The Best New Book Releases Out January 16, 2024

This debut uses humor and endearing moments to shine a light on the lives of Palestinians in America. Through three families — the wealthy Ammars, the struggling Baladis, and the Salamehs — Darraj shatters stilted narratives surrounding Palestinians, instead offering a nuanced look at generations trying to balance both old and new customs. The Ammars’ spoiled teenagers get looked after by a Baladi, while one of the Salameh aunts is married to an Ammar. We watch their dynamic as it’s applied to weddings, funerals, and secrets.

Through 13 different witch trials, Gibson tells the story of what has historically gone into being accused of witchcraft. Spoiler alert (not really): it has a lot to do with gender, indigeneity, colonialism, and resistance. The well-known Salem trials are analyzed, as are the trials of an indigenous Sami woman in Norway in the 1620s, a local healer in the U.S. in 1929, and native leaders in Lesotho in 1948. Through Witchcraft, Gibson tells the story of the women and men whom those in power tried to silence — sometimes permanently.

This made my Hey YA list for one of my most anticipated books of 2024. It’s a Jamaican-inspired chosen-by-the-gods-girlie fantasy with dragons. I am geeked. The chosen girlie in question? Faron, who has been able to channel the power of the gods since she was 12. The power granted to her was used to free her island from the dragon-riding Langley Empire, the same empire that she’s been summoned to place nice with five years later at an international peace summit. But faking the funk with the Langleys is the least of her worries once her sister Elara forms a bond with a Langley dragon. When something makes the dragons go berserk, Faron is told the only solution is to kill them on-site, but killing a dragon also kills the one they’re bonded to. She and Elara will have to rethink their ideas around their country, dragons, and family if they’re both to live.

This one is out there. Like, out there out there. A small, jaundiced baby is born in Philly to a single mother as soon as Voyager 1 launches into space. The baby, Adina, knows as a child that she is different — she has memories of a planet far from Earth, for starters. Turns out she was sent by her alien relatives to spy on Earthlings, and she does, once she’s gifted a fax machine. The notes she sends back as reports tell of all the joys and sorrows of her day-to-day life in a poor Italian neighborhood in the ’80s and ’90s. As she grows up masquerading as a (mostly) normal human girl, her differences from the other humans become more obvious to her, and she’s encouraged by a friend to share her notes with the world.

This YA Medusa retelling is steeped in Indian lore and follows 16-year-old Manisha. She’s been fleeing for years from the danger of beasts and the king’s army and now serves as a temple’s priestess on a floating mountain. It’s on this floating mountain that she meets the king’s most valued monster slayer, Pratyush, and both see potential for a future in the other. But then Manisha is assaulted by a temple visitor and thrown off the mountain into a pit of vipers. A month later, Pratyush has one more monster to slay — one that turns men to stone — before he’s free. But she’s the toughest one yet.

If you’re down for more YA retellings, L.L. McKinney’s Escaping Mr. Rochester gives a new look at Jane Eyre, and Gabe Cole Novoa’s Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix expands the Remixed series with a trans protagonist.

Breen paints a picture of America’s true psychedelic era, and it’s not the ’60s and ’70s as you’d think. Turns out, the sense for experimentation that emerged in the ’40s and ’50s had people plenty zooted. Life-altering drugs went mainstream, and John C. Lilly shared LSD with dolphins, but the true stars of this drug age were lovers and pioneering anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Their mission to scientifically expand human consciousness involved everything from temples in Bali to WWII espionage and sexologists.