Books
The Most Anticipated Books Hitting Shelves This Winter
Another season, another crop of must-reads.
Don’t let Big Go Outside convince you otherwise: There’s no better way to spend a winter Sunday than cuddled up with a blanket, a book, and your beverage of choice. Ideally, before temperatures cross the freezing point, you’ll have a towering stack of reading material and a fridge full of beverages, so you’ll never have to leave your cozy couch — even to restock.
Stack running low? No worries. From novels to essay collections, memoirs to short stories, and even more experimental fare, there’s no shortage of great reads coming out this season. Fans of sci-fi and fantasy should keep an eye out for We Lived on the Horizon, Erika Swyler’s follow-up to The Book of Speculation; Ali Smith’s near-future novel, Gliff; and, of course, the third installment in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, Onyx Storm. Those more inclined toward nonfiction will find much to admire in Colette Shade’s essay collection, Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, and Haley Mlotek’s No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce. Craving hot-off-the-press literary fiction? Soft Core by Brittany Newell, Something Rotten by Andrew Lipstein, and Good Girl by Aria Aber should be just the ticket.
Below, Bustle’s most anticipated books of winter.
Rental House by Weike Wang
Out Dec. 3. Wang’s witty novel makes for a fun post-holiday read. Taking place across two different vacations at rental houses, the story follows married couple Keru and Nate as they navigate their contentious relationships with their parents. (Hers are educated Chinese immigrants, while his are white and working class.) Naturally, things go awry, providing ample material with which to explore the book’s central question: What does it mean to share a life when your families simply can’t see eye to eye? — Gabrielle Bondi
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) by Colette Shade
Out Jan. 7. As a ’94 baby, I experienced the early aughts in a fog of incomprehension — old enough to take in the low-rise jeans and inflatable furniture, but too young to process the cultural muck it was mired in. I’ve since learned about the sticky bits (the hypersexuality and fatphobia, to name a few), but nothing I’ve read has cut to the heart of the ’00s like Y2K. After putting it down, I felt like I was able to excise the last of the decade’s cultural residue from my mind — save, perhaps, my enduring love for chokers. That dies hard. — Chloe Joe
Immortal by Sue Lynn Tan
Out Jan. 7. In this new novel, Tan throws readers back into the action of the world she created in Daughter of the Moon Goddess. This romantasy adventure follows Liyen, a newly crowned ruler who finds herself forming an unlikely alliance with the merciless God of War — and maybe something more. — G.B.
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly
Out Jan. 7. If you’re the kind of person who thinks a lot about Spotify — about what your yearly Wrapped says about you or why you heard so much of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” this year — you’re going to enjoy journalist Liz Pelly’s deep dive into the streaming platform. Compiling abundant research and interviews, many with former Spotify employees, Pelly’s book provides an insightful look at the app’s role in the music business, from its earliest days to its recent evolution, spurred by TikTok’s rise. — Grace Wehniainen
Good Girl by Aria Aber
Out Jan. 14. Aber’s debut centers on 19-year-old Nila, a German-born daughter of Afghan refugees. After she worked her way into an elite high school, her parents had hoped she might regain a semblance of the bourgeois lifestyle the family had once enjoyed. Instead, all college-aged Nila can think about is losing herself in Berlin’s techno underbelly, briefly escaping the life she was born into, with its pest-ridden apartments and dreams deferred. Perhaps she can become someone else. — C.J.
We Lived on the Horizon by Erika Swyler
Out Jan. 14. As a Never Let Me Go fan, it was exciting to read another take on a group of people whose life purpose is to donate their organs — but Swyler tackles it here in a fresh way, following a closely bonded transplant surgeon and her AI companion as they navigate a secretive city system. Expect much fodder for conversations about artificial intelligence and bioethics. — G.W.
Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
Out Jan. 21. This year, I got very into romantasy, and Yarros’ Empyrean books were an instant fave. The third book in the series, Onyx Storm, is releasing early next year, and my fellow book club girlies are all counting down the days. Dragons, enemies to lovers, a badass female main character… What’s not to love? — Olivia Rose Rushing
Something Rotten by Andrew Lipstein
Out Jan. 21. Lipstein’s third novel follows two married journalists — Cecilie, our protagonist, and her husband, Reuben — who travel to Cecilie’s native Copenhagen to escape the fallout of a Zoom-gone-wrong. But as the title suggests, Denmark proves a rotten choice. Reuben falls under the sway of Cecilie’s friend, whose brash masculinity he sees as an enviable alternative to a more American model. Expect a sticky situation to get even stickier, given that the author’s previous books focus on the slipperiness of truth and morality. — Brianna Kovan
Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) by Lola Kirke
Out Jan. 28. Actor Lola Kirke’s childhood was dripping with glamour. She grew up in a brownstone in the West Village, hung around with billionaire scions, and would call Joan Didion for help with her history homework. But Wild West Village is not a collection of Kirke’s greatest hits. It’s a searing examination of what it means to be raised as an “adult child” and the ways in which being exposed to too much, too soon — be it addiction, adultery, or neglect — can harm the privileged and the disadvantaged alike. — Samantha Leach
The Enigma Girl by Henry Porter
Out Jan. 28. Porter is a master of fast-moving spy novels — I gobbled up Firefly and its sequel, White Hot Silence in one weekend each — and The Enigma Girl is no different. His heroine, Slim Parsons, is considering dropping out of her security service work after a deep-cover operation leads to a terrifying fight on a private jet, but she’s drawn back in to go undercover in a suspicious news organization. Ample thrilling drama ensues. — Charlotte Owen
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
Out Jan. 28. Three years after publishing South to America, which would win 2022’s National Book Award for Nonfiction, Perry returns with a history of the color blue, which examines the color’s relation to Blackness — how it’s been connoted both negatively and positively, in America and elsewhere. It sounds fascinating, especially for anyone who, like me, calls blue their favorite color. — B.K.
Too Soon by Betty Shamieh
Out Jan. 28. In her debut novel, playwright Betty Shamieh follows three generations of women in a Palestinian American family. The saga moves between different eras of their lives, including 2012, when 35-year-old Arabella grapples with her next career and romantic move in New York; the 1960s and 1970s, when her mother, Naya, comes of age away from their homeland; and the 1940s, when war changes her grandmother Zoya’s path. — Stephanie Topacio Long
Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch
Out Feb. 4. Lidia Yuknavitch — beloved for The Chronology of Water, now set to become a Kristen Stewart-directed film — returns with another remarkable memoir. At the outset, the author decides to approach her own past like a favorite book, hoping this approach might “loosen” those memories’ grip on her psyche today. The eclectic results won’t just move those who already follow the creator, but will inspire readers to revisit their own lives with as much care and creativity. — G.W.
Dengue Boy by Michael Nieva
Out Feb. 4. Dengue Boy is set in a future world beset by extreme climate change, where a virus forecasting market has supplanted the traditional stock exchange and the rich have fled for newly geoengineered lands, leaving the rest of humanity to languish. It could easily be a dreary read, but Nieva has somehow created something closer to a romp. The book, translated from Spanish by Rahul Berry, moves among the life of Dengue Boy, a half-human half-mosquito chimera, and those he meets on his surreal journey, punctuating horrors both workaday and fantastical with an irresistible humor. — C.J.
Soft Core by Brittany Newell
Out Feb. 4. Newell’s sophomore novel follows Ruth, a deeply lost woman who finds new purpose (and much-needed cash) in becoming a novice strip-club dancer. She gets the gig through the connections of her ex-boyfriend and current roommate, Dino — a former high-end chef who now spends his days dealing ketamine and tending to his beloved dogs. When Dino disappears, she delves deeper into the world of sex work and kink to find him. This novel is curious about what makes us tick, and how we try and fail to reach each other’s soft cores. — C.J.
Mutual Interest by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
Out Feb. 4. For those (like me) eagerly awaiting The Gilded Age Season 3, Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s sophomore novel provides a welcome return to that turn-of-the-century world. Mutual Interest follows a lavender marriage that blossoms into a business partnership, charting the ascent of a wellness brand as thoughtfully as it renders the love stories (both platonic and romantic) that shape its history. — G.W.
Gliff by Ali Smith
Out Feb. 4. Reminiscent of Huxley’s Brave New World, Smith’s new dystopian novel takes place in the near future, following two children, Bri and Rose, and a horse named Gliff as they contend with life in an increasingly totalitarian society. Smith’s prose and young protagonists will immediately draw you into its eye-opening tale about ignoring the consequences of trusting and over-relying on technology. — G.B.
Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin
Out Feb. 4. I don’t typically read short-story collections, but the building buzz around this debut is enough to sway me. Author Maaza Mengiste, of 2019’s fantastic The Shadow King, says Lubrin’s book is “proof that it is possible for an imagination to outpace the rest of us,” and the premise suggests as much: Code Noir is comprised of 59 stories of differing literary genres, nodding to the 59 articles for slavery in French law, dating to 1685. A starred Publisher’s Weekly review calls the Canadian author’s book “a monumental achievement.” — B.K.
Fearless and Free by Josephine Baker
Out Feb. 4. As a fan of entertainment history, I was drawn to Josephine Baker’s memoir (newly translated from French) to learn about the acclaimed dancer, singer, actor, and all-around performer. What I didn’t realize before picking it up — and what makes Fearless and Free such a special read — is the extent to which Baker immersed herself in the world events that defined her time, serving as a spy for the French Resistance and an activist during the Civil Rights Movement. — G.W.
Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
Out Feb. 4. Despite its title, Bibliophobia is written by a book-lover — specifically, one who fears the power they have over her. Chihaya channels her obsession with literature into a nontraditional memoir that looks at her life through books, tying pivotal texts to her complicated relationship with her family, her cultural identity, and her mental health. — S.T.L.
Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing
Out Feb. 11. The word “multi-hyphenate” gets thrown around a lot these days and is often used by the most annoying of people to describe an agglomeration of hobbies. But Ewing (Ghosts in the Schoolyard) is the rare person who proves the usefulness of the label and how work in one area can augment work in another. As an educator, an organizer, an academic, an artist, and a writer, Ewing often returns to a few key preoccupations — education, girlhood, race, science fiction — and I can’t wait to crack open her latest, which again meditates on the intersection of education and race. — C.J.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
Out Feb. 11. In Charlotte Wood’s latest novel, a woman retreats from her life, marriage, and conservation job to find some stillness in a rural religious community. (Ironically, she’s an atheist herself.) Stone Yard Devotional combines diaristic accounts of life there — from a plague of mice, to the newly discovered remains of a long-lost nun — with musings about the narrator’s own grief and past experiences. Altogether, it’s a truly thought-provoking read. — G.W.
The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra
Out Feb. 11. Mishra, a novelist and public intellectual, tackles the war in Gaza with clear-eyed, considered prose. He argues that two competing narratives have come to shape contemporary views of the 20th century: in the Global North, the triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and particularly the horrors of the Holocaust; in the Global South, the slow progress of decolonialization and the hope for racial equality. It is these narratives that we must contend with, Mishra argues, if we are to forge a path forward toward a more moral world. — C.J.
There’s No Turning Back by Alba De Céspedes
Out Feb. 11. There’s No Turning Back was revolutionary when it was first published in 1938. Not only had its author already served time in jail for anti-fascist activities, she dared to write about eight women at a college in Rome, some of whom — gasp! — take nontraditional paths. The Italian Fascist government once banned the novel because of its feminist themes, but it lives on with Ann Goldstein’s translation. — S.T.L.
No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley Mlotek
Out Feb. 18. These days, there’s no shortage of celebrities with big divorcée energy — whether it’s J. Lo posting thirst traps in the wake of her split from Ben Affleck, Sophie Turner palling around with Taylor Swift after ending things with Joe Jonas, or Meryl Streep rebounding with Martin Short from her nearly 40-year marriage. But what, exactly, does a divorce symbolize in the 21st century? And how do women today navigate this hyperprevalent but still hyperpersonal experience? These are the questions No Fault seeks to answer through a deft mix of social commentary, reportage, and personal reflection. — S.L.
The Talent by Daniel D’Addario
Out Feb. 25. Five Best Actress hopefuls. Countless press opportunities. One prize. Written by Variety chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario, The Talent is a riotous and well-wrought ride through Moira Rose’s favorite season: “awards.” — S.L.
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
Out Feb. 25. Curtis Sittenfeld never misses. Whether she’s writing an alternate reality for Hilary Clinton, a send-up of Saturday Night Live, or dropping us into the elite world of New England prep schools. And now, in her second short-story collection, Sittenfeld interrogates delightfully topical subjects like “the Mike Pence rule,” postdivorce social dynamics, and monogamy. — S.L.
Crush by Ada Calhoun
Out Feb. 25. The author of the widely acclaimed memoir Also a Poet again pulls inspiration from her life for her debut novel. In Crush, a married couple decide to open up their marriage — and it doesn’t take long for the wife to form a delicious crush. Her giddy new romance sets the stage for an exploration of marital constructs and what it means to seek desire at any age. — G.B.
