There was another flurry of new books over the holiday period (review copies, purchases, and Christmas presents), so I actually have enough books already for two of these posts… I’ll publish the second one in a week or so.

Did you get any good books over the holidays? Anything in particular on your radar for 2025? Feel free to share in the comments.

Featuring: Harlan Coben, Jonathan Coe, Kevin Evers, Teresa Frohock, Rachel Howell Hall, Artis Henderson, David Litt, Tim MacMahon, Laura McCluskey, Amy Shearn, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Odd Arne Westad & Chen Jian

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Harlan Coben, NOBODY’S FOOL (Grand Central Publishing)

A year after the devastating events that took place in Fool Me Once, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce’s college days comes back to haunt him. Present day is hard enough for the disgraced Kierce, but his past isn’t through with him yet…

Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts — and then he runs.

Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.

His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past — and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.

It wasn’t entirely clear that this was a sequel (to Fool Me Once), when I received the DRC through NetGalley, but that’s not necessarily a problem — it just means I have another book to read before this. I haven’t read many of Coben’s novels, despite many of them having very intriguing premises. Looking forward to getting to this as soon as I can. Nobody’s Fool is due to be published by Grand Central Publishing in North America (March 25th) and Penguin in the UK (March 27th).

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Jonathan Coe, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE (Europa Editions)

A blisteringly funny political critique wrapped up in a murder mystery…

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to tourists at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere.

That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous—and power will stop at nothing to stay on top.

As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Darting between decades and genres, The Proof of My Innocence is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain’s most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

At this point, I own all of Jonathan Coe’s novels, but have read very few of them. I have no idea why, but I have a feeling it’s because they’re all eBooks, and therefore less easily browsed to choose from. Coe’s North American publisher was kind enough to send me a physical ARC, though, so this is sitting on my TBR shelf, quietly judging me for not reading right away. I started reading this a couple of days into the new year, and I was quickly hooked. (Review hopefully very soon.) The Proof of My Innocence is due to be published by Europa Editions in North America (April 15th); it is out now in the UK, published by Penguin.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received from publisher

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Kevin Evers, THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THIS (HBR Press)

Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teenager to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has blazed a path that is uniquely hers.

But how exactly has she managed to scale her success — multiple times — while dominating an industry that cycles through artists and stars like fashion trends? How has she managed to make and remake herself time and again while remaining true to her artistic vision? And how has she managed to master the constant disruption in the music business that has made it so hard for others to adapt and endure?

In There’s Nothing Like This, Kevin Evers, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, answers these questions in riveting detail. With the same thoughtful analysis usually devoted to iconic founders, game-changing innovators, and pioneering brands, Evers chronicles the business and creative decisions that have defined each phase of Swift’s career.

Mixing business and art, analysis and narrative, and pulling from research in innovation, creativity, psychology, and strategy, There’s Nothing Like This presents Swift as the modern and multidimensional superstar that she is — a songwriting savant and a strategic genius.

Swift’s fans will see their icon from a fresh perspective. Others will gain more than a measure of admiration for her ability to stay at the top of her game. And everyone will come away understanding why, even after two decades, Swift keeps winning.

As someone who enjoys some of Taylor Swift’s music, and also lives with someone who very much enjoys Taylor Swift’s music and story, I have passively acquired a surprising amount of information about the singer and her career. Naturally, because of who I am, this means I’ve become interesting in reading more about her incredible career. In addition to Rob Sheffield’s Heartbreak is the National Anthem, then, I recently got a DRC of Evers’s new book (which looks like it’ll be quite different to Sheffield’s). Looking forward to reading the two books together (or near-ish) — I might even put together a dual-review. There’s Nothing Like This is due to be published by Harvard Business Review Press on April 8th, in North America and in the UK. [The author’s written an article about Swift, too.]

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Teresa Frohock, MISERERE: AN AUTUMN TALE (JABberwocky)

Everything has a price, and those who deal with the devil pay dearly in this enthralling dark fantasy about redemption, sacrifice, and a Hell-bound battle between good and evil.

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru made a choice that has haunted him for years. He abandoned his lover, Rachael, to Hell to save the damned soul of his sister, Catarina. But Catarina doesn’t want to be saved. Now a prisoner in his reviled sister’s home, Lucian is being used as a tool to help fulfill Catarina’s wicked dreams: unleash the demons of the underworld to wage a war above.

Lucian’s first step in thwarting Catarina’s plan is to make amends with the past. Escaping captivity, he is determined to find Rachael even if it means entering the gates of Hell itself. Only then does he cross paths with a young girl fleeing from her own terrors. With the frightened foundling in tow, Lucian embarks on a journey to right a terrible wrong, to protect the innocent, and to rescue the woman he loves.

But no one escapes Catarina’s wrath. She’s just as driven in her pursuit: to track down her brother wherever it leads. And when she finds him, and she will, she vows to turn his heart to glass, grind it to powder, and crush the souls of everyone he loves.

I read Miserere back in 2011, when it was first published by Nightshade Books. I was quickly drawn in to the atmospheric and gothic world, and Frohock’s characters and prose had be hooked very quickly. Next week, the novel is getting a revised re-issue, which I hope means many new readers will find the novel and Frohock’s other work as a result. I really enjoyed this, and am looking forward to reading the new version as soon as I can. Miserere: An Autumn Tale is due to be published by JABberwocky in North America and in the UK, on January

Also on CR: Review of Miserere (original edition); Excerpt from Miserere (new edition); Interview with Teresa Frohock (2011)

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received from publisher

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Rachel Howell Hall, FOG AND FURY (Thomas & Mercer)

She’s a new PI in a beautiful seaside town. It’s dirtier than it looks — and more dangerous too — in a twisting novel of suspense…

After ten years on the force, LAPD cop Sonny Rush relocates with her elderly mother to peaceful Haven, California, to join her godfather’s burgeoning PI business. What crimes could possibly happen in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea”? Sonny’s first case: find Figgy, a missing goldendoodle last seen sporting a Versace collar. At least scouting out a dognapper gives Sonny a chance to get to know her new neighbors.

Forty-eight hours in town and Figgy’s disappearance entangles Sonny in an unwelcome reunion with her ex, one of Haven’s wealthiest citizens. And when the body of a teenage boy is found along a popular hiking trail, Sonny is drawn into a web of strange beyond anything she ever saw in LA.

Then comes a local’s warning: question everything. Haven hides secrets that could destroy its idyllic facade. Or destroy Sonny first.

I’ve been a fan of Rachel Howzell Hall’s work since 2020, when I read a review copy of And Now She’s Gone. A prolific author, she has written novels across the crime, mystery, and thriller genres (and has recently also started writing fantasy). I read this new novel pretty soon after getting a DRC, and I’ve already posted my review. The TL;DR version, though, is that this is another excellent and gripping mystery from Hall, and I can’t wait for the next in the series. Fog and Fury is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in North America and in the UK, on May 13th.

Also on CR: Reviews of Fog and Fury and And Now She’s Gone

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Artis Henderson, NO ORDINARY BIRD (Harper)

In the vein of Small Fry or Priestdaddy, No Ordinary Bird is a compelling father-daughter story that reads like true crime, haunted by a question the dashing and mysterious Lamar Henderson had always taught his daughter to ask: “How do you tell the good guys from the bad?”

Artis was five when a plane crash killed her beloved father. For years, it was simply called “the accident.”

But many things weren’t getting discussed. Like Lamar himself — a swashbuckling, larger-than-life pilot, a doting father and husband, and the most popular farmer in Georgia. Or that the IRS had immediately taken everything: the chickens, the airplanes, the islands in the Bahamas… Afterwards, Artis and her mother broke contact with everyone and fled, rebuilding from the bottom up as if Lamar’s big, wild life had never happened.

Years later, a friend tells Artis Lamar’s plane was sabotaged: her father had been one of the biggest drug smugglers in Miami in the 1970s. At the time of his death, he was about to testify in a corruption trial that had swept up everyone from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, to a US district attorney, to the Columbian drug cartels. But the deeper Artis digs, the more unexpected the story becomes.

Beyond the dramatic betrayals, glamorous drug lords, and geopolitical intrigue is the beating heart of this riveting memoir: a daughter’s grappling with a dark legacy and her memories of the father who had been the light of her life. Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, and is there a difference at all?

This sounded rather intriguing. Looking forward to reading it. (Might hold off until closer to its release date, though.) No Ordinary Bird is due to be published by Harper in North America, on September 2nd.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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David Litt, IT’S ONLY DROWNING (Gallery Books)

After moving from Washington, DC, to the Jersey Shore, a former speechwriter for President Obama starts surfing at the age of thirty-five — the rough equivalent of beginning guitar lessons on your deathbed — and must turn for help to the only other surfer he knows: a tattooed, truck-driving, Joe Rogan superfan who happens to be his brother-in-law.

David Litt, the Yale-educated writer with a sensible fear of sharks, and Matt, the daredevil electrician with two motorcycles and a passion for death metal, had always coexisted from a comfortable distance as brothers-in-law. Yet in 2021, as David wallowed in existential dread while America’s crises piled up, he couldn’t help but notice that Matt was thriving. When he wasn’t making money rewiring New Jersey beach homes, Matt was riding waves at his favorite spots in the state.

Quietly, David started taking surfing lessons. For a few months, he suffered through wipeouts on waves the height of daffodils. But to his surprise, he soon became obsessed. And once he got a sense of the ways that fully committing to surfing could change him both in the water and on land, he set his sights on an unlikely goal: riding a big wave at Hawaii’s famously dangerous North Shore. To get there, he’d need Matt’s help.

At a moment when the fault lines of class, education, and culture threaten to tear our country apart, It’s Only Drowning is a blueprint for becoming braver at a time when it takes courage just to read the news, a love letter to surfing in the vein of William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, and a poignant buddy comedy in the tradition of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods.

I’ve been a fan of Litt’s books since his debut, Thanks, Obama. This latest book looked like a slight departure (it is), and I was lucky enough to get a DRC. As it happens, I finished reading it just the other night (full review soon), and enjoyed it a great deal. That, despite not being particularly interested in reading about surfing… It’s Only Drowning is due to be published by Gallery Books in North America and in the UK, on June 24th.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Tim MacMahon, THE WONDER BOY (Grand Central Publishing)

In 2018, the Dallas Mavericks landed the most hyped European teen prospect in basketball history—Luka Doncic, who has proven to be a generational NBA talent with a flair for sensational playmaking. But that’s only half the story. With The Wonder Boy, MacMahon takes us beyond the highlights to the madness that ensues as the Mavericks try to avoid blowing their golden opportunity.

From the internal power struggles in owner Mark Cuban’s front office during the early years of Doncic’s career, to the new regime’s effort to earn Doncic’s loyalty and put the ruthless competitor in position to win, readers will learn never-before-reported details about the saga’s biggest moments, including:

• • the blockbuster deal for Kristaps Porzingis that blew up in the Mavs’ faces
  • the divorces with coach Rick Carlisle and GM Donnie Nelson
  • Jalen Brunson’s exit after a run to the Western Conference finals
  • the new pairing with the mercurial Kyrie Irving
  • the improbable journey to the 2024 Finals

As the clock ticks on the Mavs’ quest to win it all with their irreplaceable young star, The Wonder Boy pulls back the curtain on a dilemma every NBA team would love to have.

Another one I’ve already read and reviewed. This was very high on my 2025 must-read list, so I’m very grateful to the publisher for sending me an ARC. Tim MacMahon’s account of Dončić’s early career in Europe and move to the NBA is very good, and presents a pretty full portrait of Luka. As I mentioned in my review, some of my favourite parts of the book were not about Dončić, but overall it’s a solid addition to any reader’s NBA shelf. The Wonder Boy is due to be published by Grand Central Publishing in North America, on March 25th.

Also on CR: Review of The Wonder Boy

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received from publisher

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Laura McCluskey, THE WOLF TREE (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of that same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate.

Georgina “George” Lennox is happy to be back from leave after a devastating accident. That is, until she meets the hostile islanders and their enigmatic priest, who seem determined to thwart their investigation. George’s partner, Richie, just wants to close the case and head home to his family. But he hasn’t heard the wolves howling or seen the dark figures at their window at night. He’s too busy watching George as if waiting for her to break.

With the dark secrets of the island swirling around them, George and Richie must decide who to trust and what to believe as they spin closer to the terrible truth. Laced with Scottish legend yet sharp and modern in voice, The Wolf Treeannounces a spellbinding new voice in crime and mystery fiction.

The synopsis caught my attention. Looking forward to it. The Wolf Tree is due to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in North America (February 11th) and Hemlock Press in the UK (February 27th).

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Amy Shearn, ANIMAL INSTINCT (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

The world has stopped. But Rachel is just getting started…

It’s spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein — mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite — is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex. None of them, individually, are perfect… hence her rotation.

But what if one person could perfectly cater to all her emotional needs?

Driven by this possibility, Rachel creates Frankie, the AI chatbot she programs with all the good parts of dating in middle age… and some of the bad. But as Rachel plays with her fantasy to her heart’s content, she begins to realize she can’t reprogram her ex-husband, her children, her friends, or the roster of paramours that’s grown unwieldy. Perhaps real life has more in store for Rachel than she could ever program for herself.

I requested this on a bit of a whim: the synopsis was intriguing, and at the time I was looking for something out of my usual (sub-)genres. Animal Instinct is due to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in North America and in the UK, on March 18th.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Adrian Tchaikovsky, DAYS OF SHATTERED FAITH (Aries/Head of Zeus)

Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai, greatest of the Successor States, inheritor to the necromantic dominion that was the Moeribandi Empire and tomorrow’s frontline in the Palleseen’s relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world.

Loret is fresh off the boat, and just in time.

As Cohort-Invigilator of Correct Appreciation, Outreach department, she’s here as aide to the Palleseen Resident, Sage-Invigilator Angilly. And Sage-Invigilator Angilly — Gil to her friends — needs a second in the spectacularly illegal, culturally offensive and diplomatically inadvisable duel she must fight at midnight.

Outreach, that part of the Pal machine that has to work within the imperfection of the rest of the world, has a lot of room for the illegal, the unconventional, the unorthodox. But just how much unorthodoxy can Gil and Loret get away with?

As a succession crisis looms, as a long-forgotten feat of necromantic engineering nears fruition, as pirate kings, lizard armies and demons gather, as old gods wane and new gods wax, sooner or later Gil and Loret will have to settle their ledger.

Just as well they are both very, very good with a blade.

It should come as no surprise to long-time CR readers that any new book that Tchaikovsky releases is going to be on my must-read list. That being said, he writes so much, that I’m starting to get quite a considerable backlog of unread novels of his… Much like the first two novels in the Tyrant Philosophers series. Nevertheless, I fully intend to get caught up (I do!), and it’s always nice to have plenty of choice. Days of Shattered Faith is out now, published by Aries/Head of Zeus in North America and in the UK.

Also on CR: Interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky (2012); Guest Posts on “Nine Books, Six Years, One Stenwold Maker”, “The Art of Gunsmithing — Writing Guns of the Dawn”, “Looking for God in Melnibone Places: Fantasy and Religion”, and “Eye of the Spider”; Excerpt from Guns of the Dawn; Reviews of Empire of Black & Gold, Guns of the Dawn, Children of Ruin, Spiderlight, Ironclads, Made Things, and One Day All This Will Be Yours, Shards of Earth, and Ogres

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, BlueSky

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Odd Arne Westad & Chen Jian, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION (Yale University Press)

The first thorough account of a formative and little understood chapter in Chinese history

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

In this rigorous account, Westad and Chen construct a panorama of catastrophe and progress in China. They chronicle China’s gradual opening to the world — the interplay of power in an era of aged and ailing leadership, the people’s rebellion against the earlier government system, and the roles of unlikely characters: overseas Chinese capitalists, American engineers, Japanese professors, and German designers. This is a story of revolutionary change that neither foreigners nor the Chinese themselves could have predicted.

I’ve been a long-time fan of Odd Arne Westad’s work. His history The Cold War has become one of my go-to texts for one of the courses I assist on. He is also the author of Restless Empire, a history of China (which I own, but haven’t yet had the chance to read). Jian is also the author of a recent biography of Zhou Enlai, which is high on my TBR list. The Great Transformation is out now, published by Yale University Press in North America and in the UK.

Follow the Author (Westad): Website, Goodreads
Follow the Author: (Jian): Website