
Kate Manning. Scribner, $28 (464p) ISBN 978-1-982160-94-4
Manning (My Notorious Life) sets this stellar coming-of-age novel in early 20th-century Moonstone, Colo., where a young woman gets a firsthand look at the machinations behind an exploitive mining company and its workers’ efforts to unionize. Sixteen-year-old Sylvie Pelletier’s quarryman fat... Continue reading »

Michael Connelly. Little, Brown, $29 (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-48565-4
In bestseller Connelly’s thrilling fifth outing for Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch (after 2021’s The Dark Hours), Ballard invites the retired Bosch to volunteer for the LAPD’s newly revived Open-Unsolved Unit, which she’s running, enticing him with the prospect of finding the man responsible... Continue reading »

Ronald Malfi. Titan, $15.95 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-78909-959-1
The four horror novellas of this wonderfully meta collection from Malfi (Come with Me) all turn on a vibrantly imagined theme that fans of macabre fiction will easily relate to: books as agents of horror. The centerpiece of “The Skin of Her Teeth” is a novel whose story adamantly refuses to... Continue reading »

Emily Stone. Dell, $17 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-593-59834-4
With this beautiful and heart-wrenching Christmas story, Stone (Always, in December) delivers an epic story of family, loss, and the triumph of love. Siblings Cassie and Tom relied on each other and a group of friends who became like surrogate family after the death of their parents when th... Continue reading »

Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger. Nightfire, $17.99 (128p) ISBN 978-1-250-75017-4
In this inventive horror comic, Dr. Amal Robardin is a therapist in training whose first client, a schizophrenic New York City theatre scene blogger named Yasmin, has been experiencing increasingly intense nighttime visions of a figure looming in the dark beside her bed. Grappling with her own inexp... Continue reading »

Saeed Jones. Coffee House, $16.95 trade paper (104p) ISBN 978-1-56689-651-1
The potent latest from Jones (Prelude to Bruise) excoriates an American present that refuses to learn from its past or correct for a possibly disastrous future. A kaleidoscope of grief and anger mixes with the poet’s wit, giving these timely poems a striking directness: “In America, a gathe... Continue reading »

Carrie Stuart Parks. Thomas Nelson, $16.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-7852-3985-7
This propulsive thriller from Parks (Woman in Shadow) follows a small-town art instructor who must face her past to stop a murderer. Sam Williams is miraculously unscathed after an SUV crashes into the temporary classroom where she teaches art to elementary schoolers in LaCrosse, Wash. An i... Continue reading »

Stacy Schiff. Little, Brown, $35 (464p) ISBN 978-0-316-44111-7
Pulitzer winner Schiff (The Witches) delivers a revelatory and frequently riveting account of the life of founding father Samuel Adams (1722–1803). Portraying Adams as both a pious Puritan and a man of action, who “muscled words into deeds” in the cause of American independence, and whose d... Continue reading »

Naomi Duguid. Artisan, $45 (400p) ISBN 978-1-57965-944-8
“We have an intimate relationship with salt, grain by grain, in our fingers as a pinch, between our teeth as we bite into a crystal, on our tongue as it melts,” writes Duguid (Taste of Persia) in this mesmerizing mix of recipes and food history. She begins with salt’s effects on flavor and ... Continue reading »

Matthew Ichihashi Potts. Yale Univ, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-0-3002-5985-8
Potts (Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament), a Christian morals professor at Harvard Divinity School, delivers an erudite consideration of forgiveness. Lamenting that “Christian forgiveness does too often deny or diminish grief,” Potts suggests understanding forgiveness as the “refus... Continue reading »

Velinxi. Andrews McMeel, $18.99 paper (432p) ISBN 978-1-5248-7649-4
Sixteen-year-old Vicky Tan navigates e-sports’ misogynistic atmosphere in this high-octane solo debut, originally a webcomic, by Velinxi (the Scum Villain series). Vicky has always supported her older brother, Virgil, username Aeneid, a top-ranked player of popular pvp game Xenith Orion, wh... Continue reading »

