The Best New Book Releases Out January 23, 2024

The grief from losing his parents drives Iranian American poet Cyrus Shams to alcoholism and an obsession with martyrdom. This obsession leads him to find out about certain mysteries surrounding his own family, starting with an Angel of Death uncle and his mother, who may not have been who she seemed.

Here’s another one that looks at how we process grief, and heads up, Blackburn’s protagonist Coral’s methods aren’t the healthiest. When she discovers her brother in his apartment dead from suicide, instead of telling his daughter Khadija the news, she decides to masquerade as him — using his phone, she texts people back in his voice. Soon, though, her surrounding reality starts to crumble and blend with the world of her bestselling dystopian novel Wildfire.

I really liked Jennings’ debut, Flyaway, an unsettling novella set largely in the Australian outback. In this collection of stories, she continues with her penchant for folklore and dark fantasy. There are journeys taken and lessons to be learned by the cryptozoologists, knights, and boggarts of Jennings’ stories. Question is if they’ll take the lessons to heart.

In 1911, 12 Black men were made to construct a building from scratch in a cold forest in Maryland. Once they were finished, they became its first patients. The hospital was a state-owned one meant for the “Negro Insane,” and here, multi-award-winning Hylton documents this hospital’s — named Crownsville Hospital — 93-year history. Crownsville went from an antebellum-style work camp, to a hospital with more than 2,000 patients, to virtually fading from view once prisons and jails took over as America’s primary way to house poor people needing mental health care. This is the kind of book that sounds so interesting and necessary for me to read, but also one I know will make me feel a type of way.

For similar, I know I should read itm but I don’t want to get mad vibes, there’s also Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs by Benjamin Herold coming out today. It looks at five real American families of different ethnic and racial backgrounds to show how suburbia has allowed some to achieve the American Dream TM, while others paid the price.

Five hundred years from now, climate change results in a drowning world. In this dystopian future, even in places like Arizona, the rain never stops. It’s in this moist, hellish landscape that 18-year-old Jin Haldar is trying her best to keep her and her sister Thara afloat without their parents. Desperation leads to Thara accepting a job offered by an eccentric stranger, and even though Jin swore off diving since their father’s death, she agrees too. And, as with any good heist, a spicy crew is assembled. As the group tries to get the gold score of a lifetime from a submerged Las Vegas, they’ll encounter sea beasts, pirates, and mysterious figures.

Holden is in his sad-boy era. He should be living it up after having gotten the chance to audition for his favorite game show, Madcap Market. Instead, he’s in a hotel room, grieving his mother’s death and a recent breakup. But then, a potential savior enters his life in the form of concierge Leo Min. If the two can convince the show’s casting directors that they’re a real couple, they may have a chance at winning, and Holden’s holdups may be fixed. But we know things rarely ever work out so neatly.

One more on grief! Fourteen-year-old Harriet is struggling after her brother Tunde was killed in a shooting at their old school. Though she has some support, it’s not enough to stop her from feeling guilt over the last thing she said to Tudde the day he died. Then, a new classmate shows up. Alisia is a bit odd like Harriet, but more interestingly, she offers up knowledge of a fantastical world that exists beneath New York City’s subways — a world where Harriet may find the cure to her grief.