Can't-Wait Wednesday: Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin, The Pretender by Jo Harkin, and The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

  

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released. 

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
Publication: April 22nd, 2025
Tor Books
Hardcover. 288 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A twisted, tangled story about workplace love-affairs, and plants with a taste for human flesh

During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she's been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine.

An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves.

This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow."

This sounds delightfully weird and I'm totally here for it.

The Pretender by Jo Harkin

Publication: April 22nd, 2025

Knopf

Hardcover. 496 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"A sweeping historical novel in the vein of Hilary Mantel and Maggie O’Farrell set during the time of the Tudors’ ascent. The Pretender tells the story of Lambert Simnel, who was raised in obscurity as a peasant boy to protect his safety, believed to be the heir to the throne occupied by Richard III, and briefly crowned, at the age of ten, as King Edward the Sixth, one of the last of the Plantagenets.

In 1480 John Collan’s greatest anxiety is how to circumvent the village’s devil goat on the way to collect water. But the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends his life forever: John is not John Collan, not the son of Will Collan, but the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence, hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown, and because Richard III has a habit of disappearing his nephews. Removed from his humble origins, sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne’s rightful heir, John is put into play by his masters, learning the rules of etiquette in Burgundy and the machinations of the court in Ireland, where he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed and manipulative daughter of his Irish patrons, a girl imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Joan has two paths available her—marry, or become a nun. Lambert’s choices are similarly stark: he will either become King, or die in battle. Together they form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.

Inspired by a footnote to history—the true story of the little known Simnel, who was a figurehead of the 1487 Yorkist rebellion and ended up working as a spy in the court of King Henry VII— The Pretender is historical fiction at its finest, a gripping, exuberant, rollicking portrait of British monarchy and life within the court, with a cast of unforgettable heroes and villains drawn from 15th century England. A masterful new work from a major new author."

I have been craving a "sweeping historical novel" so this sounds absolutely perfect. There's something special about sinking into a compelling historical fiction story, so hopefully this one is as good as it sounds. 

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Darymple

Publication: April 29th, 2025

Bloomsbury

Hardcover. 432 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"The internationally bestselling author of The Anarchy returns with a sparkling, soaring history of ideas, tracing South Asia's under-recognized role in producing the world as we know it.

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilization, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

In The Golden Road, William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and our world today as we know it."

I am always up for some more history, and this sounds like it will be fascinating!

Can't-Wait Wendesday: Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig, & Medicine River by Mary Annette Pember

 

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! 

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
Publication: April 15th, 2025
Grove Press
Hardcover. 240 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.

As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?"

I love books that play with and explore weird ideas like this, so I'm really keen to see what Sayaka Murata does with this premise.

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
Publication: April 29th, 2025
Del Rey
Hardcover. 400 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods in this mesmerizing horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what.

Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something a mysterious staircase to nowhere.

One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . ."

I'm always up for some new horror from Chuck Wendig! Nobody tells horror tales quite like Wendig, and I'm loving this idea of a random staircase in the woods and what may lay beyond it... I have an ARC of this one that I can't wait to get into.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools by Mary Annette Pember
Publication: April 22nd, 2025
Pantheon
Hardcover. 304 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture.

From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools—sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation—were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people.  Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection.

Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions—a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it."

This is a topic that always needs more attention brought to it, and this book sounds like it'll be a very thorough--if difficult--read to learn more about the horrific history Native American boarding schools in the U.S. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian, & The Mesopotamian Riddle by Joshua Hammer

 

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! 

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Publication: March 4th, 2025
Pantheon
Hardcover. 336 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. 

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are."

I feel like this book will either be hit or miss for me, but I'm really intrigued by the premise! Typically, I'm not huge on stories that focus on dreams, but I'm fascinated by our dreams and how we dream in general, so the idea of an agency that can monitor dreams and has an entire system around them sounds like something interesting to explore, so I'm in to check it out. 

Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian
Publication: March 11th, 2025
Tor Nightfire
Hardcover. 352 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"From the New York Times bestselling author of Red Rabbit comes a supernatural horror where ghosts and ghouls are the least of a witch’s problems in nineteenth-century New England.

Something wicked is going on in the village of Ascension. A mother wasting away from cancer is suddenly up and about. A boy trampled by a milk cart walks away from the accident. A hanged man can still speak, broken neck and all.

The dead are not dying.

When Rabbit and Sadie Grace accompany their friend Rose to Ascension to help take care of her ailing cousin, they immediately notice that their new house, Bethany Hall, is occupied by dozens of ghosts. And something is waiting for them in the attic.

The villagers of Ascension are unwelcoming and wary of their weird visitors. As the three women attempt to find out what’s happening in the town, they must be careful not to be found out. But a much larger―and more dangerous―force is galloping straight for them…."

I really enjoyed  Alex Grecian's Red Rabbit when it came out in 2023 and I've been hoping for something new from him for a while, so I'm excited for this one! I'm extra glad that it's set in the wild world of Red Rabbit and I'm so curious to see what else he does with this world. (I will admit, though, that I'm a little bummed they went in a different direction for the cover art because I really liked the original artwork for Red Rabbit.)

The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer
Publication: March 18th, 2025
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover. 400 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.

London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.

Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.

From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past."

As a big fan of languages and as a history nerd-especially an ancient history nerd-this book sounds like it'll be a ton of fun to explore. I can't wait to have a chance to check it out!

Can't-Wait Wednesday: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy & The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

  

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights upcoming releases that we can't wait to read. 

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Publication: March 4th, 2025
Flatiron Books
Hardcover. 320 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together."

I feel like I've been seeing this book around for so long, I'm excited it's finally being released soon! I'm really intrigued by this premise and am really curious to see what the author will do with this setting and concept. 

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Publication: March 4th, 2025
Tordotcom
Hardcover. 144 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…"

Amal El-Mohtar is one of the authors of This Is How You Lose the Time War and I'm very curious to check out this new work from her! I have a feeling the writing is going to be gorgeous. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, Motherland by Julia Ioffe, & Luminous by Silvia Park

  

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released. 

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, transl. Sarah Moses
Publication: March 4th, 2025
Scribner
Hardcover. 192 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror."

I still think Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh is one of the most memorable books I've ever read, but I really didn't care for her short story collection Nineteen Claws and Blackbird. I feel like it's 50/50 whether I'll like this one, but I'm really excited about it nonetheless and am hopeful for another one I like as much as Tender is the Flesh. 

Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe
Publication: March 4th, 2025/October 21st, 2025
Ecco
Hardcover. 320 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From the publisher:
"Award-winning journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy.

In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values?

In Motherland, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, wife of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and documents how that failure paved the way to the revanche of Vladimir Putin.

Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe shows what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak—and reveals how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the history of its women."

I've been really enjoying more nonfiction lately, so I'm very curious to learn more about Russia's history/culture through this perspective! Also, I actually think the publication date may have just been pushed back to October because when I planned this post it said March, but it now might be October? Just a head's up!

Luminous by Silvia Park

Publication: March 11th, 2025
Simon & Schuster

Hardcover. 400 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea that tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.

Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.

On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.

While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human."

What a fascinating premise! This idea of a unified Korea in the future and everything else involved just sounds like it will be playing with a lot of interesting ideas and I can't wait to check it out. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, Guatemalan Rhpasody by Jared Lemus, & Let Only Red Flowers Bloom by Emily Feng

 

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released. 

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Publication: March 18th, 2025
Saga Press
Hardcover. 448 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones."

Stephen Graham Jones is one of my favorite authors for a number of reasons (and The Only Good Indians is the top reason because it's one of my favorites, haha), but especially because of how he incorporates the indigenous experience into his horror. This has a premise that sounds absolutely riveting and I cannot wait to have a chance to check it out. I also think that cover is fantastic.

Guatemalan Rhapsody: Stories by Jared Lemus
Publication: March 4th, 2025
Ecco
Hardcover. 240 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A vibrant debut story collection—poignant, unflinching, and immersive—masterfully moving between sharp wit and profound tenderness, Guatemalan Rhapsody offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country, the people who claim it as home, and those who no longer do

Ranging from a custodian at an underfunded college to a medicine man living in a temple dedicated to San Simon, the patron saint of alcohol and cigarettes, the characters in these stories find themselves at defining moments in their lives, where sacrifices may be required of them, by them, or for them.

In “Saint Dismas,” four orphaned brothers pose as part of a construction crew, stopping cars along the highway and robbing anyone foolish enough to hit the brakes. In “Heart Sleeves,” two wannabe tattoo artists take part in a contest, where one of them hopes to win not only first place but also the heart of his best friend’s girlfriend. And, in “Fight Sounds,” a character who fancies himself a Don Juan is swept up in the commotion of an American film crew shooting a movie in his tiny town, until the economic and sexual politics of the place are turned on their head.

Across this collection, Lemus’s characters test their loyalty to family, community, and country, illuminating the ties that both connect us and constrain us. Guatemalan Rhapsody explores how we journey from the circumstances that we are forged by, and whether the ability to change our fortunes lies in our own hands or in those of another. Revealing the places where beauty, desperation, love, violence, and hope exist simultaneously, Jared Lemus’s debut establishes him as a major new voice in the form."

I'm always up for a new collection of stories from an emerging author, and I'm honestly not sure I've ever read much about/from a Guatemalan voice, so I'm excited about that as well. 

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinpeng's China by Emily Feng
Publication: March 18th, 2025
Crown
Hardcover. 304 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping's definition of who is "Chinese," from an award-winning NPR correspondent.

In the hot summer months of 2021, China celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. Authorities held propaganda and education campaigns across the country defining the ideal Chinese ethnically Han Chinese, Mandarin speaking, solidly atheist, and devoted to the socialist project of strengthening China against western powers.

No one can understand modern China—including its response to the pandemic—without understanding who actually lives there, and the ways that the Chinese State tries to control its people. Let Only Red Flowers Bloom collects the stories of more than two dozen people who together represent a more holistic picture of Chinese identity. The Uyghurs who have seen millions of their fellow citizens detained in camps; mainland human rights lawyer Ren Quanniu, who lost his law license in a bureaucratic dispute after representing a Hong Kong activist; a teacher from Inner Mongolia, forced to escape persecution because of his support of his mother tongue. These are just a few narratives that journalist Emily Feng reports on, revealing human stories about resistance against a hegemonic state and introducing readers to the people who know about Chinese identity the best.

Illuminating a country that has for too long been secretive of the real lives its citizens are living, Feng reveals what it’s really like to be anything other than party-supporting Han Chinese in China, and the myriad ways they’re trying to survive in the face of an oppressive regime."

This sounds really fascinating and is a topic that I'd really love to learn more about. I know bits and pieces of information from different sources, but this sounds like a great overarching informative work about modern day China.

Can't-Wait Wednesday: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, Gliff by Ali Smith, & Daughter of Daring by Mallory O'Meara, & After the North Pole by Erling Kagge

 

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released. 

I planned my CWW posts poorly this month, so today we have another post featuring four anticipated releases!

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Publication: February 18th, 2025
Zando
Hardcover. 336 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband's affection and Carmilla's ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution, Hungerstone is a compulsive feminist reworking of Carmilla, the book that inspired Dracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire."

I'm so intrigued by this premise, and even more interested in the fact that it's inspired by the novella Carmilla, which I don't think I knew was an inspiration for Dracula.

Gliff by Ali Smith

Publication: February 4th, 2025

Pantheon

Hardcover. 288 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing.

An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.

Add two children. And a horse.

From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever."

I always hear so many great things about Ali Smith and this sounds really good, so I'm eager to check it out. 

Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood's First Stuntwoman by Mallory O'Meara

Publication: February 18th, 2025

Hanover Square Press

Hardcover. 384 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"From Los Angeles Times bestselling author Mallory O'Meara, the exhilarating story of America's first professional stuntwoman, Helen Gibson, who worked during a time when women ruled Hollywood

Helen Gibson was willing to do anything to give audiences a thrill. Advertised as “The Most Daring Actress in Pictures,” Helen emerged in the early days of the twentieth-century silent film scene as a rodeo rider, producer, performer and stunt double for iconic stars of the era. Her exploits were as dangerous as they were glamorous, featured in hundreds of films and serials—yet her legacy was quickly overshadowed by the increasingly hypermasculine and male-dominated evolution of action films in the decades that would follow her.

In this fast-paced and feminist biography, award-winning author Mallory O'Meara presents Helen’s life and career in exhilarating detail, including:

• Helen’s rise to fame in The Hazards of Helen, the longest-running serial in history

• How Helen became the first-ever stuntwoman in American film

• The pivotal and overlooked role of Helen’s contemporaries—including female directors, stars and stuntwomen who shaped the making of narrative film.

Through the page-turning story of Helen’s pioneering legacy, Mallory O'Meara gives readers a glimpse of the Golden Age of Hollywood that could have been: an industry where women call the shots."

I love nonfiction about interesting people, and Helen Gibson certainly sounds like she fits that!

After the North Pole: A Story of Survival, Mythmaking, and Melting Ice by Erling Kagge, transl. Kari Dickinson

Publication: February 11th, 2025

William Morrow

Hardcover. 352 pages.

Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:

"The Norwegian explorer, philosopher and acclaimed writer chronicles his historic 58-day journey to the North Pole on skis in this gripping and thought-provoking memoir that is also a profound meditation about nature and our place within it.

The North Pole looms large in our collective psyche—the ultimate Otherland in a world mapped and traversed. It is the center of our planet’s rotation, one of the places that is most vulnerable in an epoch of global climate change. Its sub-zero temperatures and strange year of one sunset and one sunrise make it an eerie, utterly disorienting place that challenges human endurance and understanding.

Erling Kagge and his friend Børge Ousland became the first people “to ever reach the pole without dogs, without depots and without motorized aids,” skiing for 58 days from a drop off point on the ice edge of Canada’s northernmost island.

In magisterial prose, Erling narrates his epic, record-making journey, probing the physical challenges and psychological motivations for embarking on such an epic expedition, the history of the territory’s exploration, its place in legend and art, and the thrilling adventures he experienced during the trek. It is another example of what bestselling author Robert MacFarlane has called “Kagge’s extraordinary life in wild places.”

Erling offers surprises on every page while observing the key role that this place holds in our current climate and geopolitical conversations. As majestic, mesmerizing, and monumental as the terrain it captures, The North Pole is for anyone who has gazed out at the horizon—and wondered what happens if you keep going. 

The North Pole is illustrated with 12-14 photographs.

Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson."

I've not read anything from Erling Kagge before, but he sounds like he's had some fascinating experience and I'm curious to learn more about them and his thoughts. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: Whiteout by R.S. Burnett, The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton, & Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

 

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! 

Whiteout by R.S. Burnett
Publication: February 25th, 2025
Crooked Lane Books
Hardcover. 352 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A researcher stranded in Antarctica receives a radio message that a nuclear war has broken out in this claustrophobic survival thriller, perfect for fans of The Martian, The Last Murder at the End of the World and Breathless.

It’s been four months since glaciologist Rachael Beckett left her husband and daughter to join an urgent research trip to a remote field station deep in the Antarctic. But after losing all communication with her crew at base camp, she’s trapped and alone – and running out of supplies. The only information she has about what’s gone so catastrophically wrong is an emergency radio broadcast playing on a a nuclear war has broken out, and Rachael might be the last survivor on Earth.

Abandoned and starving, all she has left is a fierce determination to stay alive in the extreme cold and perpetual darkness of the polar winter. The research she’s gathered about catastrophic climate damage means she holds the fate of the continent and the world in her grasp…if there’s even a world left to save.

Struggling with loneliness and grief over the unknown fate of her family back home, Rachael knows both her life and her sanity balance on a knife edge. As she battles to stay alive in unimaginable conditions, she soon discovers she’s not completely alone in the dark and cold–but she might wish she was…"

A survival story set in Antarctica–need I say more? Of course I'm going to read this! But in all honesty, I read so much nonfiction about survival in cold climates that I'm really intrigued by this entire premise and have high hopes for it. 

The Fourth Consort by Edward Ashton
Publication: February 25th, 2025
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover. 288 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood.

That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.

When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.

Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?"

I've been wanting to add more sci-fi to my reading and this one sounds so interesting! I read Ashton's Mal Goes to War and found it to have a really interesting premise and I've been meaning to read more from him, so this seems like a great option to do so. 

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
Publication: February 4th, 2025
Random House
Hardcover. 320 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"Birdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she's a little hungover sometimes on her shifts, and she has to bring her daughter Emaleen to work while she waits tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but it's a tough town to be a single mother, and Emaleen never goes hungry.

Arthur Neilsen is a soft-spoken recluse, with scars across his face, who brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods one day. He speaks with a strange cadence, appears in town only at the change of seasons, and is avoided by most people. But to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. He lives in a cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River and tells Birdie about the caribou, marmots and wild sheep that share his untamed world. She falls in love with him and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about her, Birdie moves to his isolated cabin.

She and her daughter are alone with Arthur in a vast wilderness, hundreds of miles from roads, telephones, electricity, or outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. She can start a fire and cook on a wood stove. She has her rifle and fishing rod. But soon Birdie realizes she is not prepared for what lies ahead."

Eowyn Ivey's prose is always so gorgeous that I'll pretty much read anything from her no matter what the premise is, so I'm looking forward to checking this one out.