And when it comes to fiction—especially science fiction—Keanu Reeves has had a big hit with China Miéville and The Book of Elsewhere. In romance fiction, Timothy Janovsky’s queer fun You Had Me at Happy Hour features sexy sommeliers, India Holton’s The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love has bird nerds bickering, and Chatham Greenfield’s Time and Time Again is a queer, Jewish young adult love story with a time loop. If you’re looking for young adult books that are a little quirkier and weirder, there’s Kelly Murashige’s The Lost Souls of Benzaiten, in which the protagonist prays to be turned into a vacuum cleaner.
The books featured below feature a romance with a powerful woman, a quarter-life crisis, sexy jewel thieves, dirty historical fiction, and more.
The Last One by Rachel Howzell Hall
This romanticization—the latest from the bestseller Howzell Hall—promises The Sorcerer plus NK Jemisin reality. In it, Kai is a lost young woman – she doesn’t know who she is or how she ended up in a strange land with strange animals, but she knows she has to get out before things get worse. She also knows she has abilities she doesn’t fully understand, and that enlisting the help of the town’s blacksmith can be as exasperating as it is exciting.
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Here, Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Americans without paperstells another story that explores the lives of undocumented people in the United States, this time in the form of a novel. The titular Catalina – herself undocumented – moves in with her undocumented grandparents after a tragedy. As she prepares to graduate from Harvard – after falling into certain stuffy subcultures there – she is faced with the task of helping her grandparents and the uncertainty of finding work after graduation as an undocumented person.
“Linh Ly is fine” by Thao Votang
This cover simply givesIt adds colour and style, but also a mood. A mood that Votang handles with a blunt sense of humour.
As you might have guessed, Linh Ly isn’t really doing well. She’s 27 and her mother has started dating a co-worker. The thing is, her mother doesn’t have the best relationship with men – as Linh Ly’s traumatic childhood shows. So Linh decides to spy on her mother and follow her on dates, which helps her distract herself from the absolute meaninglessness of her own dating life… and from the shooting that happened at the university where Linh works.
Jewel Me Twice by Charish Reid
Five years ago, Celeste St. Pierre first met Magnus Larsson and the two professional thieves hit it off. They stole jewels together and fought in bed. Now she runs an antiques shop in Manhattan and has lost touch with Magnus since their last disastrous job together. But her mentor’s dying wish that they both pull off one last big heist brings the two back together. Each harbors a grudge against the other, but their thieving journey through Europe could change everything.
The Modern Fairies by Clare Pollard
I want to tell you something from the short description of the book that made me want to vomit a little:
“Why don’t they tell you that the beautiful princess becomes the evil queen and that it’s just the same person in the story, just in different places?“
A read!
Set in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV, the literary salon of Baroness Marie D’Aulnoy is teeming with princesses and evil queens. There, a group of mostly women—and the recently widowed Charles Perrault—meet to tell what the hostess, D’Aulnoy, calls “comtes de fee,” or fairy tales. Meanwhile, D’Aulnoy’s life is a kind of fairy tale, full of cruel twists and turns, and when it turns out that there is a spy among the members of her salon after people are arrested for poisoning at Versailles, it becomes clear that storytelling has its own dangers.
In the shadow of the case of Tobi Ogundiran
If you’re looking for mythologically inspired fantasy, this novella by Ogundiran is the story of the acolyte Ashâke, who seems to be the only follower of the Orisha they don’t speak to. After witnessing her fellow Orishas become full-fledged priests, she desperately tries to summon an Orisha, but instead unleashes a centuries-old cosmic war with herself at the center.
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 absolutely 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!
