This month’s releases that have caught our attention takes us everywhere from Mesoamerica to Pakistan, China and Ukraine. We can already tell March is going to thrill us, break us and warm our hearts all at the same time.
The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta / Image credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta
(1 March)
Women with unfathomable inner power take on a patriarchal society that wants to destroy them in an ancient Mesoamerica setting? Yes please! In this YA fantasy, we are introduced to two characters: Indir and Saya. The former is a Dreamer, a seer with the ability to dream truth who is the only thing that stands between King Alcan’s desire for ultimate power and the survival of the long line of seers to which she belongs. The latter is a seer whose power is being abused by her own mother, and when she discovers that there’s more to her abilities than she released, she starts to question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.
All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
(1 March)
We think we’re ready for a serious story full of tears and heartbreak, but we have a feeling it might be a case of be careful what you wish for with New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir’s All My Rage. Set in Juniper, California, two best friends torn apart by an almighty fight have to find a way to come together again to defeat their respective demons; Salahudin is struggling to run the family motel in the wake of her mother’s ill health and her father’s alcoholism, while Noor is applying to college to escape her cantankerous uncle. Can they heal their friendship and save one another, or is the past determined to plague their futures?
The Night Shift by Alex Finlay
(3 March)
This one is really giving us The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix vibes. We have two female survivors of a brutal killer; one from New Year’s Eve 1999 and one from fifteen years later. The first was attacked on a night shift at Blockbuster, her fellow employee murdered. The second was attacked while working at an ice cream store, her colleague, again, slaughtered. Both survivors remember the killer’s chilling final words: “Goodnight, pretty girl.” There’s one suspect, but will he be found before he kills again? Once again, Alex Finlay has us clicking the pre-order button.
Gallant by V.E. Schwab
(10 March)
A new standalone novel from prolific fantasy writer V.E. Schwab, Gallant promises a dark tale of family secrets and dangerous shadows. Olivia Prior is drawn to a place called Gallant which is where her family comes from, but it isn’t long before she realises how steeped in ghosts the place is. When she crosses a mysterious wall, she discovers a dimension that’s a dark mirror of the world she just stepped from, and she finds herself with a choice between joining the shadows and protecting the world from them.
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James
(15 March)
There’s nothing we love more than crime blended with the supernatural - that’s what hooked us in Simone St. James’ The Sun Down Motel! The Book of Cold Cases looks to be just the thing to follow up as we follow an amateur true crime writer named Shea Collins and her strange relationship with a woman acquitted of two cold case murders. There are things going on in the woman’s house that Shea just can’t put her finger on. Is this woman as innocent as she thought?
Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu
(17 March)
At a time when war is on everyone’s minds, Melissa Fu’s forthcoming cultural venture Peach Blossoms Spring couldn’t have been more timely. Opening in 1938, it follows a young woman named Meilin and her son Renshu, who are forced to evacuate their home in China as the Japanese forces threaten to move in. With little more than a set of ancient fables to offer them comfort, they must do what they can to survive. As an adult, Renshu is living in America under a new name with a daughter of his own, and she’s desperate to learn about her heritage. But when will Renshu be ready to reflect on his own troubled past?
MORE: Brown Girls review: Daphne Palasi Andreades’ poetic coming–of-age debut is nostalgic to the core
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn
(31 March)
Kate Quinn returns little more than a year after her last novel, The Rose Code, with another World War II tale which, this time, is based on a true story. Set in Kiev, book-loving student Mila Pavlichenko is forced to abandon her studies in favour of a sniper rifle as the quickly moving Nazi forces mean she must join in the fight. Nicknamed Lady Death, she kills 300 Nazis before being sent on a tour of America; still haunted by the war and in a new country, her loneliness leads to an unlikely kinship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. But the enemy is not so far behind as she thought and she is forced into battle once again, but this time of a different kind.
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