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Readers' Most Anticipated Books of January

Posted by Cybil on December 30, 2021

It’s tempting, at the beginning of a new calendar year, to participate in that perennial ritual of disappointment—the New Year’s Resolution. Let’s be honest: These resolutions seldom, if ever, play out.

Instead, hopeless book lovers might want to try the New Year’s Resignation, in which we simply resign ourselves to our happy habit. This year I pledge to do as I do every year: Curl into my latest book when confronted with chores, meetings, work, and other unpleasantries. It’s not the most efficient lifestyle choice, but it is an honest one.

New book coming in January: A centenarian looks back on 100 years of labor and love in Isabel Allende’s Violeta. An ICU doctor faces down the cascading tragedies of a global pandemic in Weike Wang’s Joan Is Okay. And a sinister new internet meme targets America’s teenagers in Noah Hawley’s Anthem. Also this month: parental reform schools, a climate change apocalypse, and a new kind of serial killer story.

Each month the Goodreads editorial team takes a look at the books that are being published in the U.S., readers' early reviews, and how many readers are adding these books to their Want to Read shelves (which is how we measure anticipation). We use the information to curate this list of hottest new releases.

The Maid
by Nita Prose

This debut mystery from industry veteran and longtime book editor Nita Prose demonstrates the author's deep knowledge of the form. It’s a locked-room mystery, Agatha Christie style, with deep characterizations and a heartwarming center. Naive 20-something maid Molly Gray has her orderly world shattered when she comes across a dead body. But Molly is good at what she does—hotel maids know a lot more about our habits than we think.

Violeta
by Isabel Allende

As historical fiction of the epic variety, Violeta pulls out all the stops. Our heroine, Violeta del Valle, born in 1920, has seen it all over the course of her loooong life. The Great Depression. The Spanish Flu. Heartbreak and joy. Passion and grief. Revolutions both personal and political. She’s 100 years old, she remembers it all, and now she’s living through her second global pandemic. Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende (A Long Petal of the Sea) often writes in the magic realism tradition, so expect some surprises.

To Paradise
by Hanya Yanagihara

Hanya Yanagihara, author of the acclaimed 2015 novel A Little Life, is not fooling around with her wildly ambitious new book. To Paradise threads together three separate timelines—an alternate history of America circa 1893, a contemporary Manhattan story in 1993, and a futuristic vision of our ravaged and totalitarian nation in 2093. It’s three fin de siècle novels in one, stitched into one powerful vision—nothing less than the past, present, and future of the American experiment. Sounds awesome, frankly.

Joan Is Okay
by Weike Wang

This new novel from author Weike Wang (Chemistry) profiles an extremely busy ICU doctor in an extremely taxed New York City hospital. With her unit in constant crisis—and her mother who's just returned from China—Joan is pretty far from OK. Wang’s deeply felt character study is part of the fascinating first wave of literary novels to deal directly with our current global crisis. Bonus trivia: The author holds a Harvard doctorate in public health.

How High We Go in the Dark
by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Set in the year 2030—and several centuries after—Sequoia Nagamatsu’s literary sci-fi epic imagines a grim future in which climate change has unleashed an ancient virus previously frozen in the Arctic permafrost. Things get weird as the virus takes hold, the weather gets heavy, and the years roll by. Think funerary skyscrapers, talking pigs, interstellar colonialism—that sort of thing. Fans of cerebral sci-fi will want to put this one in the queue.

Olga Dies Dreaming
by Xóchitl González

Debut novelist Xóchitl González is generating lots of buzz with Olga Dies Dreaming, winner of this month’s unofficial Most Compelling Book Title Award. Siblings Olga and Pedro Acevedo have it going on in their hometown of New York City. She’s a high-society wedding planner; he’s a popular congressman for their Latinx Brooklyn neighborhood. But when Hurricane Maria devastates Puerto Rico, waves of change charge in from the south. For one thing, Mom is coming for an extended visit…

Anthem
by Noah Hawley

Veteran author and TV writer Noah Hawley has set his new thriller about five minutes into the future. A strange new meme is circulating among America’s teenagers. In the suburbs of Chicago, Simon Oliver breaks out of a mental health facility to join other travelers on a quest to find a mysterious figure known only as the Wizard. Hawley’s story is being described as a cross between Kurt Vonnegut and a Brothers Grimm fairy tale—pretty good combo!

The School for Good Mothers
by Jessamine Chan

Author Jessamine Chan’s debut novel takes parental anxiety to new and terrifying places in this dystopian sci-fi parable. In Chan’s frightening future, the government keeps a close eye on all mothers, and if you dare to slip up—let your child walk home alone, say—you might be sent to the institution known as the School for Good Mothers. One mom endures the worst-case scenario, and only her invincible love for her daughter will see her through.

Notes on an Execution
by Danya Kukafka

Danya Kukafka (Girl in Snow) takes an inventive approach to the familiar serial killer narrative with Notes on an Execution, which is being heralded as a new kind of literary suspense novel. As killer Ansel Packer awaits execution, his story is told through the eyes of the women in his life. Recommended for fans of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, Notes examines our culture’s ghoulish obsession with crime stories about (invariably male) serial killers.

The Last House on the Street
by Diane Chamberlain

With her new novel, The Last House on the Street, veteran author Diane Chamberlain (Big Lies in a Small Town) brings readers into a knotty mystery that unwinds in different time periods. Kayla Carter’s husband has just died in an accident while building their dream house in North Carolina. But when an older woman warns her away from moving in, Kayla gradually uncovers a complicated history of violence, forbidden love, and a decades-long search for justice.

Yonder
by Jabari Asim

Poet, playwright, and renowned literary critic Jabari Asim delivers a gripping story of the enduring strength of love and friendship with Yonder, one of the new year’s most anticipated books. In the nadir of the American South, a community of enslaved people who call themselves the Stolen endure vicious abuse and astonishing cruelty. But things start to change when a mysterious preacher visits the sinister plantation. In the spirit of The Water Dancer and The Prophets, Asim’s novel considers the power of love in the darkest days of American history.

Which new releases are you looking forward to reading? Let's talk books in the comments!

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