The Best New Book Releases Out January 9, 2024

In this posthumously released novel that channels Nabokov, shy 23-year-old punk singer Kyoko plots a murder. Her target is the philandering Daniel, a white man with a fetish for Asian women who has left a trail of destruction in his wake. Among those he’s damaged is Emi, Kyoko’s mother, who Kyoko believes died because of Daniel. Then there’s Alma, another Asian woman musician. In her final days of battling multiple sclerosis, she looks back on her relationship with Daniel and wonders about its sincerity. No matter, Daniel has been kidnapped by Kyoko and is going to have to cop to a few things if he wants to live.

Hot Mess Heroine is one of my favorite sub-genres, and this debut promises all the deliciously trifling and raggedy antics that protagonists in books like The Guest, Luster, and Queenie deliver. Mixed-race British girl Agnes is the one who puts the sugar in Sugar, Baby. At 21, she’s a little listless and without direction — she works as a cleaner, still lives at home, and blows all her money during weekend club visits. But then she meets the daughter of a wealthy client, and she’s suddenly thrust into the world of being a sugar baby. Though the lifestyle comes with “champagne on tap,” there’s a huge downside to it. Her super-religious mother has kicked her out, and there’s more danger and emptiness than Agnes first realized.

Apart from being a great book out this week, this is one I’m looking forward to for the entire year. It’s giving Rebecca meets the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing (starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, if you’re unfamiliar). It centers around Sana, who, along with her father, is one of the latest inhabitants of the once-grand Akbar Manzil, an estate off the coast of South Africa. Usually, the estate is a place where people go to forget themselves, even going so far as to ignore the estate’s uncanny qualities — like bones in the garden and mysterious moving figures — but Sana becomes obsessed with the contents of a forgotten room. The room’s pictures, diary, and other artifacts tell Sana of Akbar Manzil’s original owner’s second wife, who died a hundred years ago. She compulsively dives deeper into the woman’s life, but little does she know of the djinn that watches her from the shadows.

In 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés and his cadre of captains, troops, and enslaved people enter Tenochtitlan (what is now Mexico City) and are met with a ceremonial welcome put on by Atotoxli, emperor Moctezuma’s sister. The Spaniards have conquering on their minds, but they also can’t help but feel intimidated by the grandeur of the city and people. Here, that fateful meeting — and the fate of Tenochtitlan — is reimagined, breathing fresh life into the splendor of the city at the height of the Aztec empire.

In 1857, debutantes Beth and Gwen must both suffer through useless seasons. Gwen is a bit of a rake, like her father, and has no intention of ever getting married, but Beth is in the trenches trying to find a husband before she and her mother become houseless. So the two hatch a plan: if they set their parents up, Beth won’t have to marry, and she and her mother will be saved. But Gwen’s father and Beth’s mother low-key hate each other, and when a wealthy viscount starts sniffing around Beth, Gwen realizes she’s not ready to surrender the other woman to anyone else.

Here’s another stunning debut. This time set in a developing China. In Shanghai in 2007, 14-year-old Alva, daughter of an American expat mother and a Chinese father, is hoping to move to the U.S. with her mother for a new life. But then her mother becomes engaged to their current landlord, and so she settles for an American school in Shanghai where she learns of the privileges afforded foreigners. Back in 1985, Lu Fang was a young married man working in a shipping yard in Qingdao when he met an American woman who turned his life upside down.