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.
Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, is back with another captivating murder mystery story about a lonely shopkeeper who tries to solve the murder in her shop.
When Vera Wong walks downstairs into her tea shop, she is met with a dead man in the middle of the shop. In his hand is a flash drive which she swipes for herself after calling the cops because she is certain she can solve this murder better than they could. Knowing the killer will be back for the flash drive, she starts to pay close attention to her customers—so much so that she starts to become friends with them. But when she finds out which one of her new friends killed the poor man, will she be able to turn them in?
March 14, 2023
Written by Victor LaValle, the award-winning author of The Changeling, Lone Women is a gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past.
Adelaide Henry carries a trunk around with her that’s always closed—because when it opens, people start to disappear. After fleeing her hometown after her secret sin kills her parents, Adelaide takes advantage of the government's offer of free land in Montana to create a homestead. But to her surprise, she isn’t alone, and the only thing that might protect her is the secret she’s kept hidden.
March 28, 2023
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes Hello Beautiful, an emotional novel that asks the question: Can love make a broken person whole?
William Waters grew up in a family that hardly looked at him, let alone loved him, so when he meets Julia Padavano and her beautifully loving and loyal family, his world is shaken. William’s dark past surfaces soon after and jeopordizes Julia’s carefully constructed plans for their future. Among the catastrophic family rift that unfolds, William and Julia must decide if their love is strong enough to keep them together.
March 28, 2023
On the night after Christmas in 1811, a theatre is packed with more than 600 holiday revelers. Among them is Sally Henry Campbell who is newly widowed, Cecily Patterson whose life has recently gone from bad to wrose, and Jack Gibson who is hoping to impress the theater’s manager as a young stagehand. And down the street is Gilbert Hunt who one day hopes to visit the theatre with his wife. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions. In the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.
April 4, 2023
When an accident leaves her parents debilitated, a young muscician decides to abandon her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. While working there, she meets Helen, the niece of the store owner, and their friendship soon turns into more. At the same time, she is introduced to products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair, but why? Is there something more happening here? Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity.
April 4, 2023
Sally Milz is a comedy writer for a late-night live comedy show. After experiencing quite a few heartbreaks, she has sworn off finding love and settled for the occasional hookup and a successful career. She writes a sketch that pokes fun at the phenomenon that dorky yet talented men can land successful, beautiful women yet the reverse never happens for dorky women. Enter: Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation who always dates models, who is starring in the sketch. When their sparks fly, she can’t help but be in disbelief that someone like him could be into someone like her.
April 4, 2023
When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she high-tailed it out of her hometown to find a community where she was no longer the only Korean she knew. The new middle class starts her own family in is much different than the one she grew up in—where her neighbors don’t have to stretch their paychecks without safety nets. When her father dies and her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Nicole is enraged by the fact that financial instability and lack of access to healthcare took away from their livelihood. This story sheds light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society.
April 4, 2023
Emily Henry is back with one of our all-time favorite tropes: fake relationships. Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college, but for reasons they aren’t discussing, they broke up six months ago. None of their friends know they broke up, so for their annual vacation, they decide to pretend to still be together. Harriet and Wyn lie through their teeth, but how easy will it be when they both secretly want each other and the friends they are with know them better than they know themselves?
April 25, 2023
Malcolm Gephardt has always dreamed of owning a bar, and when his boss decides he’s ready to retire, Malcolm is thinking about buying the place. His plan is to make improvements, but he quickly realizes that clients don’t like change and the money won’t come easy. At home, Malcolm and his wife Jess are struggling in their marriage because of their challenge to have a baby. Taking place over the course of one week, this story explores a marriage in crisis, what it takes to make a life with another person, and the true meaning of family.
May 2, 2023
From the publisher: The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere.
This story, written by the New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone—which remained on the bestseller list for two years—is about a family who is seeking the answers to a strange secret through love, faith, and medicine.
May 2, 2023
If you loved The Midnight Library, you will love this story about a death doula who, in caring for others at the end of their life, has forgotten how to live her own. Clover Brooks has always felt more connected to the dying than the alive, so she dedicated her life to help people make a peaceful transition to the other side. When one woman that Clover is helping makes a request that Clover go on a trip across the country to uncover a forgotten love story, Clover explores friendship and romance, two things she is very unfamiliar with, and has to decide if these new-to-her feelings are worth keeping in her life.
May 2, 2023
When Perry attends a meeting at a local university, she learns about “Warrior Girl,” an ancestor whose bones and knife are stored in a museum’s archives. Even though she wanted to have a “Summer of Slack,” Perry and her friends (a.k.a. The Misfit Toys) become determined to return the remains of Warrior Girl—along with 12 other Anishinaabe ancestors’ remains—to her tribe. But as women start to disappear and Pauline’s perfectionism takes a turn for the worse, Perry and the Misfits learn that there is more to this mission than what meets the eye.
May 2, 2023
From the outside, Samantha Irby has a perfect life. Her career has taken new heights since writing a breakthrough novel, Hollywood keeps calling her to make deals, and she is walking the red carpet with the ladies of Sex and the City. But behind the glam is, well, a mess. Her diarrhea is back, she is getting turned away from restaurants for wearing ugly clothes, she can’t stop shopping on QVC, and more truly embarrassing details are making up the larger portion of her life. Throughout Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, behind the glitter and glam.
May 16, 2023
June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars with books released at the same time. But Athena Liu was the only one whose book was worth publishing. When June Hayward witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece (an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I) and submits it to her own publisher. But the only problem is this: She has to do it under a pseudonym since she definitely isn’t an Asian American like Athena. But doesn't this story deserve to be told, whoever the teller? Not able to escape Athena’s shadow and holding on to her secret at tightly as she can, June discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
May 16, 2023
Samuel Adler was six years old when his mother secured him a spot alone out of Nazi-occupied Austria to the United Kingdom. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz, is separated from her mother at a camp in Nogales after trying to flee from the dangers of El Salvador. When a young social worker discovers that Anita has another family member in the United States: Leticia Cordero, who is employed at the home of now eighty-six-year-old Samuel Adler, their lives are linked.
From the publisher: Spanning time and place, The Wind Knows My Name is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers.
June 6, 2023
