A new year means new releases! The first half of 2021 is chalk full of exciting new books — from debut authors, to TMR contributors, this is just a short list of books to add to your reading list.
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
Darren, twenty-two, is content to live at home with his mother. But when Darren gets an opportunity at a mysterious tech startup, he becomes a man on a mission. Askaripour’s debut is multilayered, funny, and satirical.
Publication Date: January 5th
The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.
Jones’s debut is at once a love story between two enslaved men and a close, painful examination of life on a Mississippi plantation. R.O. Kwan calls this book “an absolute triumph, a symphonic evocation of the heights and depths of pain, joy, and love.”
Publication Date: January 5th
The Push by Ashley Audrain
I’m all in for any book compared to Lional Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. In Audrain’s debut novel, Blythe Connor’s first child, and thus her experience with motherhood, is not what she expects. Blythe is willing to consider her misgivings are all in her head…until everything falls apart.
Publication Date: January 5th
Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel
In Argentina in 1976, Thomas Orilla is drawn into fighting for the insurgency while trying to woo his childhood sweetheart, Isabel. Fast forward to New York in 1986 where Tomas has built a new life. When Tomas receives a call from Isabel’s mother, he returns to Argentina where he faces the ghosts of choices made and not made.
Publication Date: January 12th
Pedro’s Theory by Marcos Gonsalez
Both literary and political, this debut memoir reimagines the American dream. Gonsalez explores the lives of many Pedros, some versions of himself, others the imagined lives of strangers, in order to explore the difference between the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us.
Publication Date: January 12th
Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah
Even on his wedding day, Muneer knows his marriage will not last. What he doesn’t know is that once they’re divorced, his wife will run off with their daughter and he will spend a lifetime searching for her. Quotah’s debut tackles religion, immigration, family, and heartbreak.
Publication Date: January 26th
If I Disappear by Eliza Jane Brazier
Sera loves true crime podcasts and so, when the host of her favorite podcast host, Rachel, goes missing, she decides to find out why. Rachel has been investigating an isolated ranch and so Sera uses clues from the podcasts to see what she can find out about the ranch and how or if it relates to Rachel’s disappearance.
Publication Date: January 26th
The Part That Burns by Jeannine Ouelette
In her debut memoir, Ouelette writes, “You can tear a thing apart and tape it back together and it will still be torn and whole.” She takes the pieces of difficult childhood and her longing for a created family of her own and arranges them in a way that resembles the fragmentation of memory.
Publication Date: February 1st
Girl A by Abigail Dean
Lex Gracie, now an adult with a good job and solid footing, does not want to relieve the horrors of her childhood. But when her mother dies and Lex is the executioner of the will, she must return home and to her six siblings to face the past she escaped.
Publication Date: February 2nd
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
Barbados is paradise for some, but not for all. In her debut novel, Jones explores the clash between moneyed vacationers and the locals who serve them.
Publication Date: February 2nd
Land of Big Numbers: Stories by Te-Ping Chen
Jennifer Egan says of Te-Ping Chen’s debut: “At the heart…lies a question all too relevant in 21st Century America: What is freedom?” With stories that move between realism and magical realism, this debut collection creates a portrait of modern China.
Publication Date: February 2nd
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Each of the stories in this collection features ordinary people facing extraordinary reckonings within their Floridan cities and suburbs. Lauren Groff calls this “a gorgeous debut.”
Publication Date: February 2nd
Dark Horses by Susan Mihalic
Roan Montgomery is a 15-year-old equestrian prodigy whose world inside and outside the ring is ruled by her father. Roan has, until now, been able to compartmentalize her father’s sexual abuse. But when she beings a relationship with a classmate, Roan is no longer sure she can navigate the danger of her father and the world beyond his control.
Publication Date: February 16th
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Penner’s debut moves between present-day London and 1791. In 1791, Nella runs an apothecary shop, once on the up-and-up, now a place where women can purchase poison for the men who torment them. In the present day, amateur historian Caroline finds an old apothecary vial and begins to investigate. As Caroline uncovers more of the truth, Nella and Caroline’s lives collide, despite the centuries between them.
Publication Date: March 2nd
Justine by Forsyth Harmon
It’s 1999 and Ali lives a boring life with her grandmother, until she meets Justine. Her admiration quickly turns to fixation and Ali begins to change in unexpected, somewhat troubling, ways.
Publication Date: March 2nd
The Recent East by Thomas Grattan
Beate Haas returns home to East Germany shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her twin teenagers have entirely different reactions to the move, and this creates the first ever fissure in their relationship. This novel explores what it means to leave home, and what it means to return.
Publication Date: March 9th
Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walker
In this debut novel by The Masters Review contributor Laura Maylene Walker, the future is marked on the bodies of women. Anne Valente has called this “incandescent debut novel” a “gift.” Read Laura Maylene Walker’s “Adult Education” and then preorder her book!
Publication Date: March 16th
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
This novel, told through a kaleidoscope of intergenerational stories, examines how one life influences the next. Roxanne Gay says, “Gabriela Garcia captures the lives of Cuban women in a world to which they refuse to surrender and she does so with precision and generosity and beauty.”
Publication Date: March 30th
by Jen Dupree