In the mystery/thriller category, there is the cruise-set book “On the Surface” by Rachel McGuire and the game-based young adult thriller “It’s Only a Game” by Kelsea Yu. For more young adult fiction, there is the hopeful “Unbecoming” by Seema Yasmin, in which two Muslim teenagers fight against the illegalization of abortion. And in the nonfiction category, there is “Dismantling Mass Incarceration” by Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr. and Maria Hawilo, which features Angela Davis, Clint Smith and other advocates of prison reform.
The other new releases featured below offer a romance about the hard life in the West, take a look at our troubled relationship with food, provide a timely (and actually entertaining) political explainer, and much more.
This large hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
It’s 500 years in the future and society is at its breaking point. It’s still horribly divided along class lines, but despite all of this, a young woman is very carefully building a life for herself that puts her above what society expects of her. Sweetmint lives as a second-class citizen – an invisible woman – but has managed to snag a prestigious education. But then her older brother – who disappeared some time ago – is accused of murdering someone far above his social class. Now she sets out to clear his name, navigating the shifting politics and brutal class divides.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Here, the award-winning Barry writes his first novel set in America. It’s October 1891, and winter is upon us. But so is love for the hardy. In Butte, Montana, the locals live off the spoils of the copper mines and the debauchery they allow them. Among them is degenerate No. 1, the young Irish poet Tom Rourke. Tom’s life is stuck in the filth of his surroundings when Polly Gillespie comes to town and things start to improve. The two begin an affair, but Polly is the new bride of mine captain Long Anthony Harrington, and when the two flee west, her self-flagellating, fanatical husband sends ruthless marksmen after them. It turns out they need a little more than a stolen horse and money to make it to San Francisco.
It is elementary by Elise Bryant
Have you ever read a cozy crime novel that revolves around parent council meetings at schools? It is elementaryBryant delivers just that with Mavis Miller, who is secretly persuaded to join the parent council at her 7-year-old daughter’s school. Surprisingly (it’s no surprise), the parent council president, Trisha Holbrook, wants her to lead the school’s new DEI committee, but then the principal – who had been pissing off the intimidating Trisha – doesn’t show up for work one day. And Mavis remembers watching Trisha the day before, pulling giant bags of trash and cleaning supplies out of her car…
On the way to eternity by Anton Hur
Hur, who has translated many books, looks into the future to see where this whole AI thing might take us. In this future world, cancer is basically cured by replacing human body cells with nanites, robot/android cells that essentially grant their hosts immortality. Meanwhile, there’s a literary researcher, Yonghun, who successfully teaches AI to understand poetry and creates a thinking machine called Panit. Well, Dr. Beeko, who controls the aforementioned nanotechnology, transfers Panit into an android body, and well, well, we’re left with a whole lot of questions about what constitutes art and humanity.
Democracy in Regression: How We Can Make Big and Small Changes in Our Country and Our Lives by Sami Sage and Emily Amick
I don’t read a lot of political books, so maybe it’s not worth much to say this book is so refreshing – but it is. In it, Betches Media co-founder Sami Sag and former aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Emily Amick combine political engagement and self-help. They show how to show love to yourself – and your community – by being more civically engaged. Speaking up and voting on your views on how to improve our democracy, and not giving in to the despair so many feel about modern politics, is one way to take your place in the world. They address the apathy and doomscrolling that plague current discussions about politics, offer tips on how people can get involved in a way that suits them (there’s a nice connection for the astrology gals), give advice on creating action plans, provide basic information, and even include some nice discussion questions for book clubs.
More, please: About food, fat, binge eating, cravings and the desire for “enough” by Emma Specter
Although it seems like there’s a new weight loss trend every few years, I can’t remember the last time one was as popular as Ozempic. Even its name stands out – it sounds both futuristic and retro, like something out of a sci-fi classic metropolisand Specter’s examination of these and other trends in diet culture shows how our obsession with thinness has distorted our relationship with healthy eating and actual health. She uses both her experience as someone who struggled with binge eating and her accounts to put our history and relationship with food into context.
More resources on new releases from Book Riot:
- All booksour weekly book release podcast where Liberty and some co-hosts talk about eight books that came out this week that we’ve read and loved.
- With the “New Books” newsletter, we send you by email the books that are coming out this week and are causing a stir.
- And finally, if you want real insider information on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! I find 90% of all new releases there and you can filter by trending books, Rioter recommendations, and even LGBTQ new releases!
