Spring New Releases
Must-Read Books for the Bookworm Reader Type
If you love beautifully crafted prose, thought-provoking themes, and unforgettable storytelling, these book recommendations are for you! As part of the Bookworm Reader Type, you appreciate literary fiction that lingers in your mind long after the final page.
This season, we’re curating the best spring new releases from March, April, and May—adding fresh titles each month. From powerful debut novels to masterful works by acclaimed authors, these books promise to challenge, inspire, and captivate. Stay tuned for the latest literary gems!
May New Releases
Old School Indian
by Aaron John Curtis
A Kirkus Editor's Pick - A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Cowboys & Indians Brit + Co Debutiful
A coming-of-middle-age novel about an Ahkwesáhsne man's reluctant return home and what it takes to heal.
Abe Jacobs is Kanien'kehá ka from Ahkwesáhsne--or, as white people say, a Mohawk Indian from the Saint Regis Tribe. At eighteen, Abe left the reservation where he was raised and never looked back.
Now forty-three, Abe is suffering from a rare disease--one his doctors in Miami believe will kill him.
Awake in the Floating City
by Susanna Kwan
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE
Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape--but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.
My Friends
by Fredrik Backman
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025: Goodreads - USA TODAY - Marie Claire - BookPage - Literary Lifestyle - Book Riot - Sunset Magazine - Totally Booked with Zibby Owens
Most people don't even notice them--three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it's just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Run for the Hills
by Kevin Wilson
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY: Time, People, LitHub, and BookRiot
An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.
Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it's been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it's a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it's mostly okay. Mostly.
The Doorman
by Chris Pavone
A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats.
Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite.
Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can't bring herself to leave him. Yet.
The Emperor of Gladness
by Ocean Vuong
"A masterwork." --Bryan Washington, author of Palaver and Family Meal
Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker.
April new book recommendations
The Family Recipe
by Carolyn Huynh
"Delightful....A funny yet poignant tale of one family's search for belonging and understanding." --Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author
From the author of the "sharp, smart, and gloriously extra" (Nancy Jooyoun Kim, New York Times bestselling author) Good Morning America Book Club Pick The Fortunes of Jaded Women, a stunning family dramedy about estranged siblings competing to inherit their father's Vietnamese sandwich franchise and unravel family mysteries.
Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc's Sandwiches, has decided to retire. No one has heard from his wife, Evelyn, in two decades. She abandoned the family without a trace, and clearly doesn't want anything to do with Duc, the business, or their kids. But the money has to go to someone.
Rabbit Moon
by Jennifer Haigh
A tense, propulsive drama set in Shanghai, about a fractured American family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, from the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
Six Days in Bombay: A Continent-Spanning Historical Novel of Friendship, Identity, and Mystery from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Henna
by Alka Joshi
"A sparkling travelogue and a poignant journey of self-discovery all in one. . . . Alka Joshi is simply the best!" --Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Rose Code
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist, this sweeping novel of identity and self-discovery takes readers from Bombay to Prague, Florence, Paris and London, to uncover the mystery behind a famous painter's death.
When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and her nurse, Sona, is excited to learn more about the vivacious artist who shares her half-Indian identity. Sona, yearning for a larger life, finds herself carried away by Mira's stories of her travels and exploits and is shocked by accounts of the many lovers the painter has left scattered throughout Europe. When Mira dies quite suddenly and mysteriously, Sona falls under suspicion, and her quiet life is upended.
Audition
by Katie Kitamura
"Kitamura's novels are short, sharp and deadly. I'm not sure there's anyone better writing in America today."--The Guardian
One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She's an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He's attractive, troubling, young--young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day - partner, parent, creator, muse - and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.
Atavists: Stories
by Lydia Millet
The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning--a fluent triumph of storytelling, rich in ideas and emotions both petty and grand.
The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel's fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.
Fun for the Whole Family
by Jennifer E Smith
A breathtaking, joy-filled novel about the people we love, the secrets we keep, and the enduring power of family, from the bestselling author of The Unsinkable Greta James.
The four Endicott siblings--Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude--were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country.
Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven't spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota.
March New Releases for Bookworms
I Leave It Up to You
by Jinwoo Chong
From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?
A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He's been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it's been ten years since he last saw his family.
Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion that he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all.
The Story She Left Behind
by Patti Callahan Henry
Inspired by a true literary mystery, New York Times bestselling author of the mesmerizing The Secret Book of Flora Lea returns with the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter's search for them both.
In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington's magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.
Stop Me If You've Heard This One
by Kristen Arnett
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 BY PEOPLE, VOGUE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE MILLIONS, AND NBC TODAY
Cherry Hendricks might be down on her luck, but she can write the book on what makes something funny: she's a professional clown who creates raucous, zany fun at gigs all over Orlando. Between her clowning and her shifts at an aquarium store for extra cash, she's always hustling. Not to mention balancing her judgmental mother, her messy love life, and her equally messy community of fellow performers.
The Dream Hotel
by Laila Lalami
From Laila Lalami--the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a "maestra of literary fiction" (NPR)--comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman's fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release.
Twist
by Colum McCann
A propulsive novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean--from the New York Times bestselling author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
"Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken."
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world's information. The sum of human existence--words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses--travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.
Fennell's journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship.
Goddess Complex
by Sanjena Sathian
Named a Most-Anticipated Book of 2025 by TIME and The Millions
Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It's been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister's while her well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages, and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward--and finalize her divorce, ASAP.
33 Place Brugmann
by Alice Austen
An outstanding debut novel--a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle, told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment house in Belgium during World War II.
On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever.
Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer's family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
The Antidote
by Karen Russell
From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing--not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples' memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch's apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town's secrets and its fate.
Dream Count
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, Elle, Oprah Daily, Readers Digest, The Seattle Times, LitHub, The Chicago Review of Books, BET, and Radio Times
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until--betrayed and brokenhearted--she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka's bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka's housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America--but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.