The Best New Book Releases Out December 24, 2024

I don’t usually feature sequels in these new release roundups that pick up where the proceeding book left off, except when they’re like Zhao’s Iron Widow series, which had an amazing reception. To stave off spoilers, I’ll only tell you about the first book in the series, Iron Widow, which was inspired by the only female emperor in Chinese history: Wu Zetian. But here, her story is remixed a bit, as it takes place in a world where people have developed giant transforming robots to fight the mech aliens that lie in wait beyond the Great Wall. These robots come at a great price, though. They require two pilots—a male and a female—and one is always sacrificed. Usually, it’s the female pilot, but after 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a co-pilot (to get revenge against the pilot responsible for her sister’s death), it’s Zetian who lives and her male co-pilot who perishes. This gives her the label Iron Widow, which is just the beginning of her journey as a force to be reckoned with.

This story of a decades-old unsolved mystery promises Nina LaCour, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Julia Alvarez teas. It follows Emilia Oliveras, whose past catches up to her. Let’s rewind a bit first, though—30 years ago, Emilia and her new husband Paul were on a Caribbean honeymoon when he disappeared and was presumed to have drowned. His wealthy family wanted Emilia to pay as his killer, but she managed to escape and reinvent herself as Emily Oliver. As Emily, she remarried and had two daughters, but her secrets from her first marriage ruined her second one, and now even her adult daughters don’t fully trust her. But then she gets a phone call one day that tells her Paul might not actually be dead, and as Emilia risks everything to get to the truth, her daughters aren’t too far behind.

If you’re wondering what Dukureh has to scream about to the world in this memoir, it’s some of the worst stuff ever. When she was 15, she was forced to marry, which led to her learning that she was a victim of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as a younger child. It’s after the second arranged marriage that she becomes an activist fighting for girls in her native Gambia and everywhere. She founded the organization Safe Hands, which eventually had FGM banned in Gambia. She’s now got her sights set on banishing FGM and child marriage worldwide within the next few years, and here, she gets into her work advocating for women and girls, and everything it has cost her.

The series adaptation of The Alienist had me gagged (RIP Caleb Carr), and this debut promises a similarly Victorian and twisty Gothic good time. It’s 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and James Willoughby has forsaken a posh life for a gritty one studying surgery. His desire to be at the cutting edge of medicine leads to him wanting to work with human cadavers, which, combined with his naiveté, means he gets mixed up with Nye the body snatcher. Soon, the two get so deep into the body-snatching underworld that they become caught up with rival gangs all vying for prestige…and the freshest bodies.

This genre blender has a taste of everything, from dark academia to historical fiction (with some real facts mixed in).

The dope cover art intrigued me, but the “Homeward Bound on an alien planet” description completely sold me. Three emotional support pets—Athos, Porthos, and Lovey—are aboard the Starship Horizon with a crew and their human, Dr. Winters, when things get sticky. Suddenly, they find themselves having to traverse a new, dangerous, and wondrous world to find the doctor. Equipped with their mech suits, and each other, they’ll make their way past all manner of giant robots and mechanized metropolises.

As an added bonus, this is supposed to have an adaptation soon, which will be directed by James Wan (Aquaman).