Winter demands that we slow down, take stock, rest. And while we hibernate, books can keep us company. Luckily, this season, there are plenty of noteworthy new reads to fill these cold, short days.
Below, you’ll find 100 titles out this winter that we’re excited about here at The Millions. Some we’ve already read in galley form; others we’re simply eager to dive into based on their authors or subjects. We leaned on our friends at Publishers Weekly to help blurb some of the many, many titles that we’re eager to put on your radar.
The Millions is, alas, still on hiatus, but we’re determined to continue bringing you our seasonal Most Anticipated previews in the interim (if a bit belatedly).
—Sophia Stewart, editor
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January
Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo (Black Cat)
NBCC Award winner Guo delivers a spectacular retelling of Moby-Dick, in which she recasts Ishmael as a 17-year-old girl and Ahab as a Black freedman named Seneca who’s battling the “white devil.” Read more.
Philosophy of Writing by David Arndt (Bloomsbury Academic)
In his latest, the comparative literature professor proposes new frameworks through which to understand writing not just as a craft, but as a philosophical undertaking.
Nothing Random by Gayle Feldman (Random House)
This cinematic biography of Random House founder Bennett Cerf from longtime PW writer Feldman teems with a star-studded cast including Truman Capote, James Joyce, Alfred Knopf, Ayn Rand, and Dick Simon. Read more.
Palinuro of Mexico by Fernando del Paso, tr. Elizabeth Plaister (Dalkey Archive)
Virgil’s Palinurus was Aeneas’s helmsman who fell victim to the god of sleep; his namesake in this complex, beautiful novel, is also a guide to a novel that straddles the conscious and subconscious, life and death. Read more.
The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara (Random House)
Edgar winner Anappara offers a vivid narrative of two 1869 expeditions into Tibet at a time when it was still closed off to outsiders and its rivers and mountains were mostly uncharted. Read more.
Fire Sword and Sea by Vanessa Riley (Morrow)
Riley’s exciting latest follows a young Haitian woman’s fight against slavery and her turn toward piracy. Read more.
We Would Have Told Each Other Everything by Judith Hermann, tr. Katy Derbyshire (FSG)
In this deeply affecting English-language debut, German writer Hermann reflects on the connections between art and experience, delving into her protagonist’s family history in West Germany and the relationships that shaped her life. Read more.
The Hitch by Sara Levine (Roxane Gay)
Levine serves up a bizarre and mordantly funny tale of a six-year-old who might be possessed by a dead corgi. Read more.
This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Knopf)
Mueenuddin’s lavish sophomore effort spans six decades and traces the lives of a wealthy Pakistani clan and those who work for them. Read more.
The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken (Penguin)
In Knausgaard’s ingenious fourth entry in the Morning Star series, a self-absorbed Norwegian photographer strikes a Faustian bargain in exchange for success. Read more.
The Snakes That Ate Florida by Ian Frazier (FSG)
In this substantial yet brisk collection, essayist and humorist Frazier compiles highlights from his half-century career at the New Yorker and other outlets. Read more.
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (Dial)
Immigration lawyer Burden traces the exhilarating start and excruciating dissolution of her two-decade marriage in this bruising debut. Read more.
Pedro the Vast by Simón López Trujillo (Algonquin)
In Trujillo’s equally heady and thrilling sci-fi debut, panic attack–prone mycologist Giovanna Oddó is summoned to a provincial Chilean hospital to consult on a strange case of “lethal blight” believed to be caused by the mushroom Cryptococcus gatti. Read more.
The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Summit)
In the quietly affecting latest from Dusapin, two sisters reunite to clear out their family home in the French countryside. Read more.
Discipline by Larissa Pham (Random House)
Pham, author of the memoir Pop Song, turns to fiction with the dazzling story of an art critic who publishes a novel about the former professor who rejected her after their affair. Read more.
Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro, tr. Megan McDowell (Norton)
The grieving unnamed narrator of Mexican writer Navarro’s spellbinding U.S. debut ruminates on the effects of migration. Read more.
Scale Boy by Patrice Nganang (FSG)
In this gorgeous memoir, Cameroonian novelist Nganang chronicles his coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s and his decision to pursue a literary life. Read more.
Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (Unnamed)
Banned from publication in the U.S. until 1966, Cleland’s erotic novel from 1749 offers an account of a woman’s early days of prostitution in 18th-century London.
Iconophages by Jérémie Koering, tr. Nicholas Huckle (Princeton UP)
In this adroit English-language debut, Koering, an art history professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, surveys the long and surprising tradition of how “figured representations” have been ritualistically consumed. Read more.
One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson (Grove)
Critic and fiction writer Winterson anchors this dazzling memoir-in-essays in her childhood obsession with One Thousand and One Nights, the collection of Middle Eastern folktales that introduced magic lamps and flying carpets to the West. Read more.
When Trees Testify by Beronda Montgomery (Holt)
Plant biologist Montgomery mixes memoir, history, and science in this unique examination of the significance of trees in Black history. Read more.
The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Random House)
In her stunning debut memoir, poet and novelist Griffiths details the most challenging period of her life, during which her best friend died and her husband, the author Salman Rushdie, was brutally attacked. Read more.
Crux by Gabriel Tallent (Riverhead)
This tense and staggering tale of rock climbing and family demons from Tallent explores the cost of following one’s dreams. Read more.
Beckomberga by Sara Stridsberg, tr. Deborah Bragan-Turner (FSG)
Stridsberg’s singular novel traces the history of Stockholm’s Beckomberga psychiatric asylum via wrenching stories of its patients. Read more.
How to Commit a Post-Colonial Murder by Nina McConigley (Pantheon)
McConigley follows her PEN/Open Book Award–winning collection, Cowboys and East Indians, with a witty and ultimately profound tale centered on two angsty preteens’ plot to kill their abusive uncle. Read more.
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg (Avid Reader)
Torenberg debuts with a bewitching tragicomedy about a young woman who takes drastic actions to raise money for her sister’s medical bills. Read more.
A Very Cold Winter by Fausta Cialente, tr. Julia Nelsen (Transit)
In this overdue translation of Cialente’s vital 1966 novel, her first to be published in English, a family struggles to find harmony while crammed together in a frigid Milan squat. Read more.
Station of the Birds by Betsy Sussler (Spuyten Duyvil)
In the author’s latest, a son disinherited by his father while attending college returns to his hometown with an eye toward vengeance.
Vigil by George Saunders (Random House)
A ghost attempts to guide an unrepentant oil executive toward redemption and the afterlife in the staggering latest from Saunders. Read more.
A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot, tr. Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver (Penguin)
Pelicot, who first rose to prominence after waiving her right to anonymity in the court case against her husband and 50 men accused of sexually assaulting her, tells her story for the first time in this harrowing, galvanizing memoir.
Black Dahlia by William J. Mann (S&S)
Novelist and biographer Mann delivers a meticulous and humane reconsideration of one of America’s most sensationalized unsolved murders. Read more.
Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato (831 Stories)
In this sapphic sports romance from Disabato, NFL reporter Jennifer Felix is reassigned to cover WNBA All-Star Weekend, despite knowing nothing about basketball. Read more.
February
Lee and Elaine by Ann Rower (Semiotext(e))
In this second novel by Rower, the artistic and social excesses of the New York School painters—Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning—provide a welcome obsession for a painter in a midlife crisis. Read more.
The End of Romance by Lily Meyer (Viking)
Critic and translator Meyer’s sharp and sexy sophomore novel chronicles a young woman’s liberation from an abusive marriage. Read more.
Language as Liberation by Toni Morrison (Knopf)
In this series of lectures from the Nobel laureate’s tenure as a professor at Princeton, Morrison examines Black characters throughout American literature and their impact on our national imagination.
Superfan by Jenny Tinghui Zhang (Flatiron)
Zhang explores the line between fandom and idol worship in her sharp sophomore outing. Read more.
The People Can Fly by Joshua Bennett (Little, Brown)
Bennett charts the complex role of Black prodigies and gifted children in American history, including by tracking the early educations of luminaries ranging from Malcolm X to Stevie Wonder.
Second Skin by Anastasiia Fedorova (Catapult)
Toggling between memoir, reportage, social history, cultural criticism, and erotic writing, Fedorova maps the worlds of sexual fetishism and kink, considering the the forces that shape desire, and how desire shapes us.
Autobiography of Cotton by Cristina Rivera Garza, tr. Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf)
Memoirist and novelist Rivera Garza weaves labor history, environmental catastrophe, and stories of her family into a vivid tapestry. Read more.
A Killing in Cannabis by Scott Eden (Spiegel & Grau)
Investigative journalist Eden shines in this novelistic work of true crime, which opens in 2019, when deputies responded to a 911 call reporting a kidnapping in Santa Cruz, Calif., at the home of tech CEO Tushar Atre, who’d recently launched a cannabis company. Read more.
Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth (Melville House)
Howarth captures the rhythms and underlying tensions of an Irish village through the eyes of multiple characters in her alluring sophomore outing. Read more.
Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes (Dalkey Archive)
Barnes’s trailblazing work of lesbian literature—part social satire, part Restoration pastiche, part love letter to Paris—returns nearly a century after its 1928 publication courtesy of Dalkey Archive.
The Wall Dancers by Yi-Ling Liu (Knopf)
This incisive, empathetic debut study from journalist Liu examines three decades of the internet’s evolution in China, from the mid-1990s explosion of microblogs and message boards that corresponded with the country’s increasing liberalization, to the mid-aughts raising of the Great Firewall. Read more.
Alice Baber: An Artist’s Triumph Over Tragedy by Gail Levin (Pegasus)
Levin’s biography questions why Baber—whose abstract paintings had entered into the collections of the Met, Whitney, Guggenheim, and MoMA by the time she died at 54—ultimately fell into obscurity, while also restoring the artist to her rightful place in modernist history.
Scatman John by Gina Waggot (Bloomsbury Academic)
Music journalist Waggott debuts with an affectionate biography of John Larkin (1942–1999), better known as Scatman John, who rose to fame in the mid-1990s with a blend of jazz, pop, and scat-singing. Read more.
The Jills by Karen Parkman (Ballantine)
Parkman debuts with a thrilling mystery that offers an immersive view into the lives of NFL cheerleaders. Read more.
Frog by Anne Fadiman (FSG)
Essayist and reporter Fadiman reflects on her life and the ever-changing world around her in this affecting and often humorous collection. Read more.
I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For by Bsrat Mezghebe (Liveright)
The nuanced debut from Mezghebe finds an Eritrean American teen seeking answers about her late father’s life as a revolutionary martyr. Read more.
This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman (Dial)
Goodman delivers a bighearted linked story collection about a family’s travails. Read more.
One Bad Mother by Ej Dickson (Simon Element)
New York magazine writer Dickson debuts with a smart and funny exploration of what it means to be a “bad mom.” Read more.
On Morrison by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)
Serpell, a novelist and professor of English at Harvard, provides an insightful and stimulating exploration of the work of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Read more.
Queen by Birgitta Trotzig, tr. Saskia Vogel
The first in a trio of works by the legendary Swedish writer set to be translated by Vogel, this 1964 novella follows a girl named Judit and her enigmatic inner life.
Lean Cat, Savage Cat by Lauren J. Joseph (Catapult)
An artist’s bohemian existence in Berlin implodes in this exquisite novel from Joseph. Read more.
Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky (Ecco)
Oshetsky’s potent latest dives into the volatile inner world of a young woman who fantasizes about a life beyond her abusive marriage. Read more.
Head of Household by Oliver Munday (S&S)
Munday’s debut story collection mines the complexity, anxieties, and daily rituals of contemporary fatherhood.
The Writer’s Room by Katie da Cunha Lewin (Princeton UP)
Literature lecturer Lewin debuts with an insightful exploration of the spaces where famous writers crafted their most influential works. Read more.
Citizenship by Daisy Hernández (Hogarth)
Hernández presents a comprehensive and timely inquiry into American citizenship, weaving together memoir, history, and cultural criticism.
Beloved Son Felix by Felix Platter, tr. Seán Jennett (McNally Editions)
In 1552, a 16-year-old Felix Platter left Switzerland to study medicine in France, documenting his daily life in a diary—and now, contemporary readers can enjoy one of the world’s earliest journals, which chronicles everything from a brush with the bubonic plague to a John Calvin speech.
A Place Both Wonderful and Strange by Scott Meslow (Running Press)
The short-lived 1990 TV series Twin Peaks cast a long cultural shadow, according to this energetic account from film critic Meslow. His diligent account of the show’s cultural legacy [is interwoven] with delightful peeks into its idiosyncratic production and the eccentric directorial style of David Lynch. Read more.
Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl by Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Graywolf)
This mesmerizing collection from novelist and essayist Wong uses observations of small invertebrates to tackle questions about selfhood, consciousness, and humans’ relationship with nature. Read more.
Everything Lost Returns by Sarah Domet (Flatiron)
In Domet’s latest page-turner, two women are united across time by the arrival of Halley’s comet.
Every Moment Is a Life, ed. susan abulhawa (One Signal)
This Arabic-English bilingual anthology compiles essays by 18 young Palestinian writers whose writing grapples with the ongoing genocide in their homeland.
The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova, tr. Sasha Dugdale (New Directions)
In this captivating and capacious novel from Stepanova, a 50-year-old novelist experiences a bizarre and liberating metamorphosis while in exile from her unnamed home country, which has just started a devastating war with its neighbor. Read more.
I Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa, tr. Adrian Nathan West (FSG)
Nobel laureate Llosa, who died last year, tackles Peruvian history and culture in this searching novel, published in Spanish in 2023, about the limits of idealism. Read more.
I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek (Dial)
Samek debuts with a striking collection of fantastical and speculative stories about conformity, technology, and the limits of bodily autonomy. Read more.
Doing Nothing by James Currie (Duke UP)
In his contribution to Duke University Press’s Practices series, Currie delves into modes of being such as procrastination, resignation, and melancholia—and the unexpected opportunities these states can present.
Technology and Barbarism by Michel Nieva, tr. Rahul Bery and Daniel Hahn (Astra House)
From the author of Dengue Boy comes a probing nonfiction collection which investigates the influence of “hard” science fiction and how the genre informs our complicated relationship with technology.
The Silent Period by Francesca Manfredi, tr. by Ekin Oklap (Norton)
The elegant and witty latest from Manfredi sees an unfulfilled young woman commit to silence. Read more.
Brawler by Lauren Groff (Riverhead)
Story Prize winner Groff delivers a gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances. Read more.
More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen (Random House)
DNA test results rattle a middle-aged New Yorker in the poignant latest from Quindlen. Read more.
Starry and Restless by Julia Cooke (FSG)
In this expansive group biography, journalist Cooke profiles three prolific mid-century female journalists and examines the impact their reporting had on both their times and their profession. Read more.
March
Dream Facades by Jack Balderrama Morley (Astra House)
Morley explores what the dwellings depicted on reality TV reveal about Americans’ deep-seated desires for safety and security.
Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue, tr. Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead)
In his latest work of alternate history, Mexican novelist Enrigue delivers his most ambitious book to date—a multilayered epic of the Apache Wars. Read more.
Judy Blume: A Life by Mark Oppenheimer (Putnam)
Journalist Oppenheimer contends in this impressive biography that Judy Blume “rewired the English-speaking world’s expectations of what literature for young people could be.” Read more.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life by Ellen Carol DuBois (Basic)
As a historian of woman’s suffrage, DuBois paints a definitive portrait of one of the most influential leaders in the fight for American women’s right to vote.
The Complex by Karan Mahajan (Viking)
In Mahajan’s immersive third novel, a family tragedy unfolds against the backdrop of political upheaval in India. Read more.
Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush (Chronicle)
This hybrid memoir and cookbook from the cofounder of Cake Zine pairs more than 50 recipes with a chronicle of the year she rediscovered her joy of baking.
Seeking Sexual Freedom by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (S&S)
Sekyiamah profiles traditional sex practices across Africa—particularly older women and gurus who guide girls through puberty and early marital life—and argues that such open, liberated sex lives are hampered by Western norms.
A Marsh Island by Sarah Orne Jewett (S&T Classics)
Originally published in 1885, this reissue of Jewett’s idyllic classic chronicles life in a small New England coastal community through the eyes of a Manhattanite landscape painter.
Freezing Point by Anders Bodelsen (Faber)
In this sly and visionary 1969 novel from Bodelsen, reissued with a new introduction by Sophie Mackintosh, a 30-something magazine editor agrees to be cryogenically frozen until a cure is found for his terminal cancer. Read more.
Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli (Grand Central)
The EGOT icon tells the story of her life in her debut memoir, from her four marriages to her lifelong struggle with substance use to her experience growing up as the only child of two Hollywood legends.
Voices by Frederic Prokosch (NYRB Classics)
American fantasist Prokosch’s mostly made-up memoir of his childhood in Middle America and later years in the South of France, first published in 1982, returns thanks to a reissue by NYRB.
Down Time by Andrew Martin (FSG)
In Martin’s well-observed but listless third outing, a group of loosely connected 30-somethings float through the Covid-19 era, coping with cheating partners, enduring lockdown, and questioning their professional, romantic, and creative choices. Read more.
Whidbey by T Kira Madden (Mariner)
The propulsive debut novel from Madden, author of the memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, explores the aftermath of child sexual abuse. Read more.
I Was Alive Here Once, ed. Sarah Coolidge (Two Lines)
This anthology, the latest installment in Two Lines’ Calico series, anthology gathers ghost stories from Korea, Yemen, Poland, Japan, Uzbekistan, Iceland, Tanzania, and Thailand.
On an Inland Sea, ed. Michael Welch (Belt)
Thirty-three writers meditate on the experience of living on the Great Lakes in this anthology from Cleveland-based Belt Publishing, which promotes voices from the Rust Belt.
The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood (Riverhead)
Reissued on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, this novel is allegory at its best, a phantasmagoric portrait of modern culture’s sexual politics textured by psychological realism and sparing lyricism. Read more.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus (Counterpoint)
Novelist Kraus offers an entertaining deep dive into George A. Romero’s classic horror film, which inspired a lifelong passion for horror, low-budget filmmaking, and Romero’s movies. Read more.
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, tr. by Polly Barton (Ecco)
In her follow-up to Butter, Yuzuki returns with an unnerving portrait of female obsession and friendship, in which a woman develops an all-consuming fascination with a popular lifestyle blogger.
Chains of Ideas by Ibram X. Kendi (One World)
The National Book Award winner tackles the “great replacement theory,” and how it came to find its way into contemporary politics, in his latest.
My Lover the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum (FSG)
Polymath Koestenbaum charts the psychosexual relationship between the narrator and his rabbi, as the two men torture, pleasure, and exploit one another.
Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, tr. Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio (Knopf)
Kawakami unfurls a remarkable noir-tinged tale of female desperation set during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more.
Who Killed Bambi? by Monika Fagerholm, tr. Bradley Harmon (University of Wisconsin Press)
Set in a fictional, affluent suburb of Helsinki, this nonlinear novel follows a successful realtor haunted by his role as one of four teenage rapists involved in a devastating sexual assault.
The Oldest Bitch Alive by Morgan Day (Astra House)
Day explores the nature of parasitic and symbiotic relationships in her wondrous debut, which largely follows the deterioration of a couple’s beloved French bulldog, Gelsomina. Read more.
Sydney Journals by Antigone Kefala (Transit)
This cosmopolitan collection of journal entries from the late Australian poet Antigone Kefala, who died in 2022, contains moving reflections on the tension between modern life and the life of the mind. Read more.
Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich (Harper)
Pulitzer winner Erdrich dives deep into the American psyche in this spectacular collection. Read more.
Ruins, Child by Giada Scodellaro (New Directions)
Scodallero’s mesmerizing and challenging debut novel focuses on a film screening in a near-future intentional community of women. Read more.
The Life You Want by Adam Phillips (FSG)
In a series of interlinked essays, Phillips uses psychoanalytic and literary approaches to unveil the difficulties of fashioning—and enjoying—our lives.
American Han by Lisa Lee (Algonquin)
Lee’s debut follows a brother and sister as they confront how they once embodied—and ultimately departed from—the American myth of the “model minority.”
The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín (Scribner)
The Irish writer’s latest story collection includes nine works of short fiction—many never-before-published—set across Ireland, Spain, and America.
A Good Person by Kirsten King (Putnam)
Screenwriter King debuts with the clever tale of a vengeful woman whose ex-boyfriend winds up dead after she casts a spell on him. Read more.
Son of Nobody by Yann Martel (Norton)
In the inspired latest from Booker winner Martel, a literature scholar discovers an alternate account of the Trojan War. Read more.
The Monroe Girls by Antoine Volodine, tr. Alyson Waters (Archipelago)
The fascinating and sardonic latest from Volodine plays out in the mind of a schizophrenic who lives in a postapocalyptic psychiatric hospital among the living and the dead. Read more.
