” of his work about to open, he has summoned friends and family to their north London house. The result is a “glorious ride” of a novel – one in which “Mendelson observes the minutiae of human behaviour like a comic anthropologist”.

There is a lot going on in this novel – “at times, too much” – but the overall “effect is exhilarating”, said Susie Mesure in The Times . Moving between perspectives, Mendelson cranks the drama up to a “fiery climax”. There’s a “hint of HBO’s Succession ” in this tale of a “family in thrall to a despotic patriarch”, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph . Mingling “eroticism, absurdity and pathos”, it’s “electric”.

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At first glance, this debut novel seems to be yet another post-#MeToo book “dissecting sexual trauma and queasy power dynamics”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times . At a US liberal arts college, John, a senior English professor, finds himself accused of sexual impropriety by “seven students with whom he has had affairs”. But rather than adopt their perspective, the novel is narrated by John’s wife – who is anything but sympathetic towards them. She laments the fact that young women today seem to have “lost all agency”, and admits to having “enjoyed the space” that her husband’s infidelities provided. With its bracing take on sexual politics, Vladimir is an “astonishing debut”.

In its second half, the novel becomes primarily about “female appetite”, as the narrator develops an obsessive crush on a “gorgeous new junior professor”, said Lucy Atkins in The Guardian . May Jones’s “quietly captivating” voice dazzles until the end, when the novel is let down by a “heavy-handed denouement”. Still, in its willingness to tackle “complex”, provocative themes, this is “an engrossing and clever debut”.

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Hanya Yanagihara’s latest novel is the “keenly awaited” follow up to A Little Life , her “devastating story of irreparable human damage”, said David Sexton in The Sunday Times . It consists of three sections all set in the same New York building and taking place, respectively, in 1893, 1993 and 2093.

Part one re-imagines 19th century New York as a “liberal breakaway nation in which gay marriage is normal”. Part two, set in the “time of Aids”, focuses on a wealthy white lawyer and his young Hawaiian lover. Part three envisages an America that has been ravaged by “successive waves of viruses, every few years from 2020”. While a “less bludgeoningly powerful” work than A Little Life , it’s still “highly affecting”.

This is in many ways a “wantonly strange” work, said Claire Allfree in The Times : the convoluted narrative can be “frustratingly opaque”, and there’s a complete absence of humour. Yet there’s no denying Yanagihara’s skill at immersing us in the “emotional world of her characters”. For all its flaws, To Paradise is “frequently magnificent”.

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The story of Joan of Arc – a 15th-century peasant girl from northeast France who became a national heroine – has been told many times before, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . But in her second novel, the American writer Katherine J. Chen offers a “fresh and utterly enthralling take”. Her Joan is not a religious icon – “gone are the visions” – but primarily a “woman of action”: she’s a child of remarkable physical gifts who, through a series of “serendipitous events”, becomes a key ally of the dauphin (later King Charles VII), helping to lead his armies against the English. “Vivid, visceral and boldly immediate”, the novel has already earned comparisons with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy.

At once a “mystic, martyr and war hero”, Joan is a largely “incomprehensible” figure today, said Jess Walter in The New York Times . Chen, however, has a “lively stab” at making her seem relevant – in part by imagining her as an “abused child” who uses her anger to become an “avenging warrior”. “Rich” and “visceral” in its descriptions, Joan is “stirring stuff”.

Hodder & Stoughton 368pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

In 2014, Jessie Burton’s debut novel The Miniaturist – about 18-year-old Nella Oortman’s coming of age in 17th century Amsterdam – became a global bestseller, said Gwendolyn Smith in The i Paper . Now Burton is back, with a “beguiling, tender sequel”, set 18 years later. Nella, now 37, is a widow (The Miniaturist climaxed with her husband’s execution for sodomy), who still lives in the “same grand address on Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal”. A “cold, austere place” in the previous book, the house is now suffused with “warmth and familiarity” – though it still “thrums with secrets”. “Wise and fabulously immersive”, this book, if anything, surpasses its predecessor.

I disagree, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph . Burton remains a “lovely writer”, who can craft “startlingly sculptural” sentences. But “where The Miniaturist was alive with spooky mystery”, this book lacks an “animating spirit”: characters, events and even the language seem contrived. “In seeking to bring more life to the characters in The Miniaturist, The House of Fortune somehow diminishes them instead.”

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Set in the Alaskan wilderness, Rebecca Rukeyser’s “wistful and sardonic” first novel is part adventure story, part coming-of-age tale, said The Irish Times . Seventeen-year-old Mira is working for the summer at a guest house run by a married couple, Stu and Maureen, alongside two other girls and a troubled chef. Much of her time is spent fantasising sexually about a boy she met the year before. Rukeyser’s descriptive prose is assured and elegant, and the story becomes increasingly tense, as Stu’s predatory behaviour towards the girls becomes apparent.

Mira’s adolescent yearning is well captured in this quirky, wry debut, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Rukeyser provides a “deftly juggled” mixture of merciless judgement and gentle compassion for her characters’ failings. There’s also plenty of comedy, said Cal Revely-Calder in The Sunday Telegraph, though the story becomes more “mature and melancholy” as it progresses. The Seaplane on Final Approach is about how “desire ruins everything”. And when the finale arrives, it is “catastrophic” – but it also provides “lengthy, gruesome fun”.

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“Few people outside the literary world” have heard of 41-year-old novelist Benjamin Wood, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . That’s a shame, because he’s “wonderful”. Already the author of “three richly layered novels”, he has now written a fourth, The Young Accomplice , which is “his most original yet”. Set in the 1950s, it centres on Arthur and Florence Mayhood, “childless architects in their 30s” who, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, dream of creating a communal-living project on their Surrey farm. To help them realise this ambition, they invite a pair of borstal leavers – brother and sister Charlie and Joyce Savigear – to live with them; unsurprisingly, things go wrong.

Compared with Wood’s previous novels, which blended “storytelling punch with literary sensibility”, this book at times feels muted, said John Self in The Times . Wood spends a lot of time in his characters’ heads; you wish for a bit more action. Still, there are compensations: the characters feel like “real people”, who you miss when they’re gone. This is a book that “digs its claws into you and sticks there”.

Viking 368pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Benjamin Markovits’s latest novel is a “compelling account of relative failure”, said Joseph Owen in Literary Review . Brian, the narrator, is a “big fat slow” Jewish kid from Austin, Texas, who becomes childhood friends with Marcus Hayes, his high school’s basketball star. Marcus is black, and from a broken home – for a while he lives with Brian’s family – but in adulthood, when Marcus becomes an “NBA superstar”, Brian is merely a “semi-successful” sportswriter. The novel convincingly portrays Brian’s “inhibited world-view”, which is “tainted by jealousy” of his friend. The result is a “bleak, amusing, ultimately absorbing read”.

This is a novel with the “topography of a classic American story”, said Stuart Evers in The Spectator : “sport as a metaphor for the fracture of the US; friendship as a microcosm of race relations”. It feels a little dated – a bit “male and white” – and the “detailed descriptions of basketball” could put some people off. In the final act, though, when Markovits unveils “his A-game”, the novel “ignites into something compelling and emotionally resonant”.

Faber 361pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99

In 2009, the novelist Julie Myerson found herself at the centre of a media storm after publishing a non-fiction account of her eldest son’s addiction to marijuana, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . The episode, she has said, drove her to a “kind of breakdown”, and she has never directly addressed it in her writing. Except that now, in a way, she has. This, her 11th novel – entitled Nonfiction – is all about “teenage drug addiction”. The narrator is a once “happily married” writer, who is looking back on her attempts to save her heroin-addicted daughter “from self-destruction”. Given her own backstory, Myerson is risking a lot with such a novel – but “the results are nothing less than incandescent”.

The title is confusing, and deliberately so, said Alex Peake-Tomkinson in The Spectator . This is Myerson’s “squarest attempt so far at autobiographical fiction”. Yet in other ways, it seems a typical work: she has always explored “her worst fears in her novels”. Although I hope she will “look beyond her own life” in future, I found this a “satisfyingly propulsive” read.

Corsair 288pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Maggie Shipstead’s “thrilling” historical epic, Great Circle , not only earned her a place on last year’s Booker shortlist, but also “proved a huge hit with readers”, said Lucy Scholes in the Financial Times . So it’s “savvy” of her publisher to bring out this collection of her short stories, written over the past 13 years. The tales vary widely in tone and setting – they transport us “from the catacombs of Paris, via an Olympic Village, to a guano island in the middle of the Pacific” – but taken together, they forcefully illustrate the “remarkable scope of Shipstead’s imagination and talent”.

While one or two of these stories seem a bit “too self-conscious”, most are superb, said Lizzy Harding in The New York Times . In the “sure standout”, “La Moretta”, a young couple’s honeymoon in Romania “transforms into folk horror à la The Wicker Man ”. Shipstead has an “unnerving ability to capture a character’s inner life in a few choice phrases”, said Stephanie Merritt in The Observer . “It’s a rare writer who can create a world as convincingly over a few pages as in a 600-page novel.”

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This “creepy coming-of-age tale” unfolds like a “darker version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda ”, except with “no Miss Honey coming to the rescue”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer . Set in an “icy” Massachusetts town in the 1980s, it is narrated by Ruthie, an only child whose family is “on the edge of poverty”. Ruthie is an assiduous cataloguer of “everything she sees” – her mother’s lumpy body, her awkward dinners with richer school friends – but she doesn’t always understand the significance of what she sees. Marked by its “pitiless, minutely observed prose”, Very Cold People is a work that “will stay with me for a very long time”.

Manguso is especially good at evoking the “constraints and cruelties” of Ruthie’s home life, said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times . So successfully does she portray “boring old daily pain” that it almost seems redundant when “more dramatic plot-turns arrive” towards the end of the book. Very Cold People is at its best simply as a “compendium of the insults of a deprived childhood: a thousand cuts exquisitely observed and survived”.

Picador 208pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

The Irish writer Louise Kennedy only began writing aged 47, but her rise has been meteoric, said Madeleine Feeny in The Spectator . The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, her debut short story collection, was “fought over” by nine publishers. And now, with this first novel, she has written what promises to be another hit. Plot-wise, Trespasses doesn’t break new ground, said Kevin Power in The Guardian: set near Belfast in 1975, it’s about a young Catholic primary school teacher who falls in love with a posh Protestant barrister. What distinguishes it is its “sense of utter conviction”. This is a story “told with such compulsive attention to the textures of its world that every page feels like a moral and intellectual event”.

Kennedy is a superbly visual writer, and her “idiomatic dialogue gives her prose real verve”, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer : the protagonist’s mother, catching sight of Helen Mirren on a chat show, describes her as a “dirty article”. Combining “unflinching authenticity” with a “flair for detail”, this is a “deftly calibrated” and ultimately “devastating” novel.

Bloomsbury 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Julian Barnes’s latest is that “old-fashioned thing, a novel of ideas”, said John Self in The Times . It is narrated by Neil, a former actor, but is really all about Elizabeth Finch, the “lecturer on a course on culture and civilisation that Neil took decades earlier”. Finch, who is “probably inspired” by Barnes’s friend, the late novelist Anita Brookner, is remembered as an inspirational teacher, someone “who obliged us – simply by example – to seek and find within ourselves a centre of seriousness”. Neil recalls their sort-of friendship – they occasionally met for lunch – and describes his quest, in the present day, to find out more about Finch in the wake of her death. Very much a “thinky” novel, Elizabeth Finch may be “rather less fun” than most of Barnes’s books, but it “offers plenty to chew on”.

“Part of the challenge of rendering a brilliantly inspirational teacher is making them sufficiently brilliant and inspirational,” said Sameer Rahim in The Daily Telegraph . Despite Neil’s insistence on Finch’s originality, “what she actually says tends to fall flat”. “She told me that love is all there is. It’s the only thing that matters,” a classmate of Neil recalls. The novel is further let down by its baffling middle section, which consists of Neil’s “stolid student essay” on the fourth century Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, whom Finch regarded as a kindred spirit, said Sam Byers in The Guardian .

It all adds up to a “work stubbornly determined to deny us its pleasures”. I disagree, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . As a teacher, Finch “blazes with vividness”, and Neil’s essay is a “bravura exercise in nimbly handled erudition”. Elizabeth Finch “celebrates the cast of mind” – subtle, sceptical and ironic – that “Barnes most prizes”.

Jonathan Cape 192pp £16.99; The Week bookshop £13.99

Jennifer Egan’s new novel is a “sibling novel” to A Visit From the Goon Squad, her bestselling 2010 novel about rock music, “Gen-X nostalgia” and the “digitalisation of everything”, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times . Consisting of interrelated short stories which zigzag about in time, it resembles its predecessor in structure – and features many of the same characters. But at its centre is a new figure: the “Mark Zuckerberg-like” Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, has created an “implausible” device known as Own Your Unconscious, which lets users upload their own and other people’s memories, and “watch them all like movies”.

The sci-fi aspects of the book are neither new nor “particularly fully realised”, said Andrew Billen in The Times : memory uploads have been tackled better elsewhere. But this is essentially a book of short stories, and most of them are excellent and “brain-stretching”. What “really astounds is the visual brilliance of Egan’s writing across these disparate tales”. She won a Pulitzer for A Visit From the Goon Squad; I hope this book “wins another”.

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Ali Smith’s first novel since her “extraordinary Seasonal Quartet ” has a fitting title, said Alex Preston in The Observer , as it “springs from the same source as its predecessors”. Like them, it was “written and published swiftly”, to cram in recent events. It’s 2021, and Sandy, an artist, is “struggling through lockdown”. Her father is in hospital following a heart attack – and she “only has his dog for company”. Smith skilfully evokes the grim monotony of pandemic life, said Catherine Taylor in the FT – from the “regularity of testing” to “the exhaustion of medical staff”.

Much of the plot concerns Sandy’s “renewed acquaintance” with an old university friend Martina, who gets in touch to tell her about her recent interrogation by UK border police, said Philip Hensher in The Daily Telegraph . This leads to Sandy meeting Martina’s twin daughters, Eden and Lea, who are full of “millennial” rage and entitlement. Covering a “lot of contemporary ground”, Companion Piece offers an entertaining portrait of the “world we live in, by the most beguiling and likeable of novelistic intelligences”.

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Douglas Stuart’s debut, Shuggie Bain – the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize – was a “bleak autobiographical novel about a young boy caring for his alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . His follow-up is “cut from the same cloth”.

Fifteen-year-old Mungo lives with his mother and two older siblings in Glasgow’s East End. “His brother, Hamish, is a Faginesque Protestant gang leader; his sister, Jodie, is a do-gooding fallen angel; and their mother, Mo-Maw, is a woman ruined by alcohol.” As the novel opens, Mungo is shooed off by his mother on a fishing trip with two menacing strangers from her Alcoholics Anonymous group, who promise to teach him “masculine pursuits”.

Interspersed with this “gruesome excursion” are chapters set a few months earlier, detailing Mungo’s first love affair, with a Catholic neighbour called James. Although this “alternating timeline” feels forced at times, this is still a “richly abundant” work packed with fine writing and “colourful characters”.

It may be felt – with some justification – that Stuart has written the same book twice, said Nikhil Krishnan in The Daily Telegraph . Yet he “makes small differences count”. Because Mungo is older than Shuggie, he is able to see in his sexuality “not just a source of difference and alienation, but a possible route to escape and emancipation”. And Stuart widens his focus beyond family life, taking in the “Jets and Sharks world” of Glasgow’s sectarian politics.

Like its predecessor, this “bear hug of a new novel” has a “yeasty whiff of the autobiographical” about it, said Hillary Kelly in the Los Angeles Times . If you adored Shuggie Bain , this book “will please you on every page”.

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Joseph Stalin “never spoke or wrote” about the two months he spent in London in the spring of 1907, attending the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, said Alasdair Lees in The Daily Telegraph . Into this “psychological aperture” steps Stephan May, whose sixth novel is an “openly confected” retelling of those “few overlooked weeks”.

It begins with a 29-year-old Stalin – then known by his nickname, Koba – landing at Harwich, fresh from “a campaign of terror and banditry” in his native Georgia. In London, he stays in a dosshouse in Stepney, while better-off attendees – including Lenin – lodge in Bloomsbury. May’s Stalin is a “figure of fascinating contradictions” – an “idealist and a thug” – and the novel a “captivating thought experiment”.

Sadly, it often falls “disappointingly flat”, said Simon Baker in Literary Review . There are “samey descriptions” of London’s “awful” pubs, and May makes too much use of summary. Despite having the makings of an “exciting political thriller”, the novel isn’t convincing enough for May’s story to really grow.

Sandstone 288pp £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99

Anne Tyler virtually created the “family novel” genre, but has “strayed into more diverse territory recently”, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times . Fans will be delighted by the 80-year-old’s 24th novel, which marks a return to type. Set, almost inevitably, in Baltimore, it’s a multi-generational saga spanning six decades, about a “comfortingly average” family. Mercy and Robin Garrett “enjoy a smoothly conventional life” running a hardware store and raising their three children. But theirs is a family in which “certain things must never be said”, and as the decades pass, this creates division. French Braid is “Tyler at her most Tyler-ish: pleasant and inoffensive, yet surprisingly deep and moving”.

Near its end, the novel does take an unexpected turn, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . Its final chapters are set during Covid – a topic Tyler suggested she’d never write about. Typically, however, she emphasises not the pandemic’s harrowing side, but its “potential to occasion reunion and reconnection”. This book may fall short of her best work – but “at this point any Tyler book is a gift”.

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This “eagerly awaited” debut is being hailed as “part of a wave of novels by young men of colour exploring race, romance and mental health problems”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . Nur, a 25-year-old online journalist from Birmingham who regularly suffers panic attacks, has been with Yasmina for four years. But he has yet to tell his Pakistani parents about the relationship: Yasmina’s family is Sudanese, and Nur has never got over his “mother’s disgust when she saw him hanging out with a black girl at school”.

On the surface a “poignant romance” about the barriers standing in the way of two young lovers, Good Intentions gradually reveals itself to be a deeper novel – about how an obsession with vulnerability can “make you forget your responsibility to others”.

Ali’s characters are “well-drawn”, and “what a tonic” to have a book about race in Britain set outside the capital, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Unfortunately, though, the unnecessarily complex structure necessitates a lot of darting “between points on the timeline” – and this, alas makes the novel rather “confusing”.

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Jessamine Chan’s “crafty and spellbinding” debut is set in a terrifyingly plausible dystopian America, said Molly Young in The New York Times . Frida Liu is a 39-year-old single mother with an 18-month-old daughter and a stressful job. One day, in a “spell of insomnia-induced irrationality”, she leaves her daughter unattended at home while running a work errand.

Neighbours hear the toddler crying, and alert the police. Frida is sentenced to a year in an “experimental rehab facility”, where women are moulded into better mothers by practising their parenting skills on AI dolls. The school continually berates Frida for her actions: her kisses, instructors tell her, “lack a fiery core of maternal love”.

It’s no surprise that this book has been “making waves” in the US, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph : “questions of how we define and evaluate motherhood pervade contemporary culture”. Beautifully lucid and elegantly written, this is a “must-read” novel, said India Knight in The Sunday Times – “a Handmaid’s Tale for the 21st century”.

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The Canadian writer Sheila Heti’s latest is “an original”, said Anne Enright in The Guardian . It’s a short novel about grief in which plot often gives way to “mystical” digressions that are “earnest, funny and sweet” – “a bit mad”, but in a good way.

Mira, a solitary woman in midlife, falls in love with Annie, a fellow student at their school for art criticism. Then Mira’s father dies, and his spirit joins her own inside a leaf, where they converse about “art, God, love and the transmigration of souls”, before Mira returns to “the pursuit of love”, her faith in “family and tradition” strengthened.

Billed as “a philosopher of modern experience”, Heti is known for her auto-fictional novels such as How Should a Person Be? (2010). Pure Colour is more like a fable, said Mia Levitin in the FT , in which God is an artist, and this world is his “first draft”, now “heating up in advance of its destruction”. Sadly, the book’s “meditations on grief” left me cold, and I found the prose “clunky” and “perilously close to kitsch”, with a naive, fairy-tale quality ill-suited to a story about middle age.

Harvill Secker 224pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Edmund White’s novels “forever enlarged what gay writing might do”, said Neil Bartlett in The Guardian . His latest book – “his 30th, by my count” – is an “elegant, filthy” work that “crackles with a heartfelt insistence that the old and hungry” still have much to tell us about “the dynamics of sex”.

In the year 2050, a married couple in a remote Swiss chalet decide to entertain each other by recounting their “previous sexual careers”. Constance, in her early 30s, is an “African-American orphan”, while Ruggero, her husband, is an elderly bisexual Sicilian aristocrat who is “legendarily well-connected (not to mention well hung)”.

As you’d expect, this novel is “elegantly written”, and contains many “arresting images”, said Peter Parker in The Spectator – but it’s fairly “preposterous”. The leap forward in time is merely a device allowing Ruggero to reminisce about his affair 30 years earlier with the now-forgotten writer Edmund White, then old and infirm: a “fat, famous slug”, he calls him. It is, however, all very entertaining.

Bloomsbury 288pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99

Unsure what to do after graduating, Matt Knott alighted on tutoring as an “easy way to make money”, said Georgia Beaufort in The Daily Telegraph . He duly joined an agency that specialised in finding “study buddies” for the children of the super-rich. With his “Cambridge degree and his floppy hair”, Knott proved a big success – and in this “very funny memoir”, he recounts his three years in the job.

His first assignment was in a house in Mayfair, where each day he sat in a “holding pool” of tutors waiting to see if he’d be picked to help a five-year-old with his homework. Other families were considerably friendlier: half servant, half family member, Knott accompanied his charges on various exotic holidays.

This amusing book sheds light on a ridiculous world of “butlers in very tight trousers” and “helicopter trips from Tuscan villas to smart restaurants in Rome”, said Roland White in the Daily Mail . In this milieu, five-year-olds eat lobster tempura for supper, and “PJs” stands for private jets instead of pyjamas. With his pleasing turn of phrase (these days he works as a screenwriter), Knott is a witty, observant guide.

Trapeze 336pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel is set during the far-off-seeming “early days” of the Covid pandemic, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Sasha Senderovsky, a successful Russian-born US novelist (like his creator), has retreated to his large house in upstate New York, accompanied by a group of friends. Their plan is to ride out lockdown together but, predictably, things go wrong.

Various housemates fall out with one another; “plenty of partner-swapping” occurs. If the basic conceit owes a lot to Chekhov, the novel’s boisterous, madcap comedy owes at least as much to A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Shteyngart has brilliantly captured the “almost maniacal aliveness” of the early pandemic. If anyone writes a funnier lockdown novel, “I will eat my face mask”.

There’s so much going on in this somewhat “messy” novel that at times it’s exhausting to read, said John Self in The Times . A “little more stillness” would have been welcome. Still, it exhibits Shteyngart’s trademark “feverish energy” – and the result is “often funny” and “sometimes moving”.

Allen & Unwin 336pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Michelle de Kretser’s slyly intelligent sixth novel pairs two first-person narratives,” said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . One is set in “dystopian near-future Melbourne” and follows Lyle, an immigrant who works for a sinister government agency created to deport immigrants. The other is set in 1981, and follows Lili, a 22-year-old Australian, during a carefree sojourn in the south of France. The link between the two narratives is mysterious – and even the order you read them in is “up to you”, on account of the book’s “reversible, Kindle-defying two-way design”.

The publisher has been “fastidious” in cooperating with de Kretser’s conceit, said Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph : there are two front covers, two copyright pages, two sets of acknowledgements, and so on. “It’s sort of magnificent, and it’s also sort of gimmicky” – and it left me unsure if I was actually reading a novel, or simply two novellas yoked together. Perhaps, though, it doesn’t really matter. Filled with “apt quick literary brushstrokes and the gleam of humour”, both halves are equally “terrific”.

Allen & Unwin 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Tessa Hadley is justly lauded for “elevating the domestic novel to literary fiction” in her stories about the “shifting geometries” of middle-class families, said Mia Levitin in the FT . Free Love , her eighth novel, “adds a Sixties twist to Anna Karenina ”. Set in 1967, it centres on 40-year-old Phyllis Fischer, a well-off suburban housewife married to Roger, a senior civil servant. One summer night, twenty-something Nicky – the son of a family friend – comes to supper. He and Phyllis steal an “illicit kiss” – and embark on an affair. Leaving home without a forwarding address, Phyllis swaps her cosy life with Roger for “then-bohemian Ladbroke Grove” (where Nicky occupies a squalid bedsit). Hadley’s style is as “sumptuous” as ever, and her characterisations are superb. While this isn’t perhaps her best novel, its publication is a “cause for celebration”.

Hadley has been criticised for the “narrowness of her social concerns – her incorrigible preoccupation with Cecilias, Harriets and Rolands”, said James Marriott in The Times . So it’s gratifying that in this “beautiful and exciting” novel, she contrasts the bourgeois world with the “supremely undomesticated” 1960s counterculture.

Yet there’s a problem, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times : Hadley is far more at home among herbaceous borders than in the “pot-smoking” milieu of Nicky and his friends. Her depictions of the Swinging Sixties rarely rise above cliché – and “when she tries to capture the life of a black nurse whom Phyllis befriends, the writing becomes laboured”. You sense Hadley “itching to get back to the bourgeois suburbs” – and as this disappointing novel progressed, I wished I was back there with her.

Jonathan Cape 320pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Sarah Moss’s 2009 debut novel, Cold Earth , imagined an out-of-control virus, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . She returns to similar terrain with her latest novel – only this time with less need for invention. Set in November 2020, The Fell centres on Kate, a forty-something single mum, who “finally snaps” during a two-week quarantine period, and goes for a solitary walk in the Peak District. It’s “destined to be an ill-fated expedition”: the night draws in, Kate doesn’t return – and her absence is noticed by her teenage son Matt. With its vivid sense of “accumulating dread”, this is an “intense time capsule of a tale”.

Moss moves “gracefully” between various perspectives, said Sarah Ditum in The Times : that of Alice, an elderly neighbour; and Rob, a member of the mountain rescue team. Elegantly written and concise, The Fell is a “close-to-perfect” novel. Even though Moss has said it was written fast, the prose here feels “precision-tooled”, said Roger Cox in The Scotsman . Remarkably, in only 180 pages, she has captured “all of lockdown life”.

Picador 180pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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The Best Books of 2022 So Far

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One of the best parts of working at a magazine? The piles of books that arrive months before the rest of the world gets to see them. But the influx can often be overwhelming, so when something rises to the top, we like to take note. We have been collecting and curating our favorite titles all year; here we present our selection of the best books that have been published in 2022.  

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (January 4)

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The School for Good Mothers

Jessamine Chan’s debut—like all truly terrifying nightmares—starts off in a banal, familiar way: an utterly exhausted mother, in a moment of sleep-deprived despair, does the unthinkable (and yet understandable) and walks out of her apartment, leaving her baby behind. She doesn’t intend to be gone for long, but somehow time slips away, and before she realizes it, she’s been gone for hours. It’s a terrible thing to have done, and she knows it. But no degree of contrition will spare her from the authorities who descend, first removing her child and then transplanting her to an abandoned college campus turned dystopian re-education facility where she will, ostensibly, learn what it truly takes to be a good mother. The tool for her forensically monitored progress is an uncanny robot baby, meant to stimulate her, challenge her, and, crucially, record her every movement, from loving gestures to instants of inattention. The School for Good Mothers (Simon & Schuster) picks up the mantel of writers like Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro , with their skin-crawling themes of surveillance, control, and technology; but it also stands on its own as a remarkable, propulsive novel. — Chloe Schama

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (January 4)

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Olga Dies Dreaming

Xochitl Gonzalez’s debut novel is a vivacious account of Olga Acevedo’s life as a premier party planner to Manhattan’s elite—a demanding job that opens with the ordering of luxurious embroidered linen napkins for an exorbitantly priced wedding, some which Olga will pocket to impress her own family. The contiguity of Olga’s career life and her familial roots in Puerto Rican Brooklyn creates a tension that ultimately underlines the sacrifices each world constantly asks Olga to upkeep. Gonzalez’s story may be that of a woman seeking career success, love, and happiness, but the dynamic story amounts to a slow-burn chronicle of the American Dream, with moments of humor and bare-bones honesty throughout. —Carolina Gonzalez

Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz (January 11)

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Lost and Found

The first half of Kathryn Schulz’s new book, Lost and Found (Random House), a sensitive and timely meditation on loss and grief, is balanced by the celebration of love and joy in the second half. But rather than the spoonful-of-sugar structure that this division implies, the book is united—even in its darkest moments—as a lively exploration of some of the strongest emotions we humans have the luck to feel and a wondrous look at how they work in tandem. As Schulz puts it in the book: “What an astonishing thing to find someone. Loss may alter our sense of scale, reminding us that the world is overwhelmingly large while we are incredibly tiny. But finding does the same; the only difference is that it makes us marvel rather than despair.” The book grew out of a New Yorker meditation, “ Losing Streak ,” which chronicles the experience of misplacing the mundane and suffering the utmost loss, but it moves far beyond it—into the literary, historical, and philosophical roots of both poles of experience. It offers a sure- and light-footed wander through these heavy topics, though, written with grace and comedy as well as rigor. —C.S.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (January 11)

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Mouth to Mouth

A chance run-in at an airport between our nameless narrator, a down-on-his-luck writer, and an acquaintance from college who has now become an art-world hotshot, Jeff Cook, sets the stage for Antoine Wilson’s taut, compulsive chamber piece of a novel, which you’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting. (Thankfully it clocks in at a brisk 192 pages, allowing you to do just that.) After settling in an airport lounge, the enigmatic Jeff begins recounting a wild (and allegedly never-before-shared) tale that begins with him resuscitating a drowning man on a beach and discovering after the fact that the man he saved is a major art dealer. When Jeff pays a visit to his gallery and realizes the man doesn’t remember him, he slowly begins ingratiating himself into his life, climbing the ranks of his gallery and eventually even dating his daughter, in a story that carries distinct shades of Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt—but to tell any more would spoil the book’s thrilling surprises. It may not come with any sweeping messages or moral takeaways (although that ambivalence is surely the point), but Mouth to Mouth is an elegantly told and supremely gripping tale of serendipity and deception—and delivers a brilliant ending that will leave you guessing about everything that came before. —Liam Hess

I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg (January 11)

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I Came All This Way to Meet You

Jami Attenberg’s 2017 novel, All Grown Up , was a bit of a gateway drug. It felt like it was made for me, in that it reminded me of me: a 30-something Jewish woman looking for love in the big city. I assumed, as often is the case for many fine novels, that this was also Attenberg’s story. Her latest book (and first memoir), I Came All This Way to Meet You (Ecco), reveals that the New Orleans–based writer is even more layered and idiosyncratic than her fictional characters. Her newest is an episodic collection of Attenberg’s life—her cross-country travels, debilitating injuries, bad plane rides, bad boyfriends—which are all told through her signature intimate and humorous style. But it’s her writing on her own work I found particularly revealing. “I became a fiction writer in the first place because stories are a beautiful place to hide,” she writes. I Came All This Way details the highs and lows of finding yourself through your work and living a creative life—it’s a thrill for superfans and newcomers alike. —Jessie Heyman

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (January 11)

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To Paradise

The confounding, brilliant, intricate, beautiful, horrific To Paradise is—if this string of adjectives did not sufficiently convey it—an extraordinary book. Divided into three seemingly distinct sections, positioned 100 years apart, the book is one part historical fiction (set in 1893), part present-ish-day chronicle (1993), and part futuristic sci-fi story (2093). (That last chapter, which must have been informed by, if not fully drafted within, the pandemic, presents a dystopian future filled with “cooling suits” required to venture outside and “decontamination chambers” to ward off the ever-present possibility of infection.) Those who consumed Yanagihara’s most recent work, A Little Life , will not be surprised that this book, like its predecessor, is interested in pain and suffering more than joy and happiness. But it is also a book full of gloriously painted scenes and tantalizing connection—and despite all its gutting turns, one that maintains an abiding hope for the possibility and power of love. (That may just be the only paradise truly on offer.) In and of themselves, some sections feel in some ways quite conventional, but taken together—with all of their extreme cliffhangers and unanswered questions—the stories seem to be asking: What do we want from a novel? Resolution is not available here, but some of the most poignant feelings that literature can elicit certainly are. —C.S.

Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James (January 18)

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For years, the world of elite prep schools was thought of in only the most romanticized terms; lacrosse games, leaf-festooned campuses, and, of course, educational values that prepared America’s next generation of winners to ascend their thrones. Kendra James’s Admissions (Grand Central) is a thorough, necessary, and overdue repudiation of that trope. In the memoir, James—now an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools—looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, a private boarding school in Connecticut, recalling the insidious yet not particularly subtle racism she faced as the first African-American legacy student at the predominantly white institution. Admissions is a tale in the mold of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep , but instead of relegating the racism that is so often found in “well-meaning liberal” space to a parenthetical, the book addresses it head-on, boldly naming the confusion, fear, and trauma that can so often come with being the only person who looks like you in any given room. —Emma Specter

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (February 1)

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Vladimir: A Novel

The smartest take on campus culture comes by way of Julia May Jonas’s slyly hilarious Vladimir (Simon & Schuster). Don’t be dissuaded (or erroneously excited) by the romance-novel aesthetics of the cover. It’s the story of a somewhat lonely and embittered, and yet eminently appealing, English professor whose husband has been felled by a series of sexual assault allegations. But just how real were those allegations? It’s a question almost impossible to ask in real life, but deliciously explored here through our acerbic narrator, who has a quite pre-MeToo view of power, consent, and sexual politics. The titular Vladimir is a new professor in town and the subject of a crush on the part of the narrator that also veers off into deeply inappropriate territory. The novel works on several different registers at once, deftly layering comedy with subtle commentary in an entirely engrossing read. —C.S.

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang (February 1)

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The Family Chao

For Asians in America, the perpetual foreigners, it’s the eternal question regardless of birthplace: How exactly does one become American ? This interrogation is keenly felt by immigrants and their children in particular, as Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, explores in-depth in The Family Chao (Norton), the story of the tyrannical proprietor of a small-town Wisconsin Chinese restaurant (The Fine Chao) and his three unhappy but obedient American-born sons (The brothers Karamahjong). When a scandal engulfs the Chaos, they’re forced to reconsider their place in the society they’ve toiled in and called home for decades, as well as their roles within the family itself. At times scathing and hilarious, the rollicking tale considers the thorny themes of assimilation, identity, pride, filial piety, transracial adoption, and interracial relationships. It’s a fine chaos indeed; you’ll never look at Chinese restaurant families the same. —L.W.M.

The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen (February 8)

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In her debut novel, The Arc (St. Martin’s Press), Tory Henwood Hoen has woven a bracingly entertaining antidote to the hellscape of online dating. Thirty-five-year-old branding wiz Ursula Bryne is in the grip of a third-life crisis, ambivalent about her job and unable to sustain a lasting relationship with anybody other than her cat. That is, until she is tapped to visit the lab of The Arc, a mysterious place that promises lasting love to those lucky enough to spend a week at its unnervingly glossy lab. Ursula is paired with Rafael, an improbably modest and handsome Yale grad blessed with a sense of humor and killer dance moves. The book wears its sci-fi lightly, focusing instead on anatomizing a whirlwind romance that begins to fray around the edges. As the duo’s faith in the arc’s highly proprietary pairing methodologies begins to falter, they are left to determine if they still buy into each other. Set in a privileged slice of pre-pandemic New York, the story has a sunny feel and a rich supply of semi-satirical backdrops, making pit stops at bro-infested tech conferences and members-only temples to fourth-wave feminism. With its intelligent and unfussy bent, the novel is foremost a plucky city romance that recalls the work of Laurie Colwin . Beneath the dystopian veil lies a thoroughly modern love story with old-fashioned heart. —Lauren Mechling

A Very Nice Girl by Imogen Crimp (February 8)

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A Very Nice Girl

Imogen Crimp’s A Very Nice Girl (Henry Holt) follows Anna, a talented young opera singer who is defying her provincial parents to carve out an artistic life for herself in London. That bohemian existence can prove, at times, a bit trying (she has to share a bed with her roommate and moves into a quasi-feminist commune where tampons are deemed a tool of the patriarchy), and so she takes refuge in the sterile quarters of her finance-professional boyfriend. The book eschews easy “tale of two cities” contrasts, however, and asks some serious if lightly deployed questions about the sacrifices, rewards, and worth of an artistic life (and how you pay for it). With some steamy sex scenes in the mix, Crimp feels like she’s channeling something of the Sally Rooney style: interior and complex, but also unafraid to incorporate corporeal forces among all the others that govern us. This is high-class romance at its best. —C.S.

Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary by Johanna Kaplan (February 15)

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Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary

A joy of discovery attends the publication of Johanna Kaplan’s Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary (Ecco)—a volume that gathers her cacophonous, mordantly funny stories from the 1960s and ’70s (and includes the contents of her prized debut, Other People’s Lives ). How had I never heard of Kaplan? You’ll wonder the same as you get swept up in the world of her slightly neurotic, status-aware postwar Jewish characters who mine humor from dislocation and anxiety. The bravura novella-length “Other People’s Lives” is the masterpiece here, a rollicking account of several days in the life of Louise Weil, a piercingly observant, mentally fragile young woman marooned in the ramshackle milieu of a Manhattan artistic couple who take a day trip to the country. It fizzes with the urbane energy of J.D. Salinger, Grace Paley, and Deborah Eisenberg—a restless delight. —Taylor Antrim

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (February 22)

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The Swimmers

The Swimmers , by Julie Otsuka, begins at an underground pool in an unnamed city, where regulars find almost-sacred refuge in their favorite lanes and go-to strokes. (Others—like the “binge swimmers” who periodically rush the pool to melt off holiday pounds—are tolerated more than welcomed.) Yet as Otsuka’s elegant third novel wends on, its focus narrows to one swimmer in particular: an older woman for whom the water is a stabilizing, comfortingly familiar force. Even as dementia sets in, Alice knows exactly who she is at the pool—that is, until it closes, and she’s thrust headlong into the swirling memories, strained relationships, and ever-fracturing sense of self that await her on land. —Marley Marius

Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (March 1)

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Checkout 19

The cryptic stream of consciousness that coursed through Claire-Louise Bennett’s 2015 debut short-story collection  Pond,  all told from the perspective of a single narrator who lives a solitary existence in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland, made her one of that year’s breakout new voices. Seven years later, Bennett returns with  Checkout 19,  a similarly impressionistic, and perhaps even more challenging, work of autofiction that further showcases her talents for blending the micro with the macro across a melting pot of genres, from seemingly autobiographical minutiae plumbed from her youth in Wiltshire to impressively erudite forays into literary criticism. While ostensibly it tells the story of a writer looking back on her formative years as a young woman, it’s easier to think about the book as a kind of tapestry. Once you allow yourself to get swept along by Bennett’s instinctive, synaptic abilities as a storyteller, the vivid textures of her sentences, and her subversive sense of humor,  Checkout 19  is a strange and delicious treat. —L.H.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire (March 1)

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Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice In Her Head

Warsan Shire is perhaps best known for having her work featured in Beyoncé Knowles’s 2016 feature-length film, Lemonade , but the British-Somali poet is charting a new course with her first full-length poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head (Random House), which weaves together the themes of migration, womanhood, Black identity, and intergenerational collection that Shire is so singularly gifted at exploring. Shire frequently draws on her own life to create her art, and the end result is a collection of poems that will shine as a beacon for marginalized communities everywhere (and, perhaps, inspire those who have always taken their own belonging for granted to think beyond the confines of their individual experience). —Emma Spector

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke (March 21)

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The Invisible Kingdom

Chronic illness has been relegated to the margins of public consciousness for far too long, a reality that has only become more painfully stark since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago. Tens of millions of Americans live with chronic, often “invisible” illnesses, and Yale Review editor Meghan O’Rourke’s book is a searing and thoroughly researched exploration of the pain and confusion that many of them go through in their quest to have their health issues taken seriously by the medical establishment—and, often, the world at large. —E.S.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou (March 22)

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Disorientation

Taiwanese American writer Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel, Disorientation , however, manages to tell a deeply vital and insightful story about Asian experience and identity in post-Trump America while still being absurdist to the point of IRL laughter. In the book, 29-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang experiences a rupture in her calm, orderly life of writing her dissertation on late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou (and coming home to her doting fiance, Stephen, a white literary translator with a penchant for mansplaining and Japanese-schoolgirl costumes) when she discovers that Chou is—wait for it—a total fiction, a character invented and embodied by one white man and propped up by another. Suddenly, Ingrid is thrust into a world of high-stakes espionage, book burnings, and campus protests and is forced to question the things most fundamental to her, including her field of study, her relationship, her friendships, and her identity as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants living in the U.S. —E.S.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (April 5)

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Young Mungo

Douglas Stuart’s new book bears a good deal of resemblance to his debut, Shuggie Bain , which was published quietly just before the pandemic to limited fanfare and then slowly became one of the most lauded novels of the year. (It was my personal favorite.) Young Mungo (Grove), like Shuggie , is told from the perspective of a young boy growing up in a Glasgow tenement with an alcoholic mother and little prospect of escape. But while Shuggie took the claustrophobia of that scenario and expanded it into a broad and treacherous emotional landscape, Young Mungo allows its protagonist to roam a bit wider, making it a more open and ambitious book. If Shuggie took after the great, detail-laden social realist novels of the late 19th century, Young Mungo feel more rooted in the 21st, with alternating settings, shifting time frames, and divergent plots that eventually converge to calamitous effect. Some early descriptions of the book, perhaps desiring to tamp down the inevitable bleakness of its premise, have emphasized a love affair that crosses religious and sectarian lines (and sheds new light on the divisions that plagued not just the more prominently troubled Ireland of the late 20th century but Scotland as well). And there is sporadic love (romantic and familial) to offer warmth and light within the novel’s terrifying expanse—but this is a book that sucks you into its darkness and makes you feel its profound, beating heart. —C.S.

Little Foxes Took Up Matches by Katya Kazbek (April 5)

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Little Foxes Took Up Matches

In  Little Foxes Took Up Matches —a notable debut from the writer, editor, and translator Katya Kazbek—a sense of enchantment animates dreary post-Soviet Moscow, where a beautiful boy named Mitya lives in a crowded apartment on a stately old street. As a baby, Mitya swallowed an embroidery needle—or so he and his family believe—and he’s certain it made him immortal, like the folktale figure Koschei the Deathless; he discovers another kind of deliverance, and no small amount of danger, dressing up in his mother’s clothes, using her makeup, and letting his hair grow long. (He calls this persona Devchonka, or “girl.”) A queer coming-of-age narrative in every sense of the words, Kazbek’s novel is twisty, tragic, and deeply charming—an endearing exploration of the stories we tell and the people we find in order to live. —M.M.

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong (April 5)

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Time Is a Mother

In 2019, mere weeks after publishing his celebrated novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and receiving a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Ocean Vuong’s mother died following a short battle with breast cancer. Yet if the title of Time Is a Mother, Vuong’s second poetry collection, appears to suggest this might be a circumscribed exploration of grief in the aftermath of this event, its approach is unusually wide angle. Stories of personal loss are woven into vignettes and memories that explore the most sweeping of subjects—addiction, racism, war, death, family—through Vuong’s gentle, modest voice and the occasional touch of wry humor. So, too, does he once again prove himself the rare writer in whose hands experiments with form can become a thing of beauty in and of themselves. With On Earth , Vuong used his experience as a poet to reshape the contours of the first-person novel into something more amorphous; here, his experience with prose feeds back into his poetry through cinematic poems like “Künstlerroman” and “Not Even,” where full, novelistic paragraphs are delicately strung together with single-word stanzas, open and closing like concertina windows into the lives of those whose stories they tell. (One of the few more overt tributes to his mother consists simply of an itemized list of her Amazon purchases, before delivering a gut punch in the form of a “warrior mom” breast cancer awareness T-shirt.) After all, despite its technical prowess, the most striking thing about Vuong’s writing will always be its warm, beating heart even in the face of life’s cruelties. The penultimate poem, “Dear Rose,” is written directly to his mother as a kind of sensorial biography of her journey as an immigrant from Vietnam to America—napalm on a schoolhouse, bullets in amber, churning fish sauce, dew-speckled roses—images both dazzling and devastating; in the end she simply leaves “a pink rose blazing in the middle of the hospital.” It’s a body of work as hauntingly beautiful as it is ultimately hopeful, and very possibly Vuong’s best yet. —L.H.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (April 5)

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The Candy House

Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House is something of a follow-up to her beloved A Visit From the Goon Squad . Composed of interconnected short pieces (featuring a few of the same characters that populated Goon Squad ), The Candy House is also united by the omnipresence of a sci-fi technology that doesn’t feel quite so far off from our current reality: a widely available memory download device that allows your consciousness (should you so desire) to live in an openly accessible cloud. The Candy House is a book that goes down deceptively easy. The writing is light and buoyant, the characters quite often a rollicking delight—energized by rock and roll; the countercultures of the ’60s and ’70s; high-wire acts of espionage; and technological subterfuge. But when you slow down and begin to parse the web that connects it all, the novel takes on increasing gravity. It’s a dazzling feat of literary construction that belies the profound questions at its core: Does technology aid our sense of narrative or obscure it? —C.S.

Nobody Gets Out Alive by Leigh Newman (April 12)

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Nobody Gets Out Alive

The funny, earthy, and compulsively readable stories in Leigh Newman’s debut collection, Nobody Gets Out Alive (Scribner), are about wildness in all its forms. The author’s home state of Alaska is vividly rendered in its untamed, frontier beauty—but so too are its denizens, who are fierce Alaskans with questionable taste in home decor and hilariously unrefined personalities. Newman, the author of a 2013 memoir, Still Points North (excerpted in Vogue ), which was also set in Alaska, is especially unsentimental on women—on girls kicking free of their fathers (or not); desperate mothers doing the best they can; and, in the prizewinning lead-off story, “Howl Palace,” a mordant widow who is not going gracefully into the good Alaskan night. Newman’s fiction recalls the flinty humor of Annie Proulx, Ann Patchett, and Antonya Nelson—excellent company to be in. —T.A. 

Hello Molly: A Memoir (April 12)

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Hello, Molly!

Molly Shannon’s memoir is much more than a celebrity tell-all—it would have to be, since it starts with unimaginable tragedy: When she was four, her mother and baby sister died in a car accident while her father was driving them home from a party at which he’d been drinking. Hello, Molly! is a story of resilience and resourcefulness; her father cycled through various degrees of indulgence and sobriety for most of her life. (There are memorable scenes of him cleaning the house on speed.) But it sidesteps the trappings of addiction-adjacent memoirs, avoiding the easy stereotypes of suffering. Hello, Molly! is about one of the great comic actors of our era finding her footing, but it is also a loving portrait of a deeply unconventional parent, who launched his daughter (literally: when she still was just a child, he dared her to sneak onto a plane, and she succeeded) into the world. —C.S.

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life by Delia Ephron (April 12)

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Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

After the long illness and death of her older sister, Nora, and the long illness and death of her first husband, Jerry, Delia Ephron was stunned—if not entirely surprised—to learn in 2017 that she’d been diagnosed with leukemia. Her engaging, wise, and funny new memoir, Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life , chronicles her fierce reckoning with cancer, with grief (“I took the sun setting personally,” she writes of the loneliness of early widowhood), with the life-affirming power of friendship, and, at age 72, with a new love—Peter, a Jungian psychiatrist who wrote Ephron a friendly email after she published an op-ed in the Times about trying to disconnect Jerry’s landline. (Her record of their courtship, conducted initially over email, is as breathlessly romantic as anything she’s put into a screenplay—and this is a woman who co-wrote You’ve Got Mail .) —M.M.

The Trouble With Happiness by Tove Ditlevsen (April 19)

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The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

One of the most (posthumously) lauded novelists of recent years, Tove Ditlevsen is known to most as the author of  The Copenhagen Trilogy,  a sprawling three-part memoir that chronicles both her interior life and major events of the 20th century. In this collection, the landscape is more compact, but the insight into human nature is no less poignant: A young girl watches her mother put on a costume, a temporary and tenuous escape threatened by the whims of the father; with calm remove, a woman imagines her married lover’s domestic life, a simmering, suppressed anger providing a more forceful undercurrent; a young pregnant couple looking to buy a house confronts the contraction of another family’s life at the moment they’re expanding theirs. These spare and sparkling stories summon deep wells of emotion without the slightest trace of sentimentality. —C.S.

The Palace Papers by Tina Brown (April 26)

new book reviews 2022

The Palace Papers

Whether or not you will tune in for the much-discussed Season 5 of The Crown , The Palace Papers deserves a read. Tina Brown does not seem to have researched her subjects so much as lived with them: Indeed, her own career as a young journalist, and then an editor (of many magazines, including several owned by Condé Nast) circled the royal family, and so she writes with the kind of familiarity earned through years of fine-tuned observation. There is definite bias here, but it is the kind that only sharpens her depictions; she’s not afraid to let you know which occupants of the royal palaces she thinks are up to snuff and which she thinks should fade into oblivion. In this year of royal transition (as well as entertainment), The Palace Papers is a supremely satisfying read. —C.S.

When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley (April 26)

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When We Fell Apart

A young Korean American man reeling from the recent suicide of his girlfriend sets out to learn more about the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death in this powerful novel that delves unflinchingly into the deeply timely question of what it means to belong to more than one culture. Wiley’s protagonist’s experience of trying to find links between his California upbringing and his adult life in Seoul will resonate with anyone who has ever been asked, “Where are you  really  from?” —E.S.

The Last Days of Roger Federer, and Other Endings by Geoff Dyer (May 3)

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The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings

If you’re coming to this book expecting an extended meditation on the late career of the titular tennis legend, you might be—well,  disappointed  isn’t the word, really: The book is dotted with such thoughts throughout. It’s true joy, though, is its buck-wild discursiveness. The entire book is a brooding, a searching, and an investigation—in three parts, each composed of exactly 60 more-or-less brief thoughts, about Dylan, Camus, John Berger, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Redford, Gerard Manley Hopkins, D.H. Lawrence, Chuck Yeager, T.C. Boyle, Scorsese, J.M.W. Turner, Michelangelo, Boris Becker, Browning, Ruskin, the Battle of Britain, and yes, Roger Federer (that’s a wildly incomplete list from just the first 40 pages)—of what it means to come to the end of something: painting, writing, striving, playing, living. If you’ve read Dyer before, you know what you’re in for, and it’s in glorious abundance here: humor, memoir, wit, verve, pathos, and an arsenal of erudition. If this is your first immersion, simply be prepared to chase the wind. —Corey Seymour

Trust by Hernan Diaz (May 3)

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What begins as a Henry James–esque chronicle of a Wall Street tycoon’s breathtaking ascent to power at the beginning of the 20th century reveals itself to be so much more in Hernan Diaz’s second novel, Trust: a rip-roaring, razor-sharp dissection of capitalism, class, greed, and the meaning of money itself that also manages to be a dazzling feat of storytelling on its own terms. Trust is a matryoshka doll of a novel, in which the layers peel back to reveal four alternative takes on the same narrative of the financial titan Andrew Bevel and, just as importantly, his wife, Mildred, each as riveting and full of surprises as the next. Its central theme of wealth—what it actually means, who it should belong to, how its relationship with some of the central mythologies of American life developed, and its inextricable linkage with the patriarchy—may feel both important and timely. But the uniquely brilliant way in which Diaz tells that story, as meticulously researched as it is narratively exhilarating, makes it a novel not just for the present age but for the ages. —L.H.

Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera (May 3)

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Linea Nigra

For those unacquainted with the vocabulary that accompanies the childbearing process, the linea nigra refers to a dark vertical line that can appear to bisect a pregnant person’s abdomen. Essayist Jazmina Barrera takes that physical line and writes about and (metaphorically) beyond it, packing her narrative memoir full of carefully considered and exquisitely worded musings on motherhood. Barrera wrote throughout her first pregnancy and into the beginning of her journey as a mother, and the multilayered, deeply felt work that her life experience and obvious talent have combined to produce is eminently worthy of acclaim. —E.S.

A Hard Place to Leave: Stories From a Restless Life by Marcia DeSanctis (May 3)

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A Hard Place to Leave

Longtime  Vogue  contributor Marcia DeSanctis recounts a peripatetic life—and the episodes that were less so. DeSanctis had a career as a tour guide, a TV producer (who worked, among other things, on Eastern European stories after the fall of the Berlin Wall), a cosmopolitan writer who marched to “the city’s incessant, invigorating drumbeat.” And then she moved to the quiet countryside, where she had to come to terms with a sense of herself that wasn’t based on constant movement and the frictions of foreign encounters. The essays in this collection (which include a tale of marital infidelity that made a marriage stronger  originally published in  Vogue ) might be framed as travel writing, but they are just as much stories of self-definition that take place here, there, and everywhere. —C.S. 

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub (May 17)

new book reviews 2022

This Time Tomorrow

Known for her plucky voice and sweetly amusing ensemble comedies, Emma Straub returns with her most emotionally resonant work yet,  This Time Tomorrow.  On the night of her 40th birthday, a newly single and slightly intoxicated Alice drops by her father’s home, located on an Upper West Side alley that time and foot traffic forgot. She passes out and wakes up in 1996, transported back to a moment when her father was still her energetic 40-something roommate, not an ailing 73-year-old whom she faithfully visits at the hospital. Shuttling between her teenage and middle-aged lives, Alice attempts to engineer a new destiny for her father and experiments with a panoply of what-ifs, one of which lands her the guy that got away. All the while, she grapples with the headstrong and heartbreaking nature of time. Beneath the layers of ’90s nostalgia and sci-fi portals to the past lies something even more satisfying: a complicated tale that doesn’t feel the slightest bit complicated. —L.M.

The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker (May 17)

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The Cherry Robbers

From the author of 2015 cult hit  Dietland  comes a more-than-worthy sophomore effort that follows Sylvia Wren—formerly known as Iris Chapel—the second youngest in a family of six heiress sisters, all seemingly cursed to live (and die) tragically. When Iris becomes Sylvia, she thinks she’s escaped her ominous familial fate, but has she? When we meet her in New Mexico in 2017, she’s an internationally famous yet reclusive artist ducking the attention of an overzealous journalist determined to track down the story of how Iris became Sylvia. Compelling, no? (Trust us, it is.) —E.S.

The Red Arrow by William Brewer (May 17)

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The Red Arrow

Something old is new again in William Brewer’s The Red Arrow , a rollicking bildungsroman meets wellness-through-hallucinogenics debut. Our hero has risen from the sticks of West Virginia to become a penniless painter and writer in New York who lucks into a gorgeous tech-employed fiancée and a hefty book contract. Trouble ensues. The advance is spent, the novel is not written (even as we’re given vivid glimpses of what it could be), and a suicidal depression descends. But our protagonist lucks out again—a ghostwriting gig for a star physicist seems to pull him out of his hole—until more trouble strikes. The Red Arrow is about how to survive a creative life in 21st-century America, and its answer will surprise you. Brewer’s earnest description of psilocybin therapy turns a bravura comic novel into something deeper and stranger: an account of unexpected, hard-won joy. —T.A.

Either/Or by Elif Batuman (May 24)

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Elif Batuman’s stupendous  Either/Or  is the hilarious follow-up to the author’s Pulitzer Prize–nominated  The Idiot , which introduced wannabe writer Selin during her first year at Harvard. Now a sophomore, Selin joins the literary magazine, attends campus costume parties, and visits a psychiatrist and Pilates classes, set pieces that dazzle with the author’s deadpan prose and superpowers of observation. “I thought humorlessness was the essence of stupidity,” Selin narrates, and by that metric Batuman is a genius, rendering human folly at its most colorful and borderline surreal. Readers of her essay collection,  The Possessed,  might notice stories that overlap with the author’s own life—and underscore that for lovers of literature, the line between life on and off the page is barely legible. –L.M.

Nevada by Imogen Binnie (June 7)

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Originally published by Topside Press in 2013, Binnie’s debut novel—which follows a young, punk-aspiring trans woman who heads west from New York City in her ex-girlfriend’s stolen car, attempting to play the fraught role of role model to a younger, not-yet-out acolyte she meets in Nevada—is a beautiful and occasionally disturbing complication of the oh-so-American trope of the cross-country road trip.  Detransition, Baby  author Torrey Peters is just one of a long list of trans women writers who name Binnie as an influence, and it’s long past time for the cis reader to form a bond with the brilliance of her work. —E.S.

The Lovers by Paolo Cognetti (June 7)

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In The Lovers , the celebrated Italian novelist Paolo Cognetti (author of 2018’s prize-winning debut The Eight Mountains ) has crafted a short novel of affecting elegance, set in and around the Italian Alpine town of Fontana Fredda. Our protagonist, Fausto, is a stalled writer who abandons his petit bourgeois life in Milan (and his former fiancée) for a rather more elemental existence in the mountains, where he finds work as a cook and begins an affair with Silvia, an alluring young waitress. There’s also Babette, the restaurant’s owner who “had also come from the city… though who knows when and how she got there,” and a flinty snow-cat driver called Santorso, a man forged—and eventually destroyed—by the wild surrounding landscape. Cognetti’s prose, translated into English by the poet Stash Luczkiw, knowingly calls Hemingway to mind (in one chapter, Fausto remembers teaching “In Another Country”), but the more important influence is Kent Haruf’s Plainsong . Here as there, a small community of simple people seems uncommonly beautiful. —M.M.

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun (June 14)

new book reviews 2022

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me

It’s a complicated thing, the father-daughter relationship, particularly when the two share a profession. So it’s fitting that Ada Calhoun’s  Also a Poet  is a complicated, difficult-to-encapsulate book: Labeled a memoir, it’s also Calhoun’s attempt to finish a biography of the New York School poet Frank O’Hara abandoned by her father, the longtime  New Yorker  art critic Peter Schjeldahl. The book is composed of unpublished interview transcripts, domestic scenes from her childhood on the Lower East Side (see Calhoun’s masterly  St. Mark’s Is Dead  for an expanded disquisition on the site of her youth), and a sweetly personal reckoning with the anxiety of influence. All this sounds like a pretty heady brew, but Calhoun’s voice is clear and cogent, a winning and personable guide. —C.S.

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid (August 2)

new book reviews 2022

The Last White Man

An unlikely love story is the warming center of Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man (Riverhead)—unlikely because the novel presents as the kind of cool, elegant fable Hamid has become known for. (His most recent, 2017’s masterful Exit West , used a magical realist trick to lay bare the exigencies of the refugee crisis.) Here, the characters find themselves subjected to a mysterious force that shifts their skin from white to a deep, undeniable brown. At first the change seems to affect only a few, but as it spreads, so do the attendant disruptions and paranoias. The book is obviously about race—Hamid has said that he has been mulling this work for 20 years, ever since the events of September 11 made him acutely aware of his own skin color—but it is also about the burgeoning love and chemistry between its two unabashedly physical main characters, Anders, a trainer at a gym, and Oona, a yoga instructor. Even when corporeal form seems a mysterious and mutable thing, the bond between the two acts as a bulwark against the unpredictability of the world. —C.S.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews (August 2)

new book reviews 2022

All This Could Be Different

Sarah Thankam Mathews wrote All This Could Be Different (Viking) in the first year of the pandemic, when COVID produced a drastic loss of her income. As founder of the mutual-aid organization Bed-Stuy Strong, she was galvanized by witnessing not only the catastrophes and flaws of ordinary humans but also their glorious capacity. Equal parts incandescent love story and frank explorations of everything from sexuality to work to racism, this debut novel—focused on the struggles of a queer young Indian woman in Milwaukee—evokes the precariousness of life for so many in 21st-century America and the necessity of showing up and breaking free if we truly want all this to be different. —L.W.M.

Amy & Lan by Sadie Jones (August 16)

new book reviews 2022

Amy & Lan

Set deep in the bucolic fields of rural England, Sadie Jones’s new novel, Amy and Lan , charts five years in the lives of the two young children (and best friends) after whom the book is titled. Living in a commune of sorts, the duo are left largely to roam free, aside from the odd bit of fulfilling their duties on the farm, written with a particularly evocative eye for blood and muck. Things go south when entanglements between the adults start to draw their attention, and as Amy and Lan reach their early teenage years, these glimpses of grown-up life become an inescapable reality with devastating consequences. What at first reads as a deeply atmospheric bildungsroman (dung being the operative word here), Amy and Lan quietly builds to a cautionary tale of the good life turned sour. —L.H.

Touch by Olaf Olafsson (August 16)

new book reviews 2022

In the Icelandic author (and erstwhile media executive) Olaf Olafsson’s delicate, absorbing new novel Touch , COVID lockdowns serve as a backdrop to the gentle unfolding of reawakened desire in its lead character, a 75-year-old Icelandic man who sets off on a journey to track down the Japanese woman who was his first great love back in 1960s London. His story begins with an out-of-the-blue Facebook message on the same evening he shutters his restaurant of 20 years, and continues to weave through past and present in an addictive structure of short, unnumbered chapters that also reflect his fraying recollections due to dementia. Really, to call Touch a pandemic novel would be doing it a disservice. With Olafsson’s gorgeous, lyrical writing, it feels weighted with deeper questions about memory, intergenerational trauma, and the enduring forces of love that can bridge decades and cultures—all reaching a denouement as satisfying as it is profoundly moving. —L.H.

The Hundred Waters by Lauren Acampora (August 23)

new book reviews 2022

The Hundred Waters

In The Hundred Waters (Grove), Lauren Acampora’s quietly thrilling latest, a strange drama plays out between one Connecticut family and the 18-year-old son of their new neighbors. While Gabriel Steiger’s righteous anger about the climate crisis rivets 12-year-old Sylvie Rader, who lost a friend to cancer after toxic construction debris were buried in a nearby town, his dark features and compulsive creativity remind Sylvie’s mother, Louisa, of the man she loved before her husband, when she was a young photographer living in New York. The triangle that forms between mother, daughter, and the shifty boy next door is disquieting from the start, but as both relationships tip into disquieting new territory, the Raders’ lush, monied suburb stops feeling quite so staid. —M.M.

A Visible Man: A Memoir by Edward Enninful (September 6)

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A Visible Man: A Memoir

Charting Enninful’s earliest days in Ghana to his family’s emigration to London (where they settled under the “soggy skies” and repressive policies of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain), to his rise to the EIC seat and his wedding—punctuated by an 11th-hour arrival by Rihanna— A Visible Man (Penguin Press) is both a chronicle of a singular life and a universally inspiring portrait of ambition. As Enninful writes in his introduction of his dubious stance toward memoir: “Why look back when you can look forward?” It’s our good fortune that he does both. —Chloe Schama

Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us by Rachel Aviv (September 13)

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Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

Combining the cool poise of Janet Malcolm and the confessional bravery of Joan Didion, journalist and New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv challenges the way we think about mental illness in her absorbing debut, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us (FSG). Through half a dozen vivid case studies–one being the story of her own hospitalization at age six—she unravels medical diagnoses and demonstrates how societal narratives around illness take hold. The result is a fascinating and empathetic look at the mysterious ways our minds can fail us. —Taylor Antrim 

Lessons by Ian McEwan (September 13)

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Ian McEwan’s new novel Lessons (Knopf) is rangingly ambitious, teasingly autobiographical, and unsettling in the manner of his best work, a story of monstrous behavior set against major tides of the last 70 years. Roland Baines, a kind of spectator to history, is our hero—the product of a quintessentially English boarding school, a frustrated poet, occasional tennis instructor, and better-than-average piano player. The episode that shapes his life occurs in the opening pages, during a piano lesson with Miriam Cornell, a young instructor at Roland’s school. While teaching him Bach, she pinches his bare leg, an act of sexual sadism that leads, eventually, to the real thing in her bed. Roland never quite recovers from this wildly predatory affair (he 14, she 25). And in adulthood, another villain awaits: his first wife, Alissa Baines, who leaves him and their newborn son so that she can pursue a soaring literary career unencumbered. How can a novel populated by such (notably female) cruelty feel so expansively humanist? Roland is both haunted by trauma and able to push away from it, toward love (a second marriage), parenthood, forgiveness, grace. Lessons is a luminous, beautifully written, and oddly gripping book about lives imperfectly lived. —T.A.

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (September 13)

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Bliss Montage

We’re in the thick of a dystopian golden age, but the indisputable leader of the pandemic lit pack came out in 2018. Ling Ma’s Severance was half tongue-in-cheek critique of capitalism, half science fiction about a group of New Yorkers fleeing a fatal airborne epidemic believed to have originated in Shenzhen, China. In Bliss Montage (FSG), her panic-slicked and wildly inventive new short story collection, the author continues to mine anxieties particular to our time. The narrator of “Los Angeles” lives with her uncommunicative husband and her 100 ex-boyfriends. “G,” named after the recreational drug that two young women take together in order to become invisible, gives a new spin to the notion of “ghosting.” The awful term “geriatric pregnancy” becomes a literal horror story in “Tomorrow,” whose protagonist must conceal the arm that is developing on the outside of her body—a common aspect of high-risk pregnancies, her doctor crisply informs her. These eight tales don’t build up to traditional climaxes, but the tension between the familiar and the unfathomable pulses on every page. —Lauren Mechling

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (September 20)

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Lucy by the Sea

Elizabeth Strout has kept her readers well acquainted with the doings of Lucy Barton, a bestselling writer (like Strout herself) from a devastatingly poor background, twice married and now a widow with two adult daughters, who in last year’s diverting novel Oh, William forged a kind of chummy detente with her first husband, William, as he discovered a hidden past. In Strout’s poised and moving Lucy by the Sea (Random House), Lucy and William are fleeing Manhattan in the face of COVID and setting up a lockdown life in Maine. It is only in the steady hands of Strout, whose prose has an uncanny, plainspoken elegance, that you will want to relive those early months of wiping down groceries and social isolation. Here, the Maine landscape is gorgeously rendered in its COVID hush, and Strout balances the tension of viral spread with the complex minuet of Lucy and William coming to terms with their resentments and enduring love. This is a slim, beautifully controlled book that bursts with emotion. —T.A.

Stay True by Hua Hsu (September 27)  

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Hua Hsu’s steady, searching memoir, Stay True (Doubleday), brings a certain 1990s collegiate persona into clarion focus: the undergraduate who is highly cultivated in his interests (Pavement yes, Pearl Jam no; cigarettes yes, alcohol no; indie films yes, fraternity parties no), a young Gen Xer studiedly indifferent to mainstream culture, and rigorously obsessed with what’s cool. As an undergrad at Berkeley, Hsu was this person to a T and his memoir digs, in a lovely, low-key way beneath the surface of the pose. Hsu’s Taiwanese parents immigrated to the U.S. and harbored a kind of poignant enthusiasm for their new lives–especially his father who was interested in his son’s thoughts about everything and anything. Hsu is an intellectual slacker who studies rhetoric and political science, but is outwardly bored by most everything, a creator of Zines and a cultivator of misfit friends. One friend, named Ken, bucks the trend. Ken is handsome, into Dave Matthews, and likes (the horror!) swing dancing. Hua has a curious bond with him in spite of all that and then when Ken is killed in horrific circumstances, Hsu is unmoored. A moving portrait of a persona undone by tragedy. –T. A.

Foster by Claire Keegan (November 1)

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In Claire Keegan’s Foster (Grove) , first published by The New Yorker as a short story in 2010 and now expanded to a novella, the Irish writer traces the journey of a nameless girl who is palmed off to distant relatives in a bucolic corner of rural County Wexford for a summer while her poverty-stricken, neglectful parents prepare for the birth of their next child. What unspools from there is a deceptively complex coming-of-age tale, both intimate and richly expansive, as the girl’s foster family provides her with the room and space to blossom, before a heartbreaking secret threatens to shatter her newfound idyll. Balancing Keegan’s delicate, sparing prose and masterful ear for dialogue with a tale that is almost overwhelming in its tenderness, Foster is a heart-wrenching treasure of a book that only serves to confirm Keegan’s place as one of contemporary Irish literature’s leading lights. —Liam Hess

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono (November 1)

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Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

Bono’s deeply personal memoir chronicles his earliest memories, the formation of his band, the meeting of his wife when he was still a teen (he joined the band the same week that he first asked her to go out with him). The book is also about his father, a figure that loomed over him, especially after the early death of his mother, with almost comic nonchalance regarding his son’s epically blossoming career. (It took a meeting with Princess Di, arranged by his son, to truly ruffle him.) It is about Ireland, the legacy of the violence that raged through much of the 20th century, and Africa, and also the promise of America. It is not a short or compact book. But do you want that from the man behind some of the most stirring and soaring ballads of all time? Sink into your plush chair of choice with this one in your lap and the stereo blasting. —C.S.

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Booklover Book Reviews

Booklover Book Reviews

New Books Released 2022: Best new fiction this month

With countless new books released each month, it can be hard for a book lover to keep up with all that is shiny and new in fiction . But, I love scouring the upcoming book releases lists, searching for those special gems, whether exciting new novels from bestselling authors or the next breakout debuts – whatever is likely to make our book-loving hearts sing.

Related Reading: New Books Released 2023: Best books this month

Our leisure reading time is precious… Why just pick good books to read, when you can find the best books to read in 2022!

🔍To help narrow down your book selection, I will share my top picks of the new fiction releases in 2022 across several genre. Links in this article will take you to more detail about each new book, and when I have been lucky enough to read it, open up my full review in a new tab.

So without further ado, read on to see which 2022 book releases have caught my attention so far… and which have already earned a spot on my Best Books 0f 2022 list!

Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.

New Books Released and Upcoming in 2022

Newest Books Released 2022 - November & December

November & December Book Releases

After the avalanche of highly anticipated new releases from big-name authors in September & October (see further below), there are less books to get excited about in November & December 2022. However, there will always be some titles that catch my attention.

Now Is Not The Time to Panic - New Book Release

New Release Literature

Now Is Not the Time To Panic by Kevin Wilson ( Nothing To See Here ) is a bold coming-of-age story spanning 20 years. An exploration of young love, identity, the power of art; the secrets that haunt us—and, ultimately, what the truth will set free.  Find out more >>

We Are the Light by Matthew Quick ( Silver Linings Playbook ) is described as an illuminating epistolary novel about a grieving widower Lucas Goodgame who takes in an ostracized teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.  Find out more >>

New Release Mystery Novels

Day’s End by Garry Disher – I really enjoyed Consolation (the third novel starring Paul Hirschhausen) so I was eager to ride shotgun again, as this rugged small-town cop with a good heart, gets to the bottom of more mysteries. In short – arson, a missing backpacker, and another body in a burnt suitcase… Read my review >>

Death on a Winter Stroll by Francine Mathews – The closest thing to a Christmas novel on this new books list. No-nonsense Nantucket detective Merry Folger grapples with the aftermath of the pandemic and two murders as the island is overtaken by Hollywood stars and DC suits for the holidays.  Find out more >>

Days End - New Release Fiction

But, if ever there was a season to add a fun, heart-filled fantasy novel to your reading pile, it is the festive one.

Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N Holmberg – Mid-1800s Rhode Island (land of sentient dwellings): When down-on-his luck inheritor Merritt Fernsby finds himself trapped in Whimbrel House, Hulda Larkin a trained “housekeeper” knows just what to do. But neither expects the surprises, danger, and attraction they find as they uncover the house’s secrets together.  Find out more >>

The Bookstore Sisters by Alice Hoffman – A novella about an almost bankrupt family bookstore, two sisters not on speaking terms, and the arrival of a mysterious letter. Read my review >>

New Books Released 2022 - September & October

Best New Book Releases 2022: September & October

Books New Releases - Kate Athkinson

It has been far too long since I read a Kate Atkinson title , and her latest standalone historical novel  Shrines of Gaiety  sounds too good to miss. Set in the roaring ‘20s in the clubs of Soho, London where royalty rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, this novel’s star is this glittering underworld’s notorious queen Nellie Coker. This ruthless and ambitious mother of six soon learns that success breeds enemies, and her empire faces threats from without and within. 

New in Books - Barbara Kingsolver

Books by bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver ( The Poisonwood Bible ) are never short on ambition, with her latest release  Demon Copperhead  no exception. Inspired by Charles Dicken’s  David Copperfield  but translated to a modern southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia setting, it tells of a boy’s journey to maturity after being born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer with no assets beyond his dead father’s copper coloured hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival.

Crime-Detective New Book Releases

New Book Releases - The Ink Black Heart

The Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (yes, we know it’s Rowling) has a well-earned and evergrowing fanbase due to its fabulous TV-adaptation , and the much anticipated super chunky sixth title The Ink Black Heart is finally on bookstore shelves. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is murdered just days after begging for Robin and Cormoran’s help to uncover the true identity of Anomie – a mysterious online figure who had been persecuting him. 

New fiction books 2022 - The Tilt

I have enjoyed every book I have read by Chris Hammer , but particularly so his last novel Treasure & Dirt which introduced the detective pairing Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic. Thankfully they are back in a new novel Tilt . Nell is assigned an unsolved murder that occurred decades ago in her hometown. But this is no ordinary cold case, as the discovery of more bodies triggers a chain of escalating events in the present day, and Nell begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her. 

New Books – Thrillers & Suspense

New releases books - The Last Girl to Die

I was blown away by Helen Fields’ novel One for Sorrow , and her new release The Last Girl to Die , set on the ocean-battered Isle of Mull off the coast of Scotland sounds equally riveting. When 17-year-old Adriana Clark goes missing her desperate parents turn to private investigator Sadie Levesque. She finds her seaweed-crowned body in a cliffside cave, but the deeper she digs into the island’s secrets the closer danger gets.

New fiction - Unnatural Creatures

I enjoyed Kris Waldherr’s poetic gothic novel debut The Lost History of Dreams , and so her new book about the line we cross for loyalty and love, Unnatural Creatures is likely worthy of book lover attention. Apparently, the untold story of the three women closest to Victor Frankenstein – his mother, his bride and his servant – is revealed in this dark and sweeping, atmospheric reimagining of Mary Shelley’s beloved gothic classic.

Fantasy Book Releases

New fiction - Stephen King

Described as vintage Stephen King, the bestselling author’s latest offering Fairy Tale  stars Charlie Reade, a lonely seventeen-year-old boy who befriends an old recluse Howard Bowditch and his dog Radar. But, when Howard dies Charlie inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher – for their world or ours. A young hero with a canine sidekick? Count me in.

New novel - Veronica Roth

Bestselling YA author Veronica Roth ( Divergent ) is releasing a thought-provoking adult dystopian mystery titled Poster Girl that explores the expanding role of surveillance on society. It tells the story of a woman’s desperate search for a missing girl after the collapse of an oppressive dystopian regime–and the dark secrets about her family and community she uncovers along the way.

Literary Fiction New Releases

New Book Releases - Andrew Sean Greer

I am not often in agreement with book award judges but the ironic and quirky narrative in Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Less certainly won me over. So, I am eager to accompany his hapless protagonist Arthur Less on his next adventure in Less is Lost – a literary road trip with a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina.

New Book Releases 2022 - Lucy Ives

I found the spiky, quirky narrative in Lucy Ives’ Impossible Views of the World fascinating, and her new book release Life is Everywhere sounds equally intriguing. It’s about one person, a young writer, on one evening, reckoning with heartbreak–a story that, to be fully told, unexpectedly requires many others, from the history of botulism to an enigmatic surrealist prank.

More new book releases from bestselling authors:

new book reviews 2022

Best New Book Releases 2022: July & August

New fiction books 2022 - Cold Cold Bones by Kathy Reichs

I found The Bone Code #20 a quality addition to Kathy Reichs’ iconic Temperance Brennan series, so am looking forward to her 2022 new book release Cold Cold Bones #21 . When quality time with her daughter is interrupted by the discovery of a human eyeball etched with GPS coordinates on their back porch, this leads Tempe on a dangerous pursuit of someone scarily familiar with her past cases and hellbent on revenge. This instalment also stars fan fave beau Andrew Ryan.

New Books 2022 - The Carnival is Over by Greg Woodland

Screenwriter Greg Woodland’s debut crime novel The Night Whistler set in 1970s rural small town Australia was one of my Best Books of 2020 and shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award . In his new book release, a sequel The Carnival is Over , teenager Hal and Sergeant Mick Goodenough are older but have past events made them wiser? When gruesome accidents keep occurring in Moorabool and someone close to Hal goes missing they begin to suspect something more sinister is going on.

Also, Denise Mina fans will be pleased to know the sequel to Conviction , her thrilling modern spin on mystery metafiction starring Anna and Fin, will be titled Confidence and released early July 2022.

New release romance

New Fiction Books - The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Dead Romantics has been named one of the northern Summer’s Hottest Reads ( Entertainment Weekly ). A disillusioned millennial romance ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this adult debut from national bestselling YA author Ashley Poston . Florence believes real romance is dead . . . but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories!

Books New Releases - Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

Love this title! Of Alicia Thompson’s debut, Ali Hazelwood has said, “ Love in the Time of Serial Killers is to die for… Let Phoebe and Sam’s hilarious interactions and blazing chemistry suck you in.” PhD candidate Phoebe has always been obsessed with true crime. She thinks her new neighbour, Sam, could be a serial killer. But it’s not long before she realizes that Sam might be something much scarier–a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armour to reach her vulnerable heart.

New thriller novels

2022 New Book Releases - The Swell by Allie Reynolds

The setting of Allie Reynolds’ new release standalone psychological thriller The Swell (aka The Bay) is a far cry from her snowbound breakout debut Shiver , but the plot sounds no less chilling. Described as Point Break meets Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None , this novel explores the dangerous ties between a group of elite surfers who are determined to find the perfect waves at any cost… even murder. The waves are to die for. 

New fiction books - Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

My top pick of the August new book releases in this genre is a locked-room mystery, Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney ( Rock Paper Scissors ). Daisy Darker is arriving at her grandmother’s crumbling Cornish house perched on its own tiny private island to celebrate her eightieth birthday and Halloween. It’s over a decade since her family have all been in the same place. When the tide comes in they’ll be cut off from the world, with a killer.

New Book Releases – Literary historical fiction

Best new fiction July 2022 - Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra

Mercury Pictures Presents from award-winning author Anthony Marra ( A Constellation of Vital Phenomena ) is one of the most anticipated fiction book releases of 2022 — an epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, from Mussolini’s Italy to 1940s LA—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice.

Maria Lagana arrived in Hollywood hoping to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest. Fifteen years later, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. As the world descends into WWII, she rises through a maze of politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens her carefully constructed facade, and she must finally confront her father’s fate, and her own.

New Books 2022 - The Crimson Thread by Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth ( Bitter Greens , The Wild Girl ) is known for her impeccably researched fiction romantically weaving history, fable and myth. Her new book release The Crimson Thread is another epic and enchanting tale. Set in WWII Crete, Alenka, a young woman who fights with the resistance against the brutal Nazi occupation finds herself caught between her traitor of a brother and the man she loves, an undercover agent working for the Allies.

New Book Releases 2022 - The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton

Jessie Burton’s debut The Miniaturist earned the now bestselling author a legion of fans and a TV series . Its sequel The House of Fortune is now being released. Set in 1705 Amsterdam, Thea Brandt is turning 18, her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, they are selling furniture to buy food. Nella is desperate to find Thea a husband to guarantee their future, but when she feels a strange prickling sensation on the back of her neck, she wonders if the miniaturist has returned for her.

More Literary & Fantasy new book releases

New Book Releases - The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Fantasy horror novel The Book Eaters is Sunyi Dean’s debut. Hidden across England and Scotland live six old Book Eater families. The last of their lines, they exist on the fringes of society and subsist on a diet of stories and legends. When Devon Fairweather’s second child is born a dreaded Mind Eater, she flees before he can be turned into a weapon for the family… or worse. Living among humans and finding prey for her son, Devon seeks a cure for his hunger. But time is running out…

Fiction New Releases - Babel by R F Kuang

In R. F. Kuang’s chunky new release Babel , in 1828, Robin Swift is brought from Canton to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell, training for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation (and magic) – Babel. Manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

More literary fiction new releases that have caught my eye:

  • Bobby Palmer’s peculiarly titled whimsical debut novel, Isaac & the Egg has been described as ‘Truly one of the most beautiful stories you’ll ever read’ by  Joanna Cannon – an endorsement hard to ignore.
  • Fellow fans of Jess Walter’s writing ( Beautiful Ruins , The Financial Lives of the Poets ) will be pleased to hear he’s just released his second story collection, The Angel of Rome & Other Stories .
  • The Queen of Dirt Island is a new release from award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan ( The Spinning Heart ).

New Book Releases 2022 - May & June

New Book Releases in May & June 2022

New fiction - Book Lovers by Emily Henry

It seems fitting that I start this best new book releases list with the highly anticipated and aptly titled Book Lovers by Emily Henry . The queen of the vacation rom-coms, she’s back with: One summer in small town North Carolina. Two rivals – cuthroat literary agent Nora Stephens and Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor that Nora has seen quite enough of back in the city thank you very much. A plot twist neither saw coming… 

New book releases - This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

In her new book This Time Tomorrow Emma Straub asks, what if you could take a vacation to your past? On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, she’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels like something is missing. Then she wakes up the next morning back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. 

New release books 2022 - Ali Hazelwood romance novels

With her 2021 debut novel The Love Hypothesis Ali Hazelwood staked her claim on the STEM rom-com. Fans will be pleased to see she is releasing a STEMinist novella series , one a month (May, June and July 2022), in the lead up to the release of her next full length novel, Love on the Brain in August 2022. Find out more >>

Sloane Crosley ( I Was Told There’d Be Cake ) is best known for her darkly witty essay writing. Those talents have now been invested into her new fiction release Cult Classic – a story of ghosts of boyfriends past, romantic carnage, a hipster cult experimenting with mind control and social media’s influence on our modern lives. Find out more >>

New release Fantasy & Gothic suspense

New Books May 2022 - Book of Night by Holly Black

Bestselling YA author Holly Black ( The Cruel Prince ) makes her adult debut with  Book of Night , a modern dark fantasy of betrayals, cabals, and a dissolute thief of shadows, in the vein of Neil Gaiman and Erin Morgenstern . Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or bad decision she wouldn’t make. Now she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but her magic obsessed sister, shadowless boyfriend, and return of a terrible figure from her past mean getting out isn’t easy…

Latest book releases - The Hacienda by Isabel Canas

Isabel Canas’ debut supernatural suspense novel The Hacienda is being described as Mexican Gothic  meets  Rebecca set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence. Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. But when Rodolfo returns to the capital, she begins experiencing a malevolent presence…

Action-Thriller new fiction

Good Book To Read 2022 - The Island by Adrian McKinty

I’ve long been a fan of Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy crime series , and while less impressed with his first foray into the action-thriller genre, The Chain , the synopsis for his May 2022 new release The Island definitely has my attention. Small-town girl Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. It was just supposed to be a family vacation. Then a terrible accident changed everything. You don’t know what you’re capable of until they come for your family… A good book to read if you enjoy relentless suspense, and have a strong stomach!

June 2022 new release books - The Falcon by Isabel Maldonado

Isabella Maldonado wore a gun and badge in real life before turning to crime writing, so it is no surprise her 2020 release The Cipher starring FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera was a bestseller and now Jennifer Lopez is reportedly producing/starring in a feature film version. Book 2 in the series A Different Dawn was released in 2021 and in June 2022 comes Book 3 The Falcon . A serial killer wants to play, but Nina has no time for games. Six female undergrads at an elite university vanish. The media descends. The families demand action.

Crime Mystery new book releases

Best Books 2022 - The Ghosts of Paris by Tara Moss

Another of my favourite authors is Tara Moss. Why? Because she uses her platform to speak out on important issues in real life, and in her fiction she writes kick-arse leading ladies. I adored The War Widow (aka Dead Man Switch ) starring new character private investigator Billie Walker. A former war reporter, she’s world-wise and resourceful; staunchly independent, stylish, sharp of mind and brave of heart. So am very excited to see Billie’s story continue in her latest release The Ghosts of Paris .

When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to post-war London and Paris, where her own painful memories of her wartime lover and briefly, husband Jack Rake, also lurk.

New Books Released 2022 - The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

While best known for her Rowland Sinclair series , Sulari Gentill’s highly-anticipated June 2022 release The Woman in the Library is a standalone crime novel. Set in the ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library , this unexpectedly twisty literary adventure examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

New releases in books - Metropolis by B A Shapiro

May new release Metropolis by B.A. Shapiro ( The Art Forger ) is a novel of psychological suspense involving six mysterious characters who rent units in, or are connected to, the Metropolis self-storage facility and whose lives intersect after a harrowing accident occurs there. But was it really an accident? Was it suicide? A murder? It’s a catalyst to reevaluate their lives. 

New Books - Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks ( March , Year of Wonders , People of the Book ) spends years researching and crafting her novels, so each new book release is long anticipated. This one, simply titled Horse , sounds like another thoroughly immersive and captivating read, in a similar vein to Dominic Smith’s The Last Painting of Sara de Vos .

Spanning three timelines – pre-Civil War Kentucky, 1950s New York and 2019 Washington, DC – it is the story of Lexington , the fastest horse in nineteenth-century America, his black groom, and the white abolitionist who painted him, of the woman in the WWII’s New York Art scene who went on to own the horse’s famous painting, and of Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian now unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse.

In Steve Toltz’ new novel Here Goes Nothing , Angus has been murdered. He feels humiliated – he’s never even believed in an afterlife – and he misses his audacious and fiery wife, Gracie, who’s expecting their first child. The only upside is that he’s found a way to see what his murderer is up to, and how Gracie is faring. The downside: Gracie and his murderer are getting uncomfortably close. Find out more >>

The critics are raving over this one. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts. Find out more >>

New fiction releases - Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz

New in Fiction – March & April 2022

One for Sorrow - Hellen Fields - Best books to read 2022

In Helen Fields’ latest release One for Sorrow a lone bomber is targeting victims across Edinburgh, and no one is safe. In their jobs, DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach deal with death every day. But when it becomes clear that every bomb is a trap designed to kill them too, the possibility of facing it themselves starts to feel all too real. With the body-count rising daily and the bomber’s methods becoming ever more horrifying, Ava and Luc must race to find out who is behind the attacks – or pay the ultimate price. One of my best books of 2022.

Those Who Perish - Emma Viskic - New Fiction 2022

As a long-time fan of Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic PI series , I cannot wait to dive into Those Who Perish (Book 4). This deaf PI’s perspective is always fascinating to read, and unlike in the past, he now has much to lose! But when he receives a message that his brother, Anton, is in danger, Caleb sees it as a chance at redemption. He tracks Anton down to a small, wind-punished island, where secrets run deep and resentments deeper. When a sniper starts terrorising the isolated community, the brothers must rely on each other like never before.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Benjamin Stevenson - New Books Releases 2022

Benjamin Stevenson’s March book release Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone has received lots of buzz, with film/TV rights already sold to HBO and publication/translation rights sold across the world. Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle meet  Knives Out  and  The Thursday Murder Club  in this fiendishly clever blend of classic and modern murder mystery. It’s already being hailed as one of the best books of 2022.

I was dreading the Cunningham family reunion even before the first murder. Before the storm stranded us at the mountain resort, snow and bodies piling up. The thing is, us Cunninghams don’t really get along. We’ve only got one thing in common- we’ve all killed someone.

Another notable new release: Lucy Foley’s The Paris Apartment (my review)

Drama & Romance Book Releases

Imposible, aka The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz - New Books Released

Sarah Lotz’ new book Impossible (aka The Impossible Us ) is being praised for its ‘zingy dialogue’ and compared to one of my favourite romantic comedy novels One Day . Meet Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner. Meet Bee: Serial dater. Dressmaker. Pringles enthusiast. One day, their paths cross over a misdirected email. The connection is instant, electric. Nick buys a suit, gets on a train. Bee steps away from her desk, sets off to meet him under the clock at Euston station. But there’s a twist…

The No-Show by Beth O'Leary - New Books 2022

Beth O’Leary is the author of some of my favourite rom-coms of all time – The Flatshare , The Switch -and her fourth novel The No-Show is being described as brilliantly funny, heart-breaking and joyful, her most ambitious novel yet. It is a story about three women and three dates on Valentines Day. And one man Joseph Carter who made plans with all- Siobhan for breakfast, Miranda for lunch and Jane for the evening – but fails to show for all of them. Where is he? Can they find him?

Dinner with the Schnabels - New Fiction

I just love Toni Jordan’s fun and intelligent take on relationship fiction – Our Tiny, Useless Hearts , Fall Girl , Addition – so am excited about her latest offering, Dinner with the Schnabels .

You can marry into them, but can you ever really be one of them? Things haven’t gone well for Simon Larsen lately. He adores his family, but he’s having a hard time doing anything right in the eyes of his larger-than-life in-laws, the Schnabels. To keep everyone happy, Simon needs to do one little job: he has a week to landscape a friend’s backyard for an important Schnabel family event. But as the week progresses he is derailed by the arrival of an unexpected guest. Then he discovers his wife is keeping a secret. As his world spins out of control, who can Simon really count on?

More new dramatic fiction: The Caretakers by Amanda Bestor-Siegal

New Historical Fiction Releases

The Diamond Eye - Fiction new release books

Kate Quinn’s The Diamond Eye is a timely fiction release based on a true story of a quiet bookworm who became a heroine as history’s deadliest female sniper. In the snowbound city of Kyiv , history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son–but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper–a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death.

Lessons in Chemistry - New in Books

Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel Lessons in Chemistry has been recommended for fans of  Where’d You Go, Bernadette  and  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel . Set in 1960s California it features the singular voice of unconventional, uncompromising Elizabeth Zott, a chemist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show. As her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Orphan Rock - New in Fiction 2022

Dominique Wilson’s Orphan Rock is a richly detailed story of secrets and heartbreak that takes readers from historical Sydney’s slums to the wide avenues of the City of Lights .  The late 1800s was a time when women were meant to know their place. But when Bessie starts to work for Louisa Lawson at The Dawn, she comes to realise there’s more to a woman’s place than servitude to a husband. Years later her daughter Kathleen flees to Paris to escape a secret she cannot accept. But World War I intervenes, exposing her to both the best and the worst of humanity. A powerful story about how women and minorities fought against being silenced. 

New Book Releases – Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Kaiju Preservation Society - New novels to read

John Scalzi’s adventure thriller The Kaiju Preservation Society sounds like lots of fun. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a human-free world. They’re the universe’s largest and most dangerous panda and they’re in trouble. But it’s not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to this alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

The Cartographers - New release books 2022

In The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd Nell Young’s father, one of the most respected cartographers in the world, is found dead – or murdered? – in his office at the New York Public Library . They hadn’t spoken in years, ever since they argued and he fired her over a seemingly worthless highway roadside map, every copy of which is now being destroyed. Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to discover why, the secrets behind her family, and the true power that lies in maps…

Sea of Tranquility - New Books Released April 2022

A new book from award-winning author Emily St John Mandel ( Station Eleven , The Glass Hotel ) is always highly anticipated, with Sea of Tranquility no exception. This slim epic (272 pages) about art, time travel, love, and plague, takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Three people from three different time periods, in a tale that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

Nettle & Bone - April 2022 Book Releases

Kingfisher’s April book release Nettle & Bone is a subversive fantasy adventure. This isn’t the kind of fairytale where the princess marries a prince. It’s the one where she kills him. Marra never wanted to be a hero but she’s done watching her sister suffer at the hands of a powerful, abusive prince.  Hero or not―now joined by a disgraced ex-knight, a reluctant fairy godmother, an enigmatic gravewitch and her fowl familiar―Marra must muster the courage to save her sister, and topple a throne.

New in Literature

A Tidy Ending - New in Fiction April 2022

A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon ( The Trouble With Goats & Sheep , Breaking & Mending ) is a delightfully sinister novel about Linda, a married woman living a nice, quiet suburban life – if she doesn’t think about what her husband might be up to? It’s certainly a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle she sees in the glossy magazines coming through the mail slot addressed to the previous occupant, Rebecca. A darkly funny and compulsive read, full of twists – and twists on twists – that keeps readers guessing until the last page.

Unlikely Animals - 2022 New Literature

In Annie Hartnett’s April release Unlikely Animals , med-school dropout Emma arrives home knowing she must face her dad’s terminal brain disease causing him to hallucinate, her mom’s judgement, and her younger brother’s recent stint in rehab, but she’s unprepared to find that her former best friend is missing, with no one bothering to look for her.  A tragicomic novel about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.

New Book Releases 2022 - January & February

What’s New in Books – January & February 2022

New Book Releases 2022 - The Maid by Nita Prose

Nita Prose’ debut novel The Maid is one of the most buzzworthy early 2022 new releases, with book rights sold in 29 territories and the film rights snapped up by Universal, with Florence Pugh set to play the title character. One of the best books to read to kick start your reading year.

I am your maid. I know about your secrets. Your dirty laundry. But what do you know about me?

Molly is all alone in the world, used to being invisible in her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, plumping pillows and wiping away the grime, dust and secrets of the guests passing through. But she’s thrown into the spotlight when she discovers an infamous guest dead in his bed. This isn’t a mess that can be easily cleaned up. As Molly becomes embroiled in the hunt for the truth, she discovers a power she never knew was there. What can she see that others overlook? A story about everyone deserving to be seen.

New books released - Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman

Victoria Brookman’s debut novel Burnt Out is described as a warm and witty story for our times. Calida Lyons is having a very bad week. She’s long past deadline for her still unwritten second novel and her husband has just left her. Then she loses everything in a bushfire, becomes the celebrity face of climate change and is offered a harbourside refuge by Arlo Richard, handsome tech billionaire. But things aren’t as they seem… Is fame and living with a billionaire all it’s cracked up to be?

New fiction books 2022 - The Competition by Katherine Collette

I often find myself drawn to quirky characters. The Competition by Katherine Collette ( The Helpline ) is set at the SpeechMakers annual national conference. For the first time ever, there is a $40,000 prize on offer for whomever wins the public-speaking competition. Frances, Keith, Neil and Rebecca all want to win, but for very different reasons… A heartfelt comedy of manners featuring a cast of loveable underachievers headed for self-improvement despite themselves.

More new book releases with strong female protagonists: The Department of Rare Books & Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk and  Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead by Elle Cosimano.

Mystery thrillers

New books 2022 - The Violin Conspiracy

Brendan Slocumb’s debut thriller The Violin Conspiracy strikes me as a page-turner with uncommon depth.

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. If he’s lucky, he’ll get a job at the hospital cafeteria. But Ray’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music. When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition–the Olympics of classical music–the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad . . . before it’s too late.

Of the many new books out in January and February 2022 in the commercial thriller genre, these next two synopses particularly caught my eye:

2022 book releases - You Can Run

Y ou Can Run is the first title in a brand new romantic suspense series from bestselling novelist Rebecca Zanetti.

What happens when your demons can’t be outrun? FBI Special Agent Laurel Snow, a rising star profiler, strives to stay one step ahead of the criminal mind. Then there’s her attraction to Huck Rivers, the fish and wildlife officer (and former soldier and trained sniper) that is guiding her to the crime scene—and into the wilderness…

Latest book releases - The Overnight Guest

The Overnight Guest is the upcoming release from bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf. True-crime writer Wylie Lark is snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s writing her new book. Decades earlier, two people were murdered there in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace. As the storm worsens, Wylie is haunted by secrets of the house and her own. Then she discovers a small child in the snow outside. Bringing them inside, it becomes clear the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought, and someone is willing to do anything to find them.

New historical fiction novels

The early 2022 book releases include new novels from some big-names in historical fiction. But, firstly, how gorgeous are the book covers? Luckily, the stories behind them sound just as compelling.

New Book Releases 2022- Violeta by Isabel Allende

Violeta by Isabel Allende ( Of Love and Shadows ) tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years. In a letter to someone she loves above all others, she recounts devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy, and a life shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Similar read: The Return by Victoria Hislop

New books out - The Magnolia Palace

The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis ( The Lions of Fifth Avenue ) is a novel about secrets, betrayal, and murder. In 1920s New York City, a grieving artist’s model accepts a job as private secretary to the daughter and heiress of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick. She finds herself in a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels, and family drama that runs so deep, the stakes just may be life or death. At a Vogue photoshoot nearly 50-years later, model Veronica Weber and charming intern Joshua stumble on a series of hidden messages in the museum that was once the Frick mansion.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

2022 books - How High We Go in the Dark

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut How High We Go in the Dark is receiving early high praise… apparently, a good book to read if you enjoyed David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven . From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

New fiction - This Charming Man

Best known for his The Dublin Trilogy comic crime thrillers, C K McDonnell is now penning a comic fantasy series set in the offices of The Stranger Times , the weekly go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable. In Book 2 This Charming Man , vampires start popping up around Manchester. Throw in someone trying to kidnap staff, a plumbing situation, gambling debts, an entirely new way of swearing, and a DI with a lot of baggage and it’s a hectic week at the newspaper committed to reporting the truth that nobody else will touch. But I urge you to start by reading Book 1 – it is so much fun!

Romantic fiction releases

Lots of new release romantic fiction on offer as we head towards Valentine’s Day. Here are my top picks, both out in February 2022.

Best fiction books 2022 - Love and Other Puzzles

Kimberley Allsopp’s debut novel Love and Other Puzzles is being marketed as an “astringently refreshing rom-com that reads like you’re inhaling a zingy citrus cocktail made by Nora Ephron , at a party thrown by Dolly Alderton and Beth O’Leary “. Rory’s life is perfectly predictable and ordered – but deep down she knows her career and her relationship are going nowhere. So, she decides to let the clues of The New York Times crossword puzzle dictate all her decisions for a week. Just for a week, she reasons. Just to shake things up a bit. What’s the worst that could happen? 

New release fiction books 2022 - One Night on the Island

One Night on the Island by Josie Silver ( One Day in December ) – Cleo writes about love stories every day. She just isn’t living one of her own. When the editor of her dating column asks her to marry herself on a remote Irish island – a sensational piece to mark Cleo’s thirtieth birthday – Cleo agrees. She can handle a solo adventure. Cleo arrives at her luxury cabin to find a tall, dark, stubborn American who insists it’s actually his. Mack refuses to leave, and Cleo won’t budge either. With a storm fast approaching, they reluctantly hunker down together. It’s just one night, after all…

January Rom-Com Releases: Safety in Numbers by Sophie Penhaligon (links to my review) and Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Related reading: My Top Intelligent Romantic Comedy Novels

Recent New Fiction Books

If you cannot wait for these new books to be published, then check out the November and December 2021 new release fiction you may have missed and/or my Best Books of 2021 .

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The best new books of June 2022

The month's most recommended reads, from lauded lit fic to seaside mysteries.

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

new book reviews 2022

Summer is always a boom time for publishing. But even by the breezier standards of the season, not all beach reads are created equal: Below, we've selected 10 of the best tomes to pick up as the temperatures rise — from deeply reported nonfiction to future book-club classics, plus a few sandy outliers.

Horse , by Geraldine Brooks

The enduring, mystical bond between horse and human has pretty much become its own genre by now, but journalist-turned-novelist Geraldine Brooks ( March , Year of Wonders ) goes well beyond soft-focus Seabiscuit tales in her sprawling latest — a story spread across nearly two centuries and centered on the lost narrative of a real-life Black equestrian.

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks , by Patrick Radden Keefe

A king of contemporary nonfiction — it's hard today to find a well-stocked modern bookshelf that doesn't contain his Say Nothing or Empire of Pain — Patrick Radden Keefe is also still a regular New Yorker staff writer. The wait for his next brick-sized exposé can be sated by the 12 previously published profiles compiled here covering rogues of all stripes, from a vintage-wine forger to El Chapo. (June 28)

Counterfeit , by Kirstin Chen

A good-girl lawyer named Ava Wong reconnects with her felonious college roommate, Winnie Fang, and tumbles headlong into an international scheme involving duped luxury handbags. Or does she? That's both the question and the trick in Kirstin Chin's debut — a clever, fizzy inversion of all kinds of Asian stereotypes, Crazy Rich and otherwise.

These Impossible Things , by Salma El-Wardany

Three best friends grapple with faith, romance, and identity in Salma El-Wardany's tender coming-of-age debut, already chosen for the Today book club. Malak, Kees, and Jenna are modern Muslim British girls, though the vagaries of fate and the choices they make send them spinning in and out of one another's orbits in a novel that doesn't trade its heavy subjects (rape, domestic violence, generational culture gaps as wide as the Thames) for beach-tote readability.

The Shore , by Katie Runde

The seaside of the title here is the Jersey Shore, but gym-tan-laundry is hardly the target in Katie Runde's deeply felt family saga, told largely via three female members of the Dunne clan. A father's growing brain tumor, a hectic real-estate business, and a blossoming queer romance all coalesce in one summer season of love, loss, and emotional awakening.

Cult Classic , by Sloane Crosley

It is one of Newton's less-discussed laws that a woman in New York City has a better chance of running into an ex when she is bra-less at a bodega buying oat milk than if she is standing inside his actual home, fully groomed. But the number of run-ins the recently engaged Lola keeps having with men from her past seems too bizarre to be called coincidence in Classic , the second novel from the wildly witty, why-isn't-she-your-best-friend-already brain behind The Clasp and I Was Told There'd Be Cake .

Hurricane Girl , by Marcy Dermansky

Tired of her flailing, failing L.A. existence, thirtysomething Allison decides to ditch it all for a bungalow of her own on the East Coast. When a Category 5 hurricane and a possible brain injury leave her life in shambles once again, Demansky ( Very Nice ) traces the fallout in caustically clever, refreshingly unfussy prose.

Girls They Write Songs About , by Carlene Bauer

The current crush of '90s nostalgia finds novel form in Carlene Bauer's heady, intimate tale of two young women who meet in the halcyon days of a New York music-magazine career circa 1997 — then turns its focus to all that follows when the coming-of-age glow gives way, inevitably, to the deeper shades and complications of grown adulthood.

Local Gone Missing , by Fiona Barton

Sometimes all you need is a smart, swift mystery you can knock out in one too-hot afternoon. Fiona Barton, the author of best-sellers The Widow and The Child , pivots here to a sleepy British seaside town where a detective on medical leave finds herself pulled back onto the job when two teenagers overdose at a local music festival, and a man goes missing in the night.

Ghost Lover , by Lisa Taddeo

Her 2019 nonfiction phenomenon Three Women is set to debut as a Showtime series this fall, starring Betty Gilpin, Shailene Woodley, and DeWanda Wise. In the meantime, Lisa Taddeo returns with more ruthless explorations of the feminine mystique in Ghost Lover , a raw, searching collection of nine short stories.

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Looking for love? You'll find it in 2024 in these 10 romance novels

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February 14, 2024 • Who says romance is reserved for Valentine's Day? Love stories are a treat to be savored year-round. Here are some of the best romance novels hitting the shelves in the first half of the year.

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Is Bigfoot real? A new book dives deep into the legend

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Is Bigfoot real? A new book dives deep into the legend

February 9, 2024 • The Secret History of Bigfoot is a smart, hilarious, and wonderfully immersive journey into the history of Bigfoot, the culture around it, the people who obsess about it, and the psychology behind it.

Pregame the Super Bowl with our favorite football fiction

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February 8, 2024 • Books from writers Álvaro Enrigue, Simone Atangana Bekono, and Kiyoko Murata may not come from the same place — but they still work in conversation with each other.

'Your Utopia' considers surveillance and the perils of advanced technology

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January 30, 2024 • The best of Bora Chung's new stories impart a feeling of disorientation, evoking worlds that seem at first like utopias only to disclose, upon deeper inspection, dystopias.

In 'Martyr!,' an endless quest for purpose in a world that can be cruel and uncaring

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January 29, 2024 • Engaging and wildly entertaining, Kaveh Akbar's debut novel will undoubtedly be considered one of the best of the year because it focuses on very specific stories while discussing universal feelings.

'Come and Get It': This fictional account of college has plenty of truth baked in

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'come and get it': this fictional account of college has plenty of truth baked in.

January 27, 2024 • Kiley Reid made a splash with her 2019 novel Such a Fun Age. Her latest book is set at the University of Arkansas, and it's a refreshing look at day-to-day college life outside the Ivy League.

'Forgottenness' wrestles with the meaning of Ukrainian identity — and time

'Forgottenness' wrestles with the meaning of Ukrainian identity — and time

January 23, 2024 • In writer Tanja Maljartschuk's novel, the narrator's malaise and weakening attachment to time serve as a metaphor for today's Ukraine, as well as for other struggling democracies, including our own.

'The Last Fire Season' describes what it was like to live through Calif.'s wildfires

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January 18, 2024 • Recounting months spent dodging wildfires, writer Manjula Martin considers what it means to create a home in a place that is destined to burn, and to live "inside a damaged body on a damaged planet."

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January 17, 2024 • Stephen McCauley's comic novel offers readers the gift of laughter as well as a more expansive image of what family can be. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says it was a perfect January read.

In 'Filterworld,' only you can save yourself from bad taste

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January 16, 2024 • Kyle Chayka's newest book explores how online algorithms have shaped modern culture, and what we can do about it.

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January 11, 2024 • This YA graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham attains epic dimensions in capturing the complex, bittersweet journeys of its characters .

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January 10, 2024 • Katherine Min's well-crafted posthumous novel is inspired by Lolita -- but with an Asian fetishist as Humbert Humbert and the objects of his objectification given voice.

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Out of Darkness

Out of Darkness (2022)

In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. But when they suspect a malevolent, mystical being is hunting them down, the clan are forced to ... Read all In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. But when they suspect a malevolent, mystical being is hunting them down, the clan are forced to confront a danger they never envisioned. In the Old Stone Age, a disparate gang of early humans band together in search of a new land. But when they suspect a malevolent, mystical being is hunting them down, the clan are forced to confront a danger they never envisioned.

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Cinematic depictions of ancient or near-ancient times have come a long way since the likes of 1960s cheese classics like “Prehistoric Women” and “Creatures That Time Forgot,” pictures that put the curvaceous likes of Martine Beswick and Julie Ege into animal skins and made them grunt in no particular lingo and pivot provocatively as they fled all manner of primordial danger. The new Scottish near-horror picture “Out of Darkness,” set 45,000 years prior to the present day, has copious dialogue in a language called “Tola,” concocted by a linguist and archeologist based on real research and everything. It also doesn’t have a cheesy or cheesecake-oriented bone in its body — in the cold climes of this picture every character is layered up to the extent that secondary sexual characteristics have no chance of making themselves known. And in any event, in their increasingly desperate efforts to survive, sensual activity is the furthest from everyone’s mind.

The movie begins around a campfire, and there are stories being told there. We’re in the company of a nomadic clan, with its own alpha male, named Adem ( Chuku Modu ), aptly enough. He’s a commonsensical type. When the elder of this band, Odal (Arno Lüning) tries to scare young Heron ( Luna Mwezi ) with a tale of demons, Adem sternly states “There are no demons.” And yet there’s something stalking them as they negotiate hostile-to-human forests and rugged coastlines. That thing kidnaps Heron, and threatens the well-being of Ave ( Iola Evans ), who’s carrying Adem’s child.

The unknown force compels the individuals in the small group to put down their own agendas for the nonce and concentrate on not getting killed. One member of the band is a stray woman Beyah ( Safia Oakley-Green ), whom Adem does have some sensual-activity aspirations toward; the younger man Geirr ( Kit Young ) is a warrior-in-training of sorts. This is a clan not wholly united by blood ties — the time in which they live renders the existence nasty, brutish and short, so bonds are forged by necessity, the movie demonstrates. But the contingent nature of alliance breeds mistrust, and callous disregard, as we see when certain members of the group start being treated like bargaining chips relative to an enemy these parties don’t understand and can’t seem to battle. The performers are clearly committed to their characterizations in ways that seem to go above and beyond the requirements of their call sheets — their roles are physically demanding for one thing, and the personalities they’re depicting have few contemporary traits by which the viewer might be ingratiated. 

The eerie music from Adam Janota Bzowski , the vivid dark-hued cinematography from Ben Fordesman , and the ultra-crunchy sound design from Paul Davies and his crew make this challenging atmosphere an engrossing environment to visit while constantly compelling you to note that you sure as hell would not want to live in it. The story told in “Out of Darkness” is ultimately sad more than terrifying, a parable about violence and the roots of human war. It’s an impressively credible and gnarly journey back in time. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Out of Darkness (2024)

Kit Young as Geirr

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Arno Luening as Odal

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New Romance Novels Steeped in Cozy Winter Vibes

If you’re craving comfort — or connection — pick up one of these books.

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By Olivia Waite

Olivia Waite is the Book Review’s romance fiction columnist. She writes queer historical romance, fantasy and critical essays on the genre’s history and future.

  • Feb. 13, 2024

Tough times have a way of isolating a person, and while you’re living through them, sometimes you need a story that helps you back into the wider world. Romance novels do that. In their pages, you can find connection — even when it’s hard to do in real life.

Connection is lifesaving in Tia Williams’s new novel, A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE (Grand Central, 342 pp., $29) . Ricki, in 2024, has left her job at her tyrannical family’s chain of funeral parlors and started a flower shop in a Harlem brownstone. Ezra, in 1924, has fled the racist violence of his hometown and is making a name for himself as a musician in the speakeasies of the Harlem Renaissance.

new book reviews 2022

And then their lives begin to overlap.

Ricki has come to the city in pursuit of life, and Ezra has been fleeing death — a little too successfully, it turns out, because this is not a time-slip story. He has, through a curse, become immortal. His immortality is a kind of haunting, of being trapped in the world but apart from it: People forget him entirely within a month if he doesn’t keep in contact.

Even worse, Ezra’s cursed love for Ricki will mean her death — and it might already be too late.

The book’s calculus of love and loss is brutal, and grounds the dazzling prose and light magical element.

In Allison Saft’s A FRAGILE ENCHANTMENT (Wednesday Books, 373 pp., $17.99) , it feels as if all of the characters have something they’re desperate to escape from. Our heroine, Niamh Ó Conchobhair, is a maker of enchanted clothing from a fantasy version of Ireland. Summoned to the court of Avaland, her people’s conquerors, she hopes that making wedding coats and cloaks for the prince regent’s younger brother will be a path out of poverty for herself and her family.

Kit, the groom, is blunt and embittered — literally prickly when his flower magic gets away from him — and it’s clear he is being dragged into marriage against his will. Niamh resents her instant attraction to someone so unavailable and irritating. Between the political prejudice against her people and the chronic illness she knows will kill her someday, she is convinced there is no room for love in her life.

The plot, like the prince, delights in proving Niamh wrong. Saft layers the tensions and emotions like a delicate dessert. Niamh’s confidence in her power is a relief from the untrained paranormal heroine in need of guidance, and Kit makes petulance unusually charming. I especially love when a romantasy — that’s romantic fantasy — refuses to shortchange either half of the portmanteau.

To summarize Charlotte Stein’s WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE (St. Martin’s Griffin, 324 pp., paperback, $18) , let me borrow words from the hero, the gruff former soccer player Alfie Harding, when he meets Mabel Willicker, who’s been hired to ghostwrite his memoir: “You think I’m a big hairy manimal who’s never gonna be able to work well with this here human cupcake.”

But though they seem like opposites, underneath Mabel and Alfie are anguished, self-doubting weirdos. What they need — and what they’re terrified of — is liberation from the cages they’ve built for themselves.

Alfie’s Roy Kent-inspired voice is a triumph — and very, very funny — but sex is where Stein really shines. This, children, is how the professionals do it. Not a rote list of parts and positions, but a physical flow between two people. It’s the difference between seeing choreography laid out in footprints on the floor, and being swept away by the dance.

Lastly, for pure comfort vibes I highly recommend TJ Alexander’s SECOND CHANCES IN NEW PORT STEPHEN (Emily Bestler Books, 336 pp., paperback, $17.99) , which stares at everything going wrong in the world and dares to say happiness matters anyway.

After years in New York, Eli Ward has returned to his Florida hometown. He’s out of work, out of sorts, and out as trans. But when he reconnects with his high school boyfriend, Nick Wu — now a hot dad, and maybe not as straight as he thinks — Eli has to get his act together if he wants a second chance at happiness.

Eli’s life has come crashing down around him, but Nick’s encases him like concrete. He works too much; he has a daughter he loves but an ex whose mother makes co-parenting unpleasant; and he can’t remember the last time he did something just for fun. He didn’t expect to be just as attracted to Eli now that he’s transitioned, but that doesn’t scare him — what Nick’s afraid of is that this is only a casual fling for Eli, when Nick wants it to be so much more.

This is as low-concept a book as you can get, but it works for the same reason books by Cat Sebastian, Rebekah Weatherspoon and Jackie Lau work: You enjoy spending time with these people, and you want them to reach for joy when they can. We all should.

It’s the difference between saving the world and saving one another. The former can feel impossible; the second we can do every day.

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The graphic novel series “Aya” explores the pains and pleasures of everyday life in a working-class neighborhood  in West Africa with a modern African woman hero.

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