If you are looking for a great new book, then you are in the right place. Choosing your next read can sometimes feel like an impossible task, particularly when there is an overwhelming number of new releases heading our way for spring. But we’ve done all the advanced copy reading so you don’t have to – and whittled it down to this carefully curated selection.
From the return of a literary great to mind-expanding nonfiction, here is our pick of the 14 books you should know about this month….
The first novel in over a decade from the author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun is quite the literary event. Deftly interweaving the stories of four women who are each at reckoning points in their lives, it is a typically acute study of love and fulfilment.
Fourth Estate, £20
A compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex, this novel follows István as he leaves Hungary and steps into the uber-rich world of London’s upper classes. Szalay, a Booker-shortlisted author, has that rare ability of conveying entire galaxies in the most sparse of writing.
Jonathan Cape, £20
The follow up to Peters’ 2021 megahit novel Detransition Baby comes with high expectation – and delivers. Stag Dance is a wry, merciless quartet of tales, each of which explore gender across time and place – from the crossdresser in a Las Vegas party to the near-future in which everyone must decide their sex.
Serpent’s Tail, £16.99
For fans of Daisy Jones & The Six and One Day, here is the will-they-won’t-they love story of Percy and Joe, who meet in college in the early 2000s and go on to make world-changing music together. Propulsive, transportive storytelling which is destined for the screen.
Borough Press, £16.99
In this deep-dive into our obsession with wealth and the power of words, a man is bludgeoned with a solid gold bar, and a young journalist sets out to uncover the truth of the attack in a long-read that goes viral. The novel is as smart and compelling as Assembly, the debut which launched Brown’s career.
Faber, £14.99
This story of a love affair is so addictive it could be at home with the thrillers – it is no wonder Reese Witherspoon’s production company is already set to adapt it. At its heart is Beth, whose life veers off-course when her first love returns to her small village. A simmering book of secrets, scandal and devastating consequences.
John Murray, £16.99
A feminist reimagining of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, this seafaring adventure novel is told from the perspective of a young woman who disguises herself as a cabin boy. Call Me Ishmaelle is a clever and wonderfully original skewering of a classic.
Chatto & Windus, £18.99
In 90s Zanzibar, three young friends from very different backgrounds come of age against the complicated backdrop of post-colonial East Africa. Gurnah’s first novel since being awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, expect to see this one on plenty more prize lists.
Bloomsbury, £18.99
In this very modern ghost story set in the nightmarish world of renting, Aine moves into a damp and mouldy basement flat with her boyfriend Elliot and just cannot shake the feeling that something isn’t right. A terrifically unnerving novel with a lot to say about housing, relationships and society.
Fig Tree, £16.99
Despite the hundreds of Beatles biographies that have come before it, the psychologist author behind John & Paul has done the impossible and breathed new life into a overdone subject – using songs as a lens through which to study the friendship, collaboration and genius of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Faber, £25
Weston, a talented surgeon and presenter, always felt there was something missing in the way she was taught about anatomy during medical school. Now she has written an organ-by-organ exploration of the body, which will change the way you think about it forever.
Jonathan Cape, £20
Rubenhold’s 2019 book The Five gave much overdue recognition to the women murdered by Jack the Ripper. Now, she brings her revisionist prose to the famous case of Dr Crippen, who killed his wife in the early 1900s, in this gripping, eye-opening read.
Doubleday, £25
During her second maternity leave, the broadcaster realised that for all the parenting books out there, filled with advice about weaning or sleep schedules, none focused on the particular dizzying period of mat leave itself. So she wrote one. This short, comforting book will be a much-needed companion to many.
Fig Tree, £12.99
The first adult non-fiction book Morpurgo has written in four decades is at once an account of life on his Devon farm during springtime and a glorious ode to the season. Woven into his encounters with wildlife, memories from childhood and musings on blooms are short poems, making this the ultimate gift-worthy book.
Hodder Press, £16.99
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