Releases I'm Ready For, Fall 2026

This fall promises the publication of so many exciting new books! These are the ones I'm most looking forward to, from authors I've enjoyed reading:

→ TAIPEI STORY by R.F. Kuang (Sept 8): Kuang writes in multiple genres: I've read the alternate-history-with-magic BABEL, the publishing-world-thriller YELLOWFACE, and the grad-students-visiting-hell KATABASIS. This next book seems firmly planted in reality, focusing on a college student at a summer language program who grapples with her family history and identity.

→ EXIT PARTY by Emily St. John Mandel (Sept 15): I've read all of Mandel's novels, and I love seeing how certain concepts and even characters recur throughout her work. I'm anticipating more of those echoes in what sounds like a fresh and yet very Mandelian story: EXIT PARTY involves a near future American civil war, multiple possible realities, crime, and art.

→ PLY by Hernan Diaz (Sept 29): My introduction to Diaz's work was TRUST, a fascinating reading experience through nested narrative layers. I'm intrigued that his next novel is science fiction set in a far future dystopia, described as "Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller."

→ A WALL IS ALSO A ROAD by Annalee Newitz (Oct 6): I'm a fan of Newitz's science fiction novels, which vary widely but are all inventive and thought-provoking. I am beyond curious to read their latest, about a graduate student who is also a slime mold and visits Earth to do fieldwork in ancient Pompeii.

→ THE OCCIDENTAL BOOK OF THE DEAD by T. Geronimo Johnson (Oct 6): WELCOME TO BRAGGSVILLE was the sharp and darkly funny story of college students who plan a mock lynching as a form of protest, a poorly conceived scheme that goes terribly wrong. I've been eager to see another book from Johnson, and this is going to be a big one: 672 pages about a Black cop, a violent confrontation with a white teenager, and the disputed facts of the highly publicized case.

→ LIFE OUT OF ORDER by Audrey Niffenegger (Oct 6): I have a lot of fondness for THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, which came out back in 2003. The first surprising news of a sequel was announced in 2013, so I was surprised all over again to learn it's finally arriving this fall. While I'm trepidatious, I will definitely be satisfying my curiosity about the life of Alba, the time-traveling daughter of the original couple.

→ OFF THE RESERVATION by Stephen Graham Jones (Oct 13): This is another unexpected (though less surprising) sequel, to the incredible and grisly THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS. This story focuses on different characters, five years after the events of the first book. I'm ready for more disturbing horror, more great dialogue, and more reckoning with the past.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Literary Hub, Madelyn Johnson explores how the role of book cover design has changed in the age of social media: "A cover no longer simply needs to communicate genre or tone. It must also construct an identity that a reader of that book can inhabit. If book covers once translated text for their readers, they now operate in reverse: translating readers for their audiences. In this context, the old adage has been inverted from don't judge a book by its cover to judge a reader by the covers on their books.

Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2026

Another season of books approaches, with new novels from so many of my favorite authors!

→ LAKE EFFECT by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (March 3): I loved the complicated family and marriage dynamics in Sweeney's first two novels, THE NEST and GOOD COMPANY. I'm expecting more excellent relationship drama in this new novel, which starts in 1977 with THE JOY OF SEX and an adulterous scandal that has long-ranging effects.

→ CHERRY BABY by Rainbow Rowell (April 14): Rowell is the author of so many books I've enjoyed, and I'm glad for another novel with adult characters. The premise involves a failing marriage and a successful webcomic that's getting a movie adaptation, and it's sure to be full of emotion and humor.

→ LAST NIGHT IN BROOKLYN by Xochitl Gonzalez (April 21): OLGA DIES DREAMING and ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST are both fascinating stories that unfold the complex pasts of their characters. In Gonzalez's next novel, set in 2007 (an alarmingly distant past!), a young woman gets a chance to enter the world of glamour and wealth in a changing Brooklyn on the brink of the financial crisis.

→ FIVE WEEKS IN THE COUNTRY by Francine Prose (May 5): I've read a few of Prose's many novels, and when I learned what this one is about, I knew I'd be picking it up. The story is an imagining of the real life episode when Hans Christian Andersen went to stay at Charles Dickens's home in what became a legendarily bad visit. That sounds like a ton of fun.

→ PLATFORM DECAY by Martha Wells (May 5): Yes, it's a new Murderbot Diary, the eighth in the series about a Security Unit who's great at its job but would rather be watching media than interacting with humans. I've been gradually revisiting the previous installments, inspired by the wonderful TV adaptation, so now I have a deadline for my reread.

→ RADIANT STAR by Ann Leckie (May 12): Thrillingly, May is also bringing a new book from my other favorite writer of space adventures! This is a standalone story in Leckie's Imperial Radch universe, featuring politics, religion, and characters from disparate backgrounds.

→ WHISTLER by Ann Patchett (June 2): I always admire Patchett's complicated character relationships, especially among family members in novels like COMMONWEALTH and THE DUTCH HOUSE. I'm excited to see what she'll do with this story of a woman who reconnects in middle age with the man who was her stepfather for only a brief part of her childhood.

→ FOUNDLING FATHERS by Meg Elison (June 23): Elison's previous novels include speculative fiction (a post-apocalyptic series starting with THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE) and intense stories set in the real world (FIND LAYLA and NUMBER ONE FAN). I like her work in any genre, and I can't wait to read this science fictional satire about an attempt to save America with clones of the founding fathers.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Baffler, Lydia Kiesling explores the practice of anticipated book lists and the changing internet: "By the time I came on as the editor [of The Millions] in 2016, the previews were creeping up toward a hundred titles. Max, who still owned the site when I was its editor, encouraged me to pare the list down and exert some curatorial influence, but I was constitutionally incapable. First of all, five minutes with the sausage-making of list culture was sufficient to understand how arbitrary the process really was. Secondly, as a new novelist myself, I felt the pain of being excluded. Moreover, the exclusivity denoted by curation was at odds with the revenue possibilities presented by more affiliate links..."

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer/Fall 2025

The next few months promise a fascinating crop of new books from authors I love!

→ AUTOMATIC NOODLE by Annalee Newitz (August 5): I always trust Newitz to have an original, thoughtful take on whatever they write about, and I've especially enjoyed their previous fiction involving robots, AUTONOMOUS and THE TERRAFORMERS. So a Newitz story about robots running a noodle restaurant in a post-secession San Francisco sounds like a good time to me. Don't miss the charming retro website for the restaurant/book.

→ FONSECA by Jessica Francis Kane (August 12): This novel is based on real events from the life of a real person I've never heard of, the author Penelope Fitzgerald. But I was enthralled by Kane's earlier novel also based on real events I hadn't heard of, THE REPORT, so I'm on board. I look forward to more history and more of Kane's great writing about interpersonal dynamics.

→ LESSONS IN MAGIC AND DISASTER by Charlie Jane Anders (August 19): I follow Anders's excellent newsletter, so I've been hearing about her next novel for a while and getting excited about the premise: A trans witch teaches her grieving mother how to do magic, while also investigating the secrets of a book from 1749. It sounds like there is so much wonderful stuff woven into this story, and I can't wait to read it.

→ KATABASIS by R.F. Kuang (August 26): Kuang's BABEL was an ambitious, skillful alternate history about Oxford translators controlling the magic that powers the British empire. I'm intrigued that the new novel features more magical academics, this time at Cambridge, and they're journeying into hell to save a professor's soul, or maybe just to secure a recommendation.

→ THE WILDERNESS by Angela Flournoy (September 16): I admired Flournoy's debut, THE TURNER HOUSE, for depicting a large, complex family as well the city of Detroit over time. I'm expecting more strong portrayals of characters over time in this story about the friendship between five Black women as they figure out adulthood.

→ THE UNVEILING by Quan Barry (October 14): It takes impressive range and imagination to write a novel about a high school field hockey team performing witchcraft (WE RIDE UPON STICKS) followed by one about Mongolian monks searching for the next reincarnation of a great lama (WHEN I'M GONE, LOOK FOR ME IN THE EAST). I trust Barry with any subject and genre now, but I'm particularly interested in "a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica"!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Tom Comitta introduces People's Choice Literature, a project to create America's most wanted and unwanted novels, with graphs: "There are several survey results that might give you pause. For one, there's a glaring contradiction in responses to two answers. The most wanted activity for characters to experience in a novel was 'falling in or out of love,' but the most unwanted genre was romance. Given the popularity of romance novels, it's hard to square this until you consider their place in culture, with romance often seen as a form of women's literature, a category that historically has not been given as much weight and respect as literature written by cis men."

→ Laura Miller at Slate reviews the resulting book: "People's Choice Literature offers its readers two novels for the price of one. The first is a thriller whose heroine tries to prevent her boss, a new age–y tech mogul, from launching a quantum computing network that will bring about a total surveillance state. That's the most wanted one. The least wanted novel is much harder to summarize, encompassing such ostensibly despised elements as stream of consciousness, explicit sex scenes, an extraterrestrial setting, metafictional commentary on novel-writing itself, talking animals, second-person narration, and tennis.... Full disclosure: While Most Unwanted often made me laugh, it also put me to sleep five times."

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter 2025

A remarkable number of intriguing books are coming out in the four weeks between February 25 and March 25. These are the ones I've been most looking forward to:

→ THE STRANGE CASE OF JANE O. by Karen Thompson Walker (February 25): I loved the big, bold premises and fantastic execution of Walker's previous two novels. In THE AGE OF MIRACLES, Earth's rotation begins to slow. In THE DREAMERS, a town is gripped by an epidemic of sleep. The speculative stakes are more personal this time, with a single character "struck by a mysterious psychological affliction," but since Walker's characterizations are always excellent, I'm expecting another fascinating story.

→ BACK AFTER THIS by Linda Holmes (February 25): I first became a fan of Holmes through the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, so I'm delighted that her new book revolves around podcasting. This is sure to be another smart and funny romance, like EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER and FLYING SOLO.

→ WOODWORKING by Emily St. James (March 4): St. James is a television critic I've been following for years. Her debut novel has a ton of potential for great character connections and conflicts: A high school teacher realizes she's trans, and she seeks the guidance of the only other trans woman she knows, who is one of her students.

→ STAG DANCE by Torrey Peters (March 11): The drama, humor, and raw honesty of DETRANSITION, BABY captivated me, so I'm eager to read more from Peters. Her new book is a collection of four stories (billed as "one novel and three novellas") examining gender across a range of genres—including a tall tale about lumberjacks.

→ THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones (March 18): The only one of Jones's many, many novels I've read so far is THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, but it's stayed with me for both the compelling story and the horrifying mental images. So I'm excited and scared to pick up his latest, a vampire story set at multiple points in the history of the American west.

→ THE MARTIAN CONTINGENCY by Mary Robinette Kowal (March 18): I've enjoyed Kowal's Lady Astronaut series, an alternate history in which the space program is accelerated and given higher stakes by a meteor strike that wreaks havoc on Earth. This is the fourth book, and I believe originally planned as the last, though Kowal has probably left room to write more (and has already published many short stories from the same universe).

→ TILT by Emma Pattee (March 25): This is a debut by an author I have no previous experience with, but I knew I'd be reading it when I saw the premise: A big, big earthquake strikes Portland, Oregon, and a character at the end of her pregnancy tries to walk home through the wreckage. I've heard good things.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Emily Temple at Literary Hub asks, What should the cover of Pride and Prejudice look like?: "...despite the fact that we're told not to judge books by their covers, we do. Like the clothes you wear (as Austen herself would confirm), a book's cover does—or at least can—change our perception of it, even after it's been read. Book covers can provide a kind of tonal context, or at least give the reader some hints as to how its publisher wants the text to be understood. It's easy, despite that, for a great book to transcend a dopey cover—many have done this—but it's also possible for a great cover to elevate our experience of a dopey book. A little, anyway. Perception being, after all, reality."

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer 2024

I've been planning out my summer reading and getting excited for these new books by some of my favorite authors:

→ THE HAZELBOURNE LADIES MOTORCYCLE AND FLYING CLUB by Helen Simonson (May 7): Simonson writes wonderful comedies of manners. MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND is the charming story of two widowers falling in love despite the opinions of their small English village. In THE SUMMER BEFORE THE WAR, residents of a small English village are concerned with not only the activities of their residents, but also the start of World War I. This new novel is also historical, set just after the war in 1919, and it sounds like another delight.

→ THE DEFAULT WORLD by Naomi Kanakia (May 28): Kanakia has published three young adult novels (most recently, JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE) that all portray characters and situations with the complexity and nuance they deserve. I'm excited for her first novel with an adult rather than teen protagonist. The tagline, "A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates," sounds like a wild ride, and the San Francisco tech world setting is an extra draw for me.

→ MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan (June 11): Speaking of the San Francisco tech world, that's the starting point for Sloan's MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE and SOURDOUGH before each swerves off into a mysterious secretive society, one based around books and the other in food. I adored both and can't wait to see where Sloan is going in MOONBOUND, which takes place 13,000 years in the future. There's a companion website where he's posting material related to the book.

→ SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell (July 23): I've read all of Rowell's novels, and I love the way she writes about the emotions of relationships between people with humor and heart. After almost a decade of publishing books about magical characters in the Simon Snow series, she's returning to a story of real world adults trying to figure out a relationship together.

→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson (July 30): The first collaboration between Bergman and Freedman-Lawson, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN, offers life advice that's as enjoyable to read and look at as it is useful. I'm willing to bet that even as a non-parent, I'll find guidance in this new book to incorporate into my life and relationships.

→ LOKA by S.B. Divya (August 13): Last year's MERU launched a space opera series with imaginative worldbuilding, great characters, and an exciting plot. I'm looking forward to continuing the interplanetary and genetic adventures in the next installment!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At CrimeReads, Micaiah Johnson explains how genre communicates a contract with the reader: "This understanding is why I write every single story as a murder mystery author, even though I do not strictly write murder mysteries. The murder mystery author's contract is neither kind nor cruel, but a kind of trickster middle. The murder mystery author gets to behave like an older sibling who is as bullying as they are loving: I will trick you, there will be death, but there will also be resolution. It is the antagonism of the horror writer, but in the form of a game. And, most importantly, it is a game the reader can win."

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter 2024

In my previous post, I looked back at the highlights of my 2023 reading. By now, my 2024 reading is already well underway, and I'm looking ahead to the new books I've been anticipating:

→ KINNING by Nisi Shawl (January 23): I didn't actually get much chance to anticipate this one, because I only just learned the good news that Shawl has written a sequel to EVERFAIR. In this alternate nineteenth century, Black American missionaries and white British socialists come together to turn part of the Congo into a new nation that offers safety and progress. Plus, there are airships and other steam technology. I read the first book in February 2020 (Shawl was an honored guest at the last strange FOGcon) and then put a lot of other information into my brain, so I'll need to refresh my memory of the story, but I remember that I enjoyed the world and characters.

The rest of my anticipated reads are the second novels published by authors whose debuts I really liked. Second novels are notoriously tricky, because they're often written in much less time, from ideas that haven't percolated as long, under the pressure of trying to replicate a success. I'm eager to see what these writers have done next, whether they match my expectations or not.

→ COME AND GET IT by Kiley Reid (January 30) is billed as "a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior" involving a college senior and a visiting professor. That sounds like a fitting follow-up to SUCH A FUN AGE, a page-turner about class, race, and privilege involving a babysitter and her employer.

→ WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange (February 27) is both a sequel and prequel to THERE THERE. In the first book, a variety of Native characters with connections to Oakland have plotlines that converge suspensefully at a powwow. The new book deals with consequences from those events and also goes back into the past to explore generations of Native history.

→ SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND by Jennine Capó Crucet (March 5): I wouldn't normally pick up a book described as "Scarface meets Moby Dick," but since I was a big fan of MAKE YOUR HOME AMONG STRANGERS, I'm going to check this out. Crucet's first novel followed a first generation college student in a story that was compellingly told but I guess pretty conventional. Nothing sounds conventional about the story of a wannabe gangster on a quest involving a possibly magical killer whale. It promises to be a wild ride.

→ ANITA DE MONTE LAUGHS LAST by Xochitl Gonzalez (March 5): As it happens, one protagonist of Gonzalez's second novel is a first generation college student (at Brown University). The other is an artist who died dramatically in the previous decade, and the student investigates her story. I admired the complexity and layered conflicts of OLGA DIES DREAMING, and this sounds like an even more intriguing setup.

→ MEMORY PIECE by Lisa Ko (March 19) follows three friends from the 1980s into the 2040s. That's a premise I'd be drawn to regardless, and I'm especially excited it's been written by the author of THE LEAVERS. I was so impressed by the riveting plot and deft handling of family secrets in that novel, and I can't wait to read more.

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer 2023

I've been planning out my summer reading and getting excited about all the books from favorite authors that are coming out this season!

→ CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead (July 18): It's always a surprise to learn what topic and genre Whitehead is venturing into for his next impressive book, but this time the surprise is that he's written his first sequel. I'm looking forward to another visit with the characters from HARLEM SHUFFLE, which combined a fun crime story with the more serious historical events of the early 1960s. One of the things I most enjoyed about the first book was how it portrayed the city and characters changing across several years, and the sequel has the same format, covering the 1970s.

→ MOBILITY by Lydia Kiesling (August 1): Kiesling's first novel, THE GOLDEN STATE, focused in minute detail on the stress of parenting a toddler solo and was somehow completely enthralling. I've been so curious to find out what she'd write next, and I'm fascinated by everything packed into the description of a "geopolitical exploration and domestic coming-of-age novel" that revolves around the oil industry.

→ TIME'S MOUTH by Edan Lepucki (August 1): I'm excited to get a novel involving time travel from an author I trust to do something unpredictable with it. Both the apocalyptic CALIFORNIA and the contemporary WOMAN NO. 17 were complicated and unsettling, and a story involving a possible cult in 1950s Santa Cruz promises to be as well.

(A fun note: I became familiar with both Kiesling and Lepucki through their work at The Millions, so it's a bit of synchronicity that not only are they publishing books on the same day, but both covers feature rainbow shimmers.)

→ TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett (August 1): I'm a big admirer of Patchett's masterful family stories, COMMONWEALTH and THE DUTCH HOUSE. Both novels jump around through decades to fully develop the characters and their relationships, and it sounds as though TOM LAKE does the same. Part of the story takes place in the spring of 2020 as a family comes together to isolate, and I'm eager to see how Patchett writes about the early pandemic.

→ HAPPINESS FALLS by Angie Kim (August 29): Kim's debut, MIRACLE CREEK, was an intricately plotted, emotional mystery and courtroom drama. Ever since its release, Kim has shared occasional details online about her next book, so I've been anticipating this missing person mystery for years now!

→ THE VASTER WILDS by Lauren Groff (September 12): MATRIX, the surprisingly compelling story of twelfth century nuns, was one of my favorite books of 2021, and I continue to recommend it frequently. Groff is going far (but not quite so far) back into history again with this novel, to 1610 and the Jamestown colony, and I'm intrigued.

→ LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang (September 26): I loved the beautiful writing and fierce characters of HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD, a story set in the past, in the aftermath of the California gold rush. This time Zhang imagines a future of smog and famine, and in case that isn't interesting enough, the novel is also billed as "a love letter to food."

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Millions, Stewart Sinclair explains the path to publishing his first book, a treatise on juggling: "This was the sort of class where the discussion you had in the morning would sort of carry on Socratically in your head throughout the day. So I'd still be thinking about post-modernity and irony and the films of David Lynch even as I took the streetcar down to the French Quarter, where I'd set up my pitch in the middle of the street and lay out my juggling props."

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter/Spring 2023

Now that I've finished looking back on my favorite books of 2022, it's time to look ahead to the books I'm anticipating in the first half of 2023:

→ THE TERRAFORMERS by Annalee Newitz (January 31): I always enjoy encountering Newitz's ideas, whether in fiction, journalism, or the podcast they co-host, Our Opinions are Correct. Their two previous novels, AUTONOMOUS and THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE, explore artificial intelligence and time travel in wild and unusual ways. THE TERRAFORMERS is of course about terraforming another planet, a subject I'm interested in, and the description mentions a whole lot of additional things I can't wait to read about.

→ MERU by S.B. Divya (February 1): Divya's debut, MACHINEHOOD, skillfully weaves together multiple story threads following characters in a near-ish future Earth. MERU goes far into the future and out into space, where humans must work together with "posthuman descendants called alloys". This is the first book in a planned series, and I'm eager to see where it goes.

→ THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS by Matt Ruff (February 21): Ruff has been one of my favorite authors for a long, long time. His imaginative books range across genres and always feature excellent characters. This sequel to LOVECRAFT COUNTRY marks the first time Ruff has returned to one of his story worlds. I'm looking forward to spending more time with Atticus and his family and friends as they fight more horrors, both supernatural and all too human.

→ LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle (March 28): LaValle's most recent novel, THE CHANGELING, fascinated me with the unexpected ways a realistic family story morphed into horror. It appears LONE WOMEN begins as a historical Western, and what follows is sure to be cleverly creepy and will probably keep me up at night.

→ YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang (May 16): I was recently impressed by Kuang's magical alternate history, BABEL. This new novel is something utterly different, a contemporary story set in the real world of publishing, about a writer who steals another's manuscript, as well as her Asian identity. The manuscript-theft plot isn't a new one (and this sort of cultural appropriation isn't confined to fiction), but I'm excited to see what Kuang does with it.

→ TRANSLATION STATE by Ann Leckie (June 6): I'm a big fan of everything Leckie writes, so any novel is great news. When I learned the focus of this latest novel set in the Imperial Radch universe, I was extra thrilled. This book centers on the Presgr and their translators, who provided such memorable characters in ANCILLARY SWORD and ANCILLARY MERCY. I can hardly wait.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the Los Angeles Times, Mark Athitakis considers how 2022 became the year of the fragmented-identity novel: "Throw in some overall social and cultural atomization, and it's coming to feel like we've become rhetorically unstuck in time. Fiction is usually a lagging indicator of global crises... but much of the prominent fiction of 2022 met the moment and captured this fragmentation, thick with code-switching, style-shifting and cacophonies of anxious narration."

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer/Fall 2022

Once again, I'm looking at upcoming publication dates and appreciating that if nothing else, at least the future will bring more books. These new releases are all by authors I'm already a fan of, and I'm eager to read their latest novels.

→ ANY OTHER FAMILY by Eleanor Brown (July 12): Brown's two previous delightful novels were both about families and their challenges, a favorite subject of mine. I'm excited by the premise of the new book, which features a particularly challenging family configuration: a collection of parents who have separately adopted biological siblings but work to keep the children connected.

→ THE LAST WHITE MAN by Mohsin Hamid (August 2): I adored Hamid's brilliant last book, EXIT WEST, a speculative take on migration. In this one, white people are waking up to find their skin turned brown, and I'm so curious to see where this inventive author goes with that story.

→ NUMBER ONE FAN by Meg Elison (August 30): Elison is the author of both the post-apocalyptic Road to Nowhere trilogy and the very different FIND LAYLA, about a real world teen growing up in a horrific home environment. The new book is something different again, a psychological thriller involving an author who gets kidnapped by an obsessed reader.

→ THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell (September 27): Serpell's astounding debut, THE OLD DRIFT, was so epic and wide-ranging that it's inevitable the next novel tells a smaller story. In THE FURROWS, a girl's little brother goes missing, and for years she seems to see him everywhere, until she meets a man who may or may not be her lost brother.

→ BEST OF FRIENDS by Kamila Shamsie (September 27): In HOME FIRE, Shamsie crafted a tense, complex reframing of Antigone through well-developed point of view shifts. The new novel concerns a friendship, which is something I always like to see explored in fiction, and I'm hoping for another layered and nuanced story.

→ OUR MISSING HEARTS by Celeste Ng (October 4): EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU and LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE are both outstanding novels about complicated family dynamics. Both are grounded in the real world, so I'm fascinated that Ng's next family story takes place in a dystopian future ruled by intolerance that sounds uncomfortably plausible right about now.

→ THE SPARE MAN by Mary Robinette Kowal (October 11): I've read and enjoyed all of Kowal's previous novels, which include a Regency-era magic series and an alternate history of the US space program. This time, Kowal is combining mystery, space travel, and the trappings of classic noir, and I'm expecting a fun adventure.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Andrew Simmons writes for The Millions about watching Station Eleven and teaching Hamlet to the class of 2022: "Hamlet has always been a vehicle for our existential vibrations, but the angst of my students has spiked. The class of 2022 negotiated the normal contortions of teenage growth on abnormally unstable ground—school closures, remote learning, masking, sickness."

Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2022

I'm looking forward to an exciting batch of novels coming out this spring! And I'm defining "spring" as the period between today and the end of June, because why not? Who knows how time even works anymore anyway?

→ WHEN I'M GONE, LOOK FOR ME IN THE EAST by Quan Barry (February 22): I loved the quirky WE RIDE UPON STICKS, the story of a girls' field hockey team that turns to dark magic to improve their game. I'm expecting something completely different, but as wonderfully idiosyncratic, from Barry's new novel, which follows twin brothers across Mongolia in search of a great lama's next reincarnation.

→ BOOTH by Karen Joy Fowler (March 8): I've enjoyed several of Fowler's varied books, and I'm excited that she's expanding on the subject of two short stories from the collection WHAT I DIDN'T SEE. The fascinating earlier stories and the new novel are historical fiction about the Booths, a family of famous actors in the mid 1800s, most notable today for producing the assassin John Wilkes Booth.

→ SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel (April 5): I just reread STATION ELEVEN, Mandel's excellent novel about an apocalyptic pandemic, after enjoying the recent TV adaptation. Her strange and compelling THE GLASS HOTEL was published right at the start of our real life pandemic. This new book involves the author of a bestselling novel about a pandemic, and maybe there's also a pandemic happening, and also she lives on the moon? Plus there are at least two other plotlines occurring centuries apart. It sounds completely wild, and I can't wait.

→ THE CANDY HOUSE by Jennifer Egan (April 5): When I read A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD ten years ago, it took me a little time and discussion to deepen my appreciation of the book and its tightly linked stories that may or may not count as a novel. But in the decade since then, I've found myself thinking back on many ideas and images from the story, so it certainly made an impact. I was intrigued to learn Egan would be revisiting the characters in a similarly structured book that may or may not count as a sequel.

→ WOMAN OF LIGHT by Kali Fajardo-Anstine (June 7): After I read the strong story collection SABRINA & CORINA, I was eager for the novel Fajardo-Anstine was working on. I'm delighted to see it's a multigenerational family saga with the requisite secrets, meaning it's in one of my favorite genres.

→ THE MEN by Sandra Newman (June 14): I was a fan of the time-bending THE HEAVENS as well as the post-apocalyptic THE COUNTRY OF ICE CREAM STAR. The latter is set in a future when there are no longer adults, so it's interesting that THE MEN is about a world in which there are no longer men. It's a concept other writers have explored, but I'm sure Newman's take will be unique.

→ INVISIBLE THINGS by Mat Johnson (June 28): I've read two of Johnson's previous novels, and both were a lot of fun. In LOVING DAY, the adventures in family and education are grounded in Philadelphia. In PYM, characters take a wild journey to Antarctica and encounter strange creatures. This new novel send characters all the way to Jupiter, where there may be aliens, and there's sure to be some excellent satire.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ N. K. Jemisin shares her step-by-step process of revision, or Book Renovation: "During this process, the book will no longer be a readable draft. The insertions will create contradictions, the deletions may leave plot holes; anyone who tries to read it from start to finish will end up very confused. That's okay. These are gut-renovation-level changes, leaving the load-bearing walls in place while the other walls get moved and the old wiring gets replaced. It ain't supposed to be pretty."

Releases I'm Ready For, Fall 2021

I'm excited about a bunch of books coming out in the next couple of months. Some are books I've been eagerly anticipating for years!

→ MATRIX by Lauren Groff (September 7): Groff's previous novel was the fascinating FATES AND FURIES, a relationship story nothing like I expected. I'm surprised again, and intrigued, to discover that Groff's newest book is set in the 12th century, based on the life of a historical poet, Marie de France.

→ THE ACTUAL STAR by Monica Byrne (September 14): I haven't previously read anything by Byrne, though I was interested by reviews of THE GIRL IN THE ROAD. I'm even more interested in this new novel, a global saga spanning two thousand years, from the ancient Mayan Empire to a post-apocalyptic utopia.

→ HARLEM SHUFFLE by Colson Whitehead (September 14): Every anticipated list everywhere includes the latest from Whitehead, who produces literary masterpieces with impressive frequency. The new book has a family at the center, involves a heist, and sounds like a lot of fun.

→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson (October 12): Bergman has long been a great source of thoughtful life advice through his column Asking Bear (and as a personal friend). This delightfully illustrated comic book features practical, step-by-step guides to behaving better, demanding better, and thinking through how to be a human in this complicated world.

→ PERHAPS THE STARS by Ada Palmer (October 19): This will be the fourth and final book in the expansive Terra Ignota series, a narratively inventive chronicle of twenty-fifth century politics, technology, and philosophy. The first two volumes (which are essentially one long book) left me astounded. I decided to wait on the third until it was clear when the last would be published, and then I forgot to stop waiting, but I'm looking forward to diving back into this incredible science fiction series!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Atlantic, Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath, and J. D. Porter chart The Rise of Must-Read TV: "As television scholars have noted, the plots and premises of 'complex TV' are structured primarily around characters and their development: Viewers want to identify with, relate to, and follow characters. Given that, the adaptation economy may well be one of the driving forces behind the proliferation of what literary critics call 'multiprotagonist fiction,' books with not a single protagonist (an Emma Woodhouse or Hercule Poirot, say) but a collection of main characters whose stories intertwine in surprising ways over the course of a single narrative."

Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2021

The next few months are bringing many new books from authors I'm excited to read more from!

→ THE COMMITTED by Viet Thanh Nguyen (March 2): It did not occur to me to expect a sequel to THE SYMPATHIZER, but I was excited to learn one was coming. The excellent first novel follows a double agent from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War to a new life in Los Angeles, and the second takes him to Paris to deal with the many difficult events of his past. I look forward to more time with this fascinating protagonist, and to more of Nguyen's dark humor and clever sentences.

→ LIBERTIE by Kaitlyn Greenidge (March 30): Greenidge's inventive debut, WE LOVE YOU, CHARLIE FREEMAN, featured well-developed characters, complicated family dynamics, and a wide range of topics including sign language and the history of racist science. LIBERTIE promises to deliver more history and complexity with the story of a young Black woman during the Reconstruction who tries to find a life where she can truly be free.

→ THE FIVE WOUNDS by Kirstin Valdez Quade (April 6): This novel expands a short story from Quade's great collection, NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS. All those stories did an impressive job rendering characters and relationships fully enough in a few pages to get me invested. I'm eager to see what Quade does with a whole novel to depict a family coming together in the face of a teen pregnancy.

→ GOOD COMPANY by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (April 6): I adored Sweeney's debut, THE NEST, a standout in my beloved genre of dysfunctional family dramas. It was a particular delight to enjoy the book so much and see it succeed, because Sweeney and I were workshop-mates at the Community of Writers some years earlier. The new novel explores the truths behind a friendship and a marriage against the backdrop of theater and TV acting.

→ STOP SAVING THE PLANET!: AN ENVIRONMENTALIST MANIFESTO by Jenny Price (April 20): While I'm bragging about personal connections, I'll divulge that this author is one of my cousins, which is why I'm anticipating a book that's pretty far from my usual tastes. But I am genuinely looking forward to reading this, because I agree with the premise that most "save the planet" efforts do little to address the real problems of climate change and environmental inequity. Jenny is also an entertaining writer, and I recommend her previous book about human connections to nature, FLIGHT MAPS.

→ FUGITIVE TELEMETRY by Martha Wells (April 27): I read all the previous installments of The Murderbot Diaries last year and put the series at the top of my 2020 favorites. The title character, a cyborg security expert trying to find its place in human society, is an excellent, opinionated narrator, and I can't wait for its next adventure.

→ SORROWLAND by Rivers Solomon (May 4): AN UNKINDNESS OF GHOSTS and THE DEEP are both intense, beautiful stories about power and complicated relationships. SORROWLAND sounds like it will explore these as well, in the context of another intricately imagined world. I'm especially intrigued by this sentence from the description: "Here, monsters aren't just individuals, but entire nations."

→ ONE LAST STOP by Casey McQuiston (June 1): Since reading the delightful RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE, the politically optimistic gay love story I didn't know I needed, I've been eagerly awaiting more from McQuiston. The new novel is a romance between two women, one of whom is displaced in time, and it sounds just as wonderful.

→ THE HIDDEN PALACE by Helene Wecker (June 8): This sequel to THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI has undergone changes to both title and release date since it was first announced, but it's really on the way now. I'm thrilled we'll be getting more to the richly developed story of two supernatural beings who met as immigrants to New York City and the world of humanity at the turn of the twentieth century.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Casey McQuiston writes at Goodreads about the importance of queer love stories: "I thought about what it would have meant to a teenager like me, stumbling around and grabbing onto anything that felt sturdy, to see a book like mine while loitering around the stacks. This pastel-colored confection, with a jacket copy describing a fantastical, frothy, happily-ever-after queer love story that sounded like so many of the rom-coms I loved. I think it would have helped her to know that stories like that could be prominently featured in her favorite place."

Releases I'm Ready For, Fall 2020

One thing getting me through this year is good books, and the anticipation of more good books. I've been looking forward to reading these fall releases — and the wait is over for some of them, since the September books are already out.

→ TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM by Yaa Gyasi (September 1): Gyasi's debut, HOMEGOING, was an amazing epic covering centuries and generations of characters. Her new book is the much more intimate story of a family affected by addiction, mental illness, and loss, narrated by a scientist unsure how to square her work with her religious upbringing.

→ FIND LAYLA by Meg Elison (September 1): Back when I was enthusiastic about reading post-apocalyptic stories, I sank into Elison's THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE and the rest of the Road to Nowhere trilogy. FIND LAYLA is a refreshingly different genre of story, though still one with a character going through tough times, about a teen coping with family instability and online bullying.

→ TWELVE: POEMS INSPIRED BY THE BROTHERS GRIMM FAIRY TALE by Andrea Blythe (September 7): Andrea is a friend, but I don't think I'm being too biased in my enthusiasm for her writing. TWELVE is a small book of prose poems, beautifully produced by Interstellar Flight Press, that imagines what happens to The Twelve Dancing Princesses after the end of their fairy tale.

→ THE 99% INVISIBLE CITY: A FIELD GUIDE TO THE HIDDEN WORLD OF EVERYDAY DESIGN by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt (October 6): One of my favorite podcasts is 99% Invisible, which explores the design of objects, the built environment, and all kinds of topics we probably never even thought about. The book investigates the details of how cities work, and while I'm not sure if I'll read it straight through or dip in at random, I am excited to receive my copy.

→ LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND by Rumaan Alam (October 6): The interpersonal dynamics in Alam's THAT KIND OF MOTHER were so good that I'm not going to put off reading his new book, even though it involves some sort of potentially civilization-shattering disaster. Two families who don't know each other are forced together in a remote house while something horrible seems to be happening in New York City, and nobody is sure who or what to trust.

→ BLACK SUN by Rebecca Roanhorse (October 13): Roanhorse's work has received a lot of attention and awards, and I was intrigued by her new series after hearing her speak at WisCon's online convention. The Between Earth and Sky trilogy takes place in a fantasy world based on civilizations of the pre-Columbian Americas, and it promises celestial prophecies, power struggles, and great characters.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At BBC Culture, Hephzibah Anderson pages through the first drafts of classic novels: "The manuscripts of literary works-in-progress fascinate on many levels, from the flush-faced thrill of spying on something intensely private and the visceral delight of knowing that a legendary author's hand rested on the paper before you, to the light that such early drafts shed on authorial methodology and intent. Sometimes, the very essence of what a writer is trying to express seems to hover tantalisingly in the gap between a word deleted and another added in its place."

→ David Lerner Schwartz writes for Literary Hub about Percival Everett's new novel, TELEPHONE, published in three slightly different versions: "Books of course contain multitudes in that they contain characters who, like us, are contradictory, complex, and human in worlds so close to (or far from) our own. But here, depending on the version you've received, you're getting a slightly different Zach, a slightly different story. In one version he's perhaps more reticent, another more daydreaming, another more at odds, but these differences seem overall negligible. Across the versions, they average out to the same man, the same-ish experience. But to be wise to Telephone's instantiations is to believe that perhaps somewhere else things might work out differently."

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer 2020

This is not going to be the summer anyone planned, but at least there will still be new books. These are the upcoming releases I'm most looking forward to:

→ THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett (June 2): Bennett's first novel, THE MOTHERS, demonstrated her skill at depicting characters and the way their relationships change over time. This new book promises to draw on those talents again to tell the story of identical twin sisters who grow up to assume different racial identities, a fascinating premise.

→ THE LIGHTNESS by Emily Temple (June 16): This is a debut from a writer whose work I've read for years on the site Literary Hub. The story involves a teen girl at a strange summer program, and the description intriguingly notes that it "juxtaposes fairy tales with quantum physics, cognitive science with religious fervor, and the passions and obsessions of youth with all of these."

→ MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (June 30): I read Moreno-Garcia's novella PRIME MERIDIAN and have been intending to pick up more of her work, which spans a range of genres. MEXICAN GOTHIC is, naturally, a gothic horror story, and I'm prepared to be creeped out by a spooky mansion and dark family secrets.

→ THE RELENTLESS MOON by Mary Robinette Kowal (July 14) is the third book in the Lady Astronaut series, in which a climate disaster in the 1950s accelerates the quest to colonize space. I largely enjoyed the first two books, despite some flaws, and I'm looking forward to switching to a different character's point of view for this installment.

→ BIG FRIENDSHIP: HOW WE KEEP EACH OTHER CLOSE by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman (July 14): Sow and Friedman host the excellent podcast Call Your Girlfriend, covering a variety of topics from a feminist perspective and sharing honest talk about their long-distance friendship and business partnership. I gather the book will be partly a memoir of their friendship and partly a look at friendships in general, and I'm excited to read it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ronnie Scott writes for The Guardian about publishing a book right now: "Like every Australian novelist putting a book out this month, I'm publishing it into a different world than the one I wrote it in. The Adversary is a novel of manners, meaning it's a book where people hang out and socialise and not a lot actually goes on. There are two best friends. They're both gay men. They have to change their friendship. Along the way, they share cigarettes and touch each other's hair. They step over strangers to find the right spot at a shockingly populous pool, where they sweat liberally, sweat stickily and share meaningful bites of their food."

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter 2020

Whatever else happens in 2020, it's set to be another great year for books. These are the novels I've been most anticipating reading over the next few months:

→ INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu (January 28): Yu's previous novel was HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, a moving family story that takes a metaphorical, meta-fictional approach to time travel. His new novel, described as "a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes," sounds just as unusual, clever, and thoughtful.

→ MAZES OF POWER by Juliette Wade (February 4): I know Juliette from FOGcon and have been following her writing journey for years, so I'm thrilled that she's publishing her first novel. The book, which begins a series, is set in a richly constructed world with a strict caste system. The story involves a political struggle and maybe an epidemic, and it's been getting rave advance reviews.

→ 88 NAMES by Matt Ruff (March 17): I'm a longtime fan of everything Ruff has written. His most recent book was LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, a story of supernatural and racist horrors that's currently being adapted for TV. 88 NAMES features a virtual reality game world and a mysterious figure who might be Kim Jong-un, so it's sure to be wild.

→ THE GLASS HOTEL by Emily St. John Mandel (March 24): Mandel's last novel, STATION ELEVEN, remains one of my favorite apocalypse stories (and is also getting a TV adaptation). The new book has a complicated jacket description that Mandel sums up as "a ghost story that's also about white collar crime and container shipping." I'm certainly intrigued.

→ WE ARE TOTALLY NORMAL by Rahul Kanakia (March 31): I loved Kanakia's smart first novel, ENTER TITLE HERE, which follows an ambitious high school senior on a shameless quest to manipulate her way into Stanford. Her new book also stars a high school student with a plan -- one that's thrown off track when he hooks up with his guy friend and has to reconsider his sexuality and identity.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Eater, Jaya Saxena interviews Jasmine Guillory about celebrating food in her romance novels: "In my books, I really wanted to have people eating meals together and not feeling like there was something wrong with them. To a certain extent, that is a little bit of a fantasy. But I do know plenty of women who love to eat and don't have a source of anxiety with food. I want food to be joyful and fun no matter what it is." (Thanks, Book Riot!)

Releases I'm Ready For, Summer/Fall 2019

I've got a good chunk of my reading for the rest of the year planned, with a bunch of books I've been awaiting for quite some time!

→ THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead (July 16): I've read several of Whitehead's earlier novels, all masterfully written and highly inventive. His latest takes place in Florida in the early 1960s, where a young black boy is sent to a reform school and subjected to racist violence. The subject matter means this won't be an easy read, but I'm looking forward to another powerful, engaging story from a great writer.

→ BECAUSE INTERNET: UNDERSTANDING THE NEW RULES OF LANGUAGE by Gretchen McCulloch (July 23): For years, I've enjoyed McCulloch's articles on internet linguistics, as well as the Lingthusiasm podcast she co-hosts. I've been impatient for the release of this book and can't wait to dive into chapters such as "Typographical Tone of Voice" and "Emoji and Other Internet Gestures". I'll be reading in print, but the audio version narrated by the author also sounds very entertaining.

→ THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood (September 10) is a sequel to THE HANDMAID'S TALE, a novel I treasure and admire for its thoughtful, chilling narrative. I hope the sequel will live up to the original and stand with Atwood's generally excellent work, but I'm nervous. Part of my wariness about a continuation is that the TV series, which started strong, has become infuriating, but I don't think Atwood has much to do with that, and this will definitely be a different story, set 15 years later with three different narrators. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

→ WAYWARD SON by Rainbow Rowell (September 24) is also a sequel. It follows Rowell's previous novel, CARRY ON, which was itself based on the Harry Potter analog Rowell invented for her earlier book, FANGIRL. Still with me? I've read all Rowell's novels with great delight, and I'm expecting more clever fun and heartfelt emotion from the further adventures of these magic-wielding characters.

→ THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE by Annalee Newitz (September 24): Newitz's first novel, AUTONOMOUS, was a wild ride through a world of pirated pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligences. I'm into the way Newitz thinks about science and science fiction, ideas they share as co-host of the podcast Our Opinions are Correct. I'm excited about another book from them, and the time travel plot promises another thrilling tale.

→ THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon (November 5) has a cool origin story. Solomon took their inspiration from a gorgeous song produced by the group clipping. for an episode of This American Life. In the song, and now the novel, an underwater civilization has grown from the descendants of enslaved African people thrown overboard during the ocean crossing. It's an upsetting, empowering premise, like the one in Solomon's amazing first novel, AN UNKINDNESS OF GHOSTS.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ For Literary Hub, Jake Wolff explains his approach to integrating research into a story: "I heavily researched my debut novel, [THE HISTORY OF LIVING FOREVER,] in which nearly every chapter is science-oriented, historical, or both. I'd like to share a method I used throughout the research and writing process to help deal with some of my questions. This method is not intended to become a constant fixture in your writing practice. But if you're looking for ways to balance or check the balance of the amount of research in a given chapter, story, or scene, you might consider these steps: identify, lie, apply."

Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2019

I've been organizing my to-read list and placing pre-orders, because it's time for a new season of anticipated books! Here's what I'm excited about reading this spring:

→ THE BOOK OF FLORA by Meg Elison (April 23): I've already started reading this final book of the Road to Nowhere trilogy, and I'm fascinated by what's presented in just the first couple of chapters. Each book in this intense post-apocalyptic story has a different narrative style, and each focuses on the life of a different character in a plague-stricken future where women are rare. The premise leads to difficult, violent content, so these are not light reads, but I loved the first book especially. That first installment, THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE, can be read as a standalone.

→ EXHALATION by Ted Chiang (May 7): This is a new collection of stories by a wildly creative and clever science fiction writer. When I read his first collection, STORIES OF YOUR LIFE AND OTHERS, I was impressed by how dissimilar the stories are from each other, and from anything else I'd ever read. (The movie Arrival, which I liked pretty well, is adapted from one of those stories.) I'm looking forward to enjoying more of Chiang's work, including some stories that have been available online but that I never got around to reading.

→ RULES FOR VISITING by Jessica Francis Kane (May 14): I was enthralled by Kane's first novel, THE REPORT, which imagines the story behind a real-life disaster. I also admired her short story collection, THIS CLOSE, particularly for the subtle depictions of complicated relationships. I expect to find more great interpersonal dynamics in this new novel about friendship, which sounds fun and funny.

→ CITY OF GIRLS by Elizabeth Gilbert (June 4): I've never been inclined to read any of Gilbert's inspirational nonfiction, but I adored her historical novel about a nineteenth-century woman of science, THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS. Her new novel is also historical, set in the 1940s New York theater world, and my curiosity is piqued.

→ THE TENTH MUSE by Catherine Chung (June 18): Roxane Gay's recommendation made me interested in this novel, and I've realized I also meant to read Chung's previous novel, FORGOTTEN COUNTRY, after a recommendation by Gay but never got to it. I'll definitely be picking up this new book, a story about math and family secrets.

→ EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER by Linda Holmes (June 25): This is the debut novel from a host of one of my favorite podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour. Holmes's media commentary is always smart and funny, and I'm thrilled that she's publishing a novel. The story is a romance between two people who are struggling with (I believe) mental health issues, and I'm happy to see the early reviews are as positive as I'd hoped!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On Tor.com, Vivian Shaw considers How Much Research Should You Do For Your Book?: "I recently wrote a novella about air crash investigation and practical necromancy, in which I had to learn a great deal about how air traffic control works, how flights are routed, how to read various types of chart, where various controls are located in the Boeing 737's cockpit, and so on--and then I had to not have my protagonist lecture the audience about any of these things, or bring them up in conversation with the other characters unnecessarily. Writing a particularly intense scene where I had to walk that thin line felt physically exhausting, like lifting weights with my brain, but it was also deeply satisfying to have done."

Releases I'm Ready For, Winter 2019

It's time for the return of my anticipated book lists, because there are a ton of books being published this year that I'm already excited about. Most of these are from authors whose work I've loved before, and in some cases I've been eagerly awaiting these books since they were first mentioned years ago.

Here are the books I'm looking forward to reading in the next few months:

→ THE DREAMERS by Karen Thompson Walker (January 15): I was a big admirer of Walker's debut, THE AGE OF MIRACLES, a coming-of-age story set during the gradual disaster of the earth's slowing rotation. The news of her publishing again delighted me, but I have to admit the new book's premise adds some trepidation to my anticipation. THE DREAMERS involves a town gripped by an epidemic (promising) that sends its victims into perpetual sleep (intriguing, but I've been disappointed by books with sleep-related epidemics in the past) and does something to dreams (a topic I usually find uninteresting in fiction). I haven't started reading yet, so I'm still hoping Walker will once again tell a story that exceeds my expectations.

→ THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT by Charlie Jane Anders (February 12): Anders has produced a lot of work I enjoy: her first novel, ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY, shorter fiction, and the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT takes place on a planet with a permanent day side and night side, has a plot containing revolutionaries and smugglers, and sounds like great fun.

→ THE HEAVENS by Sandra Newman (February 12): The two earlier books that made me a fan of Newman are THE COUNTRY OF ICE CREAM STAR, a novel about an apocalypse in which nobody lives past adolescence, and HOW NOT TO WRITE A NOVEL, a hilarious writing guide. THE HEAVENS is something different than either of those, a novel set in New York in 2000 and Elizabethan England, with maybe also some alternate history (yay) and definitely some dreams (hrm). My curiosity is certainly piqued.

→ THE RAVEN TOWER by Ann Leckie (February 26): I adored all of Leckie's previous novels: the trilogy starting with ANCILLARY JUSTICE and the standalone PROVENANCE. In THE RAVEN TOWER, Leckie moves from science fiction to fantasy, and I'm confident that the writing, characters, and story will be as wonderful as always.

→ GOOD TALK: A MEMOIR IN CONVERSATIONS by Mira Jacob (March 26): Jacob wrote a lovely novel about a family, THE SLEEPWALKER'S GUIDE TO DANCING, and I've been following her career since reading it. A few years ago, she published a cartoon essay called 37 Difficult Questions From My Mixed-Race Son and announced that it was part of a forthcoming graphic memoir. I'm eager to see more of these funny, tough, and visually striking conversations.

→ THE OTHER AMERICANS by Laila Lalami (March 26): Lalami is the one author on this list I haven't read before, but the buzz around this novel has me ready to snap it up as soon as it's released. It's a story about a hit-and-run accident told from many points of view, promising a mystery, secrets, lies, and complicated family dynamics.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Tor.com, Charlie Jane Anders advises focusing on your weaknesses as an author: "Writing is one of the few areas where the better you get at it, the harder it becomes. This is partly because 'getting good at writing' requires you to have more awareness of the weaknesses in your own work. But also, you can't get better after a certain point without going outside your comfort zone. And there are questions you don't even think to ask about your own work, until you've been forced to think about them."

Releases I'm Ready For, Fall 2017

Lately my reading time has diminished, because I've been trying to get as much writing as possible accomplished while I also have a lot of other things going on. This extra-busy state is likely to continue for a while, but I do intend to find time in the upcoming months for these books I've been anticipating!

→ GEORGE AND LIZZIE by Nancy Pearl (September 5): I'm a longtime fan of librarian, interviewer, and action figure Nancy Pearl, so I was excited to hear she's publishing her first novel. Even better, it's one about family relationships and secrets. Though early reviews are mixed, I'm curious to check this book out.

→ SOURDOUGH by Robin Sloan (September 5): I wrote a glowing review of Sloan's debut, MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE, so this is one of those cases where I'm nervous about whether an author's second book can live up to my hopes. Happily, advance readers are enthusiastic about this new geeky adventure through the Bay Area tech world, which prominently features some of my favorite topics: food and bread.

→ LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE by Celeste Ng (September 12): Again, this is a second novel from an author with a debut I greatly admired, the powerful family story EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU. Ng's new book involves two Ohio families whose lives become entwined, and it sounds like it's going to be another incredible read.

→ PROVENANCE by Ann Leckie (September 26): If you're a science fiction reader and haven't tried Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy yet, consider this another reminder to pick up ANCILLARY JUSTICE. I loved that series! No need to read the trilogy before PROVENANCE, however, because this book introduces new characters in a different part of the Ancillaryverse. It's the story of a woman on a quest for power and lost artifacts, and it's sure to include richly developed people, cultures, and conflicts.

→ ARTEMIS by Andy Weir (November 14): Weir's first novel, THE MARTIAN, was a ton of fun, combining a thrilling survival story with fascinating space science. ARTEMIS promises to deliver more thrills and science, plus a heist plot, and it's set on a moon colony. I can't wait!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Rosie Cima performs some excellent data analysis and visualization to measure the gender balance of The New York Times Best Seller list: "If we are looking for a single category to explain why women are better represented among best-selling authors today, the Literary/None category is our best candidate. Most best-selling books fall into this category, and its change over time closely matches the overall gender ratio, shifting from extreme bias in the 1980s to close to parity in the 2000s."

Releases I'm Ready For, Spring 2017

I've just finished reading through my previous crop of anticipated books, and I'm getting excited for the next batch. These are the books coming out this spring (and the start of summer) that I've been eagerly awaiting:

→ AMERICAN WAR by Omar El Akkad (April 4): I've been seeing buzz for a while about this novel, which imagines a second American Civil War. The description also mentions a plague, which places it squarely in the category of "horrific things I love to read about". I'm looking forward to being horrified by this one, which is Akkad's debut.

→ WOMAN NO. 17 by Edan Lepucki (May 9): I've long been a fan of Lepucki's writing for The Millions, and I enjoyed her debut novel, CALIFORNIA, about a couple who flees to the wilderness as civilization collapses. That first novel received a great publicity boost during an Amazon brouhaha, so this one may arrive a bit more quietly, but I'm one of many readers interested to find out what Lepucki has in store this time. The novel involves a writer in the Hollywood Hills, the nanny she hires, and the friendship they develop, and it's billed as "sinister, sexy noir".

→ HUNGER: A MEMOIR OF (MY) BODY by Roxane Gay (June 13): This book was originally slated for publication a year ago, but now it's really on its way, and I'm sure it will be a beautiful, difficult read, like everything else Gay writes. I loved her story collection DIFFICULT WOMEN, out only last season, and I previously devoured her amazing novel and essay collection. This new memoir considers food, weight, and body image, frequent topics in Gay's writing.

→ MADE FOR LOVE by Alissa Nutting (July 4): Nutting's debut novel was TAMPA, a seriously disturbing, seriously impressive book about a middle school teacher who is sexually obsessed with her students. I've ben curious to see where Nutting would go from there, and the answer involves a woman leaving her husband, a senior citizen trailer park, a sex doll, and tracking technology. I'm intrigued.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Guardian, George Saunders considers what writers really do when they write: "My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with 'P' on this side ('Positive') and 'N' on this side ('Negative'). I try to read what I've written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might ('without hope and without despair'). Where's the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the 'P' zone. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts." (Thanks, Henri!)