15 Books You Should Read This Spring

'The Hacienda,' by Isabel Cañas

Release Date: May 3

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches.

During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined…

'Disorientation,' by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Release Date: March 22

A Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel.

PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about "Chinese-y" things again. When she accidentally stumbles upon a note in the Chou archives, she’s convinced it's her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid's clumsy exploits to unravel the note's message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. 

'Finding Me,' by Viola Davis

Release Date: April 26

"This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn't always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination.. So I wrote this for anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be you."

- Viola Davis

'The Candy House,' by Jennifer Egan

Release Date: April 5

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity and meaning in a world where memories and identities are no longer private.

Bix Bouton’s company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix's popular new technology allows you to access and share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others. Not everyone his seduced by the technology, however, and those who exploit the technology linger in the background.

'You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty,' by Akwaeke Emezi

Release Date: May 24

A New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and one of our greatest living writers the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss.

It's been five years since the accident that killed the love of Feyi Adekola’s life, and she's ready to date again. A steamy encounter cascades into a whirlwind summer romance. However, her relationship might be sabotaged by her own desire for one person definitely off-limits: her new beau’s father. Fevi’s life just got complicated, and she must begin her search for real answers.

'Murder Among Friends,' by Candace Fleming

Release Date: March 29

In 1924, eighteen-year-old college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb made a decision. They would commit the perfect crime by kidnapping and murdering a child they knew. But as they were disposing of the body of young Bobby Franks, Nathan's eyeglasses fell from his jacket pocket.

Candace Fleming depicts every twist and turn of this harrowing case: how two wealthy, brilliant young men planned and committed what became known as the crime of the century, how they were caught, why they confessed, and how the renowned criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow enabled them to avoid the death penalty.

'Book Lovers,' by Emily Henry

Release Date: May 3

The only people who idolize Nora Stephens are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby. When she goes on a sisters’ trip with Libby to rural North Carolina, she expects rugged bartenders and handsome country doctors. Instead, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city.

Charlie himself is nobody’s hero, but Nora and him are thrown together in a series of coincidences no editor would ever allow. What they discover could unravel the carefully crafted stories they've written about themselves.

'Portrait of a Thief,' by Grace D. Li

Release Date: April 5

Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.

Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism. Will Chen plans to steal them back. If he and his crew succeed? They earn $50 million, and a chance to make history. But failure means the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves and another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

'Sea of Tranquility,' by Emily St. James Mandel

Release Date: April 5

The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.

'The Memory Librarian: and Other Stories of Dirty Computer,' by Janelle Monáe

Release Date: April 19

In The Memory Librarian, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, activist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation - queerness, race, gender plurality, and love - become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape, and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it's like to live in such a totalitarian existence, and what it takes to get out of it.

'Ancestor Trouble,' by Maud Newton

Release Date: March 29

An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves.

Searching, moving, and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer's attempt to use genealogy, a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry, to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

'Happy-Go-Lucky,' by David Sedaris

Release Date: May 31

As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, David Sedaris is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he's stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.

In Happy-Go-Lucky, Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about recent history. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

'The Book of Cold Cases,' by Simone St. James

Release Date: March 15

In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by a pair of murders after two men were gunned down. Beth Greer, a wealthy young woman, was put on trial, but was later acquitted.

Forty years later: Shea Collins she runs a true crime website. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea gets the chance to interview her at her mansion. The allure of learning the truth about the case from Beth is too much to resist, but Shea senses something isn't right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the Greer house? 

'Memphis,' by Tara M. Stringfellow

Release Date: April 5

A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter's discovery that she has the power to change her family's legacy.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

'Owning the Sun,' by Alexander Zaitchik

Release Date: March 1

For readers of Bad Blood and Empire of Pain, an authoritative look at monopoly medicine from the dawn of patents through the race for COVID-19 vaccines and how the privatization of public science has prioritized profits over people.

Owning the Sun tells the story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the right to produce lifesaving medicines. Outlining how public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against Big Pharma and their allies in government, Alexander Zaitchik's first-of-its-kind history documents the rise of privatized medicine in the United States and its subsequent globalization.