New Books for Bookworms
Fall 2024 Highly-Anticipated Books by Award-Winning Authors
For the true bookworms who devour novels with an unrelenting appetite and hold the highest literary standards, this list is curated just for you. These aren’t just books—they’re masterful works of art. Featuring the most anticipated reads of Fall 2024, from potential award-winners to future classics, these releases cater to the discerning reader who demands brilliance on every page. Whether you’re drawn to literary fiction that pushes boundaries or timeless stories that challenge the mind and heart, this list speaks to those who read voraciously and critique fiercely. Prepare to discover books that will both captivate and satisfy even the harshest critics.
December New RElease
Rental House
by Weike Wang
From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru's strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection ("To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat," says her father), while Nate's rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his "foreign" wife.
Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?
Sister Snake
by Amanda Lee Koe
A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters--one in New York, one in Singapore--who are bound by an ancient secret
Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret: once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China.
A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades.
Private Rites
by Julia Armfield
From the BELOVED, AWARD-WINNING author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world
"One of my FAVORITE NOVELS of the past few years." --Jeff VanderMeer, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author of Annihilation
It's been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. His death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father's most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.
After the Ocean
by Lauren E Rico
How do you find your way back when you've left yourself behind?
A painful unsolved mystery resurfaces after decades of confusion, sending one woman and her daughters on a journey of redemption in this emotional story about intergenerational trauma, family, and the beauty of Puerto Rico for fans of Nina LaCour, Xochitl Gonzalez, Elizabeth Acevedo, Jodi Picoult, Celeste Ng, and Julia Alvarez.
Thirty years ago, musicians Emilia Oliveras and Paul Winstead were married in Puerto Rico. Forty-eight hours later, Paul vanished from their honeymoon cruise, leaving Emilia devastated--and the prime suspect in his disappearance. So, she ran for her life, leaving behind her love, her dreams, and her identity.
Today "Emily Oliver" is a divorced music teacher and mother of two daughters who know nothing about her past: Gracie, a talented attorney who excels in the courtroom but grapples with personal relationships, and Meg, a gifted concert pianist who wrestles with her ambition and purpose.
Deadbeat
by Adam Hamdy
The author of the "moving head-spinner of a novel" (John Connolly) The Other Side of Night returns with a taut thriller following a desperate single father as he searches for the anonymous employer who hired him as a hitman.
Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk, and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron. Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he's committed.
Gabriel's Moon
by William Boyd
From the internationally bestselling author beloved by readers everywhere, William Boyd offers his most exhilarating novel yet, following a reluctant spy drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession
Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a fire that took his mother's life. Every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes of Europe in the grip of the Cold War. When he is offered the chance to interview Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the People's Republic of the Congo, he finds himself drawn into a web of duplicities and betrayals.
Bluebird Day
by Megan Tady
A Washington Post Noteworthy Book
In this hilarious, heartwarming tale, mother-daughter skiing champs face the bumps in their own relationship when an avalanche in a Swiss village forces them together.
Alpine skiing G.O.A.T. Claudine Potts and her daughter, Wylie, have been bred for gold medal glory. They're skiing their way to fame, but this gilded future is cut short when a fall forces Claudine's retirement and Wylie's debilitating anxiety sends her off the slopes.
With the collapse of their ski careers, their relationship falters and now it's been years since Wylie and Claudine have even spoken. They live on opposite coasts, pursuing different passions, until a chance opportunity to pair up in a European fitness competition drives them back together. Can this duo survive snow-buried regrets and family secrets and have the happy reunion they're hoping for?
November New Release
The Blue Hour
by Paula Hawkins
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
"The best Paula Hawkins yet - by a tense and haunting mile." - Lee Child
"An atmospheric, stylish puzzle box of a thriller... truly exceptional." - Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods
"A masterful exploration of the nature of obsession...I loved it." - Angie Kim, New York Times bestselling author of Happiness Falls and Miracle Creek
The propulsive and powerful new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge....
A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith and cements Hawkins's place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.
"Atmospheric and marvelously twisty." - Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution
"Reminiscent of du Maurier: art, islands, missing spouses ... Hard to put down." - Mick Herron
"A masterpiece! Gorgeous and chilling." - Shari Lapena
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
by Haruki Murakami - Philip Gabriel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.
"Haruki Murakami invented 21st-century fiction." --The New York Times - "More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world." --San Francisco Chronicle - "Murakami is masterful." --Los Angeles Times
We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.
Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world - a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he's been missing all along.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature's most important writers.
"Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change/movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?" --Haruki Murakami, from the afterword
Lazarus Man
by Richard Price
In this electrifying novel, Richard Price, the author of Clockers and a writer on The Wire, gives us razor-sharp anatomy of an ever-changing Harlem.
East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. At day's end, six bodies are recovered, but many of the other tenants are missing.
In Lazarus Man, Richard Price, one of the greatest chroniclers of life in urban America, creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently impacted by the disaster.
Anthony Carter--whose miraculous survival, after being buried for days beneath tons of brick and stone, transforms him into a man with a message and a passionate sense of mission.
Felix Pearl--a young transplant to the city, whose photography and film work that day provokes in this previously unformed soul a sharp sense of personal destiny.
Royal Davis--owner of a failing Harlem funeral home, whose desperate trolling of the scene for potential "customers" triggers a quest to find another path in life.
And Mary Roe--a veteran city detective who, driven in part by her own family's brutal history, becomes obsessed with finding Christopher Diaz, one of the building's missing.
Price, the bestselling author of Lush Life and, most recently, The Whites, has created a bravura portrait of a community on the edge of disintegration. Rich with indelible characters and high drama, Lazarus Man is a riveting work of suspense and social vision by one of our major writers.
OCTOBER NEW RELEASE
The Wood at Midwinter
by Susanna Clarke
From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'
Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees-and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.
One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst-and the path of her life is changed forever.
Blue Light Hours
by Bruna Dantas Lobato
One of Electric Literature's "75 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2024"
From the National Book Award-winning translator, an atmospheric and wise debut novel of a young Brazilian woman's first year in America, a continent away from her lonely mother, and the relationship they build over Skype calls across borders
In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother she left behind in northeastern Brazil. Four thousand miles apart and bound by the angular confines of a Skype window, they ask each other a simple question: what's the news?
Shock Induction
by Chuck Palahniuk
From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future.
In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface.
Blue Hour
by Paula Hawkins
The propulsive and powerful new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day.
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.
Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.
But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.
The Man in Black: And Other Stories
by Elly Griffiths
From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries, an eclectic, thrilling collection of short stories, featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love.
Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur, and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. The Man in Black gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume.
There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.
The Mighty Red
by Louise Erdrich
A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.
History is a flood. The mighty red . . .
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding.
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.
Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He's determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.
Women's Hotel
by Daniel M Lavery
ONE OF FALL'S MOST ANTICIPATED READS--New York Times, Vulture, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, and more
From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women's hotel in 1960s New York City.
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There's Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There's Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there's Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.