The 23 Most Anticipated Books of 2017
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Emma Flint, Little Deaths, January 17
Flint’s debut, set in 1965 Queens, follows a mother accused of killing her two children.
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Adam Silvera, History Is All You Left Me, January 17
Break out the Kleenex for this tale of teenage grief.
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Jeff Giles, The Edge of Everything, January 31
A girl’s life is forever changed after meeting a bounty hunter from hell.
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Katie Kitamura, A Separation, February 7
Just after a young wife agrees to separate from her philandering husband, he goes missing.
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Elan Mastai, All Our Wrong Todays, February 7
A man from a utopian parallel universe ends up in our 2016 after a time-travel mishap.
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Joyce Carol Oates, A Book of American Martyrs, February 7
Two families collide in Oates’ latest: that of an evangelical Christian man who murders an abortion doctor, and the physician’s grieving wife and children.
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Jason Rekulak, The Impossible Fortress, February 7
Revel in 1987 nostalgia in this debut about a teen boy, a coveted copy of Playboy, and a computer-nerd girl.
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George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo, February 14
Saunders’ first novel, which unspools during one long night in a graveyard, is narrated by multiple voices.
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Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give, February 28
A girl navigating the chasm between her poor neighborhood and fancy private school watches as the police gun down her best friend.
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Kevin Canty, The Underworld, March 7
Inspired by a real disaster, Canty’s novel explores the aftermath of a huge tragedy — a small-town fire with overwhelming fatalities.
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Peter Heller, Celine, March 7
Celine, a PI, investigates a case in Yellowstone National Park that quickly becomes far more complex than the random animal attack it was made out to be.
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Alec Baldwin, Nevertheless, April 4
The actor gets candid about his Long Island upbringing, struggles with addiction, storied career, and family.
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Caitlyn Jenner, The Secrets of My Life, April 25
We’re dying to know what off-camera secrets Jenner’s memoir holds.
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Gabourey Sidibe, This Is Just My Face, May 1
If the Empire star’s memoir is half as funny as her Twitter account, expect to laugh until you cry.
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Paula Hawkins, Into The Water, May 2
As the millions of readers who devoured The Girl on the Train know, author Paula Hawkins is very good at playing with your perception — and she does it again in her new novel, Into the Water, which she says is about "sisters who have a very messy history" and two women who turn up dead, weeks apart, at the bottom of a river. "It's rich and creepy and suspenseful," says Jaya Miceli, the designer who brought Hawkins' literary sleight of hand to life on the book jacket. To get "the story's murkiness and beauty to come through," she placed the text under a fish tank and photographed it through the water. But then she did something else. Look closely: Do you notice the blurred outline of a woman’s face in the depths? "We didn’t want something you can see immediately," Miceli says. "But when you see it, you can't unsee it." Just like a great Paula Hawkins twist.
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Sherman Alexie, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, June 13
The National Book Award-winning author pens a moving tribute to his mother.
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Terry Brooks, The Black Elfstone, June 13
Terry Brooks has been spinning his tales of Shannara since 1977, but with this new quadrilogy, he's bringing the beloved series to a close.
Why did you decide to end the series now? Well, my original plan was to live forever, but I’m discovering that that’s probably not going to happen, and I don’t want to be one of those authors whose series, after going on such a long time, gets written by somebody else at the end.
So you already know what’s going in the final chapter? I’ve got it in my head how I want the series to end — I know the emotional impact I want it to have. I started out with some concepts about the way science and magic work, where they were flip sides of the same coin. Now I’ll show you what happens when the two meet yet again!
These books will be the chronological end of the series. Is that it? You’re done with Shannara? If I want to go back and fill in some gaps that I left along the way or write more stories about a particular character, I can — but I’m not under any obligation.
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Angelica Baker, Our Little Racket, June 20
When an investment bank collapses, the women in the fallen CEO’s orbit must reassess their own roles.
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Rachel Khong, Goodbye Vitamin, July 11
In this tragic and funny novel, 30-year-old Ruth ends her engagement, quits her job, and moves home to care for her father, who has Alzheimer’s.
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Sarah Schmidt, See What I Have Done, August 1
Schmidt delves into the Lizzie Borden story, which may or may not have unfolded as we’ve always thought.
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Daniel Handler, All The Dirty Parts, August 29
Take a peek at the opening lines of the new adult novel by Daniel Handler — a.k.a. Lemony Snicket: "Let me put it this way: This is how much I think about sex. Draw a number line, with zero is you never think about sex and ten is, it’s all you think about, and while you are drawing the line, I am thinking about sex."
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Matthew Weiner, Heather, The Totality, October
Mad Men creator Weiner’s literary debut is the tale of a family and a psychopath.
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Scott Kelly, Endurance, November 7
While many of us fantasize about leaving Earth, astronaut Kelly has actually done it.