This preview highlights titles to be published in February 2024
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Editor’s Choice
Editor’s Choice
Editor’s Choice
Crime & thriller
Jenny Hollander Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead Constable, 6th, £16.99, hb, 9781408719572
Début This compulsive lead début certainly delivered on its publisher’s promise of
keeping me up all night. It tells the story of Charlie Colbert, an English magazine editor in New York, who has fought tooth and nail to obliterate her past—nine years earlier, she and her college classmates became tabloid fodder after shocking events dubbed “Scarlet Christmas”. So, when Charlie catches wind of a proposed documentary “setting the record straight”, she fears it could bring her whole life crashing down. Hollander is digital director at Marie Claire US. New York-based for many years, she now lives in London.
Top sellers
house, she finds herself raising her aristocratic mistress’ illegitimate baby, which brings her unexpectedly close to the Lord of the manor. BookScan
Erica James
A J Finn End of Story HarperFiction, 29th, £16.99, hb, 9780008234201 In the long-awaited follow-up to the number one bestseller The Woman in the Window, a mystery novelist with three months to live and an unsolved disappearance in his past invites a detective fiction expert to his San Francisco mansion. When a body surfaces in his pond, they realise the past isn’t buried—it is waiting. BookScan
Rosie Goodwin Our Fair Lily Zaffre, 15th, £14.99, hb, 9781804183045 Upstairs and downstairs collide in the first book in a new saga series starring miner’s daughter Lily Moon. A parlourmaid at a Warwickshire manor
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An Ideal Husband HQ, 29th, £16.99, hb, 9780008413828 The author of Mothers and Daughters returns with another family drama featuring a couple navigating a divorce, a woman on a journey of self-discovery and an older man getting his just deserts. Uplifting and wryly humorous, says HQ. BookScan
Historical
Emily Howes The Painter’s Daughters Phoenix, 29th, £16.99, hb, 9781399610780
Début “Beautifully written… I raced through it”, said Hilary Mantel, chair of judges,
when she announced Howes’ début as winner of the Mslexia First Novel Award in 2021. It reimagines the lives of the two daughters of 18th-century artist Thomas Gainsborough. Peggy and Molly are under pressure to embody the image of perfection projected in their father’s portraits, but Peggy has a secret: there’s something different about her sister, something she can’t let anyone else see. A tale of love and betrayal, Phoenix’s lead début will be backed by an “unmiss- able” publicity campaign.
Men and Get Away With It is a comic thriller about a woman who wakes up hung over to find her best friend dead and resolves to track down her killer. BookScan
Ali Hazelwood Bride Sphere, 6th, £9.99, pbo, 9781408728864 In this enemies-to-lovers paranormal romance from the author of The Love Hypothesis, a danger- ous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha werewolf turns amorous. BookScan
Literary
This Room Will Someday Be Dead, a lesbian serial dater’s paranoia esca- lates while she fumbles her way through her first serious relationship and gets to know her estranged half-sisters. Warm, witty and wise, says Atlantic. BookScan
Hanako Footman Mongrel Footnote Press, 8th, £16.99, hb, 9781804440438
Début The British- Japanese actor
known for appearing in “The Crown” and “Defending the Guilty” was inspired to write her début novel by the lack of representation in her industry. It interweaves the voices of three young women in Japan and the UK, exploring identity, connection and belonging.
Katy Brent The Murder After the Night Before HQ Digital, 1st, £9.99, pbo, 9780008536718 The second novel from the author of How to Kill
Emily Austin Interesting Facts About Space Atlantic Books, 1st, £16.99, hb, 9781805460848 In the second novel from the author of Everyone in
Keiran Goddard I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning Abacus, 8th, £16.99, hb, 9781408717813 From the poet and author of the Desmond Elliott Prize-longlisted début Hourglass comes a
Howard Jacobson What Will Survive of Us Jonathan Cape, 1st, £18.99, hb, 9781787334823 The new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question is a midlife love story about a documen- tary filmmaker and a playwright whose profes- sional collaboration leads inexorably to an affair. BookScan
Lotte Jeffs This Love Dialogue Books, 1st, £22, hb, 9780349703152
Début Journalist, author and magazine
editor Jeffs co-hosts the podcast “Some Families”
Literary
Chukwuebuka Ibeh Blessings Viking, 22nd, £14.99, hb, 9780241618257
Début This intimate début by a 22-year-old Nigerian author has been praised by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Opening in 2006, it charts the coming-of-age of Obiefuna, a gay teenager who is sent away to a brutal Christian boarding school after his father notices an attraction between him and his apprentice. There, Obiefuna survives by keep- ing his head down and, some- times, participating in the prevailing homophobia. But just as happiness seems in reach, politics close in. In piercing, heart-wrenching detail, Ibeh anatomises desire, love, fear, shame and the emotional cost of being forced to live a lie.
“stylistically striking” novel told from the alternating perspectives of five friends who grew up together on the same council estate, exploring poverty, hope and forgiveness.
about modern family and LGBTQ+ parenting, so it is fitting that her début novel spans 10 years of an extraordinary friendship to explore queer love and choosing your own family.
Shubnum Khan The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years Magpie Books, 1st, £16.99, hb, 9780861546268 “Sweeping and tender”, the second novel from the author of Onion Tears is set in a decaying mansion on South Africa’s eastern coast. It explores the transportive powers of love and grief, and the unique history of the country’s Indian diaspora.
Angie Kim Happiness Falls Faber & Faber, 1st, £14.99, hb, 9780571371471 In the second novel from the author of Miracle Creek, winner of four
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© Katrina Campbell
© Stephen Mortland
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