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 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 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
"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.
