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, and check out WPL's Reader's Corner for more book suggestions!
Fiction
Yoon's (The Hive and the Honey) story of a military working dog attempting a treacherous journey home in the aftermath of an unnamed war rarely moves in expected ways. Those looking for a penetrating study of animal psychology will be disappointed; Yoon relies on familiar canine iconography more than he offers a parseable survey of animal consciousness. More surprising is that this instinct toward anthropomorphism doesn't reflect junk science or lazy characterization and is instead used to assert Yoon's governing thesis: dogs are people too. Or, more accurately, what are considered essential human qualities can be found in abundance in the animal world, for those willing to look beyond the falsity of human exceptionalism. The novel's narrative construction, an amalgam of The Odyssey and Au hasard Balthazar, positions Etna as a heroic figure who bears witness to humanity's best and worst. Yoon's fabulist shading situates the story at a nexus of grim reality and hopeful fairy tale, enlivening and devastating readers in equal measure as they watch Etna reckon with the all-too-human conclusion that one can't go home again. VERDICT Yoon sidesteps the schmaltz of so many animal stories and delivers something far richer in emotion and conviction.--Luke Gorham, Copyright 2026 Library Journal
In Thai's expressive sophomore effort (after Banyan Moon), sisters Vivi, a conservator, and Calla, an artist, embark on a quest to learn about the links between an enigmatic painting and their late father, Tuấn. Calla reconnected with Tuấn shortly before his death, but Vivi remained unable to forgive him for physically abusing her and Calla after their mother, May, left when they were children in Deer Creek, Wis. Calla gives Vivi a sketch found in Tuấn's shed of Blue Mirror, a painting by Vietnamese French artist K. P. Lý that was recently bequeathed to a museum where Vivi's boyfriend works. When Vivi strips a layer from Lý's work and discovers another painting of two women, she feels compelled to uncover its mysteries. The sisters travel to Arles, Ho Chi Minh City, and back to their childhood home, gathering clues about Lý's connection to the family from their great-grandmother's journal entries. Thai dots the narrative with poetic impressions of an artist's mind, for instance when the sisters retrace Lý's footsteps in Arles, where Van Gogh painted his most famous work, and Vivi imagines Lý seeing the light there as Van Gogh saw it. It's an appealing family mystery. Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly
A Wyoming ghost town provides the stage for this spectacular novel from Obreht (The Tiger's Wife) about the enduring myths of the Wild West. It opens dramatically in 2024, when a young nanny named Nina Terzic is pushed to safety from a malfunctioning small-engine plane by her boyfriend, Ben. She lands in a lake and, after fruitlessly awaiting rescue on the shore, wanders into the wilderness, not knowing Ben's fate and equipped only with a dying phone and four protein bars. Relieved to find the ghost town of Sunrise, she takes shelter in a stable, where she discovers a corpse. Obreht then jumps to 1902, when 45-year-old Anton Vargas, a former cowboy and gunslinger whose exploits have become fodder for dime-store novels, returns to Sunrise after more than two decades ("There was something antiquated about him... no mules, no companions, totally alone"). He reunites with an old buddy and is pressured into helping to solve the case of a missing boy. Finally, Obreht introduces historical reenacter Coll, who produces an annual play in Sunrise honoring Vargas's legacy. In 2003, Coll wants to create an immersive theater experience, but he's sidetracked by mysterious threats and a controversy surrounding a dead wolf. Obreht employs impressive restraint, providing just enough clues to create intrigue as the reader pieces together the connections between the three storylines. After the novel returns to a resilient Nina, now on her last protein bar, it careens to an explosive climax. Readers will have a blast. Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
"I wasn't dying to fill in when I was asked in 2014... to help shrink the growing backlog of unassigned prewritten obituaries" on the New York Times Obit Desk, admits Roberts (The New Yorkers), a Times journalist since 1983, at the outset of this charming account. However, in doing the work for over a decade, he found that "the sixteen hundred people whose lives I've memorialized" helped him "come to my own ways of... dealing with death." Roberts breaks down the guidelines that determine who is chosen for a Times obituary; how an obit is written, particularly the "blunt headline or first paragraph, which sets the tone"; and why, in "trying to capture the subject's soul," finding small details, such as a favorite object, can help the obituarist recreate how the subject lived. Exemplars of the craft reveal the obituarist's adroit use of language, wit, and observation: "Eugene Polley, an inventor whose best-known creation has fostered blissful sloth, caused decades of domestic discord and forever altered the way consumers watch television, died on Sunday.... Mr. Polley, the inventor of the wireless television remote control, was 96"; "Reginald Foster... who, in four decades as an official Latinist of the Vatican, dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin, died on Christmas Day.... He was LXXXI." Readers will revel in this lively book of the dead. Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly
In this innovative history, astrophysicist and folklorist McTier (The Milky Way) chronicles the evolution of human creativity from the perspectives of the Greek Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts and sciences born to Zeus and Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory). In her narrative role as Clio, the Muse of history, the author shares how the Muses fear that human creativity is being hobbled by the cult of celebrity, the myth of the lone genius, social inequality, and the rise of AI. McTier combines a history of innovation with witty and occasionally crotchety commentary from the Muses. Ourania, the highly mathematical Muse of astronomy, traces her influence from Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe through the launching of Sputnik and the Challenger explosion. Galileo, the narrator claims, was Ourania's first love, as well as "the mortal world's first modern genius." Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, oversees a survey of the evolution of textiles and the birth of ballet; Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, and her twin sister Thalia, the Muse of comedy, reflect on how collaboration and competition spark creativity; and Erato, the Muse of erotic poetry, discusses the history of sex and its regulation, including the development of the birth control pill. Entertaining and wholly original, this will inspire readers to embrace and celebrate human ingenuity. Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly
This outstanding debut from New York Times reporter Barragán explores the lives of Nigerian scammers who use seduction as part of their grift. Having initially traveled to Lagos to find a Nigerian man who romanced and scammed his mother, Barragán ends up closely following four such "Yahoo Boys" (so named after the email service). They include Chibuike, who strings along an Irish mother for years by posing as professional wrestler Cody Rhodes, and Richie, who fears that a woman in Kentucky may have died because of his scam. Along the way Barragán delves into how romance scams work--using fake social media accounts, the scammers seduce Western men and women into buying them gift cards--as well as the Yahoo Boys' lavish lifestyles and the lengthy pre-internet history of "impersonation scams" in Nigeria. There are plenty of eye-popping details, including alarmingly manipulative chats between the scammers and their victims, and even more nefarious alleged strains of Yahoo, including Yahoo Plus, in which scammers use "supernatural forces" to attract victims, and Yahoo Plus Plus, which "was rumored to entail ritual killings." Yet the book is most noteworthy for its affecting humanization of both the Yahoo Boys--Barragán shatters the image of romance scammers as part of "well-organized Mafia-like syndicates," instead revealing them as impoverished young men scrambling to survive--and of their victims, made vulnerable by the West's loneliness epidemic. It's a remarkably empathetic view of both sides of the con. Copyright 2026 Publishers Weekly
