Friends,
Please enjoy this list of upcoming 2024 book releases I am super excited about. My own plans involve a lot of solo, offline trips where I can read and rest with wild abandon.
PS: If you love translated works as much as I do, Fitzcarraldo Editions just announced their list of translated works due Spring 2024 and you can find that here.
PPS: Juliana just announced a ā24 women in translation 2024ā challenge that Iām absolutely signing up for.
Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones - Priyanka Mattoo
UK release date 18 June 2024 | 304 pages
Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattooās community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.Ā Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir--because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments.
Instructions For Traveling West: Poems - Joy Sullivan
UK release date 9 April 2024 | 160 pages
A book for anyone flinging themselves into fresh starts,Ā Instructions for Traveling West grapples with loss, loneliness and belonging. These poems teach us that naming our desire is profound alchemy. Each of us holds the power to set our own course forward.
āHere, we see a woman feeding herselfālight, bread, joy. This book is going to be a beloved companion by so many readers.ā
Maggie Smith ā New York Times bestselling author ofĀ āYou Could Make This Place Beautifulā
Maurice and Maralyn: A Whale, a Shipwreck, a Love Story - Sophie Elmhirst
UK release date 29 February 2024 | 272 pages
Maurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works.
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an idea: sell the house, build a boat, leave England -- and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation -- forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale. It sinks within an hour, and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The Story Collector - Iris Costello (sadly, not my long lost family! - Iris Costello is the pseudonym of bestselling author, Nuala Ellwood)
UK release date 29 February 2024 | 400 pages
A long-held secret ties the tales of three women, from the cobbled streets of war-time London to an isolated German WWI camp, and the sea-swept cliffs of Cornwall. Beautifully told, moving and unforgettable.
Earth - John Boyne
UK release date 2 May 2024 | 176 pages
Book #2 in a four part series - I absolutely devoured Book #1 - Water. 1
Take my word for it and read them in order.
The Lagos Wife - Vanessa Walters
UK release date 29 February 2024 | 320 pages
Nicole Oruwari has the perfect life: a handsome husband, a palatial house in the heart of Lagos and a glamorous group of friends. She left London and a troubled family past behind to become part of a community of expat wives.
But when Nicole disappears without a trace after a boat trip, the cracks in her so-called perfect life start to show. As the investigation turns up nothing but dead ends, her aunt Claudine flies to Nigeria to take matters into her own hands. As she digs into her niece's life, she uncovers a hidden truth. But the more she finds out about Nicole, the more Claudine's own buried history threatens to come to light.
The Picnic - Matthew Longo
UK release date 25 January 2024 | 320 pages
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria.
But this was not an ordinary picnic-it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment.
On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German "vacationers" packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union-the so-called end of history-all would flow from those dramatic hours.
The Painters Daughters - Emily Howes
UK release date 29 February 2024 | 384 pages
1759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into mental confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out.
Iām dying to know - are there any others youāre excited about that Iāve missed off this list?