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 Daisy Jones & the Six and David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue are notable stand-outs and successes. In 2021, we can add Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau to this genre, and also to my growing list of most-anticipated novels of the year. Pitched as “Almost Famous meets Daisy Jones and the Six“, here’s the synopsis:
In 1970s Baltimore, fourteen-year-old Mary Jane loves cooking with her mother, singing in her church choir, and enjoying her family’s subscription to the Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club. Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house.
The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, Impeachment: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job — helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.
Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she’s always known and the future she’s only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she’s going to be.
Jessica Anya Blau’s Mary Jane is due to be published by Custom House in North America (May 11th) and in the UK (May 27th).
Brian Staveley’s debut novel, 
Elizabeth Knox‘s The Absolute Book generated quite a bit of positive buzz when the publisher(s) sent out the advance review copies. It kept popping up in my Twitter feed, typically accompanied with a positive review or response. Now that we’re getting closer to its publication, I thought it was time to write a quick post about it. Pitched as a contemporary fantasy that is a “spellbinding mix of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, American Gods and His Dark Materials” (quite an interesting mix), here’s the synopsis:
A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents’ house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.
With the considerable (and deserved) success of Silvia Moreno-Garcia‘s 
A few years back, I stumbled across Dead Boys, a short story collection by Richard Lange. I loved the way he wrote, and how he created and constructed characters, and he became an author I always kept an eye open for. Since then, he’s published a handful of interesting, gripping novels of crime fiction, including the LA noir 
David Swinson is at the author of the superb Frank Marr trilogy, set in Washington, DC — if you’re looking for a great crime story, starring a complicated cop protagonist, then I highly recommend you pick up 
Adrian Tchaikovsky has a new sci-fi novel due out in 2021: Shards of Earth! The first in the Final Architecture series (not sure if this will be a trilogy or more), it sounds bold and ambitious. Pitched as “an extraordinary new space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man’s discovery will save or destroy us all”, I’m really looking forward to reading this.
In 2021, Ad Astra are due to publish Furious Heaven, the sequel to Kate Elliott’s acclaimed 
I spotted this book in a catalogue a long time ago. The synopsis caught my eye, and I made a note of it. Recently(ish), the publisher unveiled the eye-catching cover, and my interest was further increased. Christopher Buehlman‘s first foray into fantasy, “Set in a world of goblin wars, stag-sized battle ravens, and assassins who kill with deadly tattoos”, here’s the synopsis for The Blacktongue Thief:
Back in 2012, Black Library published Pariah by Dan Abnett. The first novel to focus predominantly on Alizebeth Bequin, a beloved character from the author’s other Inquisition series — Eisenhorn and Ravenor. Fans of the series have long been waiting for the conclusion to the story, and this March Dan and Black Library are going to deliver the highly-anticipated Penitent. The first novel will also receive a new cover in the (superb) style of the new book.
And, for those who have been eagerly awaiting Penitent, here’s the synopsis:
Civilian Reader 