Sleeping Giants

Rene Denfeld

This is a late March release that I did not include in my March predictions.

Synopsis: From the bestselling author of The Child Finder and The Enchanted, a compelling and poignant story of sibling bonds, foster children, monsters masquerading as caretakers, terrifying secrets, and the power of love to right even the most egregious wrongs. Twenty years ago, a nine-year-old boy was swept away by powerful waves on a remote Oregon beach, his body lost to the sea. Only a stone memorial remains to mark his tragic death. For most of her life, Amanda Dufresne had no idea she had an older brother named Dennis Owens, or that he had died. Adopted as a baby, she learned about him while looking into her late birth mother, and is curious to know more about this lost sibling. Retired police officer Larry Palmer is a widower with nothing but time and in need of a purpose. He offers to help Amanda find answers. The search leads to shocking and heartbreaking discoveries.

The Husbands

Holly Gramazio

This is one of the most buzzed about books of 2024. I will be surprised if it is not a BOTM selection this month.

Synopsis: When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living?

Debut

The Mother Act

Heidi Reimer

This novel is actually an April 30th release. So it could be an April or May BOTM selection.

Synopsis: Set against the sparkling backdrop of the theater world, this propulsive debut follows the relationship between an actress who refuses to abandon her career and the daughter she chooses to abandon instead.

Sadie Jones, a larger-than-life actress and controversial feminist, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this more deeply than Jude, the daughter Sadie left behind. Two decades later, Jude is a talented actress in her own right, and her fraught relationship with Sadie has come to a scandalous head. On a December evening in New York City, at the packed premiere of Sadie’s latest play, the two come face-to-face and the intertwined stories of their lives unfold—colorfully and dramatically. What emerges is a picture of two very different women navigating the complicated worlds of career, love, and family, all while grappling with the essential question: can they ever really understand each other?

Debut

Worry

Alexandra Tanner

Synopsis: Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world on the verge of calamity—a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood. Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction.

Debut

The Limits

Nell Freudenberger

Freudenberger’s last novel, The Lost and Wanted, was a BOTM selection in 2019. This book is also blurbed by other past BOTM authors.

Synopsis: The most thrilling work yet from the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Newlyweds and Lost and Wanted, a stunning new novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three characters who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single year. The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family. Heart-wrenching and humane, a profound work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Repeat Author

The Real Americans

Rachel Khong

The Real Americans is a late April release, so it may be an April or May pick.

Synopsis: From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home. Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

All We Were Promised

Ashton Lattimore

This book was the answer to the first app hint this month.

Synopsis: Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.

Debut

The Stone Home

Crystal Hana Kim

The Stone Home is the new novel from the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 author Crystal Hana Kim. It is also blurbed by several past BOTM authors, including Min Jin Lee.

Synopsis: A hauntingly poetic family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center. Inspired by real events, told through alternating timelines and two intimate perspectives, The Stone Home is a deeply affecting story of a mother and daughter’s love and a pair of brothers whose bond is put to an unfathomably difficult test. Capturing a shameful period of history with breathtaking restraint and tenderness, Crystal Hana Kim weaves a lyrical exploration of the legacy of violence and the complicated psychology of power, while showcasing the extraordinary acts of devotion and friendship that can arise in the darkness.

The Paris Novel

Ruth Reichl

Everything about this book just says BOTM to me. It will not be published until April 23, so it is possible that it may be an April or May selection.

Synopsis: A dazzling, heartfelt adventure through the food, art, and fashion scenes of 1980s Paris—from the New York Times bestselling author of Save Me the Plums and Delicious! When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual inheritance: a one-way plane ticket and a note reading “Go to Paris.” Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a traumatic childhood has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. But when her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes. Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store, where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and for the first time in her life Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress—and embarks on an adventure.
 

Village Weavers

Myriam J.A. Chancy

Myriam Chancy’s 2021 release What Storm, What Thunder was a BOTM selection as well as an award winner. Her newest book focuses on the friendship of two girls, sounding like it may be up BOTM’s alley.

Synopsis: From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families―forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets―and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship―until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls―connected their entire lives―who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.

Repeat Author

The Sicilian Inheritance

Jo Piazza

Synopsis: Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie’s death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight

Just for the Summer

Abby Jimenez

Abby’s last few books have been BOTM selections. With her winning the 2023 BOTM Book of the Year, I have a difficult time seeing Just for Summer not being a selection. Oh, did I mention the awesome first sentence was one of the app hints?

Synopsis: Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it’s now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They’ll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work. A sharp and scintillating summer novel that will make readers laugh out loud and cry happy tears from the New York Times bestselling author of Yours Truly.

Repeat Author

How to End a Love Story

Yulin Kuang

This debut romance novel was alluded to by the app hints this month.

Synopsis: Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except… Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.

Debut

Begin Again

Helly Acton

Synopsis: Despite living firmly in her comfort zone, Frankie McKenzie feels unsettled. She can’t help feeling something’s missing. Is it a home to call her own? Travel? A more rewarding job? A relationship? Before she can work it out, she dies in a freak kebab-related accident after what she sees as yet another dud of a first date. But life isn’t over for Frankie. Instead, she is miraculously offered a second chance: Frankie can revisit key moments from her past to see if different choices will lead her to the fulfilling life she’s always dreamt of. Have you ever wanted to change the past and discover the result of choices not taken? Now, in this brilliantly fun novel of what-ifs, missed chances, and new beginnings, Frankie McKenzie discovers what starting over might bring…

Debut

Weekends with You

Alexandra Paige

Synopsis: For fans of Beth O’Leary and Josie Silver, a heartwarming and romantic debut told over the course of one year in monthly weekend installments, about found family, new love, and the magic of London.

Unwillingly becoming one of eight flatmates in a quirky warehouse conversion would have been difficult enough without any romantic entanglements, but when Lucy lays eyes on Henry Baker, the traveling photographer who only comes home twelve weekends a year, she knows her hands will be full with more than just posies. As each weekend progresses, Lucy also finds herself unexpectedly falling for all her new flatmates, along with this bustling but ultimately sweeter home. Can Lucy learn from the flowers she tends to and bravely reach for all that she needs to bloom?

Debut

You Know What You Did

K.T. Nguyen

Synopsis: In this heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng, a first-generation Vietnamese American artist must confront nightmares past and present… Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor but seems to have it all now: a dream career, a stunning home, and a devoted husband and daughter. When Annie’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true. 

Debut

While We Were Burning

Sara Koffi

For me, this cover screams BOTM thriller. It is also a debut novel.

Synopsis: Parasite meets Such a Fun Age in a scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, and female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions. After her best friend’s mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs and slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life, almost like she belonged there from the start. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend’s death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it. Because Brianna has questions too.

Debut

What Happened to Nina?

Dervla McTiernan

Synopsis: Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home. What happened to Nina? Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign. Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive “fans.”

Daughter of Mine

Megan Miranda

Megan Miranda’s previous book, The Only Survivors, was a popular BOTM selection last year. So it seems a pretty good bet that her newest novel will also be a pick.

Synopsis: When Hazel Sharp, daughter of Mirror Lake’s longtime local detective, unexpectedly inherits her childhood home, she’s warily drawn back to the town—and people—she left behind almost a decade earlier. But Hazel’s not the only relic of the past to return: a drought has descended on the region, and as the water level in the lake drops, long-hidden secrets begin to emerge…including evidence that may help finally explain the mystery of her mother’s disappearance..

Repeat Author

A Game of Lies

Clare Mackintosh

A Game of Lies is the second book in Mackintosh’s DC Morgan series, the first of which (The Last Party) was a BOTM selection in 2022. I think this makes it a decent bet, but there is never a guarantee that BOTM will continue a series.

Synopsis: They say the camera never lies. But on this show, you can’t trust anything you see. Stranded in the Welsh mountains, seven reality show contestants have no idea what they’ve signed up for. Each of these strangers has a secret. If another player can guess the truth, they won’t just be eliminated – they’ll be exposed live on air. The stakes are higher than they’d ever imagined, and they’re trapped. And when a murderer strikes, Ffion knows every one of her suspects has an alibi . . . and a secret worth killing for.

Repeat Author

Darling Girls

Sally Hepworth

Sally Hepworth’s previous book was a BOTM selection, although she did not have a history of being a BOTM author. I think The Soulmate did well enough that BOTM may pick her April 23rd release, Darling Girls.

Synopsis: For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

Repeat Author

A Short Walk Through A Wide World

Douglas Westerbeke

Synopsis: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets Life of Pi in this dazzlingly epic debut that charts the incredible, adventurous life of one woman as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving.  A spellbinding and inspiring story about discovering meaning in a life that seems otherwise impossible, A Short Walk Through a Wide World reminds us that it’s not the destination, but rather the journey—no matter how long it lasts—that makes us who we are.

Debut

The Emperor and the Endless Palace

Justinian Huang

If BOTM is serious about jumping on the romantasy train, I think it is likely that we will see a romantasy pick most months. This looks like the best bet for this month.

Synopsis: In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue. In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead. And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they’ve met before. Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them. As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love—a power that transcends time itself…but one that might consume them both.

Debut

The Familiar

Leigh Bardugo

Synopsis: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo comes a spellbinding novel set in the Spanish Golden Age. In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family’s social position. What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen―and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.

Repeat Author

I Cheerfully Refuse

Leif Enger

Synopsis: Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.

Table for Two: Fictions

Amor Towles

Synopsis: From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of seven stories – six stories based in New York City and a novella set in the Golden Age of Hollywood featuring one of his most beloved characters.

Repeat Author

Weird Black Girls: Stories

Elwin Cotman

Synopsis: From Philip K. Dick Award finalist Elwin Cotman, an irresistibly unnerving collection of stories that explore the anxieties of living while Black—a high-wire act of literary-fantastical hybrid fiction. In each of the seven stories in this collection, characters pursue their obsessions on paths to glory and destruction while around them their worlds twist and warp, oscillating between reality and impossibility. On display throughout is Cotman’s ability to reveal truths about the human experience—about friendship, love, betrayal, bitterness—through whimsy, horror, and fantasy. Elegiac in tone, imaginative and humorous in their execution, the character-driven stories in Weird Black Girls challenge, incite, and entertain.

The Wives: A Memoir

Simone Gorrindo

This nonfiction debut was also one of the app hints this month.

Synopsis: A captivating memoir that tells the story of one woman’s experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving her New York City job—a profoundly intimate look at marriage, friendship, and today’s America. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, The Wives offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

Debut

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Erik Larson

Because of Erik Larson’s popularity and the fact that The Demon of Unrest is an April 30th release, I would not be surprised to see this book among BOTM’s April or May selections.

Synopsis: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.

Repeat Author