Perhaps best known to readers of CR as the author of the acclaimed novels Autonomous and The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz is taking a different tack for their next book: Four Lost Cities. I first learned of this book from a podcast interview with the author, quite some time ago. (I wish I could remember which one.) It is a book that explores four abandoned cities and tries to ascertain why their inhabitants abandoned them. Here’s the full synopsis:
A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history — and figure out why people abandoned them.
In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.
Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers — slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers — who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.
Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.
Annalee Newitz’s Four Lost Cities is due to be published by W. W. Norton in North America and in the UK, on February 2nd, 2021.
A couple of years ago, Oliver Harris introduced readers to his new protagonist, British spy Elliot Kane, in A Shadow Intelligence. This year, Kane returns in Ascension, which sees the agent pulled into a mystery surrounding the death of a close friend. Here’s the synopsis:
In 2021, Stacey Swann‘s “bighearted debut”, Olympus, Texas will arrive on shelves in North America and in the UK. I spotted it in a catalogue, and I’m very intrigued by it — it has “technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot”, and has been described as “Wildly entertaining” by Richard Russo, who happens to be one of my favourite authors. So, yeah. Very much looking forward to giving this a try. here’s the synopsis:
Ben Rhodes was one of President Obama’s longest-serving aides, and is a frequent contributor to various Crooked Media podcasts — in particularly, 
In June, readers will be able to enjoy a new novel by Benjamin Percy: The Ninth Metal is the first novel in the Comet Cycle series. I’m a big fan of Percy’s fiction, non-fiction, and comics, so this was always going to be on my most-anticipated list for 2021. Here’s the synopsis:
I first discovered Stark Holborn via the excellent 
I think I first heard of T. L. Huchu‘s upcoming debut novel, The Library of the Dead, after Ben Aaronovitch blurbed it. The first in a new series, Edinburgh Nights, it looks like a great new urban fantasy series that I’m very much looking forward to trying. I’m particularly looking forward to the Edinburgh setting — I haven’t read much (urban) fantasy set there. Pitched as “Sixth Sense meets Stranger Things“, here’s the synopsis:
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker – and they sure do love to talk. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to those they left behind. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children – leaving them husks, empty of joy and strength. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will rock her world.
Last year, I started reading a lot of books about the NBA. In particular, I read four books about the Golden State Warriors — one each on 
There have been quite a few novels released in the past couple of years (and upcoming) with music at the heart of them. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 
Brian Staveley’s debut novel, 
Civilian Reader 