New Releases: March 2024 Edition

Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!

FICTION

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. Having arrived in the United States from India, the Shahs have achieved success after 20 years of hard work; they live in a gated community in California with spectacular ocean views. But success doesn't mean the same thing to their children, which is made clear on the night their 12-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?  A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream. Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray.  Frances Perkins, born to well-off parents, arrives at the turn of the 20th century in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood with a fellowship to investigate childhood malnutrition. Enraged at the deplorable living and working conditions she encounters, she is soon ensconced with other powerful women, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, who are equally socially conscious. Shortly after she witnesses women falling to their deaths during the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, Frances is recommended by former president Theodore Roosevelt to a committee on safety in New York State seeking to prevent future workplace tragedies. . . She fights for workers' rights, meets and becomes enthralled with a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and forms a partnership with him that will carry them all the way to the White House.  Dray introduces readers to this real-life trailblazing woman who is the mother of Social Security and became the first woman appointed to a United States presidential cabinet. A fictionalized portrayal of a phenomenal woman who has largely been lost to history.  Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Pride and Joy by Louisa Onomé.  Onome blends humor and pathos in her captivating adult debut which finds a Nigerian Canadian woman attempting to find redemption by hosting her mother’s 70th birthday party. Joy Okafor Bianchi, a mental health counselor and recently divorced single mother, has taken on the task of hosting her mother Mary Okafor’s weekend celebration in the suburbs of Toronto, and she invites family and friends from across Canada and the U.S. to share in the festivities. The morning of the party, however, Joy’s 12-year-old son, Jamil, discovers that his grandmother has died peacefully in her sleep. The day also happens to be Good Friday, and Mama Mary’s sister, Nancy Akintola, comes to believe—after a premonition involving a brown cow on the side of the road—that her dear sister will rejoin them in the land of the living in an Easter miracle. Joy, despite her skepticism, finds some parts of herself wanting to believe her mother will walk through the door on Easter Sunday. Onome’s rich storytelling is enhanced by authentic descriptions of traditional Nigerian music and foods, such as Egosi soup and chin chin, as her characters come together amid great loss. Readers will savor Onome’s vibrant portrait of a family. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

NONFICTION

The Autoimmune Cure: Healing the Trauma and Other Triggers That Have Turned Your Body Against You by Sara Szal Gottfried. 
New York Times bestselling author Dr. Sara Gottfried reveals how trauma can rewire your body to trigger autoimmune diseases—and provides a comprehensive plan to reset your immune system and finally heal. Emerging research shows that up to 80% of patients with autoimmune disease experienced significant emotional distress before getting sick… Dr. Gottfried has created a powerful program designed to break the vicious cycle of autoimmune disease, reset your immune system, and restore your health, with advice on: diet, sleep, supplements, breathwork, microbiome restoration, somatic therapy, ketamine-assisted treatment, microdosing psilocybin, MDMA-assisted therapy. The Autoimmune Cure offers a roadmap to lasting relief from autoimmune disease by addressing the root cause of the condition and healing the body, mind, and spirit. Publisher: HarperCollins, Copyright 2024

Rabbit Heart: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Story by Kristine Ervin.  In 1986, when Ervin was eight years old, her mother, Kathy, was kidnapped from an Oklahoma shopping mall. Days later, her body was found in an oil field, but it would be years before the details of her rape and murder were revealed, and decades before a suspect was identified. Ervin writes candidly of the ways her mother’s absence and the lack of closure around the case left her ill-equipped to handle hardships… Then, in 2008, long after Ervin had given up hope for a conviction, a DNA match turned up the name of one of the men who abducted her mother… This will haunt readers long after they’ve turned the last page. Agent: Mary Krienke, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.) Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly

Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland.  Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter Nordland (The Lovers) details the fallout from being diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor… In 2019, when Nordland was in India reporting on New Delhi’s monsoon season, he was incapacitated by a seizure. Medical tests revealed that the culprit was a stage four glioblastoma multiforme… Nordland came to consider the news “the best thing that ever happened to me—maybe even if I don’t survive it, but especially if I do.”… Years into his diagnosis, with no new cancer and occasional, manageable seizures, Nordland writes with palpable gratitude for whatever time he has remaining and provides a stirringly clear-eyed perspective on his own mortality. Readers are sure to be moved by this openhearted account. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Jan.) Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly.