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Publishing This Week
Hello,

There is much to explore among this week's 14 new and notable books, including Bryn Turnbull's The Last Grand Duchess, which received a stellar 4.6-star average in our early reader program First Impressions.

Another is Secrets of the Sprakkar (SPRAH-car) by Iceland's First Lady, Eliza Reid, which offers a powerful and atmospheric portrait of a tiny country, and its women, that could lead the way forward for us all. We have copies to give away!

Davina Morgan-Witts, Publisher




This Week's New and Notable Books
There are too many books published each week for you to read about them all, let alone read them all. So we do the legwork for you, scouring the publishers' catalogs and the pre-publication reviews to pick out what we believe to be among the best and most interesting. For more about our process, see “Picking Books” and “Rating Books”.
The Last Grand Duchess book jacket
The Last Grand Duchess: A Novel of Olga Romanov, Imperial Russia, and Revolution
by Bryn Turnbull


On sale Feb 8 from Mira
Genre: Historical Fiction. 384 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5
Members' Rating: 4.6/5

This sweeping novel takes readers behind palace walls to see the end of Imperial Russia through the eyes of Olga Nikolaevna Romanov, the first daughter of the last tsar.

Read More | Reader Reviews
Secrets of the Sprakkar book jacket
Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World
by Eliza Reid


On sale Feb 8 from Sourcebooks
Genre: Biography/Memoir. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

Iceland is the best place on earth to be a woman―but why? Secrets of the Sprakkar is a powerful and atmospheric portrait of a tiny country that could lead the way forward for us all.

Read More | Win Copies for Your Book Club
Nobody's Magic book jacket
Nobody's Magic
by Destiny O. Birdsong


Debut Author
On sale Feb 8 from Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Novels. 368 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives.

Read More
The Wind Whistling in the Cranes book jacket
The Wind Whistling in the Cranes: A Novel
by Margaret Jull Costa


On sale Feb 8 from Liveright/W.W. Norton
Genre: Novels. 528 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

From the winner of the prestigious FIL Prize in Romance Languages comes this masterpiece saga, set in the twilight of the late twentieth century, of two clashing families in coastal Portugal.

Read More
Very Cold People book jacket
Very Cold People: A Novel
by Sarah Manguso


Debut Author
On sale Feb 8 from Hogarth Books
Genre: Novels. 208 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5

The eagerly awaited debut novel from "one of the most original and exciting writers working in English today" (Jhumpa Lahiri): a masterwork on growing up in - and out of - the suffocating constraints of small-town America.

Read More
My Mess Is a Bit of a Life book jacket
My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety
by Georgia Pritchett


Debut Author
On sale Feb 8 from HarperOne
Genre: Essays. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5

Jenny Lawson meets Nora Ephron in this joyful memoir-in-vignettes on living - and thriving - with anxiety from a multiple Emmy Award-winning comedy writer whose credits include Succession and Veep.

Read More
Jane and the Year Without a Summer book jacket
Jane and the Year Without a Summer: Jane Austen Mysteries #14
by Stephanie Barron


On sale Feb 8 from Soho Crime
Genre: Mysteries. 336 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

May 1816: Jane Austen is feeling unwell, with an uneasy stomach, constant fatigue, rashes, fevers and aches. She attributes her poor condition to the stress of family burdens, which even the drafting of her latest manuscript - about a baronet's daughter nursing a broken heart for a daring naval captain - cannot alleviate.

Read More
Home/Land book jacket
Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return
by Rebecca Mead


On sale Feb 8 from Knopf
Genre: Biography/Memoir. 240 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5

A moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land - this is a "winsome memoir of departure and reversal...about the way a series of unknowns accrue into a life" (Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror).

Read More
Sickening book jacket
Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It
by John Abramson


On sale Feb 8 from Mariner Books
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion. 336 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

The inside story of how Big Pharma's relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge - misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health.

Read More
The Authority Gap book jacket
The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It
by Mary Ann Sieghart


Debut Author
On sale Feb 8 from W.W. Norton & Company
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion. 384 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

An incisive, intersectional look at the mother of all gender biases: a resistance to women's authority and power.

Read More
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