House of Day, House of Night
by Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Tokarczuk, a Nobel laureate in literature, first published this book in her native Poland in 1998. It’s not so much a novel as it is an anthology of stories, poems and other short writings that are linked by a setting — a remote village on the Polish-Czech border — and an unnamed narrator. Gender-bending characters, odd neighbors and legendary saints keep readers company.
Riverhead, Dec. 2
Television
by Lauren Rothery
In a shambolic magazine interview, an A-list movie star pledges to give away the millions he will earn from his upcoming blockbuster in a lottery. His best friend and occasional lover is unfazed: Over their years together, she’s witnessed all manner of erratic, eyebrow-raising behavior. Rothery’s debut novel shifts between their perspectives and that of a young female filmmaker with a keen eye for Hollywood’s compounding hypocrisies and absurdities.
Ecco, Dec. 2
The Award
by Matthew Pearl
Maybe don’t meet your heroes — and definitely don’t move into the same rambling Massachusetts Victorian house they’ve occupied for years. That’s one lesson that an aspiring novelist named David Trent learns the hard way in the latest from Pearl (“The Dante Club”). At first, the vaunted writer, Silas Hale, simply ignores his eager new neighbor, or finds peevish ways to punish him. (Who needs heat in a brutal Northeastern winter?) But when David unexpectedly lands his own literary success, tables are turned in this morally slippery satire.
Harper, Dec. 2
The Heir Apparent
by Rebecca Armitage
The accidental death of a parent and sibling is a tragedy. But if said relatives happen to be next in line for the English throne, grieving gets even more complicated. Lexi, a medical resident in Tasmania, has no time to process the loss of her father and brother before she gets sucked back into life as Princess Alexandrina, now her grandmother’s presumptive heir. The queen gives her one year to decide: family, power and the duty she was raised to accept, or the independent life (and budding romance) she has worked so hard to protect.
Cardinal, Dec. 2
Huguette
by Cara Black
Black’s 24th book is, as usual, a crime novel set in Paris — but, unusually, it’s a stand-alone: a chance to introduce Huguette Faure, a pregnant teenager scrambling to rebuild her life after World War II. That rocky road puts her in touch with a protective police officer, an ambitious film director and a mysterious correspondent: “Consider this what I owe you,” he writes. “Signed, ‘The Grasshopper.’”
Soho Press, Dec. 2
American Canto
by Olivia Nuzzi
At 24, she was New York magazine’s Washington correspondent — an enviable perch that proved a precipice when news broke that she had gotten too close to the then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a coy memoir (no mucking about with real names, but who else might be “the politician” with eyes “blue as the flame”?) Nuzzi describes her fall from professional grace, and lays the groundwork for a resurrection.
Avid Reader, Dec. 2
This Year
by John Darnielle
As the lead singer of the beloved indie band The Mountain Goats, Darnielle is known for his densely literary and emotionally rich lyrics — and for the astonishing rate at which he churns out music. In this book of days, Darnielle (who is also a novelist) turns 365 of his songs into a personal meditation on the creative process, tracing the lineage from his first lo-fi solo recordings, made on a Panasonic boombox, to the band’s 23rd album, which came out on Nov. 7.
MCDxFSG, Dec. 2
Barbieland
by Tarpley Hitt
Love her or hate her, you can’t ignore Barbie. As Mattel’s creation enjoys a new moment of cultural ascendence, Hitt examines the life and times of an American icon whose ever-shifting perception has so often mirrored that of American culture.
Atria, Dec. 2
Year of the Water Horse
by Janice Page
A longtime journalist who is now a culture editor at The Washington Post, Page recounts her colorful childhood in a large, rowdy and not untroubled Catholic family in Braintree, Mass.; her early struggles with an eating disorder; and her unlikely but loving marriage to a Taiwanese immigrant (they met while she was working as a waitress at what was then Braintree’s only Chinese restaurant).
Pegasus, Dec. 2
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear
by Gyles Brandreth
This chatty origin story of literature’s most famous anthropomorphic bear — who marks his 100th birthday this month — finds that life for his creator, A.A. Milne, was no particular pot of honey. Both Milne and his son and muse, Christopher Robin, struggled with the enormity of Pooh’s fame (Milne’s early work as a successful playwright, among other things, was vastly overshadowed), and its complicated legacy.
St. Martin’s, Dec. 2
Cape Fever
by Nadia Davids
A young Muslim maid and her white, British employer tangle in an unnamed colonial town in the 1920s. Mrs. Hattingh may be lonely and eccentric, but Soraya is grateful to work for her — until her perversion and deceit become inescapable. If you ever wondered if a Gothic thriller had room for racial microaggressions and critiques of empire, this is the book for you.
Simon & Schuster, Dec. 9
Seeing Other People
by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka
Neither Morgan nor Sawyer is looking for romance when they show up at a support group for the haunted, but they bond when they realize that they are the only people who showed up with actual ghosts in tow: Morgan’s one-night stand and Sawyer’s fiancée. The livings join forces to help their specters — and each other — move on in this emotional, slow-burn romance by the husband-and-wife duo Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka.
Berkley, Dec. 9
The Sea Captain’s Wife
by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Mazzeo (“The Widow Clicquot”) tells the 1856 story of a young New England couple, Joshua and Mary Ann Patten, who entered a race to sail from New York to San Francisco. Disaster soon struck: Joshua fell dangerously ill, the crew tried to mutiny, and the ship ran into an 18-day gale. It was up to 19-year-old Mary Ann to safely sail the ship to port, becoming in the process the first woman to command a merchant vessel as captain.
St. Martin’s, Dec. 9
The Rest of Our Lives
by Ben Markovits
A law professor challenged by his students while navigating a quietly hostile marriage drives his daughter to college — and keeps going. Yes, it sounds like a sexed-down “All Fours.” But Markovits’s 12th novel, which made the 2025 Booker Prize shortlist, takes in mortality, white fragility and pickup basketball along the way. “At some level,” Markovits writes, “everything you feel or think is a kind of taking sides.”
Summit, Dec. 30
An Arcane Inheritance
by Kamilah Cole
Ellory, a Jamaican scholarship student who delayed college to take care of her sick aunt, is expecting to feel out of place when she arrives at the elite Warren University. But once on campus, she is haunted by a strange sense of déjà vu. Determined to unravel the school’s secrets, she joins forces with Hudson, a legacy student, in this dark academia fantasy full of occult rituals, generational trauma and a rivals-to-lovers romance.
Poisoned Pen Press, Dec. 30
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