Can you believe we made it to the third month of 2023? It seems only yesterday that we were ringing in the new year. But yes, we finally arrived in March, one of my favorite months. Spring is around the corner (well, already here if you are in the New York area), and March is when we commemorate all the past and present works women have done worldwide. But of course, a new month brings us new releases to read!
Want a remix of a classic? Or a cozy mystery to read in the spring air? Get ready for a list of new releases that will make March your favorite month!
Featured Book of the Month
Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Ten-year-old Julia loves the mysteries of the ocean and marine biology, just like her scientist mother. Her family is spending the summer on a remote island where her mom is searching for the elusive Greenland shark, a creature that might be older than the trees, and so rare that it’s only been seen a few times.
But the ocean is reluctant to give up its secrets, and Julia tries not to worry as her mother returns disappointed at the end of each day.
Determined to prove that the shark is real, Julia sets off on a quest to find it herself, armed with a set of coordinates, a compass, and her trusty rain jacket.
She soon realizes that there are some journeys you shouldn’t go on alone. As Julia comes face to face with the dark and wondrous truths of the sea, she finds the strength to leave the shark in the depths and kick up towards the light.
Through a unique blend of poetic prose and stunning illustrations, Julia and the Shark tells an unforgettable story full of dark depths and starry skies, courage and hope.
This lyrical, deeply moving middle grade novel about one family’s fierce love and resilience is perfect for starting conversations about mental health and how it’s okay to not be okay. (Credit: Union Square Kids)
Weyward by Emilia Hart
I am a Weyward, and wild inside.
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.
1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives–and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.
The House of Dudley: A New History of Tudor England by Joanne Paul
Each Tudor monarch made their name with a Dudley by their side–or by crushing one beneath their feet.
The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII, but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. That was until the reign of Elizabeth I, when the family was once again at the center of power, and would do anything to remain there. . . .With three generations of felled favorites, what was it that caused this family to keep rising so high and falling so low?
Here, for the first time, is the story of England’s Borgias, a noble house competing in a murderous game for the English throne. Witness cunning, adultery, and sheer audacity from history’s most brilliant, bold, and deceitful family.
Welcome to the House of Dudley. (Credit: Pegasus Books)
A Most Intriguing Lady by Sarah Ferguson
Victorian London was notorious for its pickpockets. But in the country houses of the elite, gentleman burglars, art thieves and con men preyed on the rich and titled. Wealthy victims–with their pride and reputation at stake–would never go to the police. What they needed was a society insider, one of their own, a person of discretion and finely tuned powers of observation, adept at navigating intrigue.
That person was Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, the youngest child of Queen Victoria’s close friends the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. Bookish, fiercely intelligent, and a keen observer, Mary has deliberately cultivated a mousey persona that allows her to remain overlooked and significantly underestimated by all. It’s the perfect cover for a sleuth, a role she stumbles into when trying to assist a close friend during a house party hosted by her parents at their stately Scottish home, Drumlanrig Castle.
It is at this party where Lady Mary also meets Colonel Walter Trefusis, a distinguished and extremely handsome war veteran. Tortured by memories of combat, Walter, like Mary, lives a double life, with a desk job in Whitehall providing a front for his role in the British Intelligence Service. The two form an unlikely alliance to solve a series of audacious crimes–and indulge in a highly charged on-off romance. (Credit: Avon Books)
A Gentle Murderer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …”
Father Duffy has heard many confessions through the years, but none quite so disturbing as the one he’s heard tonight. A young man enters the confessional just as the priest is readying to leave for the evening; he’s distraught that he has killed a woman in a paroxysm of uncontrollable rage–and he’s still wielding the hammer he used to do the deed. Father Duffy tries to convince the young man to turn himself in to the police, but he flees just as suddenly as he had appeared.
When the priest learns the next day that an escort was found bludgeoned to death on the East Side, he sets out to search for the troubled confessor. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ben Goldsmith of the NYPD is drawn deep into the official investigation. Neither is aware that the other is searching for the murderer, and both hope against hope that they’re able to find the killer before he strikes again. (Credit: Poisoned Pen Press)
Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major
It is an ordinary Monday and harried London literary agent Emma is flying out of the door as usual. Preoccupied with work and her ever growing to-do list, she fails to notice her lovely husband Dan seems bereft, her son can barely meet her eye, and her daughter won’t go near her. Even the dog seems sad.
She is far too busy, buried deep in her phone; social media alerts pinging; clients messaging with “emergencies”; keeping track of a dozen WhatsApp groups about the kids’ sports, school, playdates, all of it. Her whole day is frantic–what else is new–and as she rushes back through the door for dinner, Dan is still upset. They fight, and he walks out, desolate, dragging their poor dog around the block. Just as she realizes it is their anniversary and she has forgotten, again, she hears the screech of brakes.
Dan is dead.
The next day Emma wakes up… and Dan is alive. And it’s Monday again.
And again.
And again.
Emma tries desperately to change the course of fate by doing different things each time she wakes up: leaving WhatsApp, telling her boss where to get off, writing to Dan, listening to her kids, reaching out to forgotten friends, getting drunk and buying out Prada. But will Emma have the chance to find herself again, remember what she likes about her job, reconnect with her children, love her husband? Will this be enough to change the fate they seem destined for? (Credit: William Morrow & Company)
The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner
1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.
Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves…(Credit Park Row)
A Death At The Party by Amy Stuart
Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite–everything’s going according to plan.
But Nadine–devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter–finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?
Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother–only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.
Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite. Credit: Simon & Schuster)
My Dear Henry: A Jekyll and Hyde Remix by Kalynn Bayron
London, 1885. Gabriel Utterson, a 17-year-old law clerk, has returned to London for the first time since his life– and that of his dearest friend, Henry Jekyll–was derailed by a scandal that led to his and Henry’s expulsion from the London Medical School. Whispers about the true nature of Gabriel and Henry’s relationship have followed the boys for two years, and now Gabriel has a chance to start again.
But Gabriel doesn’t want to move on, not without Henry. His friend has become distant and cold since the disastrous events of the prior spring, and now his letters have stopped altogether. Desperate to discover what’s become of him, Gabriel takes to watching the Jekyll house.
In doing so, Gabriel meets Hyde, a a strangely familiar young man with white hair and a magnetic charisma. He claims to be friends with Henry, and Gabriel can’t help but begin to grow jealous at their apparent closeness, especially as Henry continues to act like Gabriel means nothing to him.
But the secret behind Henry’s apathy is only the first part of a deeper mystery that has begun to coalesce. Monsters of all kinds prowl within the London fog–and not all of them are out for blood… (Credit:
Feiwel & Friends)
Lies We Sing To The Sea by Sarah Underwood
Each spring, Ithaca condemns twelve maidens to the noose. This is the price vengeful Poseidon demands for the lives of Queen Penelope’s twelve maids, hanged and cast into the depths centuries ago.
But when that fate comes for Leto, death is not what she thought it would be. Instead, she wakes on a mysterious island and meets a girl with green eyes and the power to command the sea. A girl named Melantho, who says one more death can stop a thousand.
The prince of Ithaca must die–or the tides of fate will drown them all. (Credit: HarperTeen)
La Duchesse: The Life of Marie de Vignerot–Cardinal Richelieu’s Forgotten Heiress Who Shaped the Fate of France by Bronwen McShea
Married off at sixteen to a military officer she barely knew, Marie de Vignerot was intended to lead an ordinary aristocratic life, produce heirs, and quietly assist the men in her family rise to prominence. Instead, she became a widow at eighteen and rose to become the indispensable and highly visible right-hand of the most powerful figure in French politics–the ruthless Cardinal Richelieu.
Richelieu was her uncle and, as he lay dying, the Cardinal broke with tradition and entrusted her, above his male heirs, with his vast fortune. She would go on to shape her country’s political, religious, and cultural life as the unconventional and independent Duchesse d’Aiguillon in ways that reverberated across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Marie de Vignerot was respected, beloved, and feared by churchmen, statesmen, financiers, writers, artists, and even future canonized saints. Many would owe their careers and eventual historical legacies to her patronage and her enterprising labor and vision. Pope Alexander VII and even the Sun King, Louis XIV, would defer to her. She was one of the most intelligent, accomplished, and occasionally ruthless French leaders of the seventeenth century. Yet, as all too often happens to great women in history, she was all but forgotten by modern times.
La Duchesse is the first fully researched modern biography of Vignerot, putting her onto center stage in the histories of France and the globalizing Catholic Church where she belongs. In these pages, we see Marie navigate scandalous accusations and intrigue to creatively and tenaciously champion the people and causes she cared about. We also see her engage with fascinating personalities such as Queen Marie de Médici and influence French imperial ambitions and the Fronde Civil War. Filled with adventure and daring, art and politics, La Duchesse establishes Vignerot as a figure without whom France’s storied Golden Age cannot be fully understood. (Credit: Pegasus Books)
Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah
On a Spring afternoon in London, Sam hops the stairs of his flat two at a time. There’s 1,300 missing from his and his wife, Efe’s, shared bank account and his calls are going straight to voicemail. When he finally reaches someone, he learns Efe is nearly 5,000 miles away as their toddler looks around and asks, “Where’s Mummy?”
When Efe and Sam met as teens headed for university, it seemed everyone knew they were meant to be. Efe, newly arrived in the UK from Ghana and sinking under the weight of her parents’ expectations, found comfort in the focused and idealistic Sam. He was stable, working toward a law career, and had an unwavering vision for their future. A vision Efe, now a decade later, finds slightly insufferable. From the outside, they’re the picture-perfect couple everyone imagined, but there are cracks in the frame.
When Efe and Sam are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, they find themselves on opposing sides. Fatherhood is everything he has dreamed of, but Efe feels stuck in a nightmare. And when a new revelation emerges, they are forced to confront just how radically different they want their lives to be. Already swallowed by the demands of motherhood and feeling the dreams she had slipping away once again, Efe disappears. (Credit: Ballantine Books)
The Book That No One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade and illustrated by Tor Freeman
Expected Publication Date: March 14
The life of a book isn’t easy, especially when people judge you by your cover (not every book can be adorned with sparkly unicorns!). And this narrator should know–it’s the book itself, and it has a lot of opinions. It gets irritated when readers bend its pages back, and it finds authors quite annoying. But it does have a story to tell. Through witty direct address and charming illustrations, readers meet a book that has never been read, with a cover the boring color of a school lunch table and pages so dry they give bookworms indigestion. But what happens when this book meets you, a curious reader? Multitalented author Richard Ayoade and award-winning illustrator Tor Freeman bring to life a hilariously subversive take on the nature of books and reading, with a heartening theme of finding the courage to tell our own stories. Readers of all ages will be delighted by the myriad bookish references and laughs on every page. (Credit: Walker Books US)
Different For Boys by Patrick Ness
Expected Publication Date: March 14
Anthony “Ant” Stevenson isn’t sure when he stopped being a virgin. Or even if he has. The rules aren’t always very clear when it comes to boys who like boys. In fact, relationships of all kinds feel complicated, even with Ant’s oldest friends. There’s Charlie, who’s both virulently homophobic and in a secret physical relationship with Ant. Then there’s drama kid Jack, who may be gay and has become the target of Charlie’s rage. And, of course, there’s big, beautiful Freddie, who wants Ant to ditch soccer, Charlie’s sport, and try out for the rugby team instead. Ant’s story of loneliness and intimacy, of unexpected support and heart-ripping betrayal, is told forthrightly with tongue-in-cheek black-bar redactions over the language that teenagers would actually use if, you know, they weren’t in a story. Award-winning author Patrick Ness explores teen sexuality, friendship, and romance with a deft hand in this structurally daring, illustrated short novel. (Credit: Walker Books US)
Dear Dolly: Collected Wisdom by Dolly Alderton
Expected Publication Date: March 14
For three years, Dolly Alderton has been sharing her wisdom, warmth, and wit with the diverse universe of fans who have turned to her “Dear Dolly” column seeking guidance on a host of life problems.
Dolly has thoughtfully answered questions ranging from the painfully–and sometimes hilariously–relatable to the occasionally bizarre. They include breakups and body issues, families, relationships platonic and romantic, dating, divorce, the pleasures and pitfalls of social media, sex, loneliness, longing, love and everything in between.
Without judgement, and with deep empathy informed by her own, much-chronicled adventures with love, friends, and dating, Dolly helps us navigate the labyrinths of life. In this wonderful collection, she brings together her collected knowledge in one invaluable volume that will make you think, make you laugh, and help you confront any conundrum or crisis. (Credit: Harper)
Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire
Expected Publication Date: March 14
Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram).
A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause the computer to burst into flames. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives–where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one.
By turns unhinged and earnest, Once Upon a Tome is the colorful story of life in one of the world’s oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment. (Credit: W. W. Norton & Company)
The Strangers’ House: Writing Northern Ireland by Alexander Poots
Expected Publication Date: March 14
Northern Ireland is one hundred years old. Northern Ireland does not exist. Both of these statements are true. It just depends on who you ask. How do you write about a place like this? THE STRANGERS’ HOUSE asks this question of the region’s greatest writers, living and dead. What have they made of Northern Ireland – and what has Northern Ireland made of them?
Northern Ireland is roughly the same size as the State of Connecticut, yet has produced an extraordinary number of celebrated poets and novelists. Louis MacNeice, too clever to be happy, formed by his childhood on the shores of Belfast Lough. C. S. Lewis, who discovered Narnia in the rolling drumlins and black rock of County Down. Anna Burns, chronicler of North Belfast and winner of the Booker Prize. And Seamus Heaney, the man of wry precision, the poet with the gift of surprise.
As well as household names, Poots also examines writers who may be less familiar to an American readership. These include the dark and bawdy novels of Ian Cochrane, a celebrated raconteur obsessed with Columbo, and Forrest Reid, a man who saw Arcadia in the Irish countryside, and who was, perhaps, the North’s first queer author. Reading the work of these writers together produces a testament to over one hundred years of literary endeavor and human struggle. THE STRANGERS’ HOUSE is the story of how men and women have written about a home divided, and used their work to move, in the words of Seamus Heaney, “like a double agent among the big concepts.” (Credit: Twelve)
The Flames by Sophie Haydock
Expected Publication Date: March 14
Amid an opulent society living under the shadow of war are four muses, women whose bodies were shown in intimate detail, depicted by the charming yet controversial artist Egon Schiele. Adele, his passionate and fierce admirer; Gertrude, his sister who survived their blighted childhood but is possessive, single-minded, and jealous; his mistress Vally, a poor young woman from a bad background but with steel at her core; and the two, very different, Harms sisters, Edith and Adele, both of whom vie to become Schiele’s wife.
Over the course of little more than a decade, the four women risk everything–their reputations, their most precious relationships, and their sanity and souls–as they try to hold on to the man they adore. As World War I throws their lives off course forever, and the Spanish influenza pandemic ravages Europe, threatening everyone in its path, one question remains: Will any of them emerge unscathed from their relationship with this man? Sophie Haydock’s The Flames reimagines the intertwining lives of these women: four wild, blazing hearts longing to be known. In an elegant Bohemian city like 1900s Vienna, everything seems possible. But just as a flame has the power to mesmerize, it can also destroy. (Credit: Overlook Press)
Just One More by Annette Lyon
Expected Publication Date: March 21
Becca’s life is turned upside down when she finds Jenn dead in the bathtub. Soon she begins to unspool the secrets Jenn kept in life, including a troubled marriage to Rick and two dead wives in his past. The more Becca learns, the more determined she becomes to get justice for Jenn, even if the clues surrounding her death aren’t quite adding up….
Over a year before her death, Jenn begins to notice her husband acting strangely. Using her skills as a librarian, she digs into Rick’s past–and falls down a rabbit hole far deeper and darker than she bargained for. She’s already beaten the odds by living longer than his other dead wives. But now she fears her time is up. (Credit: Scarlet)
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Expected Publication Date: March 14
Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady–ah, lady of a certain age–who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing–a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.
What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police? (Credit: Berkley Books)
Insomniacs After School by Makoto Ojiro
Expected Publication Date: March 21
Unable to sleep at night, Ganta Nakami is cranky in class and unpopular with his classmates. He discovers that the school observatory, once used by the now-defunct astronomy club, may be the perfect place for a nap–but he’s not alone. Fellow insomniac Isaki Magari is willing to share the observatory with Nakami, and a friendship between the two begins as they bond over the most unlikely of things.
Dark rumors about what befell the members of the astronomy club keep people away from the school observatory, and that’s what makes it the perfect sanctuary for Nakami and Magari to get some much-needed rest. Unfortunately, the school faculty can’t allow its unsanctioned use. But if there were a new astronomy club, maybe these two insomniacs could have a place to call home! (Credit: Viz Media)
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
Expected Publication Date: March 21
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.
But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us. (Credit: Viking)
Play The Fool by Lina Chern
Expected Publication Date: March 28
For Katie True, a keen gut and quick wit are just tools of the trade. After a failed attempt at adulting in Chicago, she’s back in the suburbs living a bit too close to her overbearing parents, jumping from one dead-end job to the next, and flipping through her tarot deck for guidance. Then along comes Marley.
Mysterious, worldly, and comfortable in her own skin, Marley takes a job at the mall where Katie peddles Russian tchotchkes. The two just get each other. Marley doesn’t try to fix Katie’s life or pretend to be someone she’s not, and Katie thinks that with Marley’s friendship, she just might make it through this rough patch after all. Until the day when Katie, having been encouraged by Marley to practice soothsaying, reads the cards for someone who stumbles into her shop. But when she sneaks a glance at his phone, she finds more than intel to improve her clairvoyance. She finds a photo. Of Marley. With a gunshot wound to the head.
The bottom falls out of Katie’s world. Her best friend is dead? Who killed her? She quickly realizes there are some things her tarot cards can’t foresee, and she must put her razor-sharp instincts to the ultimate test. But Katie’s recklessness lands her in the crossfire of a threat she never saw coming. Now she must use her street smarts and her inner Strength card to solve Marley’s murder–or risk losing everything. (Credit: Bantam)
Murder in Postscript by Mary Winters
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Amelia Amesbury–widow, mother, and countess–has a secret. Amelia writes for a London penny paper, doling out advice on fashion, relationships, and manners under the pen name Lady Agony. But when a lady’s maid writes Amelia to ask for advice when she believes her mistress has been murdered–and then ends up a victim herself–Amelia is determined to solve the case.
With the help of her best friend and a handsome marquis, Amelia begins to piece together the puzzle, but as each new thread of inquiry ends with a different suspect, the investigation grows ever more daunting. From London’s docks and ballrooms to grand country houses, Amelia tracks a killer, putting her reputation–and her life–on the line. (Credit: Berkley Books)
Murder Under a Red Moon by Harini Nagendra
Expected Publication Date: March 28
When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime to please her domineering mother-in-law—during the blood moon eclipse, no less—she doesn’t expect, once again, to stumble upon a murder.
With anti-British sentiment on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women’s suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous and treacherous place than Kaveri ever imagined—and everyone’s motives are suspect.
Together with the Bangalore Detectives Club—a mixed bag of street urchins, nosy neighbours, an ex-prostitute, and a policeman’s wife— Kaveri once again sleuths in her sari and hunts for clues in her beloved 1920s Ford.
But when her life is suddenly put in danger, Kaveri realizes that she might be getting uncomfortably close to the truth. So she must now draw on her wits and find the killer . . . before they find her. (Credit: Pegasus Books)
Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of An Unsung Sisterhood by Ruby Warrington
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Foregoing motherhood has traditionally marked a woman as “other.” With no official place setting for her in our society, she has hovered on the sidelines: the quirky girl, the neurotic career obsessive, the “eccentric” aunt. Instead of continuing to paint women without kids as sad, self-obsessed, or somehow dysfunctional, what if we saw them as boldly forging a first-in-a-civilization vision for a fully autonomous womankind? Or as journalist and thought leader Ruby Warrington asks, What if being a woman without kids were in fact its own kind of legacy?
Taking in themes from intergenerational healing to feminism to environmentalism, this personal look and anthropological dig into a stubbornly taboo topic is a timely and brave reframing of what it means not to be a mom. Our experiences and discourse around non-motherhood are central to women’s ongoing fight for gender equality. And whether we are childless by design or circumstance, we can live without regret, shame, or compromise.
Bold and tenderhearted, Women Without Kids seeks first and foremost to help valorize a path that is the natural consequence of women having more say about the choices we make and how our lives play out. Within this, it unites the unsung sisterhood of non-mothers–no longer pariahs or misfits, but as a vital part of our evolution and collective healing as women, as humans, and as a global family. (Credit: Sound True)
The Lonely Hearts Book Club by Lucy Gilmore
Expected Publication Date: March 28
A young librarian and an old curmudgeon forge the unlikeliest of friendships in this charming uplit novel about one misfit book club and the lives it changed along the way.
Sloane Parker lives a small, contained life as a librarian in her small, contained town. She never thinks of herself as lonely…but still she looks forward to that time every day when old curmudgeon Arthur McLachlan comes to browse the shelves and cheerfully insult her. Their sparring is such a highlight of Sloane’s day that when Arthur doesn’t show up one morning, she’s instantly concerned. And then another day passes, and another.
Anxious, Sloane tracks the old man down only to discover him all but bedridden…and desperately struggling to hide how happy he is to see her. Wanting to bring more cheer into Arthur’s gloomy life, Sloane creates an impromptu book club. Slowly, the lonely misfits of their sleepy town begin to find each other, and in their book club, find the joy of unlikely friendship. Because as it turns out, everyone has a special book in their heart–and a reason to get lost (and eventually found) within the pages.
Books have a way of bringing even the loneliest of souls together…(Credit: Sourcebooks Casablanca)
Tombs by Junji Ito
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Three-time Eisner Award winner Junji Ito invites you to the horrific Tomb Town and beyond.
Countless tombstones stand in rows throughout a small community, forming a bizarre tableau. What fate awaits a brother and sister after a traffic accident in this town of the dead? In another tale, a girl falls silent, her tongue transformed into a slug. Can a friend save her? Then, when a young man moves to a new town, he finds the house next door has only a single window. What does his grotesque neighbor want, calling out to him every evening from that lone window?
Fresh nightmares brought to you by horror master Junji Ito. (Credit: Viz Media)
Spin by Rebecca Caprara
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Sixteen-year-old Arachne is ostracized by all but her family and closest friend, Celandine. Turning to her loom for solace, Arachne learns to weave, finding her voice and her strength through the craft. After the tragic loss of her family, Arachne and Celandine flee to the city of Colophon, where Arachne’s skills are put to the test. Word of her talent spreads quickly, leading to a confrontation with the goddess Athena, who demands that Arachne repent.
But Arachne will not be silenced. She challenges Athena, and a fateful weaving contest ensues, resulting in an exposé of divine misdeeds, a shocking transformation, and unexpected redemption. (Credit: Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Keep Dancing, Lizzie Chu by Maisie Chan
Expected Publication Date: March 28
Twelve-year-old Lizzie Chu has lived with her Wai Gong (grandfather) in Glasgow since her parents died when she was a baby. But Wai Gong has been acting different lately. He spends a lot of time talking to his Guan Yin statue–the Chinese goddess of compassion, kindness, and mercy–at his altar and seems to be becoming more forgetful. Even the shared passion he and Lizzie have for their favorite show, Strictly Come Dancing, seems to be tailing off.
When Lizzie’s friend Chi visits one day dressed as Princess Leia for Comic Con, Wai Gong mistakes her for Guan Yin, and is naturally delighted, and Lizzie seizes the opportunity to use Chi as Guan Yin to help her with her grandad. And then Lizzie gets an idea: she and Chi can take Wai Gong to Blackpool to the Tower Ballroom, where he’d always dreamed of going. If only she can get her grandad there, she thinks, he’ll find some peace, and perhaps things will be OK at home again. After all, one of the myths around Guan Yin is that she brings order and harmony, so it’s got to work out–right? (Credit: Amulet Books)
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