Yahoo Lifestyle The 20 Best New Book Releases This Month: December 2024
Here are the 20 best new book releases this month: December, 2024. Normally, I would echo Douglas Adams and say “don’t panic.” But it’s December and you still haven’t read all the books you wanted to read this year, you still haven’t bought all the gifts you need for family and friends and coworkers, you still haven’t sent out your holiday cards and seemingly everyone you know has sent a holiday card to you with their handsome family in some awesomely clever pose that must have taken weeks to arrange (at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Really?) plus a witty “our year of joy and success” newsletter and you still haven’t…oh, never mind.
So, panic. And then take a deep breath and say, to heck with it all, grab a book and escape to your happy place. That’s what I’m doing! So let’s get reading. At the head of the Parade are…
The 20 Best New Book Releases This Month: December 2024
1. Pick-up by Nora Dahlia
2. The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right by Suzanne Allain
3. How To Get A Life in Ten Dates by Jenny L. Howe
Three winning new romances.
Writer Nora Dahlia makes her romance debut with Pick-up, which is such an obvious bit of word play about picking your kids up at school while maybe crushing on another single parent waiting in line that it’s amazing no one thought of it before Dahlia. Check out our profile of Dahlia, who shares some of her favorite books and how Dahlia’s big sister had a big impact on her.
When The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right, confusion creates humor and–it’s important to be earnest about this–everyone enjoys themselves immensely. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy life in Regency England if you were a commoner but headed into high society posing as your blue-blood cousin and caught the eye of a handsome aristocrat? That is, until you develop feelings for him and he thinks you’re wealthy and the right sort and you are the right sort, just not the upper class, lots of money at your disposal sort of right sort. Oh dear.
Author Jenny L. Howe gives us a heroine tired of the dating life (who isn’t?) and proffers a challenge to family and friends: set me up on ten dates. What she doesn’t expect is to see her best friend nominate himself for one of the slots!
Pick-up by Nora Dahlia ($18.99; Gallery Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right by Suzanne Allain ($19; Berkley) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
How To Get A Life in Ten Dates by Jenny L. Howe ($18; St. Martin’s Griffin) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
4. Thank You, Everything by Icinori
5. Bert, The Bowerbird by Julia Donaldson; illustrated by Catherine Rayner
Ahh, just…breathe. Take a moment. Stop. Look around and see everything you can be thankful for. In this meditative, lovely picture book, author and illustrator Icinori floats readers through all the things we can be grateful about. Filled with bold, bright and simple graphics, it travels through a day, thanking everything from the alarm clock (I suppose) to the bed (sure!) to the sink and the glass holding the water from the sink. It’s simple, yes, but the images are so smile-inducing and alive with pleasure, the text so disarming, you might just find this a good for the adults and teens in your life as much as the kids.
Bert, The Bowerbird is a winner. It has an engaging story about a bowerbird named Bert trying to woo a mate, who is not pleased with his tokens of affections and keeps demanding more, more, more! You get charming illustrations, a plucky hero and an ever-growing list of stuff Bert collects that is oh so fun to read aloud. What more could you want, other than a mate worthy of Bert. (But I think you’ll discover that, too.)
Thank You, Everything by Icinori; translated by Emilie Robert Wong ($29.95; Enchanted Lion) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Bert, The Bowerbird by Julia Donaldson; illustrated by Catherine Rayner ($18.99; Boxer Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: Author Nora Dahlia on How A Big Sister Can Change Your Life
6. Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson
7. Mechanize My Hands To War by Erin K. Wagner
8. How To Steal A Galaxy by Beth Revis
Best-selling author Brandon Sanderson returns to traditional publishing after a year or so of highly successful self-publishing various books. And just in time, since fans are dying to read the climax of the first arc in the Stormlight Archive. You will need to read books 1-4, but if you’re a Sanderson fan, you’ve already done that. This is classic epic fantasy storytelling.
Ever since HAL-9000, sci-fi fans have been aware of the dangers of AI (well, earlier than that, even, thanks to Harlan Ellison et al). Now that it’s here and disrupting our lives, sci-fi again leads the way. In Erin K. Wagner’s all-too-timely work, it’s the near future and a renegade anti-android proselytizer is on the loose with a militia causing havoc in the US. The setting is not some space station, but Appalachia and the stakes–as in the best of sci-fi–are not about AI versus not-AI but people with children on one side and their duty on the other and the reality of a hard life. Publishers Weekly calls it “sharply imagined and all too plausible.” This review was not written by AI. Yet.
If you like sci-fi and romance and don’t have a lot of time, not to worry. Beth Revis offers the second in her Chaotic Orbits series. How To Steal A Galaxy is sexy, fun, filled with banter, and more twists than an Agatha Christie novel as thief for hire Ada and crime stopper Rian square off again at a charity auction. Did I mention the nanobot climate cleaner that everyone is angling to steal? Oh and that it’s a novella, so it’s under 200 pages so you can easily dash through it even during the holiday madness. If Tracy and Hepburn crossed with space sounds like your cup of tea, you should start with Full Speed To A Crash Landing, which is also a novella. You’re welcome.
Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson ($39.99; Tor Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Mechanize My Hands To War by Erin K. Wagner ($28; DAW) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
How To Steal A Galaxy by Beth Revis ($23; DAW) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
9. The Last Kilo by T.J. English
10. The Cure For Women by Lydia Reeder
The Last Kilo is a true crime corker about Los Muchachos, purveyors of cocaine in 1980s Miami (Don Johnson linen jacket not included). Author T.J. English is excelling with true crime works and this one is a doozy.
The real crime is the treatment of women by the insulated world of medicine, an issue that still bedevils us today. So everyone should know the names of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. Blackwell was the first woman to graduate from a U.S. medical school. Her success inspired others and created a backlash among male doctors, who “scientifically” declared women unfit to attend medical school, much less practice medicine. Jacobi studied at the Sorbonne and was one of the best educated doctors in the world and wouldn’t stand for such nonsense. She did pioneering work upending centuries of prejudice and misinformation about women and their bodies. Author Lydia Reeder’s work of history tells their stories with a verve that Publishers Weekly calls “urgent and revealing.”
The Last Kilo by T.J. English ($32.50; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Cure For Women by Lydia Reeder ($30; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
11. Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
12. Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy
13. Against The Grain by Peter Lovesey
14. Alter Ego by Alex Segura
Acclaimed writer William Boyd’s latest literary thriller is Gabriel’s Moon in which a travel writer becomes a tool of an irresistible agent for MI6. FYI, I would love to be a travel writer and I’d happily be a tool of MI6 if it included an irresistible agent (and benefits and a pension, assuming I lived). Just FYI.
Adam Hamdy is a rising star of tough-knuckled, British crime fiction. In his new thriller Deadbeat, a desperate dad agrees to kill a man for a vast sum of money. The man is evil, he’s told, so it’s a guilt free assignment, right? Then the bodies start piling up and the dad begins to wonder too much about his anonymous employer….
It’s a sad day for fans of the Peter Diamond series as author Peter Lovesey says goodbye to the Detective with this 22nd and last mystery.
Author Alex Segura’s latest is Alter Ego, a twisty work about a woman who made her name in the dude-dominated world of comics (not to mention film and other artistic areas). She’s done it all, but now she’s being tempted to reimagine one of her favorite superheroes: the Lethal Lynx. Can she trust the man making the offer? No, she cannot. Can she resist…?
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd ($28; Atlantic Monthly Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy ($28.99; Atria Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Against The Grain by Peter Lovesey ($28.95; Soho Crime) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Alter Ego by Alex Segura ($28.99; Flatiron Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
15. Cabin by Patrick Hutchison
Patrick Hutchison gets all Walden Pond and buys a falling-down cabin in the middle of nowhere (the gravel road leading to it is called Wit’s End) and then does his level best to make it a home. Mind you, he’s never even used a level in carpentry, so it’s a challenge. Think Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House, but with more bears and less running water.
Cabin by Patrick Hutchison ($29; St. Martin’s Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
16. The Voyage Home by Pat Barker
17. Rental House by Weike Wang
18. White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton
Three works of fiction travel the globe (and into the past).
The Voyage Home by one of England’s best writers is the third and final volume in a work retelling the fall of Troy from the point of view of the women. It’s a triumph for Barker, who enjoyed world-beating success earlier in her career with a trilogy about World War I.
Vacations are not necessarily relaxing when the in-laws come along. (Nor are holidays!) In Rental House, a couple with very incompatible families try to bring everyone (and a giant sheepdog) together for some quality time. But her family are severe Chinese immigrants who demand perfection and his family are rural, working class folk who never understood their son’s intellectual ambition or his “foreign” wife. Oh, dear.
Debut author Rosa Kwon Easton took inspiration from the life of her grandmother to inform her historical novel White Mulberry. It’s about an eleven year old Korean girl who moves to Japan in 1928, elated to be with her older sister, continue her education and avoid an arranged marriage. Then life gets really complicated, thanks to anti-Korean prejudice, passing as Japanese and a looming world war. Fans of Pachinko will be ahead of the game on the nuances captured here but the reviews indicate any fans of good fiction will be swept up.
The Voyage Home by Pat Barker ($29; Doubleday) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Rental House by Weike Wang ($28; Riverhead Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton ($16.99; Lake Union Publishing) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: Artist Jules Feiffer Names The Picture Book That Was So Good He Gave Up Trying To Write One of His Own for 40 Years!
19. New York Sketches by E.B. White
20. A Town Without Time by Gay Talese
Here are two wonderful stocking stuffers.
E.B. White is a master of the gently amusing and perceptive essay and his New York Sketches is a treat. It fits alongside his ode to NYC called Here Is New York, but this is more casual, more fun. White helped define New York and his magazine home the New Yorker with endless bits of fun. Many of those that centered around the city are gathered here for the first time. No need to pour over dusty back issues in the library, panning for gold. It’s all here and surprisingly durable tossed-off gems they are.
Gay Talese is of course one of the creators of the New Journalism, an earthquake in reporting style that is now so widely adopted we just call it “journalism.” The 92 year old writer especially loved chronicling New York and A Town Without Time compiles some of his best work about the city from the past 70 (!) years. He covers everything from the building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga in the recording studio, all with style and insight and a style that brings the best of fiction into journalism and brings it alive. That’s why his pieces are still worth your time today, unlike most dry works of reportage that give you the who what where and when but often not the how and almost never the why. Great stuff. Perfect for anyone who enjoys good writing, good nonfiction or New York City.
New York Sketches by E.B. White ($18; McNally Editions) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
A Town Without Time by Gay Talese ($29.99; Mariner Book Classics) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: The 19 Best Taylor Swift Books Straight Out of Our 'Wildest Dreams'
