The Man Who Died Twice
by Richard Osman

Richard Osman is back with everyone's favourite mystery-solving quartet. The second installment of The Thursday Murder Club series is just as clever and warm as the first-an unputdownable, laugh-out-loud pleasure of a read.
 
Genre: Mystery
Themes: Ensemble casts
Character: Likeable; Spirited; Well-developed
Writing Style: Engaging; Well-crafted dialogue; Witty
 
2 Sisters Detective Agency
by James Patterson

During the course of the investigation of a young man's abduction, Rhonda and Baby become entangled in a dangerous case involving a group of overprivileged young adults who break laws for fun, their psychopath ringleader, and an ex-assassin victim who decides to hunt them down for revenge.

Genre: Crime fiction; Mystery
Themes: Family secrets; Homecomings
Storyline: Plot-driven
 
1979
by Val McDermid

Journalist Allie Burns teams up with another aspiring investigative journalist, Danny Sullivan, for a series of stories in 1979 Glasgow about international tax fraud and a domestic terrorist group that create enemies and get one of them killed.

Genre: Mystery
Storyline: Intricately plotted
Pace: Fast-paced
Writing Style: Gritty
The Heart Principle
by Helen Hoang
 
 
When she suddenly loses her ability to play the violin, Anna Sun must learn to listen to her heart and falls in love with a man her parents disapprove of, forcing her to choose between meeting expectations and finding happiness in who she really is.

Genre: Contemporary romances; Multicultural romances
Character: Ability diverse; Complex; Culturally diverse
Storyline: Own voices
Tone: Amusing; Explicit; Moving
 
The Wish
by Nicholas Sparks

A successful travel photographer, Maggie Dawes, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis, is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas with her young assistant and begins to tell him the story of the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.

Genre: Christmas stories; Love stories
Pace: Leisurely paced
Tone: Bittersweet; Heartwarming; 
 
The Christmas Wedding Guest
by Susan Mallery

Guilted into being bridesmaids at their parents' vow renewal ceremony, sisters Reggie and Dena Sommerville, each working through tough personal issues, find love in the most unexpected of places -- their hometown.

Genre: Contemporary romances; Holiday romances
Themes: Love in a small town
Tone: Amusing; Heartwarming
Writing Style: Engaging
 
In The Country of Others
by Leïla Slimani

After marrying a handsome Moroccan soldier during World War II, a young Frenchwoman is torn as tensions mount between the locals and the French colonists.

Genre: Relationship fiction; Translations
Character: Complex; Culturally diverse
Storyline: Character-driven; Sweeping
Tone: Atmospheric; Dramatic
Writing Style: Compelling; Descriptive
 
Apples Never Fall
by Liane Moriarty

A family of tennis stars debate whether or not to report their mother as missing because it would implicate their father in the new novel by the New York Times best-selling author of Big Little Lies.

Genre: Relationship fiction; Psychological suspense
Character: Flawed; Introspective
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately plotted; Nonlinear
Tone: Atmospheric; Menacing; Suspenseful
Writing Style: Compelling
 
The Butler
by Danielle Steel

Taking a job working for Olivia, a woman who is trying to get her life together, butler Joachim, as his life falls apart, unexpectedly reaches a place with Olivia where the past doesn’t matter and only what they are living now is true.

Genre: Mainstream fiction; Relationship fiction
Storyline: Character-driven; Plot-driven
Tone: High-drama; Moving
Writing Style: Engaging
Beautiful World, Where Are You
by Sally Rooney

Four young people pair up, break up, have wild flirtations and worry about their friendships and the world they live in while pondering their eroding youth, in the new novel from the best-selling author of Normal People.

Genre: Literary fiction
Character: Complex; Flawed
Storyline: Character-driven
Tone: Moving; Reflective; Thought-provoking
 
The Spectacular
by Zoe Whittall

In 1997, three generations of women -- Missy, a cellist in an indie rock band; her mother Carola, who is just surfacing from a sex scandal; and her grandmother Ruth -- each struggle to build an authentic life as they try to find a way to understand each other.

Genre: Canadian fiction; Literary fiction
Character: Strong female
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately plotted; Nonlinear
Writing Style: Candid; Compelling; Gritty; Stylistically complex
 
Cloud Cuckoo Land
by Anthony Doerr

Follows four young dreamers and outcasts through time and space, from 1453 Constantinople to the future, as they discover resourcefulness and hope amidst peril in the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize--winning author All the Light We Cannot See.

Genre: Literary fiction
Character: Complex
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately-plotted; Nonlinear
Tone: Dramatic; Strong sense of place; Thought-provoking
 
Under the Whispering Door
by TJ Klune

After he dies, a curious and powerful being gives Wallace one week to cross over to the land of the dead, and Wallace, who finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life, sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Genre: Contemporary fantasy; LGBTQIA romances
Storyline: Character-driven; World-building
Pace: Leisurely paced
Writing Style: Engaging; Witty
The Wisdom of Crowds
by Joe Abercrombie

The power struggle continues between those who cling to magic and those who want to usher the industrial age. Readers will be riveted by the intricate plot featuring a large cast of flawed characters clamoring for money and influence.

Genre: Epic fantasy; Fantasy fiction
Themes: For the resistance
Storyline: Intricately plotted; World-building
Tone: Atmospheric
Writing Style: Descriptive; Engaging; Witty
 
The Last Graduate
by Naomi Novik

A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the sequel to A Deadly Education.

Genre: Fantasy fiction; First person narratives
Themes: Academies of magic; Laws of magic; Women of steel
Character: Culturally diverse; Snarky
Storyline: Action-packed; World-building
Writing Style: Compelling; Richly detailed
 
Red X
by David Demchuk

Men are disappearing from Toronto's gay village. One by one, stalked and vanished, they leave behind small circles of baffled, frightened friends. As the missing grow in number, those left behind begin to realize that whoever or whatever is taking these men has been doing so for longer than is humanly possible.
 
Genre: Canadian fiction; Horror
Tone: Atmospheric; Creepy; Disturbing
Writing Style: Compelling; Descriptive
 
The Last House on Needless Street
by Catriona Ward

When a neighbor moves in next door, a family of three -- a teenage girl who isn't allowed outside, a man with memory loss and a house cat who reads the bible -- are terrified that the unspeakable secret that binds them together will be exposed.

Genre: Horror; Multiple perspectives; Psychological suspense
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately plotted
Tone: Atmospheric; Bleak; Creepy; Menacing; Suspenseful
Writing Style: Compelling
 
Reprieve
by James Han Mattson

A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room -- a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment.
 
Genre: Horror
Tone: Atmospheric; Creepy; Disturbing; Thought-provoking
Writing Style: Compelling; Gritty
 
The Night She Disappeared
by Lisa Jewell

One year after a young woman and her boyfriend disappear on a massive country estate, a writer stumbles upon a mysterious note that could be the key to finding out what happened to the missing young couple.

Genre: Thrillers and suspense
Storyline: Intricately plotted
Tone: Suspenseful
Writing Style: Compelling
 
Friends Like These
by Kimberly McCreight

In this relentlessly twisty literary thriller, a desperate intervention in the Catskills brings together a group of college friends ten years after graduation—a reunion marked by lies, betrayal, and murder.

Genre: Multiple perspectives; Psychological suspense
Character: Complex
Storyline: Intricately plotted; Nonlinear
Pace: Intensifying
Writing Style: Compelling
 
The guilt trip
by Sandie Jones

While in Portugal for her brother-in-law’s wedding to Ali, who rubs everyone wrong way, Rachel discovers something about Ali that changes everything and threatens to unravel friendships and marriages in a place where jumping to conclusions becomes the difference between life and death.

Genre: Psychological suspense
Tone: High-drama
Character: Flawed
 
Harlem shuffle
by Colson Whitehead

A furniture salesman in 1960s Harlem becomes a fence for shady cops, local gangsters and low-life pornographers after his cousin involves him in a failed heist in the new novel from the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad.

Genre: Crime fiction; Historical fiction; Literary fiction
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately plotted; Own voices
Tone: Dramatic; Strong sense of place; Suspenseful
Writing Style: Compelling; Descriptive; Gritty
 
Matrix
by Lauren Groff

Cast out of the royal court, 17-year-old Marie de France, born the last in a long line of women warriors, is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey where she vows to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects.

Genre: Historical fiction; Literary fiction
Themes: Chosen family; Novels of place
Tone: Mystical; Strong sense of place
Writing Style: Lush; Lyrical; Richly detailed; Stylistically complex
 
The Show Girl
by Nicola Harrison

In 1927, Olive McCormick, a star in the Ziegfeld Follies, accepts a marriage proposal that forces her to decide if she is willing to reveal a devastating secret and sacrifice the life she loves for the man she loves. 

Genre: Glitz and glamour novels; Historical fiction
Character: Sympathetic
Storyline: Character-driven; Intricately plotted
Tone: Atmospheric; Moving; Romantic
 
Fuzz : When Nature Breaks The Law
by Mary Roach

Join "America's funniest science writer" Mary Roach on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet. What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? As New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science.

Genre: Nature Writing; Science Writing; Society and culture
Writing Style: Accessible; Engaging; Witty
 
The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line
by Mari K. Eder

Delve inside the lives and experiences of fifteen unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII-in and out of uniform.

Genre: Collective biographies; History Writing;
Writing Style: Compelling; Richly detailed; Well-researched
Tone: Inspirational
 
The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream
by Dean Jobb

Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, this vividly told true-crime narrative describes the hunt for one of the first known serial killers. Dr. Cream's poisoning spree coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.

Genre: Biographies; History Writing; Life stories; True Crime
Tone: Disturbing
Writing Style: Compelling; Well-researched