Ah, spring. It’s the season of blooming flowers, picnics, and leisurely strolls. It’s the perfect season to maximize time outdoors before summer comes along and sends us all right back inside to the comfort of our fans and air conditioning. Taking advantage of the great outdoors doesn’t necessarily mean being active all the time. You can get some much-needed vitamin D by simply moving your downtime outside to your balcony, yard, or nearby park.
If you’re looking for a great book to read as you lounge beneath the shade of a big tree or listen to on a relaxing nature walk, you can’t go wrong with any of the below new releases for spring; they were curated by over 110 million readers on Goodreads.
This narrative reimagination of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn centers the story not around the adventuresome white boy but instead around Jim, the enslaved man who escapes his owner and travels with Huck down the Mississippi River. Percival Everett shows Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion in a radically new light in James. With many of the plot points of Twain’s original novel still in place but with an entirely new perspective, this is a must-read for anyone interested in shifting the way we think about classic American literature.
Publishing March 19.
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect AI robot for her human owner, Doug. She has dinner ready for him every night, wears the outfits he chooses for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. She tries her best to please Doug in every aspect, but as she’s trying, she’s learning, too. As Annie explores human traits such as longing, secrecy, and curiosity, she starts to ask herself whether Doug really genuinely cares for her. What does she owe her “owner,” and what does she owe herself?
Publishing March 19.
Each night, Chrissy Dowling transforms into a princess when she performs her musical cabaret of the life of the late Diana Spencer on the Las Vegas strip. But in reality, Chrissy’s life is more tragic than truly royal, as she subsists on a diet of Adderall and Valium and is dating a married senator. When Chrissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, Chrissy suddenly finds herself immersed in a dangerous world of obsession, fintech, and mobsters. What follows is an addictive thriller full of secrets and scandal.
Publishing March 26.
Fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club will love this fun mystery about a woman who spends her life trying to prevent her foretold murder, only to die in precisely the predicted manner. In 1965, Francis Adams is told by a fortune teller at a fair that she will be murdered. Distressed, she spends her years trying to compile information on her potential future killer, only to be found murdered in her sprawling country estate. In the present day, her great-niece, Annie, is determined to find the killer. Can Annie safely unravel the mystery, or will her investigation send her into the path of a murderer?
Publishing March 26.
In 4 B.C.E., an ambitious courtier is tasked with seducing a young emperor, only to realize that they are both ruled by blood, sex, and intrigue. In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a visitor procure a mysterious medicine, only to accidentally unleash an otherworldly terror. In present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and is sure that they’ve met before. In The Emperor and The Endless Palace, these three seemingly unrelated timelines are woven together by the twists and turns of fate.
Publishing March 26.
Justin has a curse that, thanks to a Reddit thread, is now all over the internet: Every woman he dates finds their soulmate right after they break up. When a woman messages him saying she has the same problem, Justin and Emma create a plan. They decide that they will date, just for the summer, and break up, canceling out one another’s curses. It’s supposed to be a fling, but when Emma’s toxic mother shows up in town, and Justin unexpectedly has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they’re suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected.
Publishing April 2.
From a very young age, Patric Gagne realized that she made others uncomfortable. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her, and she spent years of her life picking locks and invading homes in an attempt to ease the nothingness she felt inside of herself. In college, Patric confirmed what she’d long suspected: She was a sociopath. However, in spite of the fact that sociopathy was the first personality disorder identified, it has gone wildly under-researched, leaving Patric to prove to herself and the rest of the world that she isn’t a monster.
Publishing April 2.
In this work of historical fiction, author Chanel Cleeton focuses on Miami just after the Great War, where wealthy industrialists like Robert Barnes and his wife, Anna, have flocked. Robert and Anna build Marbrisa, a glamorous house on Biscayne Bay, and appear to have it all—but one scandal can change everything. Years later, following the death of her parents in Havana, Carmen Acosta journeys to Marbrisa to join her estranged older sister, only to learn that nothing in the mansion is as it seems.
Publishing April 9.
Leigh Bardugo is back with a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age. In the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days as a scullion. But when her mistress discovers that her servant actually has the power to perform little miracles, she demands that Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position. When Luzia meets Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king, she takes the one chance to better her fortunes—but as her notoriety grows, so do the risks to her safety.
Publishing April 9.
When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night, she’s shocked to find a young woman in labor on her doorstep, drenched from the rain and barely able to speak a word of English. Jean is the only midwife in the village, but she has no idea who this woman, Muirin, is and can only assume that she must be the wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. When Tobias does indeed show up looking for his wife, Jean becomes concerned for Muirin’s safety. As she starts to fall for this mysterious woman, she worries that she is putting herself, Muirin, and the baby in danger.
Publishing April 9.
From the bestselling author of Cultish and the host of the Sounds Like A Cult podcast comes a blend of personal narrative and cultural criticism interrogating the human mind and its biases in the internet age. Author Amanda Montell argues that our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, leading us to increasingly use magical thinking to cope with the chaos around us and invest in the belief that we can manifest our way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, or thwart the apocalypse by learning to can peaches. Her prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and forgiveness for our anxiety-addled selves.
Publishing April 9.
Noemi Broussard is ready for a fresh start, with a new boyfriend and a plan to move away from the reservation she grew up on—until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide rocks her world. When Noemi’s Uncle Louie shows up after nearly a decade away from the reservation, he brings with him a past full of secrets and horror that might help Noemi figure out exactly what happened to Roddy. Together, Noemi and Louie try to find the truth about Roddy’s death, suspecting something menacing lurking within their tribal lands.
Publishing April 16.
When Annie “Anh Le” Shaw’s mother, a Vietnam War refugee, dies suddenly one night, Annie’s carefully curated life begins to unravel. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder comes roaring back into her life, and unlike the last time she struggled with her mental illness, this time around, her hyper-fixations might be coming true. Distressed, Annie distances herself from her friends and family, only to wake up naked in a hotel room next to a lifeless body with no idea of what happened. In this harrowing thriller, the main character has an increasingly fractured mind, leading to dizzying twists.
Publishing April 16.
Babe, wake up—it’s time for a new Emily Henry novel! Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told the story of how they met, fell in love, and moved to his lakeside hometown together… that is until Peter realized that he was actually in love with his childhood best friend, Petra. Rocked by their split, Daphne finds herself proposing to be roommates with the only other person who could possibly understand her situation: Petra’s ex, Miles. The two roommates mostly avoid each other. But one night, while drowning their sorrows together, they hatch a plan.
Publishing April 23.
From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin comes a novel that asks whether we are destined or made in America and whether genetic and cultural pasts can be overcome. On the precipice of Y2K in New York City, 22-year-old magazine intern Lily Chen falls in love with pharmaceutical empire heir Matthew. Years later, in 2021, Nick Chen has never felt quite like he belongs in Washington with his single mother, Lily. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.
Publishing April 30.
In the near future, a civil servant accepts a job with the salary of her dreams, and is eventually told what project she will be working on: A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible. She has been assigned to be “the bridge” and assist a man named Commander Gore, who died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, as he adjusts to life in the present day. Over the course of the year, Gore and the bridge fall haphazardly in love, with consequences they never could have imagined.
Publishing May 7.
A semifamous, 45-year-old artist announces her plan to drive across the country, from Los Angeles to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, though, she spontaneously exits the freeway and beds down in a nondescript motel, where she seeks an entirely different type of freedom. All Fours is a tender reinvention of one woman’s sexual, romantic, and domestic life, complete with perfect comic timing and unabashed curiosity about human intimacy.
Publishing May 14.
Anna Green and Liam Weston got married in college for strategic reasons: Anna needed subsidized family housing while she was at UCLA, and Liam needed to marry in order to receive his inheritance. Three years later, the two are living completely separately, hardly thinking of one another—until Liam realizes that the clause in his grandfather’s will requires him to have been happily married for five years before he can receive his inheritance. Reluctantly, Liam reconnects with starving artist Anna, bringing her paint-splattered feistiness into his world of toxic wealth.
Publishing May 14.
Outside of an isolated island, there is a world destroyed by a fog that has swept the rest of the planet. On the island, though, the 122 villagers are happy to fish, farm, feast, and obey the nightly curfew set by the three beloved scientists who keep the island’s smog at bay. But when one of the scientists is found brutally stabbed to death, the villagers learn that the delicate security system around the island has been damaged. If the murder isn’t solved within 92 hours, the smog will envelop the island and everyone on it.
Publishing May 21.
Lyla is in a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, aren’t going great. When Nico and Lyla decide to try out for a new reality show, The Perfect Couple, they’re whisked off to a tropical paradise to compete against four other couples for a cash prize. But not long after they arrive on the island, things start to go wrong. As tensions run high and the stakes get more dangerous, Lyla realizes that this game show is real and the stakes are life-or-death.
Publishing May 21.
