Did one of the book covers on our homepage catch your eye? They are all new titles being released in January 2022, and all are well-reviewed and anticipated. You can read the description of each below, then click the linked title to request a copy or get your name on the wait list. And don't forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
Featured Fiction for January
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl GonzalezIt's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers.
But behind closed doors things are less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1% but she can’t find her own. Then she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront family secrets.
Olga and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
In 2030, an archeologist arrives in the Arctic to continue the work of his deceased daughter, where researchers are studying secrets revealed in melting permafrost, including the preserved remains of a girl who died of a virus.
Once unleashed, the Arctic plague reshapes life for generations, traversing the globe, forcing humans to devise ways to embrace possibility amidst tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, an employee falls in love with a mother desperate to keep her infected son. A scientist finds that one of his test subjects—a pig—develops capacity for human speech. A painter and her granddaughter go on a cosmic quest to locate a new planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, the author takes readers on an original and compassionate journey.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess: Celestial Kingdom, Book One by Sue Lynn Tan
Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is used to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother. But when Xingyin’s existence is discovered, she is forced to flee, leaving her mother behind.
Alone and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the Crown Prince, mastering archery and magic, even as passion grows between her and the emperor’s son.
To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies. When treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the Celestial Emperor.
Featured Nonfiction for January
Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma by Galit Atlas
The people we love and those who raised us live inside us; we experience their emotional pain, we dream their memories, and these things shape our lives in ways we don’t always recognize. Emotional Inheritance is about family secrets that keep us from living to our full potential, create gaps between what we want for ourselves and what we are able to have, and haunt us like ghosts.
In this transformative book, the author entwines the stories of her patients, her own stories, and decades of research to help us identify the links between our life struggles and the “emotional inheritance” we all carry.
Murder at Teal's Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery that Inspired Twin Peaks by David Bushman and Mark T. Givens
In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities―young and beautiful with secrets. Perhaps the trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew?
Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty?
Rise: My Story by Lindsey Vonn
A fixture in American sports for almost 20 years, Vonn is a legend. With a career that transformed how America celebrates female athletes, Vonn—who retired in 2019 as the most decorated American skier of all time—was in the vanguard of that change.
In Rise, she shares her incredible journey, going behind the scenes of a life built around resilience and risk-taking. She offers a glimpse into her pursuit of her limits, a pursuit so focused on one-upping herself that she pushed her body past its breaking point. While this grit and perseverance helped her fight injuries, it came with a cost—physical and mental. Vonn opens up about her depression and struggles with self-confidence. She dissects the moments that sidelined her and how, each time, she came back using an approach rooted in hard work.
