5 New Release Books I Can't Wait To Read

and 5 Spring Backlist Books I Added To My TBR (including books I've never seen anyone talking about!)

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Hello! Spring has officially arrived and with it SO many more books! I don’t know about you, but I love adding both new and old titles to my TBR (to-be-read). Doesn’t this create chaos and tbr overwhelm you might be wondering? The short answer - for me it does not. I’m a mood reader who often needs to browse through a lot of possibilities to land on something I “might” be in the mood for. Or there are times I know I’m in the mood for a literary mystery, so I prefer to have as many options of potential mysteries as possible in my TBR lists.

With the idea that you too might enjoy having a variety of books to add to your TBR’s, I thought I’d pick 5 of my most anticipated spring releases and 5 backlist spring books I just added to my TBR. I have to tell you, all of these books sound so good, and what’s so fun for me about researching backlist titles is coming across books that I’d previously never heard of, but now can’t wait to read. I’d love to know in the comments what spring new releases you’re looking forward to reading.

New and Upcoming Spring Releases

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda - March 26 (Mariner Books)

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

One Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member's perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans

For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

• Why I’m excited -I’m starting this soon and already wondering what happened regarding the 12 year old and what will the fallout be. Also I loved both The Vanishing Half and Such a Fun Age, those are big comps to compare this to.

I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay - May 7 (William Morrow)

How would you react in a life-or-death situation?

It's a question everyone asks themselves, but few have to face in real life. English teacher Richard Boyle certainly never thought he would find himself talking down a former student intent on harming others, but when Mark LeDrew shows up at Richard's school with a bomb strapped to his chest, Richard immediately jumps into action. Thanks to some quick thinking, he averts a major tragedy and is hailed as a hero, but not all the attention focused on him is positive.

Richard's brief moment in the spotlight puts him in the sights of a deranged blackmailer with a score to settle. The situation rapidly spirals out of control, drawing Richard into a fraught web of salacious accusations and deadly secrets. As he tries to uncover the truth he discovers that there's something deeply wrong in the town--something that ties together the blackmailer, and a gang of ruthless drug dealers, and Richard has landed smack in the middle of it. He's desperate to find a way out, but everyone in his life seems to be hiding something, and trusting the wrong person could cost him everything he loves.

What price will he pay for one good deed?

• Why I’m excited - Linwood Barclay is an auto read author for me! While not all of his books have been hits for me (The Lie Maker was average) I’ve loved many of his backlist books (Trust Your Eyes, A Noise Downstairs), so I’m hopeful this could be another 5 star winner for me

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan - May 21 (Doubleday Books)

Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories of manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus's scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister's wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who's-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.

In a globetrotting tale that takes us from the black sand beaches of Hawaii to the skies of Marrakech, from the glitzy bachelor pads of Los Angeles to the inner sanctums of England's oldest family estates, Kevin Kwan unfurls a juicy, hilarious, sophisticated and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex, and the lies we tell about them all.

• Why I’m excited - I love a rich people behaving badly story and this one has a love triangle aspect that I also love. Add in the globetrotting aspect and this seems like a fun spring/summer read

Knife River by Justine Champine - May 28 (Dial Press)

When Jess was thirteen, her mother went for a walk and never returned. Jess and her older sister, Liz, never found out what happened. Instead, they did what they hoped their mother had done: survive. As soon as she was old enough, Jess fled their small town of Knife River, wandering from girlfriend to girlfriend like a ghost in her own life, aimless in her attempts to outrun grief and confusion. But one morning, fifteen years after their mother's disappearance, she gets the call she's been bracing for: Her mother's remains have been found.

Jess returns to find Knife River--and her sister--frozen in time. The town is as claustrophobic and rundown as ever. Liz still lives in their childhood home and has become obsessed with unsolved missing persons cases. Jess plans to stay only until they get some answers, but their mother's bones, exposed to the elements for so long, just leave them with more questions. As Jess gets caught up in the case and falls back into an entanglement with her high school girlfriend, her understanding of the past, of Liz, of their mother, and of herself become more complicated--and the list of theories more ominous.

• Why I’m excited - Missing person stories are my literary catnip, I will always be drawn to this type of mystery- what happened to the mother and will they find the killer is enough to draw me in

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden - May 28 (Avid Reader Press)

A twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961--a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be--led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel's doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season. Eva is Isabel's antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn't. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house, Isabel's suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel's paranoia gives way to infatuation--leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva--nor the house in which they live--are what they seem.

• Why I’m excited - This premise is very intriguing- Isabel seems like a woman on the edge and I’m curious about what’s going to happen between her and Eva. The buzzwords that grabbed me- fury fueled obsession, paranoia, Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. I’ve read the first few pages of this and the writing is strong and I’m definitely looking forward to continuing

Spring Backlist Books On My TBR

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu - March 2014 (Knopf)

A story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.

• Why I added to my TBR - This sounds like a potentially twisty, complicated love story which are my favorite type of love stories

The Overstory by Richard Powers - April 2018 (W.W. Norton & Company)

A sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of--and paean to--the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, this story unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours--vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

• Why I added to my TBR - I’m in my tree and nature era, plus I loved Bewilderment and this sounds like it could be a saga and it’s set over many years which I love

Night Prayers by Santiago Gamboa & translated by Howard Curtis - March 2016

A young philosophy student is arrested for drug trafficking in Bangkok and given an ultimatum: plead guilty or face the death penalty. In the darkness of his cell, it is not his own demise that weighs most heavily on him but a deep longing to be reunited with his sister. He will do anything to see her again. Readers of Roberto Bolaño, Hernan Diaz, and Gabriel García Márquez will find much to love in this story that spans the mean streets of Bogotá to the bordellos of Thailand and tells of a love between siblings that knows no end.

• Why I added to my TBR- One of my reading goals this year is to read more translated books ( I had great success with translated novels last year) and this is one I’ve never heard of. I’m already wondering what happens to this young student. Plus, I don’t read many stories involving siblings

The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong - May 2016 (Penguin Books)

Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home - he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life? Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family.

• Why I added to my TBR - Another translated book and one that has me wondering- what actually happened, did he kill his mother?!

Darkroom by Mary Maddox - March 2016 (Cantraip Press)

What would you do if your best friend disappeared?
Talented but unstable photographer Day Randall has been living rent-free in Kelly Durrell's Colorado condo for eight months. Day needs someone to keep an eye on her. Kelly needs someone to draw her out of her stable but not spectacular life. The arrangement works for both of them.
Then Kelly comes home one day to find Day gone. There's no note, no phone call. Day's car is still parked out front, but her room is starkly, suspiciously spotless. No one seems to care. Day wouldn't just leave. Alone, Kelly traces Day's last steps through shadowy back rooms of Boulder nightclubs and to a remote mountain estate, where the wealthy protect themselves behind electric fences and armed guards. Along the way, she uncovers a sinister underworld lying just below the mountain snow, and a group of powerful people who will do anything to protect the secrets hidden in Day's enigmatic photographs. In terms of subject matter and tone, Darkroom is a close cousin to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or TV’s True Detective.

• Why I added to my TBR - As I mentioned above, I can’t resist a disappearance mystery. I love a mountain setting as well, plus I’m wondering what’s going on behind the gates of the wealthy estate. And I’m super excited about the comparison to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book I loved

Did any of these catch your eye? What new or old books are you looking forward to reading this spring?