2021 Anticipated Releases: Part One

hey everyone,

today’s post is one of my favourite annual posts to create- a list of some of my most anticipated releases publishing next year! the second part of this post will hopefully go up some time in december/january as a lot of publisher catalogues aren’t out yet and some of the other books i wanted to include don’t have synopsis’ yet either.

i hope you find some in this list to add to your tbr’s, let me know what your most anticipated releases are! mine seem to have common themes of dark sapphic stories, ghosts, nature and teen girls😂🙈

M xx

⭐️1. SELF PORTRAIT IN GREEN by Marie NDiaye: Obsessed by her encounters with mysterious green women, and haunted by the Garonne River, a nameless narrator seeks them out. Each encounter reveals different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive, seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her obsession. The multi-prize winning subversion of the memoir by Marie NDiaye written in diary entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20893797

⭐️2. THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE by Julia Fine: A provocative meditation on new motherhood- Shirley Jackson meets The Awakening- in which a postpartum woman’s psychological unraveling becomes intertwined with the ghost of children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown and her female lover. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44429352

⭐️3. THE BONE HOUSE by K Ming Chang: A Taiwanese-American micro-retelling of Wuthering Heights that centers around two young lesbians in a butcher’s house that is haunted by the ghost of an ex-lover, setting off a series of uncanny events, romantic trysts, and revelations about their entwined pasts.

⭐️4. WE PLAY OURSELVES by Jen Silverman: After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54899574

⭐️5. A LESSON IN VENGEANCE by Victoria Lee: Pitched as The Secret History meets Genuine Fraud and The Craft, it’s the story of Felicity, a senior returning to school after her girlfriend’s tragic death, only to meet a new student and teenage literary prodigy who transferred to research the school’s bloody history, and recruits Felicity into a murderous experiment of their own. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50999821

⭐️6. CALL IT HORSES by Jessie Van Eerden: Set at the dawn of 1990, following three outcast women from a tiny West Virginia town, road tripping out to New Mexico seeking Georgia O’Keeffe’s studio and the clarity of leaving their separate hauntings behind. The book is a dreamy novel partially told through letters that the main character, Frankie, writes to her aunt’s dead lover, Ruth. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53364784

⭐️7. THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED by Mariana Enriquez: Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina- A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53215250

⭐️8. BOTANICAL CURSES AND POISONS by Fez Inkwright: Poisonings are among the most memorable deaths in history, from the Roman Empire to the Medieval era and beyond. Fez Inkwright returns to folkloric and historical archives to uncover historical uses and the fascinating, untold stories behind deadly plants, witching herbs and fungi. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52730081

⭐️9. WHAT SHE’S HAVING: STORIES OF WOMEN AND FOOD: Sixteen writers explore the complex relationships that women have with the food we cook, eat and share. From an essay about elaborate meals for one, an ode to eating with your hands, a story about the love to be found in a plateful of pasta, and a tale exploring the darker side of what we crave: this is a collection that explores and celebrates food and all its nuances. https://deardamsels.com/product/what-shes-having-stories-of-women-and-food/

⭐️10. THE PAPER GARDEN by Caitlin Vance: A darkly humorous, gothic and speculative story collection that explores contemporary queer romances, mother-daughter relationships and mental illness by reimagining fairy tales or myths. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52698125

⭐️11. THE DIVINES by Ellie Eaton: A compulsively readable literary debut set in a secluded boarding school, exploring the intoxicating, destructive relationships between teenage girls. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53018367

⭐️12. THE LOST APOTHECARY by Sarah Penner: Hidden in the depths of 18th-century London, is a secret apothecary shop. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious 12-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53288434

⭐️13. MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH by Salena Godden: Mrs Death is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job and seeks someone to unburden her conscience to. Wolf, a troubled young writer, is well acquainted with death, but until now hadn’t met Death in person- a black, working-class woman who shape-shifts and does her work unseen. Enthralled by her stories, Wolf becomes Mrs Death’s scribe, and begins to write her memoirs. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced – or, in the case of Mrs Death, facilitated – their friendship grows. All the while, Death must continue to hold humans’ fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect her… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52568660

⭐️14. LUCKENBOOTH by Jenni Fagan: The devil’s daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin, to work as maid for the Minister of Culture. But the real reason she’s there is to bear him and his barren wife a child, the consequences of which curse the tenement building that is their home for 100 years. As we travel through the nine floors of the building over the next eight decades, the resident’s lives entwine over the ages and in unpredictable ways. Along the way we encounter the city’s most infamous Madam, a seance, a civil rights lawyer, a bone mermaid, a famous Beat poet, a notorious Edinburgh gang, a spy, the literati, artists, thinkers, strippers, the spirit world – until a cosmic agent finally exposes the true horror of the building’s longest kept secret. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41826984

⭐️15. WOMEN AND OTHER MONSTERS by Jess Zimmerman: Through analysis of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx, Jess takes us on an illuminating feminist journey through mythology. She guides women (and others) to reexamine their relationships with traits like hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, teaching readers to embrace a new image of the female hero: one that looks a lot like a monster, with the agency and power to match. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54228607

⭐️16. VARIATIONS by Juliet Jacques: Using fiction inspired by found material and real-life events, Variations explores the history of transgender Britain with lyrical, acerbic wit. from Oscar Wilde’s London to austerity-era Belfast via inter-war Cardiff, a drag bar in Liverpool just after the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Manchester’s protests against Clause 28, and Brighton in the 2000s. https://www.influxpress.com/variations

⭐️17. IN THE PINES by Paul Scraton: Scraton’s story of an unnamed narrator’s lifelong relationship with the forest and the mysteries it contains, told through fragmented stories that capture the blurred details and sharp focus of memory. Accompanied by eerie images created using a 170-year-old technique of collodion wet plate photography by Eymelt Sehmer. https://www.influxpress.com/in-the-pines

⭐️18. THE CORPSE QUEEN by Heather Herrman: Orphaned 17 year old Molly goes to live with her aunt in 1850s philadelphia, only to discover the source of her aunts secret wealth is from robbing graves and selling bodies to anatomists. Molly must decide what she will do to claim a place of power in a male dominated medical society. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44168535

⭐️19. GARGOYLES by Harriet Mercer: Six weeks after her 40th birthday, Harriet is struck by a rare and life-threatening illness. From the first day in Critical Care, whenever she tries to sleep, the backs of her eyes come alive with soul-sucking gargoyles; and she remains awake for the entire six weeks which produces its own hallucinations. The gargoyles become metaphors for lurking demons, fear of death, her relationship with her late father, and her dream of having a family. A stunning blend of poetic memoir and essays, Gargoyles explores the effects of illness, grief, love, and loss, but is also about the power of memory, which both haunts and enriches. https://deadinkbooks.com/product/gargoyles-pre-order/

⭐️20. PARADISE BLOCK by Alice Ash: Mould grows as thick as fur along the walls, alarms ring out at unexpected hours and none of the neighbours are quite what they seem. A little girl boils endless eggs in her family’s burnt-out flat, an isolated old woman entices a new friend with gifts of cutlery and cufflinks, and a young bride grows frustrated with her unappreciative husband, the caretaker of creaking, dilapidated Paradise Block. These thirteen surreal stories lure us into a topsy-turvy world where fleatraps are more important than babies and sales calls for luxury coffins provide a welcome distraction. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54823533

⭐️21. THE GLASSY BURNING FLOOR OF HELL by Brian Evenson: In this new short story collection, Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration- combining psychological and ecological horror. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/e/brian-evenson/glassy-burning-floor-of-hell.htm

⭐️22. A DOWRY OF BLOOD by S.T Gibson: A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides. Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant, to a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets… https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55384940

⭐️23. THIS POSION HEART by Kalynn Bayron: “Could be described as a YA Little Shop of Horrors meets The Secret Garden with a sprinkle of Hadestown thrown in for good measure.” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43911432

⭐️24. OUR WORK IS EVERYWHERE by Syan Rose: A graphic non-fiction book on queer and trans resistance. In their own words, queer and trans organizers, artists, healers, comrades, and leaders speak about their experiences with power, love, pain, and magic to create a portrait of queer and trans realities in America. The many themes include Black femme mental health, Pacific Islander authorship, fat queer performance art, disability and health care practice, sex worker activism, and much more. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52022907

⭐️25. COCKFIGHT by Maria Fernanda Ampuero: Ampuero sheds light on the hidden aspects of the home: the grotesque realities of family, coming of age, religion, and class struggle. A family’s maids witness a horrible cycle of abuse, a girl is auctioned off by a gang of criminals, and two sisters find themselves at the mercy of their spiteful brother. With violence masquerading as love, characters spend their lives trapped re-enacting their past traumas. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52030591

⭐️26. IN THE GARDEN OF SPITE by Camilla Bruce: An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history– and the men who drove her to it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50920166

⭐️27. AMAZING ART EXPERIENCES- AROUND THE GLOBE IN 300 IMMERSIVE ADVENTURES by Yolanda Zappaterra: From the Lightning Field in New Mexico to an art island in Japan, expert guide Yolanda Zappaterra leads us on a comprehensive, worldwide tour of bucket list destinations for every season- including art fairs, festivals, installations, art trails, galleries, art islands, monuments, sculpture parks and museums. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52039286

⭐️28. MEMPHIS by Tara Stringfellow: A multi generational tale based on the authors family which traces the effects of violence on the family after the patriarch, the first black detective in memphis, is lynched by members of his own squad. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52268640

⭐️29. TROUBLE GIRLS by Julia Lynn Rubin: A queer modern reimagining of thelma and louise where after stabbing a would be rapist to death, two best friends go on the run in a journey that grows darker and deadlier with each decision they make. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52514688

⭐️30. BITCH by Lucy Cooke: Award winning zoologist Lucy takes us on a global journey to meet the animals and scientists that are helping to redefine female species and release it from the shackles of stereotype- introducing us to polyamorous chimps, alpha-female hyenas, menopausal killer whales and lesbian lizards. She sets out to re-write the evolutionary labels that have come to define a gender and propose a new understanding of what it means to be female today. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54362565

⭐️31. WE ARE HERE by Jasmin Hernandez: Presents the bold and nuanced work of Black and Brown visionaries transforming the art world. Centering BIPOC, with a particular focus on queer, trans, non-binary, and BIWOC, this collection features 50 of the most influential voices in NY, LA, and beyond, paired with interviews that engage with each artist and influencer, delving into their creative process and unpacking how each subject actively works to create a more radically inclusive world across the entire art ecosystem. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51075429

⭐️32. THE CENTAURS WIFE by Amanda Leduc: Leduc’s new novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic, is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54416508

⭐️33. SORROWLAND by Rivers Solomon: A genre-bending work of gothic fiction that wrestles with the tangled history of racism in America and the marginalization of society’s undesirables, about a Black woman with albinism, the mother of infant twins, who is hunted after escaping a religious compound, then discovers that her body is metamorphosing and that she is developing extra-sensory powers. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48915089

⭐️34. THE WITCH OF EYE by Kathryn Nuernberger: This essay collection investigates the horrors inflicted on so-called “witches” of the past. In one essay, we learn through folklore that Jesus’s mother was a midwife who cured her own son’s rheumatism. In other essays there are subtle parallels to contemporary discourse around abortion and environmental destruction. Nuernberger weaves in her own experiences, too. There’s an ironic look at her own wedding, an uncomfortable visit to the Prague Museum of Torture, and an afternoon spent tearing out a garden in a mercurial fit. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52344604

⭐️35. BURNING GIRLS AND OTHER STORIES by Veronica Schanoes: Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. Emma Goldman takes tea with Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. A young woman in 17th century Germany is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father, but discovers that vengeance may consume all that it touches. In the title story, Schanoes invests the immigrant narrative with a fearsome fairytale quality that tells a story about America we may not want—but need—to hear. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910198

⭐️36. TWO WHITE QUEENS AND THE ONE EYED JACK by Heidi Von Palleske: In 1965, two 6 year-old boys, Gareth and Jack, compete to see who can climb higher up a tree. When Jack falls and loses his eye on a thorn bush, the accident brings about a series of events that will bind them together for life. When they meet albino twins Clara and Blanca, a shared fate unfolds. With Gareth and Jack’s help, the twins are able to reclaim their lives and leave their nightmarish past behind them. From the shores of Lake Ontario to the hustle of Berlin, from the art of oculary to punk opera, this is a story of dark secrets, suppressed desires, forgiveness, and love. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49218749

⭐️37. BOOKSTORES- A CELEBRATION OF INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS: Photographer Horst A. Friedrichs opens the door to the world of bricks-and-mortar bookstores, showcasing their variety, quirkiness, and vitality with lavish photography and celebrates the passion and commitment of the owners with interviews and anecdotes. https://www.waterstones.com/book/bookstores-a-celebration-of-independent-booksellers/horst-a-friedrichs/stuart-husband/9783791385815

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