The Best New Book Releases Out February 13, 2024

Arden had me in a vice grip with her Winternight Trilogy, so I know this one is going to hit. During WWI, Laura is a talented field nurse who becomes wounded and later discharged. After she returns home and hears of her brother Freddie’s death during combat, something doesn’t sit quite right with her. To get to the bottom of what’s going on, she returns to the war by volunteering as a nurse in Belgium. There, she hears of haunted trenches and a mysterious wine that makes soldiers’ worries disappear. Through another timeline, we learn that months ago, Freddie did happen upon a mysterious man who could make the terror of the trenches evaporate. What happened after this meeting is the question.

When Gutierrez was 15, she felt like things were going pretty well. As a freshman in high school, she was top of her class and looking forward to college. But then her parent’s visas expired, and they were forced back to Mexico. This left Gutierrez’s brother in her care, and both of them parentless. As an unaccompanied, homeless youth, she became one of the statistics she wanted to avoid, but she and her brother persevered to make it in the land of so-called dreams.

Ghana declared 2019 The Year of Return — a time 400 years since the first slave ships sailed from Ghana when the country opened its doors to the Black diaspora to give them a chance to reconnect with their roots. It’s during one of these returns to home that Americans Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive in Accra. They want to explore historic transatlantic slave trade sites and get a little taste of the queer scene. But a murder happens, and through the narration of their two guides — the disparate Kobby and Nana — we’re walked through the who and why in a sometimes funny, sometimes spicy tale.

Carrie Sun has always worked hard. She excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and entered the corporate world, all in the name of the American Dream her parents wished for her when they immigrated to the U.S. from China. But once she hits 29, she starts feeling like something’s missing. So, she drops out of a master’s program and quits her job. When she gets the opportunity to work for one of the most respected hedge funds in the world, she jumps at it. Soon, luxury and privilege like she’s never known are opened up to her, but it also starts to swallow her whole.

Neferuru joins the other historical girlies — Kaikeyi, Medea, and Circe for starters — who are having their stories told from from fresh, new perspectives. The titular Neferuru was a princess and high priestess of Kemet, whose mother was the Pharaoh. When she learns of a plot to overthrow her mother, she knows she must act. But the alliance she forms with a powerful and enigmatic tattooed wise woman comes at a higher cost than she first imagined.