The 22 Best New Book Releases This Week: Nov. 5-11, 2024

Here are the best new book releases this week: November 5-11, 2024. Ok, there’s a nip in the air where I’m writing this. So Fall is most definitely Falling. Leaves are falling. Temperatures are falling. My weight…is not falling, but that’s a story for another day. (Hey, you need insulation in Winter, right?) Whether you’re celebrating a victory, wanting to forget a defeat or ignore a drawn-out fracas, books are always the answer.

If you’ve been reading this column, you know each week brings an unexpected bounty of great books in one category or another. This week it’s mysteries and thrillers. I focused on six but could just as easily have offered up twelve titles worth considering. But you’ll always find romances, biographies, the secret life of chickens (yes, chickens), Young Adult novels, sci-fi, fantasy and more. So let’s get reading. At the head of the Parade are…

The 24 Best New Book Releases This Week: Nov. 5-11, 2024

1. The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig & Karen White
2. Misery Hates Company by Elizabeth Hobbs
3. Drop Dead Sisters by Amelia Diane Coombs
4. You Can’t Hurt Me by Emma Cook

Three fun mysteries and a tense thriller to start off the week’s best books!

Some books contain not one, not two but three potential murderers. The Author’s Guide to Murder contains not one, not two but three authors, all of them working together on this lark and clearly having a blast doing so. A famous author found dead in the locked library of a castle? The main suspects are three female authors of varying types with ever-changing stories about where they were when? Oh, they're having fun. If you’re already a fan of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig or Karen White, you’re already getting this. If you’re not, this might just make you one.

I am always a sucker for the launch of a new series. (I do like to get in on the ground floor of things.) A great character name? That gets me too. Then I pay attention to the early buzz. This book is set in old money Boston, features our hero Marigold Manners (!) and the reviews compare it to Cold Comfort Farm (a classic comedy) or as if Edith Wharton and Agatha Christie teamed up. I. Am. Sold.

Actor and all-around creative Mindy Kaling loves Drop Dead Sisters, the story of three siblings who must stop in-fighting so they can hide a body that’s oh so accidentally popped up which they had nothing to do with. But who wants to explain that to the handsome law enforcement man they’d rather be flirting with? Kaling loves it so much she introduces the book and published it via her imprint.

More siblings in You Can’t Hurt Me. Eva Reid is famous for feeling no pain–no cuts, no broken bones, nothing causes pain. Her sister Anna is known for…being the sister of Eva Reid. But when Eva dies, Anna is drawn into the mystery of what happened and how and why and what she finds will change everything.

The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig & Karen White ($30; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Misery Hates Company by Elizabeth Hobbs ($29.99; Crooked Lane Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Drop Dead Sisters by Amelia Diane Coombs ($28.99; Mindy’s Book Studio) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

You Can’t Hurt Me by Emma Cook ($18.99; Hanover Square Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org 

Related: Can You Match The Celebrity With Their November Book Club Pick?

5. Bel Canto Annotated Edition by Ann Patchett
6. Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
7. Constant Reader: The New Yorker Columns 1927-1928 by Dorothy Parker

Ann Patchett’s most famous novel–which is saying something–takes place in the embassy of a South American country during a hostage crisis. Here it’s given the annotated treatment in a deluxe edition, the sort of thing one sees more with the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland and Moby-dick, or The Whale. It’s a worthy choice, though doing so on its…23rd anniversary is curiouser and curiouser. But hey, I'm impatient so no complaining here.

Anyone looking for a comfort read should consider Before We Forget Kindness. The fifth in a series, it features a magical cafe where people can be transported back in time…but only for as long as the coffee they are served takes to cool. Folks can get a glimpse of a loved one, correct an error, enjoy a happy moment, grieve and so on. Heart-tugging, with each book containing a grab bag of emotions and memories. Why it’s not an English language anthology show yet on Netflix is a puzzle.

I am not being modest when I say no one will read over my run-downs of new books 50 or 100 years from now. But reviews by Dorothy Parker? Of course! She is scathing, funny and insightful. Parker reviewed books for the New Yorker just from 1927-1928, but that was long enough for her to weigh in on everything from Ernest Hemingway to Winnie-the-Pooh. She was quite wrong about dismissing Pooh bear, but she’s quite funny in doing so. A treat.

Bel Canto Annotated Edition by Ann Patchett ($40; Harper) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi ($21.99; Hanover Square Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Constant Reader: The New Yorker Columns 1927-1928 by Dorothy Parker ($18; McNally Editions) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

8. What The Chicken Knows by Sy Montgomery
9. Box Office Poison by Tim Robey

Two unexpected works of nonfiction to enjoy.

Author Sy Montgomery brought alive the mysterious life of one of the smartest creatures on earth with The Soul of an Octopus. Can she do the same for the lowly, mundane chicken? Apparently so.

Tim Robey tackles film history from a clever, unexpected angle: flops! Yes, he tells the tale of Hollywood by looking at some of its biggest flops and what they reveal about movie-making throughout the years. He covers everything from future classics like The Magnificent Ambersons to reviled fare like Geena Davis as a swashbuckler in Cutthroat Island to Gigli and Cats. I assume the paperback edition will include a new chapter on Megalopolis.

What The Chicken Knows by Sy Montgomery ($22.99; Atria Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Box Office Poison by Tim Robey ($32.99; Hanover Square Press) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

10. Mr. Nice Spy by Tiana Smith
11. Where The Library Hides by Isabel Ibañez
12. Love Advice From The Great Duke Of Hell by unfins

Three romances (of a sort) cover the gamut in storytelling.

Mr. Nice Spy offers a Hollywood style romp as a fireworks designer named Andee and her (sexy) CIA contact go on the run to foil an escaped arms-dealing prisoner looking to upturn world events…and reconnect with Andee, his biological daughter. Hijinks! Banter! All the fun stuff.

Where The Library Hides is a romantasy set in historical Egypt with a woman looking to unearth clues to her parents’ demise when she’s forced to combine forces (and perhaps marry!) the one man she doesn’t trust.

And Love Advice From The Great Duke of Hell is a highly popular webtoon (okay, an online comic strip) turned into a print edition. It’s about an awkward teenager who bargains away his soul to summon the powers of darkness…so he can find out if the girl he likes maybe likes him too? The Great Duke of Hell is just as astonished as you are. I started reading it and couldn’t stop laughing. Offbeat, silly fun that should work for fans of Kimberly Lemming (That Time I Got Drunk and Saved A Demon).

Mr. Nice Spy by Tiana Smith ($18.99; Berkley) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Where The Library Hides by Isabel Ibañez ($20; Wednesday Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Love Advice From The Great Duke Of Hell by unfins ($19.99; Webtoon Unscrolled) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

13. Mr. Campion’s Christmas by Mike Ripley
14. The Conspiracies of the Empire by Qiu Xiaolong

Great characters never die. Never. They will always return in one form or another. Just accept it. Happily, at times they are revived with love and affection and the results are sterling. I look forward to finding out if that is the case for these latest examples.

Mr. Campion’s Christmas brings back Marjery Allingham’s Albert Campion, that posh adventurer and detective. Author Mike Ripley finished the final novel started by Allingham and is now on his twelfth tale. (Though not, strictly, a twelfth night tale, despite the Christmas setting.)

Judge Dee, that Chinese exemplar of intellectual rigor combined with poetic insight and a righteous sense of justice is back. Author Qiu Xiaolong–as one expects–avoids any Western-style orientalism. But the second of his acclaimed series also offers new translations of classic Tang poetry at the back, proving the writer (a poet in his own right) may be Dee’s ideal Boswell.

Mr. Campion’s Christmas by Mike Ripley ($29.99; Severn House) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Conspiracies of the Empire by Qiu Xiaolong ($29.99; Severn House) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

15. The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
16. The Improvisers by Nicole Glover
17. The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn

Three works of fantasy and sci-fi to entertain and hold up a mirror to today, as the best speculative fiction usually does.

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a woman on the run, choosing to only offer “small” fortune telling because “big” fortune telling just gets her into trouble. (People only like to hear the answers they want.) But then she becomes entangled with a found family of a kind-of reformed thief and a baker and they’re trying to help a foundling and maybe it’s time to stop hedging her bets and gamble on the friends she has for a change.

The Improvisers is set during an alternative era of Prohibition, so you get the Jazz Age and glamorous nightlife but you also get magic. Our hero is Velma, a barnstorming pilot, a bootlegger (of magic, not hooch), an Indiana Jones for mystical objects and a fine jazz pianist to boot. Yep, another book series I await the TV series for. (I mean, the books are always better. You should always read the books a show is based on. But some books just demand to be made into a series.)

In The Naturalist Society, it’s the 19th century and women of course are constrained in society. Even in an alternate history with dashes of magic, women are corseted. Beth Stanley is gifted at tracking down new facets of the natural world…and anything that she can name gives her some of its power. She and her late husband hid this fact while they did their work. But now he’s dead, there’s a race to tap the magnetic powers found at the Poles and the two men hoping to take over her husband’s work realize they must partner with Beth in order to have any chance of success. I’m intrigued too.

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong ($19; Ace) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Improvisers by Nicole Glover ($19.99; Harper Voyager) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn ($16.99;p 47North) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Related: Which Author Sent Sales Soaring Over The Moon in 2024?

18. Carson The Magnificent by Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas
19. The Name of this Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin

Two biographies are tantalizing. Johnny Carson was the king of late night. We all projected our ideas of who he was onto the public face Carson proffered on The Tonight Show. But was there anything behind the facade? Or was he just…boring off camera? The late Bill Zehme and his one-time assistant Mike Thomas look behind the curtain. And R.E.M. was famous early on for mumbling their lyrics. What were they saying? Did it matter? College radio favorites, R.E.M. made their lyrics more easily heard…and were just as mysterious as always. They pioneered Americana (along with others) and became huge without seeming sell outs. One of the most influential acts of the 1980s/1990s, with a front man who was closeted in the era of AIDS but always outspoken politically, R.E.M. offers a rich story tackled here by Peter Ames Carlin.

Carson The Magnificent by Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas ($30; Simon & Schuster) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Name of this Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin ($32; Doubleday) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

20. The Wolf-Girl, The Greeks and the Gods by Tom Holland; illustrated by Jason Cockcroft
21. The Donut Prince of New York by Allen Zadoff
22. Streetlight People by Charlene Thomas

Three young adult books anyone who enjoys good storytelling should tackle.

Historian Tom Holland recounts the Persian Wars. But in this fictional account, the gods also play a role, just as they did in the tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey, some of his childhood favorites. Combine his vivid storytelling with striking imagery by Jason Cockcroft and you’ve got a display worthy over-sized book with a corker of a story.

In Allen Zadoff’s The Donut Prince of New York, a plus-sized kid finds acceptance once he joins the football team. That’s more fun than getting ready for a party by having to stretch out a sweater so it won’t seem so tight. And heck, the girl he likes likes him back. But he’d still rather indulge in his love for donuts and musical theater and get the girl anyway. Crazy, right?

And Charlene Thomas makes like The Twilight Zone with the spooky story of an idyllic smalltown where the folks on top like to stay on top. Kady is most definitely a Have-Not so she’ll never be accepted. But one thing Kady does have is the power to twist and shape time. That let’s her keep her upper class boyfriend with her all the time…but it also brings her to the attention of those who want to claim her power for their own. And maybe her idyllic small town isn’t so peaceful after all. Reviews name check Twin Peaks and Ray Bradbury, so I’m in.

The Wolf-Girl, The Greeks and the Gods by Tom Holland; illustrated by Jason Cockcroft ($19.99; Candlewick Studio) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

The Donut Prince of New York by Allen Zadoff ($18.99; Holiday House) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Streetlight People by Charlene Thomas ($19.99; Dutton Books For Young Readers) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org

Related: How Did A Bookstore Celebrate Taylor Swift Books…Without Any Taylor Swift Books?