There’s only one good way to get through the dreary days of winter, and that’s to hunker down with a stack of books and read your way through the short, gray days until the sun shines again. Here are 10 titles to get you started.
Credit: Algonquin Books
Credit: Algonquin Books
Jill McCorkle, the New York Times bestselling author of “Life After Life,” delivers a compassionate collection of short stories about ordinary but complex lives in “Old Crimes: Stories.” The North Carolina native explores marriage, parenthood, obsolescence and the path not taken as her characters look back on their lives. Author Alexander Chee calls it “a new wonder.” (Algonquin Books, Jan. 9)
Credit: St. Martin's Press
Credit: St. Martin's Press
Alabama author Rachel Hawkins is a member of the book-a-year club, having delivered the New York Times bestselling novels “The Wife Upstairs” in 2021, “Reckless Girls” in 2022 and “The Villa” in 2023. Next up is “The Heiress,” a gothic thriller set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At its center is the wealthiest woman in North Carolina, who’s been widowed four times, and her adopted son Cam, who wants no part of his inheritance when she dies. Nevertheless, he gets sucked back into her vortex where he discovers the disturbing answers to long-lingering questions about her life. (St. Martin’s Press, Jan. 9)
Credit: Clarkson Potter
Credit: Clarkson Potter
“Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts”
Home cooks who use recipes passed down through their families know what it means to feel the presence of a departed loved one when cooking one of their signature dishes. That was the inspiration for Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky Poet Laureate from 2021-2023, to write this collection of stories and recipes that chronicle the lives of eight generations of the author’s family. The book not only celebrates the history of Black cooks in this country who helped shape American cuisine, but provides the secret formula behind delectable dishes like chicken and dumplings, jam cake and chess pie. (Clarkson Potter, Jan. 23)
Credit: Baker Publishing Group
Credit: Baker Publishing Group
Flannery O’Connor’s “Why Do the Heathen Rage?”
When Flannery O’Connor died in 1964, she left behind 378 pages of materials for her unfinished novel “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” At the time it was deemed unpublishable, but for the past 10 years scholar Jessica Hooten Wilson has been organizing the material into 192 pages of scenes that provide some insight into what O’Connor’s intent was with the novel. The subtitle says it all: “A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress.” (Baker Publishing Group, Jan. 23)
Credit: Penguin Random House
Credit: Penguin Random House
Poet Phillip B. Williams creates an indelible character with Saint, a mysterious conjurer in 1830s Arkansas who liberates enslaved people from plantations across the state and brings them to a utopia near St. Louis called Ours. Concealed from outsiders, Ours promises to keep residents safe and give them a place to flourish. But over the course of four decades, Saint’s grand scheme begins to fall apart revealing another kind of bondage. (Penguin Random House, Feb. 20)
Credit: Citadel Books
Credit: Citadel Books
Criminal defense attorney and former state legislator McCracken Poston Jr. recounts the true story of one of his most unusual cases that took place in Ringgold in 1997. Alvin Ridley was an eccentric town character considered odd but harmless until he was accused of murdering a wife few people knew he had. His quirky ways made him a difficult client, but Poston managed to get him off with a groundbreaking defense. Years later Ridley would be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, casting his behavior in a very different light. (Citadel Books, Feb. 20)
Credit: Minotaur Books
Credit: Minotaur Books
Decatur author Thomas Mullen, whose previous book “Blind Spots” was a sci-fi crime thriller, returns to historical fiction with this World War II-era thriller set in Boston. Reporter Anne Lemire and FBI agent Devon Mulvey become unlikely allies when her story about Nazi propaganda crosses over into his investigation of an immigrant factory worker’s death. Together they become embroiled in a case of espionage and organized crime that could send a city already steeped in misinformation and distrust into turmoil. (Minotaur Books, Feb. 27)
Credit: Penguin Random House
Credit: Penguin Random House
Louisiana author Maurice Carlos Ruffin made a big splash in 2019 with his bitingly satiric novel “We Cast a Shadow” that imagined a Southern town in the near future where wealthy Blacks pay big bucks to undergo “demelanization.” His new novel is set in New Orleans during the Civil War. Ady and her mother are enslaved together by a businessman in the French Quarter. When they are separated, Ady is distraught and befriends a free Black woman who introduces the girl to a secret society of spies called the Daughters who undermine the Confederacy. (Penguin Random House, Feb. 27)
Credit: Harper Collins
Credit: Harper Collins
“The House of Hidden Meanings”
Pop culture icon RuPaul, creator of the Emmy Award-winning TV show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” provides a candid, introspective account of his life story from his youth growing up poor, Black and queer in San Diego to his current status as an international superstar. A highlight, of course, is his formative years developing his drag act in Atlanta. (Harper Collins, March 5)
Credit: Penguin Random House
Credit: Penguin Random House
Garrard Conley, a Kennesaw State University professor of creative writing and executive director of the Georgia Writers Association, made a literary name for himself with “Boy Erased,” his 2016 memoir about his adolescent experience in gay conversion therapy. It was later made into a movie with Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Now he’s back with a historical novel about a love affair between a minister and a doctor in 18th-century Puritan New England and the ramifications it has on their lives and those of their wives and children. (Penguin Random House, March 26)
