Trope Machine Accidentally Does A Precog
This is just a quirky way of saying I'm writing about books I haven't even read yet now
Guys I’ll be so for real right now. I have like eight half-completed issues of this newsletter I haven’t been able to get over the finish line. I’ve got one about ocean books and one about Gone Girl Husbands and one about books about estranged siblings who reestablish their connection through the magic of puppetry (there’s only two on here but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?). Stuff’s hard right now, you know? (Laughing imagining someone reading this going “what, is something going on right now???”)
But I did recently go through my TBR to organize upcoming releases so that I can action-surge the Los Angeles Public Library the second they’re available and hopefully come out on top of the Holds Hunger Games and I thought maybe that would count as content for this as well! I mean, it’s words, you’re reading it, sounds like content to me!
Here are some books coming out soon that are on the TM radar:
March 4: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
This is a piece of speculative near-future fiction about a woman detained at an airport because the Risk Assessment Administration has analyzed her Dream Data and concluded she is potentially about to murder her husband. She is sent to a retention center full of other women also under observation for future crimes. I don’t expect this one to be super fun but I am very curious about what it’ll say about the proportional relationship of privacy and security, especially right at this moment!
March 11: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
You had me at “Detransition, Baby” author and kept me at “illegal logging outfit full of repressed lumberjacks having psychosexual crises” and “bonus novella where everyone has to choose their gender.”
March 11: The Jackal’s Mistress by Chris Bohjalian
I’m very curious about this one as a big Civil War reader — the wife of a missing Confederate soldier finds an injured Union soldier and the description here says “must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger” which I think is funny because it implies the book could potentially be about her just choosing to leave him there and then, idk, go back to harvesting grain? That would be a pretty funny book I’m not going to lie, but the description also says “inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines” and I think that kind of eliminates the grain scenario as a possibility, but I do appreciate how coy the book is being about its premise.
March 18: Funny Because It's True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire by Christine Wenc
I don’t have anything insightful to say about this one I’m just excited to be immersed in Onion culture. BTW you can get physical Onions again, did you know?
March 25: Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen
Vampire book! Vampire book! VAMPIRE BOOK!
April 1: A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton
I feel like based on vibes this will be a bit of a queer Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Is my feeble brain just making the video game connection and going “Boss Baby vibes?” It’s possible! Three queer friends who made a video game together online in the 90s, and have never met, are now unknowingly all in the same city.
April 8: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen
I will always show up for anything even vaguely “Clue”-shaped and this one fits the bill:
everyone trapped in a mansion by a big storm
wealthy host murdered
blackmail
puzzles?!?!?
Also I’m a big fan of this Golden Age mystery cover art style making a comeback.
April 22: The Pretender by Jo Harkin
Palace intrigue! Hidden heirs! Based on a real heir to the British throne raised in obscurity who in real life became a spy in the court of Henry VII, the real draw here is the first line of this excerpt: In 1480 John Collan’s greatest anxiety is how to circumvent the village’s devil goat on the way to collect water. But the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends his life forever.
May 6: The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li
I got so psyched for this one all over again re-reading the description: A family gothic about two Chinese American families scrapping for ownership of their mysteriously deceased starlet matriarch’s crumbling Hollywood mansion.
June 10: With a Vengeance by Riley Sager
“Riley Sager murder train” is really all I need to know about this one. I don’t always love Sager’s books but ever since the wild ride that was The Only One Left I can trust I’ll at least have a fun time.
June 10: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by Victoria E. Schwab
The sparse description for this 560-page book is so perfectly withholding that I feel like I’ve been Pickup Artisted by it:
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.
London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.
One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.
And all of them grow teeth.
Thank you for reading!!