Books Publishing This Week
The afternoon light filters through the window, golden and soft, stretching long shadows across the floor. March is a month of in-betweens—not quite winter, not quite spring. The air still holds a lingering chill, but there’s a new warmth in the sun, a whisper of the season to come. You can hear the occasional drip of melting ice outside, the slow retreat of winter as the earth wakes up from its slumber.
It’s the perfect kind of afternoon to slow down, to settle in with a book you’ve been meaning to start. You’ve had it sitting on your shelf for a while, waiting for just the right moment. And now, with the afternoon stretching before you like an open page, you decide this is the time.
You make yourself comfortable, gathering the small comforts that turn reading into a ritual. A warm mug of tea, fragrant and steaming, sits within reach on the side table. A soft, knit throw blanket—one you’ve kept nearby all winter—drapes over your legs as you curl into your favorite spot. The couch is positioned just right, where the sunlight spills onto the cushions, making everything feel just a little cozier.
The book feels solid in your hands, the weight of it grounding. You run your fingers along the cover, smooth and cool, before flipping to the first page. There’s always something special about this moment—the pause before you step into a new world, when the story is still full of unknowns, waiting to unfold.
You begin to read, and just like that, the world around you begins to fade. The faint sounds of the house—the ticking clock, the distant hum of traffic, the occasional creak of the floorboards—drift to the background as the words on the page take hold.
The characters come to life, their voices distinct, their emotions real. The setting forms around you, vivid and detailed, as if you could reach out and touch it. The afternoon sun shifts slightly, casting a warm glow over the page, and you lose track of time, caught in the rhythm of the sentences, the unfolding of the plot.
From time to time, you pause, stretching slightly, taking a sip of your tea. It’s cooled just enough to drink comfortably, and the warmth spreads through you, soothing and familiar. Outside, a breeze stirs the bare branches of the trees, shaking loose a few lingering raindrops from the morning’s drizzle. The air smells fresh, like the world is on the edge of something new.
You turn another page, then another. The afternoon drifts by, slow and steady, wrapped in the quiet magic of a good book. This is the kind of moment you’ll remember later—not for anything grand or extraordinary, but for its simplicity, its ease. The quiet comfort of a March afternoon, a story unfolding in your hands, the soft warmth of the sun as winter gives way, little by little, to spring.
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Books Publishing This Week: March 9 - 15
Heat of the Everflame by Penn Cole
The third installment in the #BookTok sensation and New York Times bestselling series that started with Spark of the Everflame—now in a collectible hardcover edition featuring gorgeous full-color endpapers, an exclusive designed hardcover case, and a never-before-seen bonus chapter.
The war has begun. Both sides demand Diem’s allegiance—or her death.
After her disastrous coronation, Diem finds herself at the center of the conflict between the Descended and the Guardians. With her newfound friends and the man she’s falling for on one side, and the mortals she has vowed to protect on the other, Diem must walk a careful line to save the people she loves…even from one another.
When the mystery of her unusual heritage begins to unravel, it sends Diem and Luther on an unexpected journey across the realms. The answers they seek may hold the key to winning the war, but finding them will require Diem to face painful truths about her mother, her bloodline, and her fate.
Meanwhile, the Crowns have set Diem in their sights. Some could be her greatest allies—while others want her dead. To end their oppressive reign, Diem must sort friend from foe and risk it all to build an army of her own.
But a powerful figure in the north has plans that could change everything…
This collectible hardcover edition includes an exclusive bonus chapter from Luther’s point of view.
Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation’s River by Charlotte Taylor Fryar
An impassioned meditation on American identity and its ebb and flow through the Capital’s great waterway
As she walks the length of the Potomac River, clambering up its banks and sounding its depths, Charlotte Taylor Fryar examines the geography and ecology of Washington, D.C. with all manner of flora and fauna as her witness. The ecological traces of human inhabitancy provide her with imaginative access into America’s past, for her true subject is the origin of our splintered nation and racially divided capital.
From the gentrified neighborhood of Shaw to George Washington’s slave labor camp at Mount Vernon, Potomac Fever maps the troubled histories of the United States by leading us along the less-trafficked trails and side streets of our capital city, steeped in the legacy of white supremacy and colonialism. In the end, Fryar offers hope for how “we might grow a society guided by the ethics and values of the places we live.”
A synthesis of historical, environmental, and personal narrative, this compelling debut work of nonfiction exposes the roots of our national myths, awash in the waters of America’s renowned river.
Luminous by Silvia Park
In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.
Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.
On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.
While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.
Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn
Author Interview with Deanna Raybourn
Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.
After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a call from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.
Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.
Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.
Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted by Ben Okri
In this modern fable with the impish magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a masked ball makes two upper-class British couples see each other in a new light.
A wise, enchanting novel about love, power, and our many selves—past and future, public and private—from the Booker Prize–winning author.
There are organizations for people who grieve, for alcoholics and other kinds of addicts. But if you’ve been devastated by the love of your life walking out on you, where the hell do you go?
On the 20th anniversary of the day her first husband left her, Viv decides to host an unconventional party for those burned by love. She successfully ropes in her reluctant second husband, Alan, and their friends Beatrice and Stephen, and when she meets the famed fortuneteller Madame Sosostris—last seen in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and rumored to be the secret to success of 5 prime ministers—she believes she’s found the perfect act to headline her masquerade.
In a sacred wood in the south of France, the partygoers disguise themselves and wait eagerly for the great clairvoyant, who might be able to mend their broken pasts and brighten their futures. But the night soon goes awry, in a comically revealing way that causes our couples to question their relationships and the direction of their lives.
And They Had a Great Fall: A Novel by Shelby Saville
For fans of Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You, a debut contemporary romance about a celebrity and a single mother who push and pull against each other as they teeter between a carrying on a secret affair and living an authentic life.
If Jake Laurent is the “human equivalent of Friday,” Kat Green is “Monday.” Nevertheless, the two shared a secret (if casual) affair during the pandemic, and now, almost exactly one year later, they’ve reunited in Copenhagen, the “city of fairy tales.” Only neither one of them is living a fairy tale.
Jake is a young actor who’s cracking under the public pressure that comes with rising celebrity. Kat is a single mother at the top of her career who believes she’s holding it all together but is barely living. Each one is a simple escape for the other—until the security Kat has worked so hard to build for her tiny family comes under threat, and Jake has to decide if he can keep Kat a secret even if it’s at the expense of his own fame.
And They Had a Great Fall is the story of two people who are going through the motions in life—until they finally look inside themselves to figure out what it takes to find a happily ever after.
The Serpent Bearer: A Novel by Jane Rosenthal
Part World War II spy thriller, part romance, and part tale of buried family secrets, The Serpent Bearer is perfect for fans of Kelly Rimmer’s The German Wife and Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network.
A suspenseful tale stretching from Spain to Hollywood, from a small Jewish community in South Carolina to a crumbling hacienda in the Yucatan, The Serpent Bearer carries readers into the lives of a glamorous British aristocrat, a Jewish gambler, and a beautiful Hollywood screenwriter—all swept up by dangerous political currents during WWII.
Solly Meisner, a Spanish Civil War veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, has barely settled in after his return home when he discovers powerful Nazi sympathizers are working behind the scenes in his new hometown of Pennington, South Carolina. Determined to stop them, he signs on with the Coordinating Office of Information (COI), a newly formed US spy agency. His first assignment: travel to the Yucatan and infiltrate a group of German spies and collaborators—including Estelle, a beautiful British woman he fell in love with in Spain, and whom he fears may have betrayed him.
In the Yucatan Solly encounters a band of European exiles, not all of them who they claim to be. With his contacts dropping like flies, danger lurks at every turn. But with the Nazis only a few hundred miles from the US coast and making plans for an invasion, there is no time to lose, and no one Solly trusts to track them down and stop them but himself. If he fails, the world he once knew will be gone forever—and the people he loves with it.
Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo
A haunted woman stalked by a serial killer confronts the horrors of fairy tales and the nightmares of real life in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by a Bram Stoker Award–winning author.
It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.
The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.
A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams―they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer. But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon, she’ll be walking among them.
Blood Beneath the Snow by Alexandra Kennington
Revna is no stranger to struggle. As the only member of the royal family without a magical ability, she is seen as an embarrassing mistake to her kingdom and a blight on her family tree. Luckily, Revna has found family in other outcasts in her kingdom. But when her two closest friends’ lives are put in danger, she is determined to save them by any means necessary, no matter the cost. The Bloodshed Trials—a competition where the last sibling in the royal family standing takes the throne—might just be the ultimate price.
Revna turns down her arranged marriage and commits to competing for the throne only to be kidnapped by the mysterious and terrifyingly powerful Hellbringer, the general of her country’s greatest enemy. He has the ability to rend souls with the flick of his wrist and is every inch as intimidating as the war stories say he is. But Revna wonders if there may be some humanity left in him—especially when he reveals there are other parties who want her on the throne for their own furtive reasons.
The Only Light in London by Lily Graham
She took him in when no one else would. She didn't expect to fall in love...
London, 1939. When Finley offers her spare room to refugee Sebastien, she sees relief in his haunted eyes. Forced to flee the hatred in Germany, Sebastien has been desperately lonely in his adopted country. Finley lost her father in the last war and feels a stab of empathy for the pain of this thin stranger, separated from his loved ones, far away from home.
At first, Finley and Sebastien are like ships in the night, exchanging bashful goodnights in the corridor. But Finley quickly realizes that Sebastien is too terrified to sleep, plagued by thoughts of his smiling little sister being snatched by soldiers. As the London sky darkens with enemy planes, he slowly opens up to her over cups of cocoa in the kitchen.
Every time Sebastien speaks to Finley, she finds herself inching closer to him, and soon love begins to grow. But when he tells her he wants to join the English army, to fight the people who have forced his family to face such horror, she must silence her devastation in her heart. She knows if she were in his shoes, she would do the same thing, and she must be brave too. She will stay in London, waiting for Sebastien, and helping other refugees like him.
As the bombs rain down, and the London streets empty, she knows she faces grave dangers. But she can't hide away while the man she loves risks his life. She needs to do anything she can to defeat the enemy they all share. But the last war cost Finley so much. What will this one take?
Upon The Corner of the Moon: A Tale of the Macbeths by Valerie Nieman
At the dawn of the second millennium, two royal Scottish children are swept away from their families—Macbeth to the perilous royal court of his grandfather, and Gruach to the remnants of the goddess-worshiping Picts. Macbeth learns that blood bonds are easily severed while Gruach finds her path only to lose it when she’s summoned back to the patriarchal world. Each struggle with gaining and losing power, guided and misguided by prophecy and politics as their paths converge in a fiery bid for royal succession. Upon the Corner of the Moon separates literary legend from reality, immersing readers in a story about the real rulers who changed the face of Scotland. Some legends are true, and the truth sometimes becomes a legend—or a lie. This novel masterfully dovetails the Macbeth legend and the truth without sacrificing either.
Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley
Author Interview with Colleen Oakley
Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.
But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.
Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.
Alterations by Kate Maruyama
Adriana, a seamstress for Edith Head at Paramount’s costume department in the 1940s, falls in love with a bit player named Rose and the two move in together. As Adriana’s career blossoms, society and life interfere and Adriana makes decisions that affect three generations of her family.
1998: Laura, Adriana’s granddaughter has left LA on the heels of a failed relationship and a career in film. She moves in with her grandmother in Baltimore to find some time and space to think, but her beloved cousin dies leaving her daughter, Lizzie, who also moves in with them.
You can’t choose your family, but you can’t escape them either. Three lives twine together in the past and the present to take a closer look at how family, tight or not, makes up who we are.
Just Want You Here by Meredith Turits
Swept up in Hulu’s juicy drama Tell Me Lies, based on the novel by Carola Lovering? Your next hit of complicated, raw matters of the young heart comes from debut novelist (and Bustle founding editor) Meredith Turits this springtime with JUST WANT YOU HERE: A Novel (Little A; on sale: March 11, 2025). The novel is an intimate and deeply moving coming-of-age story about second chances and the inextricable bonds between lovers and friends. Lyrically written, JUST WANT YOU HERE delivers drama, romance, and literary sophistication—a one-sitting novel that’s a must-pass-on to friends. It will hauntingly remind you of the intense, chaotic emotions and wandering desire of your late 20s… a time some of us longingly reminisce about, while others hope to forget.
The only love Ari has known is Morgan. Engaged and planning a life with him in New York, Ari is shocked when Morgan sits her down one rainy afternoon and tells her their decade-long relationship is over. They’ve been over for a long time now, he says―and Ari knows he’s right.
Twenty-eight years old and suddenly alone, Ari throws herself into a new job in Boston, as assistant to a tech CEO. Wells is British, twelve years her senior, a devoted husband and father. He’s also captivated by Ari, in a way neither of them can explain. Ignoring every warning signal from friends and their own instincts, they dive into a fiery affair, which becomes more dangerous as Ari finds herself intricately tangled with his wife, Leah. Nothing can prepare Ari for the choices she must make as she tries to uncover what’s right for herself, and for the people she can’t let go. As a new path opens―a journey of lies and the twisted calculus of protecting them―Ari’s second chance at happiness forces her to consider who she really is. Can you love someone without dragging them under? What does it take to start over again?
Fan Service by Rosie Danan
The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for Arcane, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes—sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.)
Ever since his show went off the air, Devin and his career have spiraled, but waking up naked in the woods outside his LA home with no memory of the night before is a new low. It must have been a coincidence that the once-in-a-century Wolf Blood Moon crested last night. The claws, fangs, and howling are a little more difficult to explain away. Desperate for answers, Devin finds Alex—the closest thing to an expert that exists. If only he could convince her to stop hating his guts long enough to help....
Once he makes her an offer she can’t refuse, these reluctant allies lower their guards trying to wrangle his inner beast. Unfortunately, getting up close and personal quickly comes back to bite them.
Counting Backwards by Jacqueline Friedland
A routine immigration case, a shocking legacy. Jessa Gidney's quest for justice draws her into the heart of an abhorrent conspiracy. As she uncovers her personal ties to a heartbreaking past, her life takes a dramatic turn, in this emotionally riveting novel inspired by true events.
New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all--a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage, and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family's history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby ICE detention center. There she meets Isobel Pérez--a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter--but as she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel's health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. One that shockingly has ties to her own family.
Virginia, 1927. Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a different future--one separate from her exploitative foster family--unknowing of the ripples her small, country life will have on an entire nation.
As Jessa works to assemble a case against the prison and the crimes she believes are being committed there, she discovers the landmark Supreme Court case involving Carrie Buck. Her connection to the case, however, is deeper and much more personal than she ever knew--sending her down new paths that will leave her forever changed and determined to fight for these women, no matter the cost.
Alternating between the past and present, and deftly tackling timely-yet-timeless issues such as reproductive rights, incarceration, and society's expectations of women and mothers, Counting Backwards is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won. A moving story of two remarkable women that you'll remember for years to come.
Family Treasures Lost and Found by Karen A. Frenkel
In FAMILY TREASURES LOST & FOUND, Karen A. Frenkel chronicles the survival of her Polish Jewish parents and her paternal grandfather, the fates of her other grandparents and uncle, and her own journey to recover her family history—particularly the parts her father refused to talk about and those her mother glossed over. Beginning in 2014 on the cusp of turning 60, Frenkel embarked on a seven-year quest to understand how far her parents went—emotionally, physically, and morally—to save themselves from the Nazi onslaught. Using her skills as a journalist, she investigated unspoken parts of her parents’ pre-war lives and WWII experiences, drawing on her mother’s recorded oral history and rare personal archive of photos, art, and correspondence, as well visiting Kraków, Lviv, Tarnów, and Vienna. In the end, Frenkel was not only filled with newfound admiration for her parents—she came to love people she had never met.
Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder by Brandi Bradley
In “Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder," maintaining appearances is more than important–it’s a matter of life or death.
When a young entrepreneur is killed, everyone in town points fingers at his picture-perfect fitness influencer ex-girlfriend, Gabbi – including the victim’s best friend, Jenna. As detective Lindy D’Arnaud and her partner Boggs search for a motive, they begin to wonder if this is a case of jealous violence or something much deeper. In Lindy’s personal life, things aren’t much clearer. When Lindy’s wife’s ex-boyfriend–and sperm donor to their baby–decides to move back to town, she finds herself competing for her wife’s affection.
Told through the shifting perspectives of Lindy, Gabbi, and Jenna, “Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder” is a page-turning Southern noir novel brimming with quick wit and juicy gossip.
Boy With Wings by Mark Mustian
Johnny Cruel is born with wing-like appendages. Is it a miracle, or is he cursed? Is he an angel or a horror? Struggling to find his place in the world, Johnny ends up in a freak show traveling the 1930s South, where he bares his back to onlookers who come to gape, laugh, recoil and fawn. While looking for a place to call home, Johnny notices a strange man who pursues him. What does this man want, and can he be trusted? In his signature fashion, Mustian pens a thrilling and emotional story of self-discovery perfect for book clubs and fans of historical fiction.
