The best books to keep you warm this January

A woman's uncertainty in pregnancy becomes uneasiness in the early months of motherhood becomes something a little more sinister, as her daughter not only fails to bond with her but displays increasingly alarming behavior — that goes wholly diminished by her husband — in this compulsively readable thriller. Let's just say: never distrust a mother's intuition. (January 5)

The first novel to take advantage of the expiration of The Great Gatsby's copyright, this prequel imagines Nick Carraway's life in war-torn Paris and on the battlefront of World War II before he gets to West Egg. (January 5)

A love story of the most tragic proportions, revered writer Robert Jones, Jr. uses his debut novel to pry open our collective hearts. Isaiah and Samuel are two enslaved teenagers living on a plantation in the American South, whose bond both threatens their safety and provides one of the only reasons to hope within their community. (January 5)

A children's tome filled with Black excellence, celebrating — and providing the historical context for — accomplishments of Black musicians, artists, journalists, politicians, scientists, and more. It goes without saying that this book offers something to adults as well as kids. (January 5)

Darren, a young Black man from Bed-Stuy, is recruited onto the sales team of a successful tech start-up — plucked, if you will, from his gig as the manager of the Starbucks in the lobby of the company's office building. What comes next is a combination of character study, searing indictment of all the problematics of white corporate culture, and some good old-fashioned enjoyable sarcasm. (January 5)

The author of The Vexations turns her sights back onto short stories (this is her second collection); the works within take on a genre-bending, hauntingly environmental quality. (January 12)

The prequel we never knew we needed — until author Angie Thomas announced its pending arrival, and then this story became as necessary as the original. Rose tells Maverick's backstory in fine detail, offering up insight into how he became the man we met in The Hate U Give and giving us more reasons to love the Carter family. (January 12)

Nadia Owusu, an urban planner and writer who pens her debut from the vantage point of her 28-year-old self, seems the perfect candidate for a memoir: The daughter of a U.N. public servant, she's lived in Dar es Salaam, Addis Ababa, and Rome. Her mother left her as a toddler, and as a teen, her father died of what Owusu thought was cancer. She dispatches all of this heartache with blistering honesty, but does so with prose light enough that it never feels too much to bear. (January 12)

A remote British boarding school provides the backdrop for the reflections of protagonist Josephine, who finds that although she may have escaped to Los Angeles, her past at St. John the Divine is never as far behind as she'd prefer. (January 19)

If The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel were a YA novel, it would be this YA novel. Main character Izzy is a high school student who stumbles into a standup comedy career after pretending to be in college — but without all the divorce drama, of course. (January 19)

The actress tells her life story in her own words, starting with her childhood in India and spanning her stint as Miss Universe, her entrée into Bollywood and eventually Hollywood. (January 19)

This nonfiction story of the first hospital staffed entirely by women could not be more timely. (January 19)

The venerable journalist is back on our bookshelves with a tome full of never-before-collected essays and reported stories, mostly from the 1960s. Didion dug up tales on everything from a Gambler's Anonymous meeting in Gardena, Calif., to her own rejection from Stanford University. (January 26)

Beyond its intoxicating cover, this novel captivates in plot, too — it follows two sets of sisters whose lives converge and diverge in eerily similar ways. (January 26)