Happy Tuesday, star bits! It’s almost April, if you can believe it. I have had an incredible reading year already. My favorite books of 2024 so far (that are available now) include Rainbow Black, The Other Valley, Wandering Stars, Headshot, Martyr!, Interesting Facts About Space, and The Book of Love. What new releases are you loving these days? Maybe you’ll find it in this newsletter! For you today, I have a mystery about a missing woman, a tense novel about the (possibly literal) horrors of being a parent, and a highly anticipated debut about a woman’s past relationship with a famous author.
As for other new releases, at the top of my list of today’s books that I want to get my hands on are The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang, Rabbit Heart by Kristine S. Ervin, and A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Patricia and I talked about books we are excited about that are out this week, including Says Who?, Worry, and There’s Always This Year.
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Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura
Tatum is a young woman living a quiet, satisfying life in Chile with her partner. But her happy existence gets shaken up when the past comes knocking. A famous author she knew from college, whom she met after writing a fan letter, has been accused of sexual misconduct. Tatum had spent ten years in his orbit. And now reporters want to know about her relationship with the author. Tatum must not only fight to keep her past from damaging her present and her future, but she begins to examine that decade and the power dynamic she had with the author. Was she in control of what was happening? Was it wholly appropriate? And how can she get past this scandal and back to her own life?
Backlist bump: Complicit by Winnie M Li
Monsters We Have Made by Lindsay Starck
This is an intense novel with a Slenderman-type monster at its nougat center. When Faye was a child, she attacked her babysitter, supposedly at the behest of the Kingman, a monster she read about on the internet. Now 23, Faye is missing, gone without a trace and leaving behind her child. Her mother, Sylvia, will have to revisit the pain and horror of that incident 13 years ago in order to find her. As Sylvia falls down a rabbit hole looking into the Kingman, and what internet lore might mean to Faye’s disappearance, she’ll have to face ugly realities about parenting, the bonds of love, and their limits. Will she find Faye before she reaches her breaking point? Because, just maybe, the Kingman might be real. (Also, this might be my favorite cover of the year.)
Backlist bump: Penpal by Dathan Auerbach
What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan
Speaking of parents with big problems: this is a “he said, she…is missing” mystery. By all accounts, Simon and Nina are a great couple. So when they go on vacation in Vermont, and only Simon returns, it’s a shock. Nina’s parents don’t think Simon’s explanation for her disappearance makes sense. Simon’s parents might not either, but they’ve got a lot of money to pay for expensive lawyers. The lawyers turn Nina’s disappearance, and soon her life, into a media circus. As Nina’s parents fight to find out what happened to their daughter, they are close to being pulled under a wave of lies and obstruction. In a public carnival of armchair detectives and Simon stans, it shows them just how much the truth doesn’t matter. Not when you don’t have money.
Backlist bump: Before and After by Rosellen Brown
This week, I am reading Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist by Jasmin Graham and Under the Bridge by Rebecca Godfrey. I didn’t get to any TV this week (except for the Celtics, of course), but I hope to watch a movie tonight. I’m thinking either Poor Things or Killers of the Flower Moon. I really want to watch All of Us Strangers, because I heart Andrew Scott, but I don’t think I’m ready. I hear that it’s devastating. The song stuck in my head this week is “Here is a Heart” by Jenny Owen Youngs. And here is your weekly cat picture: I’m creeping while Zevon’s sleeping.
That’s all for this week! I appreciate you more than I can say, friends. Thank you for joining me each Tuesday as I rave about books! I am wishing you all a wonderful rest of your week, whatever situation you find yourself in now. And yay, books! See you next week! – XO, Liberty
“When mountains are formed, they are forced up by deep geographical forces over millennia—the top is ages older than the bottom. Ascending, in many ways, is less like moving upward through space than it is like moving backward in time.”—Nicholas Binge, Ascension