The first few months of the New Year have no shortage of exciting reads coming your way. Get a jump on your 2022 reading goals by placing these hot titles on hold now so they’re ready and waiting for you when they are released. And if you want to really want to make a literary splash in the coming weeks, be sure to also sign up for our exciting 2022 winter reading challenges for all ages!
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (January 4)
In this debut novel about the launch of a government program meant to correct “bad” mothering, Chan collects the judgments and pressures that society places on women who deign to be multifaceted and translates them into a propulsive, perceptive story.
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Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (January 4)
A blazing new talent debuts with the story of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her absent mother, her glittering career amongst New York’s elite and her Puerto Rican roots in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
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Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho (January 4)
Centering on nearly two decades of best friendship between two Taiwanese American women, this novel explores the bonds of shared experience of coming of age in Los Angeles in immigrant families. Fiona and Jane’s friendship is challenged over the years by distance, romantic relationships and betrayal. But throughout it all, they are constants in each other’s lives—reminders for one another of who they once were and all that they can be.
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To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (January 11)
Although entirely different in plot and reach than the novel that made her famous, the A Little Life author brings the same emotional charge and intimate character study to the page here. Comprised of three unique sections all following characters of the same name (and surrounding the same house in New York City’s Washington Square), To Paradise offers an alternate, reimagined version of America—including a futuristic one in which climate change and pandemics have given way to totalitarian rule—all under the guise of pondering what paradise means to each person
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Manifesto: On Never Giving Up by Bernardine Evaristo (January 18)
Bernardine Evaristo makes a dazzling nonfiction debut with her memoir, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, a triumphant meditation on her life as a writer, a Black woman and an activist. In taking stock of her experiences, Evaristo—who became the first Black woman to win the Booker prize with her 2019 novel Girl, Woman, Other—not only provides a compelling look at her life and career, but also provides valuable insights into the intersections of race, gender and identity in our world.
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South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (January 25)
Imani Perry, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, returned to her hometown in Alabama seeking to challenge what we think we know about the South. In South to America, Perry shows readers that there is no one archetype of the American South, as she considers everything from immigrant communities to the legacy of slavery to her own ancestral roots. As she encounters new places and new people, Perry argues that in order to understand American identity, we must take a look below the Mason Dixon line.
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Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James (February 15)
The second installment of the Dark Star Trilogy (following the best-selling Black Leopard, Red Wolf), traces the journey of heroine Sogolon, the 177-year-old Moon Witch, as she provides her own perspective on the events of the first book, retelling the adventure tale from a separate point of view.
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When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry (February 22)
From the acclaimed author of We Ride Upon Sticks comes a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia. Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama, the young monk Chuluun sets out with his identical twin, Mun, who has rejected the monastic life they once shared. Their relationship will be tested on this journey as each possesses the ability to hear the other’s thoughts. As their country stretches before them, questions of faith—along with more earthly matters of love and brotherhood—haunt the twins.
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All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir (March 1)
From #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a brilliant, unforgettable and heart-wrenching contemporary YA novel about family and forgiveness, love and loss, in a sweeping story that crosses generations and continents.
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Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama by Bob Odenkirk (March 1)
In this brilliantly entertaining and heartfelt memoir, beloved star and comic maverick Bob Odenkirk writes honestly about the highs and lows of showbiz: his work on infamous cult comedy Mr. Show, as a performer and writer on legendary series such as The Larry Sanders Show and Saturday Night Live, becoming everyone’s favorite lawyer in the global hit TV series’ Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and what it’s like to reinvent himself as an action film star at 50 in Nobody. Bob Odenkirk’s career is inexplicable. And yet he will try like hell to explicate it for you.