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Readers' Most Anticipated December Books
At the beginning of each calendar month, Goodreads’ crack editorial squad assembles a list of the hottest and most popular new books hitting shelves, actual and virtual. The list is generated by evaluating readers’ early reviews and tracking which titles are being added to Want to Read shelves by Goodreads regulars.
Each month’s curated preview features new books from across the genre spectrum: contemporary fiction, historical fiction, mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy, romance, horror, young adult, nonfiction, and more. Think of it as a literary smorgasbord. Check out whatever looks delicious.
New in December: South African author Nadia Davids puts a colonial spin on the gothic novel with Cape Fever. Pakistani author Sarah Mughal Rana conjures jinn in the high-fantasy variant Dawn of the Firebird. And South Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum celebrates the joy of books in the essay collection Every Day I Read.
Also in the mix this month: Small-town romance in Denver, dark academia in New England, and historical fiction in 13th-century Bruges. Plus a new biography of Dolly Parton!
Each month’s curated preview features new books from across the genre spectrum: contemporary fiction, historical fiction, mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy, romance, horror, young adult, nonfiction, and more. Think of it as a literary smorgasbord. Check out whatever looks delicious.
New in December: South African author Nadia Davids puts a colonial spin on the gothic novel with Cape Fever. Pakistani author Sarah Mughal Rana conjures jinn in the high-fantasy variant Dawn of the Firebird. And South Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum celebrates the joy of books in the essay collection Every Day I Read.
Also in the mix this month: Small-town romance in Denver, dark academia in New England, and historical fiction in 13th-century Bruges. Plus a new biography of Dolly Parton!
Set in the 13th-century Carolingian Empire, this debut novel from author Janet Rich Edwards introduces teenage Aleys, who flees an arranged marriage to join a sisterhood of dedicated mystics. By way of vivid historical fiction, author Edwards explores the streets and canals of Bruges and the real-life religious order known as the Beguines. But the book is also digging for deeper truths about historical pivot points and the ultimate existential mystery. Bonus trivia: Edwards is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard.
For those who prefer the shadowy bookshop aisles, Dark Sisters is a ferocious story from the intersection of horror and historical fiction. Author Kristi DeMeester uses multiple POVs and timelines to track three generations of witches who engage with the dark arts to escape a culture relentlessly hostile to women. Look for 18th-century witch hunts, 1950s systemic misogyny, and 21st-century patriarchal oppression. Meanwhile, the legend of the Dark Sisters travels down through the years. What has really changed?
One of the season’s most interesting story setups comes from author Tory Henwood Hoen (The Arc), who presents a kind of delayed coming-of-age story turned quarter-life crisis. Twentysomething Cricket Campbell returns to her family’s lake house to help care for her suddenly fading father. But things get strange when dad’s Alzheimer’s disease morphs into something resembling prophecy. Author Hoen brings heart and humor to a story that asks big questions about memory, inertia, and maybe even causality itself.
A literary expedition into the heart of Hollywood—or maybe the perpetual American dream of Hollywood—Television is the debut novel from author and director Lauren Rothery. Told via three intertwining perspectives, the novel follows an aging A-list movie star who decides to give away his millions in a kind of improvised lottery. But just underneath the action, Rothery asks compelling questions about fame, true love, and how we make meaning in our modern, media-drenched world.
The fourth installment of Sarah Adams’ When in Rome romance series once again brings the action to the small town of Rome, Kentucky. It seems that hometown girl Madison Walker has returned to launch an upmarket farm-to-table restaurant. Unfortunately, the farm in question is owned by James Huxley, a figure from Madison’s past who—well, let’s just say there’s a history. Author Adams (The Cheat Sheet) also mixes in a bit of sibling rivalry and small-town meddling. It’s never easy, is it?
More romance to warm up your December nights, this time with a little subgenre splicing involved: With The Mating Game, author Lana Ferguson (The Nanny) delivers a kind of paranormal/holiday hybrid story concerning a Colorado renovator who is also a late-blooming werewolf. Tess Covington can’t afford trouble, and since she’s about to go into heat, it’s critical that she avoid alpha wolves like subcontractor Hunter Barrett. Alas, they’re working on the same construction project. Can these two keep their paws off each other? Let’s find out!
If you’re in the market for a new romantasy saga, check out this new series starter from author Stacia Stark. Genre fans may remember Stark from her Kingdom of Lies books, which cover similar slow-burn, max-steam territory. This time around, readers are transported to an alternate ancient Rome where cruel vampires run the show. Look for lots of gladiator/arena action, a doggedly self-reliant heroine, and a particularly intense vampire love triangle. Early readers are digging it.
Fans of dark academia will want to consider this intriguing specimen from Kamilah Cole, who wraps traditional horror and fantasy elements around a spooky central mystery. First-year student Ellory Morgan is entirely aware of Warren University’s dark and occult-haunted past. What she’s not prepared for is the intense déjà vu. Somehow, Ellory has been here before. When she teams with brooding legacy student Hudson Graves, the weirdness commences. Early readers are praising the atmospheric writing, BIPOC representation, and twisty reveals.
Set in northern England amidst the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the late 1970s, Jennie Godfrey’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story wrapped in a historical mystery. When 11-year-old Miv hears about the disappearing women, she undertakes an investigation with her best friend, Sharon. The idea is to find the killer by investigating all the suspicious people on their street. Turns out, there are loads of dodgy things going on. Early readers are vibing with this story of lost innocence and dark nostalgia.
South African author Nadia Davids invites readers to a crumbling mansion near an unnamed city in a colonial empire, circa 1920. Our narrator Soraya, from the nearby Muslim Quarter, works as maid and personal assistant to elderly Mrs. Hattingh, who forever awaits her son’s visit from London. Davids’ novel leverages the mood and atmosphere of the classic gothic novel, but with spirits and ghosts rising from the place where psychological suspense meets cold, hard historical fact.
Born with a hole in her heart, 13-year-old Ida lives a necessarily sheltered life in the small logging town of Mineral, Washington. When her older cousin Elna comes to visit from San Franscisco, Ida gets a glimpse of the other side of adolescence—dangerous, thrilling, mysterious. But when a strange man dies beneath the winter ice of Needle Lake, the two cousins must guard an awful secret. Early readers report that Justine Champine’s coming-of-age mystery delivers beautiful prose and psychological depth.
Here’s a compelling end-of-year option for SFF readers and completists: Tailored Realities is the new short fiction collection from the prolific Brandon Sanderson, author of The Stormlight Archive, The Mistborn Saga, and the concluding chapters of Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time series. Mostly sci-fi, with some detours into urban fantasy, the new collection includes previously published short stories and flash fiction, plus the new time-traveling zombie novella Moment Zero.
The rarest and most valuable volume in the Library of Fates is the magical tome known as The Book of Dark Nights. It’s the kind of book that proposes a bargain: Write your most terrible secret in its pages, and it will generate a prediction for your future—in your own handwriting, no less. Author Margot Harrison’s fantasy/mystery tells the story of two former classmates who must work together when the book goes missing. Books about books are the best kind of books.
With Dawn of the Firebird, Pakistani author and Oxford University student Sarah Mughal Rana brings new ideas into the occupied lands of high fantasy. The gist: Khamilla Zahr-zad forsakes the life of a nomadic storyteller to join the clan of her emperor father. Kindling the spark of her own powerful magic, she hides her identity to brave the winds of war. Secrets are revealed as Khamilla learns from and/or fights with warrior monks, treacherous courtiers, wizened scholars, and mysterious jinn.
California author Katrina Leno has staked an admirable claim in the YA book world with stories that blend in elements of fantasy, horror, magical realism, and general speculative loveliness. Her latest book profiles four sisters who befriend a ghost in their Manhattan brownstone apartment. Family lore says that all women in the Farthing bloodline are directly descended from Persephone, the Greek goddess of death. So, that helps in a situation like this. Bonus trivia: Leno’s website is pretty adorable.
Desperate, broke, and fleeing a bad marriage, Selena retreats to her aunt’s homestead in the odd desert town of Quartz Creek. She soon makes a series of discoveries: Her aunt is dead. Her neighbors are extremely…hmm, eccentric is perhaps the polite term. And, most importantly, several of them are ancient gods and desert spirits. Fantasy author T. Kingfisher, a.k.a. Ursula Vernon, is incapable of writing an uninteresting book, and early readers are suggesting this one is on the cozier end of the spectrum.
By day, Andi Zeigler is personal assistant to the wife of the prime minister of Canada. By night, she writes especially steamy romance novels under a secret pen name. Actually, Andi’s latest book has caused a stir since she titled it, perhaps unwisely, The Prime Minister & Me. Meanwhile, the PM’s new bodyguard looks awfully familiar, in that one-night-stand kind of way. Trouble, she is a-brewing. Ottawa author Amy Lea returns to her specialty of twisty, lively rom-coms.
It’s a pickle, all right: When her friend bails at the last minute, Stella Renee Johnson finds herself visiting a sex club for the first time. The next day at work, the sexy stranger from the night before walks into the office. Not only that, it seems that he’s the inventor of the AI program about to cost Stella her job. YA author Zakiya N. Jamal makes her adult romance debut with this lighthearted but acutely steamy story of 21st-century problems.
America can’t agree on much these days, but there’s one notion we can all get behind: Dolly Parton is the best. In her new biography, author Martha Ackmann tracks Parton’s personal and professional life, from her impoverished Smoky Mountains childhood to her incredible career as a musician, a businesswoman, and a really quite extraordinary philanthropist. Bonus trivia: Ackman has previously published books on women in NASA and the first female ballplayer in the Negro Leagues.
Here’s one for the serious book lover: Every Day I Read is a collection of essays from South Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum specifically about the art and science of reading itself. Topics include critical book-nerd concerns like the magic of characterization and the oddly specific joys of genre. Bonus trivia: Hwang made an international splash with her debut novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, which has since been translated into several languages.
