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!

Anticipated March 2025 Releases

  

March is just around the corner, and that means a whole slew of new releases! I am looking forward to so many of these, though I am of course most excited for Stephen Graham Jones' The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. I've been fortunate enough to read a couple of these (The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi was fascinating!) so far and it's looking like a great month; I also have ARCs of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom and When the Moon Hits Your Eye that I'm hoping to get started on soon and I can't wait. 
What March releases are you most looking forward? Let me know below, and be sure to let me know if I missed any of your most anticipated releases on this list as well.
Happy reading!

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Luminous by Silvia Park || March 11th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The House No One Sees by Adina King || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Twist by Colum McCann || March 25th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian || March 11th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom by Emily Feng || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters || March 11th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Guatemalan Rhapsody by Jared Lemus || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Death is Our Business by John Lechner || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Prince Without Sorrow by Maithree Wijesekara || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Universality by Natasha Brown || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

A History of the World in Six Plagues by Edna Bonhomme || March 11th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

White Line Fever by KC Jones || March 18th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

When the Moon Hits Your Eyeby John Scalzi || March 25th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Strange Bedfellows by Ariel Slamet Ries || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

I Am Made of Death by Kelly Andrew || March 4th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

A Greek Tragedy: One Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis by Jeanne Carstensen || March 25th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

What are your anticipated March releases?

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.