The Best New Book Releases Out December 19, 2023

This is the third in the Spice Isle Bakery Mystery series, but, as with many cozy mysteries, you don’t have to read them in order. But if you still want to, you can start with Against the Current, in which the main character, Lyndsay Murray, opens the Caribbean Spice Isle Bakery with her family but then has to find out who killed a rival baker. Or, you can go ahead with this latest release, where she works as one of the vendors for the Caribbean American Heritage Festival but has to take a step back from the festivities in order to figure out who killed an up-and-coming reggae singer.

Gabby DiMarco lives a happy existence as the fact checker for a popular magazine. It’s this job that has her taking a genealogy test and finding out that she…has a sister. One who has been trying to track her down ever since — according to her — Gabby went missing from San Juan 25 years ago. Suddenly, Gabby’s world is turned upside down, and even though she agrees to meet her biological sister Isabella in Puerto Rico, the women may not have the reunion Isabella was hoping for.

Everly Winters is happy with being the mostly ignored but still appreciated wallpaper in everyone’s life. She craves a career in art, but stays in the safe space of being a receptionist, vital but unremarkable in her own eyes. But then she secretly gets nominated to be on the plus-sized makeover show, On the Plus Side, and realizes that maybe she does want attention from Logan, the show’s cameraman. When their burgeoning romance takes center stage, it may be a little more than her introverted heart can handle.

Self-help books always make the rounds this time of year, and in recent years, there’s been a growing sentiment that maybe a lot of the start-of-the-year goal setting is cliché and that the same general rules don’t work for everyone. But books like this one by Ali Abdaal, who has gained a huge following on YouTube as a productivity expert, are helping to reshape how we look at productivity and how to achieve it. Abdaal argues that by finding joy in work, we can be the most productive and outlines ways to do this.

This is such a joyful collection of 117 pictures and eight essays, all on the lives of Black people around the world. It takes you from the Bronx to Lagos to Namibia and beyond, showing the trendsetting, art, resistance, and joy experienced by Black people all over. It’s been described as Humans of New York meets The Black Book, which I love.

In this thriller, two teens have two very important questions to answer. The girl who woke up on a dirt road with no memory must figure out if the panicked man who showed up at the police station with her school ID and birth certificate claiming to be her father is telling the truth, and Drew needs to find his girlfriend Lola before it’s too late…and before he gets charged with her murder.