The Best New Book Releases Out November 19, 2024

If you’ve been anywhere near a fantasy book section the last year, you’ve seen Yarros’ super popular Fourth Wing series. Well, with Variation, she’s stepping away from dragons for a minute and getting into ballerinas. In this contemporary romance, elite ballerina Allie Rousseau and Coast Guard rescue swimmer Hudson Ellis get thrown back into each other’s orbits because of an injury, and Hudson’s niece shows up at Allie’s doorstep looking for her birth mother.

Side note, but it looks like ballerinas are having just a bit of a moment since Juhea Kim’s next book is the ballet world-set City of Night Birds, out November 26th.

I haven’t come across anyone who’s read Braiding Sweetgrass by Kimmerer who doesn’t recommend it emphatically. Here, the Indigenous scientist considers the gift economy and how we can better position ourselves when it comes to reciprocity and community, based on lessons from nature. Which is, of course, in direct contrast to the capitalist-driven culture of scarcity we currently live in.

Mimi and Tanvi are Indian American cousins who couldn’t be any more different. Tanvi is more introverted, shy, and into nerdy things, while Mimi is seen as more assertive, more balanced, and “perfect.” Despite their differences, they’ve always gotten along—Mimi has protected Tanvi from bullies at school, even—but then Mimi starts kicking it with token mean rich girl Beth, who is Tanvi’s biggest bully. Well, Tanvi is not about to have another trash year and decides to get ahead of Mimi’s and Beth’s shenanigans by…exposing them with an incriminating picture taken at a party. While that gets a big yikes from me, the more important thing is that the day after the party, Tanvi wakes up with a bump on her noggin, scratches, and no memory. And, Mimi is missing (which you knew would happen). Tanvi, naturally, is feeling guilty in more ways than one, and starts her own little investigation. Things change, though, when the police say they’re investigating a murder…

Keke Palmer may be the queen of memes and keeping it cute, but her memoir gets real. She gets into her struggles with restarting her career after a decade, becoming a single mother, issues with boundaries, and more, all told in her singular voice. And let me just say that I know she spills in this, because the promo tour for the book has already involved revealing some behind-the-scenes Hollywood mess.

This sounds so deliciously extra. Kembral Thorne is at a party trying to turn up a little while she’s away from her newborn when things get weird. People start dying, which she can actually deal with fine since she’s an investigator, but that’s not really the worst part. There’s something that’s pushing the party down through different layers of reality—so deep that walls are bleeding and there’s a slim chance of returning to the normal plane. But there’s still a chance that Kem will survive, especially since she’s linking up with her nemesis, cat burglar Rika Nonesuch. This has adventure, reality-bending magic, macabre rituals, and some sapphic pining for good measure.