Need some more new books to spice up your reading list? Look no further!
As 2024 shakes out, here are six books to keep an eye out for when browsing through libraries or bookstores.
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
Author of bestselling Cultish, Word Slut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language and host of the podcast “Sounds like a Cult,” Amanda Montell brings you her third work of writing: The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality.
The text includes a blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative exploring cognitive biases, power, disadvantages, and the highlights of what Montell calls “magical thinking.”
Montell broadly defines magical thinking as the belief that a person’s individual thoughts possess the ability to impact unrelated events in the external world. Montell suggests that, in the age of modern information, the brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded. This is how she attempts to make sense of the senseless and result in our irrationality being intensified.
The Familiar
Leigh Bardugo, author of the New York Times’ bestselling Ninth House, Hell Bent and mind behind the Grishaverse – now Netflix’s Shadow and Bone – creates a historical fantasy set in the Spanish Golden Age.
Protagonist Luzia Cotado uses what magic she has to survive her days as a scullion in the new capital of Madrid. However, when her magical abilities are discovered and she attracts the attention of Antonio Perez, the former secretary of the King of Spain, her life takes an unexpected turn.
Within the thralls of the ongoing war between Spain and England’s heretic queen, Luiza is forced to harness all her wit to survive. A stand alone and inspired by Bardugo’s own family history the book is sure to be another hit.
Lady Macbeth
Ava Reid, author of The Wolf and The Woodsman and A Study in Drowning presents a reimagining of Lady Macbeth – one of Shakespeare’s most renowned villainesses. The novel attempts to retrieve her voice and past and explores the power embedded in transforming her story, as it was previously written by men.
A mix of fantasy, historical fiction, and gothic literature, the novel follows Lady Macbeth – a woman who knows the fate decided for her by the men in her life but who possesses the power to rival even those most dangerous to her.
Wandering Stars
Indigenous author Tommy Orange brings the anticipated follow up to best seller There There. Wandering Stars traces the legacy of Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School by following the story of protagonist Star.
Drawing together narratives of past and present, Orange’s writing stitches together poetry, sorrow, and rage in the face of ongoing settler colonialism in the United States.
Where Sleeping Girls Lie
Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, author of best-selling Ace of Spades, presents a contemporary young adult mystery exploring the story of a young girl who uncovers a series of dark secrets after her boarding school roommate disappears.
The more Sade uncovers, the more she realizes there is more to the school than meets the eye. Forced to navigate her own secrets and those of the school, Sade is thrown into a high-stakes investigation into the nature of institutions.
The Warm Hands of Ghosts
Katherine Arden, author of New York Times’ bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale brings a new historical fiction following the story of a young combat nurse during the Great War. Determined to find her believed-to-be-deceased brother, Laura Iven discovers a series of odd signs that suggest otherwise.
From within the thralls of war, where ghosts move among the living, Laura and Freddie Iven must confront their deepest traumas and decide whether their war-torn world is worth saving.
