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The Book Review
The Books We're Excited About in Early 2026
00:45:45
A new year means new books are on the way! So many new books. On this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz talks with fellow Book Review editors Joumana Khatib and MJ Franklin about the upcoming fiction and nonfiction titles they’re most anticipating between now and April.
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A
This podcast is supported by GSK. Carol picked up a javelin when she was 60. Now she's a silver medalist at the National Senior Games. But even the most active older adults can face unforeseen risks. For Carol, it was rsv, or Respiratory Syncytial Virus, a common virus that can be serious in people 50 or older with certain chronic conditions, as well as anyone 75 or older. Read Caril's story in GSK's advertisement In the Times Fit, focused and caught off guard.
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How?
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Ask your doctor about RSV risks and vaccination.
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Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz.
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I'm Joumana Khatib.
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And I'm MJ Franklin.
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We are all editors at the New York Times Book Review. And it's January, which means there's an entire year of reading ahead of the three of us and ahead of all of you. We are here this week to help guide you through the first several months of of 2026. We're going to be talking about a handful of titles coming out between now and the end of March. Why specifically the end of March? Because in March we're going to have to do another one of these, a spring books preview. We'll talk about what goes up until the summer then. That is why Shimon and MJ welcome. How are you feeling now that it's a new year? Before we get into, like, specifics, what do you have any reading goals that you set for yourself this year?
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E
I really love the new year. I feel optimistic anytime I get to do like, blank slate, restart. So I feel like 2026. A whole bunch of new books that I'm excited to dive into. I have a few goals. One of them is to read more classics, and I have a series of classics that I want to read that include Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina. Just things I I feel they're so influential, but I never got around to. And then one goal of mine is to slow down and when I'm reading stuff, go back and find as many essays as I can find about that book. Not just read the book, but fill out my knowledge of the conversation, fill out the references, all of that stuff. So those are my strange, heady goals.
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C
Look at you. Look at this man who believes in.
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Criticism here at the New York Times Book Review. We believe in criticism. It's alive and well.
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C
That's amazing. Shumada, do you have any goals this year?
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If I can be vulnerable on Main, I will say that my reading is one of the few areas of my life that consistently goes well. So I'M going to try and not interfere too much and just do as I have been doing.
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C
Yeah. Do not quit while you're ahead.
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Do you have any goals?
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MJ I think we came to a shared goal separately, which is I am hoping to read classics I've never read. I'm definitely going to check out the aforementioned Wuthering Heights. Joumana's been talking about Middlemarch for what I feel like has been six months. I've always wanted to read Middlemarch. And then I feel like there are a bunch of books I read when I was younger, either in high school or college. And you do it because it's part of the class and you have to. And maybe for me, this particular person, I was just not smart enough or mature enough to really get it or understand it. I think there can be great value in going back to some of those books that we were made to read when we were younger and actually bringing our experiences to it and understanding it in a different way.
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E
I also think reading these books outside of a classroom when it's no longer homework, just the fact of it being homework, makes it feel obligatory. You roll your eyes at it, you sigh at having to do all of the stuff while you're so busy. And so you shut down certain receptors to receive this book. And being able to revisit it on your own terms makes you more open and you get more out of it and reading it as an adult, you understand more. I'm a big proponent of rereading. I'm a big proponent of visiting classics that you haven't picked up ever. Be free, read what you want to and enjoy.
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C
These are great 20, 26 goals. Let's all go back, let's revisit some stuff. We should also read some new stuff. And we're gonna say in January, February and March, some of the books that we are really excited by, really jazzed by. I didn't give you an order beforehand, so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna point. I don't know why I'm closing my eyes. Like that's gonna make a difference. Mj, I'm gonna point at you.
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E
So I will start then. And I wanna start with a book vigil by George Saunders. George Saunders is back. He is.
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C
This is a big one. A big one.
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He is an all time fave. He is just a good writer. So this is his return after about four years. His book Liberation Day came out a few years ago, but I think he's probably best known for Lincoln and the Bardo which is 2017 and the 10th of December.
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D
Although Real George Saunders heads would maintain that he has been with it since Civil War Land and Bad Decline, which.
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Is also a great title.
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I'm so sorry. I am obligated to put that in there because I love his stories.
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This is a long way of saying George Saunders has been out here and he's just someone that you should read and look forward to. Vigil is about a ghost. Her name is Jill and she is in this not fully purgatory, but she isn't totally transcended over. She has this job and she has to help usher dying souls to the afterlife. She has to help them accept that they're dying, find peace, and then transcend over.
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She's like a ghost Doula.
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Exactly. Okay, Exactly.
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A doula in the bardo.
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That should be.
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None of those words are in the Bible.
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E
I will only be referring to this book as a doula in the Bardo because that is pretty accurate. This time she has to usher along a pretty unremorseful oil exec. His name is K.J. boone, and in his life he exploited a ton of people and he knowingly hurt a ton of people. And he is dying and he has to come to terms with that. And she's like, oh, this man, he's pretty odious and he's so full of himself. But she's got a job to do. However, Boone is being haunted by other ghosts who want him to suffer for his crimes. And so there's this other ghost that's popping in. And meanwhile, Jill is grappling with her own burdens, which is why she has not transcended over completely too. And so you're in this weird between life and death state. And it's so creative and it's similar to Lincoln and Lombardo in terms of the creativity at play. It's probably more formally straightforward, but it's just George Saunders just back full of heart. It's a hard tasked try to say, let's be invested in the emotional and spiritual rehabilitation of this pretty terrible man. But if anyone can do it, it is George Saunders. And so that's what Vigil is.
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Are you looking forward to reading this one, Jomana? It is very important to note under 200 pages.
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Oh my God. I don't want to start the year with page counts. I just, I don't. That's my goal is to not look at page counts.
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C
What is the problem here?
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I think that we are giving too much power to the length of a book. I don't think that the length of a book is a reason to be daunted or put off.
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I have to say I'm with Giovanni here. I think it's nice that this one is short, partially because he packs so much into it. But if it were 500 pages, I'd be so there. I would read anything that George Saunders writes.
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C
George Saunders, our podcast series. The Interview just did an interview with him where he talks about how he has developed this reputation for being a nice guy, being someone who's so focused on kindness and all this stuff, in part because of a commencement speech that he gave several years ago that was then turned into a book we should never forget. And I think if you've read any of his short stories or this is only a second novel, he is weird. He is a real weirdo, and there's something wonderful about that.
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I also think that he's just like a real craftsman. What he's able to do and how he stages his scenes. I had the privilege of interviewing him when Lincoln and the Bardo came out, and my co host for that interview asked about a lion, and that lion is in the middle of this scene, and there came upon us a rain of hats. And my co host asked him about it, and George was just like, I don't know. I was in the scene and I felt it needed more verticality, listening to how he thinks about staging a scene and what it can do and the significance of that. And verticality, by the way, is something to watch for in Vigil of people ascending, descending, where they are not just what they're saying and how they're feeling, but what they are doing and. And the literary richness of that, I think. Yeah, people talk about George Saunders heart, but he is just a meticulous, thoughtful craftsman as well.
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C
There's also a scene in this book, which I was able to read this weekend because it's pretty short, in which one ghostly character starts to reproduce themselves through their butt, I believe.
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It's insane. Yeah, it's great. He's the best.
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He's the best.
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So that is Vigil by George Saunders out January 27th.
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MJ, you point at someone.
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Okay, you're up, Zhuang. All right, I'll take the mantle. I have a very classic, elegant, immersive novel that is already getting comparisons, including from our own critic, Dwight Garner, to the Russian greats. This is called this is where the Serpent Lives by Danielle Moenuddin. Moonaddin has written one book prior to this, and it was a book of short stories and zoomed like A comet across the critical universe and was shortlisted for all kinds of prizes and whetted everybody's appetite. It's been a long time since then, several years at least. And in the meantime, he has been like, this is a tick of mine. I hate when author bios say, like, he divides his time between, like, Paris and New York. It's okay. But this one is actually interesting. He divides his time between a farm in rural Pakistan and Oslo. Okay, interest. Now I'm interested.
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Yeah.
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So the novel, I think, takes his real skill as a story writer and scales it up. Because this is a book of four interlocking stories that nest inside each other and each section follows a specific character. So in the beginning we meet this man named Yazid who was adopted by a food stall runner. This kid was left alone on the street and he takes him in and then he becomes this larger than life character. It's fascinating. And he becomes the driver for a family that includes a man named Hisham, who is a Pakistani businessman and studied in the States and stole his brother's girlfriend, who then became his wife. Interesting. And then his cousin, and then the driver's protege. And when I tell you I have never been interested or frankly invested in the welfare of a cucumber crop in Pakistani farms until now. If you can get emotionally invested in cucumbers and their outcomes, this is the book that will do it for you. It's fascinating, it's funny. It has that sort of like, upstairs, everybody's looking at me quizzically, I'm gonna move on.
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No, no, no, please keep going.
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It has that fun, like, upstairs, downstairs feeling to it because Yazid and then his protege are employees and they serve a longtime family, so there are questions of class and even caste and religious division. But it's so much more than that because these are characters that are very intimately entwined in each other's lives. And I found it incredibly moving. And the way that Moena Dean has this very detailed and intricate and understandable universe of characters, I loved it. It was like when I got my Barbie Dream House, you know, that's how I felt.
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I am excited to read this one because I feel like what we're like two or three weeks into the new year, but I already have fomo. I feel like this book so far is your favorite's favorite book. I feel like it's been. Dwight Garner loved it and he said, quote, it's a serious book that you'll be hearing about again later in the year when the shortlist for the Big prizes are announced. I feel like the people who have read it have loved this book and I'm excited to dive in.
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Yeah, I'm very enthusiastic about this. It's good stuff. So that was. This is where the Serpent Lives by Danielle Mouwenuddin. And it's out now. So, Gilbert, any nonfiction?
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Are you asking me because I'm a middle aged man?
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No, but not. No.
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Okay. I do. You know me so well. You know me so well. There's a book that comes out at the end of January. This comes out January 27th, and it's called Fear and the Reagan 80s. The Bernie Getz Shootings and the Rebirth of White Rage. Do either of you know who Bernie Getz is? Or had you heard the story of Bernie Goetz before you'd heard about this book?
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I had not.
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Okay. Had you?
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I did, yes.
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Okay. So I'm Talking to you, MJ.
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We're here.
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Yeah. In the early 80s, in 1984, there was this incident where a man, a white man on a train, was approached by some black teenagers and they asked him for some money. It was a dangerous time in New York. He felt threatened. He pulled out a gun that he should not have had and he shot all four of them on the subway. He paralyzed one of them. He ran to New England for nine days or so and eventually came back. And it was a huge deal in New York. It was a big tabloid sensation. Subway shooter. There were lots of people who were pro Bernie Goetz. Like, finally someone stood up for us. All these people who feel like we are being scared by crime and young thugs on the subway. And it was just a giant story here in New York City. So Heather N. Thompson, who has won a Pulitzer Prize in history for a previous book, that was a book that she wrote about Attica called Blood in the Water, has taken this on and she lays out the case. But it's not just, let's find an old piece of crime and write about it. She's also making an argument for how this incident is one of the incidents that sort of presaged a lot of what we're seeing now when it comes to vigilante justice, when it comes to what she calls white rage. It's a very ambitious book and it's a very big topic that she's taking on.
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It sounds both heartbreaking and ambitious and intense.
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Yeah, I think it will be. And crazily enough, there are two books coming out this month about the Bernie Getz shooting. There's this one, Fear and Fury by Heather N. Thompson. And there's another one called Five Bullets and that's by a man named Elliot Williams. He's a former federal prosecutor who used to work in the Justice Department in the Obama administration and he has also been a legal analyst on cnn. And he also goes deep into the case, but I think he's approaching it more from a very legal perspective. I think both these books are approaching it from very different angles. But it is wild that we have two books about this thing coming out at the same time. Mj, I am pointing at you.
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Yes, I want to talk about Lost Lambs by Madeleine Cash, which is actually out now. This is a debut and it is pretty unhinged in such a fun way. It is about a self destruct. Each member is spiraling in his or her own way. We have parents who are in a not totally agreed upon agreement to have an open relationship. Meanwhile, there are children. They have three daughters. The oldest is dating someone who may or may not be a war criminal. The middle child feels forgotten as a middle child. So she gets on her computer and she starts an online relationship with someone who may or may not be a terrorist. And then the youngest is a genius and she is very conspiracy theory minded about what's going on in the town. But are these crazy conspiracy theories or is there a little bit of truth there? Read to find out. This book is wild.
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What is going on?
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That's the right question for this book. I keep calling it Ryan Murphy Gleecore in the way that Ryan Murphy could sell the most bonkers storylines and he sells it with a wink. But it's not just too cheeky. It's an inland joke. It's all fun. That's what this book is. I am shocked that it's a debut because it has such an assured sensibility. Madeline Cash can really sell a punchline. She can really rock a callback. And it's a book to get lost into the hijinks of a small town where everything is afoot all of the time. This is one. It's like the girls who get it get it and the girls who don't. Don't you have to be in the right mentality. I read this over break during the twilight days between Christmas and New Year where I was just like, get me something well done, but so entertaining and so fun. That's the Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. Out now. Gilbert, you have a fiction title for us, right?
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I do. I am going to talk about Half his age by Jennette McCurdy. This comes out January 20th and this is the first novel from the former co star of the Nickelodeon sitcom icarly, who became known further known to many people about four years ago when her book I'm Glad My Mom Died came out. It was a memoir about her young life, about her crazy and abusive stage mother. It was a giant, giant hit. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for so many weeks. That was a memoir. This is her first attempt at a novel which she claims she's always actually wanted to write fiction. This is a book with a story that I think might turn some people off because what it is about is about a 17 year old high school senior. Her name is Waldo. Don't know why, haven't read the book. And it's about Waldo and her relationship, her sexual relationship with her creative writing teacher. That plot framework alone, I feel like has a way of pushing a lot of people away because we've seen the story many, many times, primarily stories written by men. It'll be interesting to see what Jeanette McCurdy, who based on her memoir and the title of her memoir and her basic vibe, likes to poke people. So I'm curious to see what this actually reads like.
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I'm curious too, because her first book, her memoir, wasn't just a book. It is such a phenomenon.
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Absolutely.
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And I feel like with a book that big, all eyes are on you for your sophomore effort. And choosing this subject matter proves that she's fearless. She's willing to go there, talk about these third rail topics and it's a genre pivot. I'm so curious how she pulls it off.
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That is half his age. Jennette McCurdy out January 20th. We'll be right back.
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This podcast is supported by GSK. Carol picked up a javelin when she was 60. Now she's a silver medalist at the National Senior Games. But even the most active older adults can face unforeseen risks. For Carol, it was RSV or respiratory syncytial virus, a common virus that can be serious in people 50 or older with certain chronic conditions as well as anyone 75 or older. Read Carol's story in GSK's advertisement In the Times. Fit, focused and caught off guard. Ask your doctor about RSV risks and vaccination.
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I'm Natalie Kitroef and as the Mexico City bureau chief for the New York Times, I started looking into the Sinaloa cartel and fentanyl production. I was trying to understand why this drug was killing so many Americans. And to do that, I knew that we had to get inside of this criminal organization. It took us months and months of work and multiple trips to Sinaloa to actually get into this fentanyl lab. There were a lot of risks involved in the reporting, but people got to have a real inside view into the organization that is making this drug. And they saw the process with photos and videos and interviews. This is the kind of work that we're able to do because of our subscribers. And if you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.
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C
Welcome back. This is the Book Review Podcast. I'm Gilbert Cruz and I am wonderfully joined this week by MJ Franklin and Jumana Khatib. We are talking about some books to look forward to over the next several months. Joumana, I believe you have a piece of nonfiction.
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I sure do. So this is a World appears A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan. This is coming out at the end of February, February 24th. So Pollan, you probably know, or if you've been to, like any kind of vegetarian adjacent cafe, you've probably seen one of his quotes at the bottom of their menus, eat mostly plants, not too much. You know, that whole thing. So he's best known for the Omnivore's Dilemma. And then actually his last book, how to Change youe mind from 2018, started looking at psychedelics and how they play with our very plastic consciousnesses. And so this book is a much more almost like scientific investigation into consciousness and sentience. And this is the moment where I have to admit that I have an extremely low tolerance for hearing about other people's experiences using drugs, particularly psychedelics. However, I am riveted by this. So the book opens by talking about, frankly, how new this sort of degree of scientific interest in consciousness is. It was like the late 80s, basically, and most of the big discoveries have happened in the last 25 years, 30 years. It was basically dismissed as something that is not even worth thinking about, let alone applying scientific rigor to. And thank goodness, not for the first time, not for the last, for Francis Crick, who helped discover the double helix, who was like, oh, actually, I think this is something we should look at. And then grudgingly, the scientific community was like, okay, sure. So Pollen outlines the elements of consciousness, sentience, thought, feeling, the development of a self. So it can get a little like freshman philosophy seminar in moments. But it's really interesting and he even talks a lot about the different types of intelligence, animal and plant. And I would just like to shout out plant consciousness and make a plea with whoever is in charge of how I am reincarnated because I would like to come back as a plant. Because. Tell me that this doesn't sound enviable. Plant consciousness is ancient, brainless and largely immobile.
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Sign me up. Sign me up.
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I know I'm hoping for next time. So that is a World of Peers by Michael Pollan, coming out February 24th.
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C
You know my thoughts on plants.
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You eat them. Oh, no, you don't. I eat them. You famously don't eat them.
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You don't like houseplants.
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I don't like houseplants.
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Is it that?
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Not that I don't like them. I just don't see the. What is the point?
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Okay, I have to say this. So I recently learned that when two dear friends of mine that are in a couple moved in together, one of them said, you have too many houseplants. We can't move this many into our new apartment. And for a long time I thought it was a space consideration, but then it turns out that the person was like, I can't sleep in a room with houseplants because they steal your oxygen and deprive your brain of oxygen. And I've never looked at her the same way.
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She's jealous of the house plant.
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Yeah, I know. It's some real, like, single white spider plant.
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C
So, like, when I was a kid, my grandmother made me suspicious of cats because she said they steal your breath when you're sleeping.
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D
That is just so.
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Yeah. I have two cats, and I can tell you they are not capable of doing that. I love my cats dearly. They're so weird. They're not stealing anything. Wait, but why don't you like house plants?
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What do they add greenery? Yeah.
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E
So how do you feel about decorations, ornamentation?
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C
I love stuff on the walls. I love stuff on.
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But I am gonna tell you something.
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C
That wear you drape over, sometimes dirt gets out. You have to water them. And it's not like they don't.
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You do have to water them. Dirt should never be getting out. Just naturally. They sit in a pot.
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C
Plants don't love you back. Why do I need to love a plant?
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D
Oh, George Saunders, I think you would have an opinion on this. Okay, M.J. would you please take it away?
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E
Absolutely. I also have a nonfiction title, and that is on Morrison by Namwali Serpell, which is out on February 17. Namwali Serpell, you may be familiar with. Because of her fiction. She has two novels, the Old Drift and the Furrows, both of which are incredible. The Furrows was a New York Times best book of the year when it came out. I love that book. Namali, in addition to being a novelist, is also an essayist and critic and a professor and a Toni Morrison scholar. And this is what that book is. This is a collection of essays based on Namali Serpell's Harvard course on Toni Morrison. And each essay tackles a specific Morrison book and connects that to a larger cultural, black, or literary idea that Morrison has explored. So there might be an essay about naming in Sula or signifying or masks or jazz. And you're just with Namwali Serpel as she breaks down these Toni Morrison books. Morrison is an icon, number one. But number two is famously dense, literary, rewarding. But sometimes you read a Toni Morrison novel and you're like, I wish I had a guide. That is who Namwali Serpell is here in this book. The book is pretty academic again. It started out as a college class, and so I actually read it. I had, like, a pen and a pad, and I was writing down, number one, just the words I didn't know, and then all of the literary terms that I didn't know. You have to put a lot of yourself into this book. But if you love good literary criticism, if you love close reading, if you love Toni Morrison, I think this is one that you will absolutely want on your reading list. I've read, I want to say, 60% of Toni Morrison's books, and even the ones that I have read, I wanted to go back and reread with the knowledge that I gained from this essay collection. And then the ones that I hadn't read, I was eager to pick up. I'm going to shoehorn a second recommendation in here, and that is Language as Liberation. And that's also nonfiction, a collection of essays and lectures. But this one is by Toni Morrison herself. Toni Morrison we know as a novelist, but she was also a professor, and she taught a course before she died about the American canon. And she reads blackness into the American canon. And this February, February 3rd, those lectures are being released as this book, Language as Liberation. Again, academic. You gotta study it. But it's just like an unprecedented and invaluable peek into how one of our most iconic authors read our other iconic authors.
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C
Is this a book that if, like you, you've only read some Toni Morrison, not all of Toni Morrison, you could target the chapters or the books that you want to read about. That's always my concern with collections of criticism. It's like, I'm obviously not gonna read all this. I haven't Read all of Toni Morrison.
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E
Absolutely. Because each essay is specifically one book, one idea. You can pick and choose your adventure. But also, I would say even if you haven't read anything, this is a good primer on Toni Morrison. It's a good introduction, these books and her ideas. But then if you have read Toni Morrison, it's not like, oh, I've read this before. It's accessible, but also scholarly, smart, fresh, open to all that is on Morrison by NAMWALI SERPELL, out February 17. And also Language as Liberation by Toni Morrison, out February 3. So that's what I got. Joumana, what about you? Got anything else for February?
- [29:19]
D
Oh yes. Oh yes, this is my month. I always love February. Anyway, so, okay, so the first one I'm going to talk about is a novel called Clutch by Emily Nemens. This is coming out on February 3rd. This is like the great millennial retelling of the group, the Mary McCarthy book about eight friends who met at Vassar and their foibles and travails in New York. But you know, with a difference because those women were in their early 20s, like really just starting out their lives. And the women in clutch are 40, give or take a couple months. And we follow them over three very busy months in their lives. We're talking a funeral, marital implosions, psychosis, corgi, frostbite. That's a big subplot. And what I really like about this book is that none of the five women feel overly like stereotypes or even archetypes. The characters are very culturally on the nose. So, for example, one character, her name is Greg, she is a progressive legislator in Texas who's gone viral for breastfeeding on the Capitol floor and banging her cowboy boot on the table to get a point across. And she's married to this musk esque space race billionaire who's on Ozempic and has killed a million shorebirds. And there's a novelist and there's a high powered lawyer and somebody struggling with infertility. So she really wraps up a lot of thoughtful and all encompassing problems or challenges that people at that stage of life face. And this is a classic formula looking at a group of friends over space and time as they confront the quotidian and inevitable outcomes in life. Your parents get old, your kids grow up, your marriages falter. But, but she's so in command of this story. It actually gives you the feeling like, oh, everything's gonna be okay. I don't actually know what's gonna happen in my millennial cohort. But like these friends, even when things go catastrophically wrong, you feel comforted or like it's a real pleasure to settle in to read.
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E
I was not expecting that kind of cozy vibe based on the series of dilemmas you listed off when you first started describing this.
- [31:49]
D
Oh, yeah. And it is fully deranged in moments. There's a lot that's just totally demented, but you can tell that she has a. She has a very. The author has a very high EQ and a sense of humor, and she's companionable. You're happy to be in her, in her hands for however long.
- [32:08]
E
The book is companionable and demented. Two words that I'm like, sign me up.
- [32:14]
D
And then I have another novel for February. This is not companionable or cozy at all, which you might get from the title. This is called Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novak, coming February 10th. Such a good title.
- [32:27]
E
What a title.
- [32:28]
D
Such a good title. Obviously, I'm, like, professionally bound to read a book called Murder of Bimbo, and I was really, really interested in this. This is doing something totally fascinating and unexpected from a literary point of view. So it opens. This woman has just fled to the woods after committing a heinous act, which is committing an act of violence against a very divisive politician that she refers to as meat throughout the narrative. And she's writing this to a podcast host who, I think, with progressive values, who kind of re Evaluates instances of where the public has gone, public favor has gone in, like, an unfair direction. And she talks about how she was a sex worker and recruited by undercover agents to, like, take down this politician. It's nuts. And you learn things about her along the way, but you learn things about the mission. It feels like Ocean's 11Y, kind of. Which is a movie I have seen. So the thing with Murder Bimbo is that each of its three sections, the facts or the big moving shapes are the same. Sex worker, murder politician, reviled politician, undercover work. But the circumstances change ever so slightly, so you're left wondering what the actual truth is. It's like Fates and Furies, the Lauren Groff book.
- [33:54]
E
Love that book.
- [33:55]
D
Yep. Yep. And where. And that's the book where you hear the story of a marriage from one spouse's perspective and then the complete opposite, or almost the opposite perspective from the other spouse. And it's destabilizing and weird. It's got a little bit of, like, biography of X or sort of trust exercise. But this is. It's a romp. You know, the sex worker's having fun and we're having fun with her. And the other thing that I have to say is whatever your own politics are, I do think that if you are going to make politics a central point of your novel, they need to be coherent and the politics have to be there for a reason. This was my problem with Creation Lake, among other things. But the politics in this novel are thought through and cogent and they are there for a reason. And I thought that that was an accomplishment. All right, mj, how about you?
- [34:55]
E
Before we get to my title, I have two follow ups. One is I loved Creation League. Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun with Creation League. Two, you mentioned Lauren Groff and was going to Shoehorn. She has a new book coming out Too in February. February 24, Brawler. But the book I wanted to mention is Kin by Tayari Jones, also out on February 24th. This is Tayari Jones's return after about six years. She wrote An American Marriage, which was huge, iconic. I think it was an Obama favorite book. It's an incredible novel.
- [35:25]
C
One of our hundred best books of the 21st century.
- [35:27]
E
It is so good. This book is a different type of story that was about an American marriage. This is about two girls, Nisi and Annie, both of whom don't have mothers. Nisi's mother is murdered by Nisi's father when Nisi's a baby and then the father kills himself while Annie's mother runs away when she's a baby, orphaned. These two girls become each other's family. They become each other's cradle friends. And we follow them over the course of their lives as they take different paths to growing up and finding themselves and finding the mothers that they never had. There's a lot going on here in such a fantastic way. It's a historical novel in that it's set in the 50s and 60s in the Jim Crow South. It's the story of friendship and sisterhood. It's a coming of age story. And think of it like, like books like the Vanishing Half or Shred Sisters or Lonely Crowds. You're just immersed in these two characters and their completely life changing and life saving friendship. And it's a look at these young women navigating life with all of the baggage of family. It is a novel to you just feel like these girls are your friends, they're your family, they're your sisters. You're so invested in them. And I loved it.
- [36:55]
D
You've been talking about this for a while very persuasively.
- [36:58]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:58]
E
You've read it too.
- [36:59]
D
Jomana I did. I read it in one gulp. I was at home. Hold my call. It's really, really good.
- [37:06]
E
What I love about books like this is that these are not books that are trying to reinvent the wheel. These are books that are perfecting the wheel. You have read stories of sisterhood. You have read stories of friendship. You have not read a story of S or friendship. Just this immaculately done. It's so good. So again, that's Ken by Tayari Jones, and that's coming out on February 24th. I'm pointing to you, Gilbert. You're in the hot seat.
- [37:32]
C
I am going to talk about a March book. This is a book that comes out March 3rd. It is called Cave A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks by Benjamin Hale. So this initially started as a story that read in Harper's magazine in 2023, which some listeners might recall. That story detailed the disappearance of a young girl. This young girl was the author's cousin. She was hiking with her grandparents, I believe, in the Ozarks in Arkansas, and she went missing. And luckily they found her a couple of days later. And when they did, she was dehydrated and discombobulated. And she also spoke of being accompanied over the past several days by, quote, an imaginary friend, which is slightly creepy. The author finds out that decades earlier, in that same general area, there was another young girl who disappeared. She met a terrible end. She was murdered by a religious cult. And he puts these two stories side by side. And I don't believe, not having read the full book, but having read the story, that there is a direct connection that he is indicating between these two things. And by putting these two stories together, he's trying to tell a tale about this part of America, the Arkansas Ozarks. He is reflecting on that region, on his family, on true crime, on all sorts of things. I'm curious to see how this book takes this story, which I thought was told pretty well in the Harper's piece, and fleshes it out to a full read. We have all read stories, nonfiction stories, which were like, I just felt like a long magazine piece.
- [39:16]
D
Could have been an article, could have.
- [39:17]
C
Been an article, article, could have been a tweet book, could have been an article. I'm hoping that's not the case with this because it is, in its initial form, a story that was very creepy and very sad in its own way and really lingered after I read it. So that's Cave Mountain by Benjamin Hale. That is out March 3rd. Chumana.
- [39:38]
D
Okay, we're going to move away from disturbing family lore and go into some frothy fictional family foibles.
- [39:49]
C
You did it.
- [39:50]
D
I landed it. All right, so this is Lake Effect by Cynthia Dupree Sweeney. This is coming out on March 3rd. The author is the best selling writer of the Nest and Good Company. And she's really eked out a ledge or a point of view for herself with sort of families come together with disastrous but kind of lovable results. The Nest was about four siblings squabbling over their family inheritance or lack thereof. And Good Company was about two couples and falling in and out over the decades. So this is squarely in that vein. It opens in 1977 Rochester, which is so precise you can almost smell it. And smells great.
- [40:35]
C
Smells great.
- [40:36]
D
And our heroine is appropriately buying up multiple copies of the Joy of Sex to hand her around to her friends. By the time and this is not none of this is a spoiler at the same time. And by the time that the first part comes to a close, two neighbors will have had an affair with each other and flown to the Dominican Republic to have a shotgun divorce, I guess. And this, of course, totally rearranges their families. And then the story lurches into the future and looks at the effects on the kids and the way that the ramifications of all of this. And if you like the kind of big, messy family with a little bit of froth, I think this is definitely a book for you. So that is Lake Effect by Cynthia D'Apri Sweeney. Gilbert, what do you have?
- [41:30]
C
I have a book that comes out like the last one I mentioned, also on March 3rd. This is now I Surrender by Alvaro Enrige. I know you both know who this is and you both remember his last book because it was one of our top 10 books of 2024. That book, you Dreamed of Empires was a piece of deep historical fiction. It was set in 1519 and it imagined the first interaction between the conquistadors and the Aztecs. It's Hernan Cortez. He comes to what is now Mexico City. He encounters the emperor Moctezuma, who is a bit dissolute at this point. Taken a lot of mushrooms, a lot of psychedelics. It is a book that I think about, not infrequently because of how redolent it was, how sensory it was. I've read a lot of historical fiction and this one just seemed very elemental, very close to the elements. This one is also a piece of largely historical fiction. It takes several storylines. One of them is about drama. Geronimo very famous indigenous leader. He's an Apache leader. It's about a family. Also, that far in the future is traveling through the American Southwest on a bit of a road trip. I cannot say I would have been excited for an Alvaro Enrique book if I had not read you Dreamed of Empires, which was just so. The writing was so unique and vibrant and odd in its own way. I'm very much looking forward to this.
- [43:04]
E
One thing that's great about Alvaro is similar to George Saunders. Just the sheer creativity and imagination that he's able to channel into these novels and just transform whatever it touches, whether. Whatever history that is. He's a writer to watch. I'm excited.
- [43:22]
D
Ditto. Okay, I'm gonna slide in, take the last bit. And I'm so happy that the calendar shook out this way, because I can talk about the final. The third and final install and Tana French's Cal Hooper series. This is called the Keeper. This is coming out on March 31st. So we're getting in just under the wire. So Tana French, of course, is the wildly popular mystery and thriller writer. I think she's best known for the Dublin Murder Squad books, which picked up with different detectives. And so this is a slightly different series. This follows an American detective named California who's picked up and left Chicago and settled in the tiny backwater village of Ardnicalty, Ireland. So over the course of his story, we've seen him slowly work his way into the community which is not accustomed to interlopers. And so by the time that we meet him now, he's got a fiance, he's got drinking buddies in the pub. He's got like a. Not an official foster child, but like, you know, he's hanging out with a teenager that he's helping get back on the right path and making furniture and enjoying life until a young woman is found dead in a river. And of course, being a small town, the town is consumed with this. It's also complicated because the young woman in question was engaged to the son of the most powerful, influential man in town.
- [45:03]
B
So the.
- [45:04]
D
This immediately becomes a big question about. It's like an existential question.
- [45:08]
C
That's suspicious.
- [45:09]
D
It is suspicious, yes. Antifreeze Rivers, can you come look at my kitten? It becomes so existential. This murder reroutes intimate relationships. It changes the way people relate to the town. It changes the future of the town itself. It's got all the elements of what we like in a ton of French. It's very character driven. There's some good dialogue. The way she renders Irish brogues on the page is quite a feat. So I'm excited and, you know, I'm excited to see what she does next. Bringing a series to a close. That means she has to have something else on her mind. So that's the Keeper by Tana French coming on March 31st.
- [45:52]
C
It feels like we just talked about so many books and yet I want to just throw out very quickly, without any context, some titles that are coming out over January, February, and March. In January we have a new book by Karl Ove Knauskaar, the School of Night. Colleen Hoover has a new book, Woman down, coming out in January. Speaking of thrillers, in February we have a new Yo Nesbo book, Wolf Hour, that comes out February 3rd. As MJ mentioned, Lauren Groff has a collection of short stories out February 24th called Brawler. In March, there's a new novel by Abby Jimenez titled the Night We Met. Louise Erdrich has a collection of short stories as well titled Python's Kiss. So those are just a few extra titles coming out over the next several months. MJ Shumana I hope that listeners feel like we've actually given them some books that they could discover over the next several months.
- [46:49]
E
I think we have a tremendous range. We have Unhinged, we have good family stories, we have deep nonfiction, and we have a lot of murder. What else could you want?
- [46:58]
C
Jumana, thank you so much as always for being on the Book Review podcast.
- [47:01]
D
Thank you for having me. What a blast.
- [47:04]
C
Mj, you often host this podcast, so the fact that you have joined and you did not demand to sit in the seat that I'm sitting in, I take as a compliment. Thank you for joining.
- [47:14]
E
I would never do a hostile takeover. I'm such a fan of these preview episodes. I love listening to you two, so it's a privilege to get to join.
- [47:23]
C
That was my conversation with Juma. Hello Monica Teeb and M.J. franklin. Looking at the first three months of this year in books, I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thanks for listening.
- [47:43]
A
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