New Releases - January 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

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall.  This captivating postapocalyptic novel is set in and around New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Global warming has resulted in a sea level rise of unforeseen proportions. When the floodgates that keep the city dry are breached during a massive hurricane, the museum is inundated with water. The story is told from the perspective of Nonie, an adolescent insect enthusiast and the child of museum staffers who have taken flood refuge at their workplace. . . The survivors flee the museum using a birchbark canoe taken from one of the exhibits and carefully make their way through the flooded city to the Hudson River. They then face a series of challenges and nearly lose everything before overcoming adversity in an epic finale. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen. In this sweeping and heart-rending debut, Chen brings to life more than 60 years of Chinese history through the tale of childhood sweethearts separated by war and reunited decades later in America. . . In the historical timeline, Haiwen enlists in the Nationalist army in a misguided effort to help his family, a decision that will tragically reverberate through succeeding generations. Suchi, meanwhile, is sent to Hong Kong with her older sister to escape the war. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson. The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick. When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. . . In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present. - from the publisher.

NONFICTION

The Survivor: How I Made It Through Six Concentration Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter by Josef Lewkowicz and Michael Calvin.  Lewkowicz, a survivor of six concentration camps during the Holocaust, later became a Nazi hunter who captured SS commander Amon Goeth (a key figure in Schindler's List). Copyright 2024 Library Journal.

You'll Never Believe Me: A Life of Lies, Second Tries, and Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist by Kari Ferrell.  Ferrell debuts with a raw and riveting account of how she became infamous for scamming New York City’s hipsters… The New YorkObserver nicknamed Ferrell “the Hipster Grifter,” and, while serving nearly a year in jail for her crimes, she began to drop her hard-edged persona as she met and bonded with her fellow inmates. After her release, Ferrell became a prisoners’ rights advocate and developed a production company that focuses on work from women of color. With a combination of bruising vulnerability and self-deprecating humor (“I was like a law-breaking Martha Stewart. Oh, wait”), Ferrell’s audacious coming-of-age tale pairs the thrill of true crime with the redemptive arc of a good memoir. It’s a deliciously edgy testament to reinvention. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.

How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert.  Winner of the Dave Greber Book Award for social justice writing, Reichert pens a culinary memoir about her childhood, early adulthood, and midlife as she reflects on her father's survival of the Holocaust, her family's foodways, and all that she has come to know about food, history, and inheritance. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.