Usually, the start of a new year brings a sense of optimism. This time around, the omicron variant of COVID-19 has knocked things off course a bit, but no matter what else 2022 brings, readers still have a great deal to look forward to. Just ask fans of Hanya Yanagihara, Jennifer Egan, and Ottessa Moshfegh—all of whom have new releases on the horizon. Here, we round up the 25 titles coming in 2022 that we’re most excited to crack open.
1 Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser
This riveting behind-the-scenes story of the clothes on our backs is a must-read for clotheshorses everywhere. Remember that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda Priestly details the industry’s worth of labor that went into Andy Sachs’s bargain-bin sweater? Add in some climate journalism, a deep dive into modern history, and a crash course on workers’ rights, and you’ve got this book in a nutshell.
2 Velorio by Xavier Navarro Aquino
Set in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the deadly storm that devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, Velorio follows Camila, a survivor of the disaster whose grief leads her to a rural cult called Memoria. But Urayoán, the idealistic leader of Memoria, has demons of his own.
3 Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
This buzzy debut (there’s already an adaptation for Hulu, starring Aubrey Plaza, in the works) centers on the Acevedo family: Olga is a Nuyorican wedding planner to the stars, and her brother, Prieto, is a congressman representing their rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. When the militant radical mother who abandoned them crashes back into their lives, all three must confront the secrets and resentments lurking behind their family’s shiny public facade.
4 To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
If A Little Life emotionally wrecked you sometime in the last six years, get ready for round two, because Hanya Yanagihara’s latest epic is gunning to make you weep. A 720-page tome spanning three New York City–set stories over three centuries, To Paradise is an incisive look at love, loss, and the consequences of the American experiment.
5 You Don’t Know Us Negroes and Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston
Unappreciated by the masses until long after her death, Zora Neale Hurston was an unparalleled storyteller and one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Whether you’re new to her writing or a longtime devotee, don’t miss this new collection spanning more than 35 years of her nonfiction work—including some previously unpublished pieces.
6 The Verifiers by Jane Pek
What kind of person would want to work at an online dating detective agency: a hopeless romantic, or a consummate cynic? Twenty-five-year-old Claudia Lin, the protagonist of this funny and touching modern detective story, is a little bit of both. (Her traditional Chinese mother thinks she works at a finance firm—and, uh, is straight—but that’s a problem for another day.) When one of her agency’s clients turns up dead, Claudia takes it upon herself to investigate, but quickly gets in over her head.
7 The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton
Described as The Girls meets Fight Club, this new novel from the author of Social Creature plunges readers into a vortex of dark academia and queer desire. Soon after arriving at a Christian boarding school in Maine, Laura finds a sense of belonging in the school’s intensely insular chapel choir—and falls deep under the thrall of its obsessive, charismatic student leader, Virginia.
8 Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde
The many characters who populate Eloghosa Osunde’s debut novel are vagabonds in the truest sense of the word: queer, impoverished, nonconforming—those who exist at the fringes of society. Out in the streets of Lagos, they fight to make their way in the world, sometimes at odds with one another and on other occasions coming to each other’s rescue. Together, they add up to a novel as vivid and varied as the city itself.
9 Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
Lydia is a mixed-race vampire squatting in a London artists’ studio. Away from her vampire mother for the first time, she’s scrambling to source fresh pigs’ blood—her best option to avoid preying on her new human artist friends—all while longing to taste vegetables, ramen, and all the other people food she can’t digest. In short, Lydia isn’t just searching for something to eat; she’s also looking for a way to reconcile her demon and human sides, her half-Japanese heritage, and her relationship to food itself.
10 Girls Can Kiss Now by Jill Gutowitz
Humorist and Twitter sage Jill Gutowitz’s debut essay collection is a laugh-out-loud look at the mainstreaming of queer culture. Tackling important topics such as Lindsay Lohan’s relationship with Samantha Ronson, the omnipresence of oat milk, and the enduring lesbian appeal of Taylor Swift, Gutowitz’s book is perhaps the definitive authority on what it means to be gay and a little too online.
11 Finding Me by Viola Davis
She’s taught us How to Get Away with Murder, swung for the Fences, and epitomized (Suicide)Squad goals. Now, for the first time, the Oscar- and Emmy Award–winning actress is telling her own story in this powerful new memoir.
12 Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson
By day a high-powered lawyer advocating for psychiatric patients, Vivian spends her nights smoking, drinking, dating—anything to chase away the lingering aftereffects of her childhood trauma. But when she finds herself more alone than ever before following a fraught family reunion, her old self-medicating tricks cease to work the way they used to, and she must find a new way to repair the broken parts of her.
13 The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
In an alternate version of our current reality, tech juggernaut Mandala’s Own Your Unconscious platform—a service that allows users access to every memory they or any other member has ever had—is the latest craze. But not everyone is captivated by this new technology. And for those who have bought in, the consequences are just beginning to make themselves known. Envisioned as a “sibling novel” to her celebrated 2011 title, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan’s hotly anticipated follow-up tackles portals, alternate dimensions, and humanity’s desperate search for connection.
14 Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Following the resounding success of his 2019 debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, queer Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong returns to his roots with a spellbinding new collection. Peeling back the curtain on his efforts to grapple with his mother’s death, Vuong’s latest poems are achingly brave and fiercely intimate.
15 End of the World House by Adrienne Celt
The apocalypse is nigh, but Bertie has bigger problems—like the fact that her best friend, Kate, is about to move hundreds of miles away. As a last hurrah, the two take a trip together to Paris, where a strange, time-looped night in the Louvre forces Bertie to confront her relationship to change or risk being separated from Kate forever.
16 The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe
Lest you think Janelle Monáe—a globally acclaimed singer-songwriter, actor, and style icon—has been slacking lately, take heart: The superstar multi-hyphenate’s first collection of short stories comes out this year. Set in the same sci-fi world as her concept album Dirty Computer, The Memory Librarian enlists the help of an array of creative collaborators to tell new tales about technology, identity, and liberation.
17 When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley
When Min—a Californian by birth who’s moved to Seoul to explore his Korean heritage—is told that his girlfriend, Yu-jin, has committed suicide, the news doesn’t quite add up. But when he dedicates himself to finding out the truth about her death, Min quickly realizes that he may never have really known Yu-jin at all.
18 Book Lovers by Emily Henry
The author of Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation returns with another unputdownable romance in Book Lovers, the story of two publishing industry rivals thrust together over the course of one month in a small North Carolina town. As agent Nora and editor Charlie repeatedly cross paths, they just may come to see themselves as main characters of the same story.
19 Elektra by Jennifer Saint
In ancient Greece, the House of Atreus is shrouded in tragedy—some say cursed. And none are more affected by this curse than the women who are drawn into this family’s web: Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and prodigal daughter Elektra. Ariadne author Jennifer Saint returns with a vivid reimagining of Greek mythology’s most haunted lineage.
20 This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
Independent, successful enough, and about to turn 40, Alice is satisfied enough with her life—barring her waning relationship with her ailing father, that is. But when she wakes up on her birthday the next morning, it’s not quite the one she expected: She’s back in 1996, reliving her sweet 16, and her dad is in his 40s again. Now that she’s got a shot at a do-over, what does Alice actually want to do over?
21 Either/Or by Elif Batuman
In 2017, Elif Batuman’s laugh-out-loud fiction debut, The Idiot, introduced us to Selin, a Harvard freshman in 1995 who has just discovered the new frontier of email. In this follow-up, it’s 1996, Selin is now a sophomore, and she’s made herself a checklist of essential college experiences that includes drinking, partying, and sex. All in all, this literary sequel is sure to delight day-one fans of Selin’s adventures.
22 You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
The intensely prolific Akwaeke Emezi—since debuting their novel, Freshwater, in 2018, they’ve published four books in as many years—is on track to have a banner 2022. Of the three new releases Emezi has hitting shelves this year, we’re most excited about You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, a love story inspired by the author’s lifelong affinity for Nigerian romance novels.
23 Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
Abused shepherd boy Marek finds himself at the center of a power struggle upending his medieval village in the latest novel by My Year of Rest and Relaxation author Ottessa Moshfegh. As the mystical powers of a blind midwife come into conflict with the political machinations of the town’s devout lord and governor, Marek gets caught in the crossfires of an epic clash between the church and the occult, the natural and spiritual worlds, and life and death.
24 Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin
Vera is a girl coming of age in a sheltered mountain town whose women—mothers, more specifically—are subjected to a unique crisis: Regularly and without warning, some of them will vanish without a trace. The daughter of a vanished mother herself, Vera wonders: When she becomes a mother, is she, too, fated to disappear?
25 The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias
Mario became a hitman for a good reason, really—it was his only option to afford his young daughter’s ever-mounting medical expenses—but the payoff has been much smaller and the damage to his family much greater than he expected. Then he gets offered a job that will take him deep into the belly of a drug cartel. The job is risky, but if he survives, the score will pull his family out of poverty forever.
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The Best, Buzziest New Books of 2022
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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