Best New Books: Week of January 12, 2021

After a brief hiatus, we return with the very best books publishing right this second. Literally; the following books all received starred reviews in Booklist and will hit shelves either today or another day this week. To read our starred reviews before the books go on sale, subscribe to Booklist.

Adult Fiction

★ The Captive, by Fiona King Foster

★ The Charmed Wife, by Olga Grushin

★ The Children’s Blizzard, by Melanie Benjamin

★ Georgana’s Secret, by Arlem Hawks

★ Glamour Girls, by Marty Wingate

★ Hades, Argentina, by Daniel Loedel

★ People Like Her, by Ellery Lord

★ The Perfect Guests, by Emma Rous

★ A Stranger at the Door, by Jason Pinter

★ That Old Country Music, by Kevin Barry

★ To Cook a Bear, by Mikael Niemi

★ The Worst Duke in the World, by Lisa Berne

Adult Nonfiction

★ Dog Flowers, by Danielle Geller

★ Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, by Carl L. Hart

★ Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, by Frank Wilczek

★ Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, by Andrea Pitzer

★ In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of Alice Walker’s Masterpiece, by Salamishah Tillet

★ Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, by Julian Bond

★ The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention, by Julia Cameron

★ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, by George Saunders

★ The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene, by Richard Greene

★ You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Youth Fiction

★ The Ambassador of Nowhere, Texas, by Kimberly Willis Holt

★ Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas

★ Every Single Lie, by Rachel Vincent

★ The Nightmare Thief, by Nicole Lesperance

★ Off to See the Sea, by Nikki Grimes and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon

★ Sheepish (Wolf under Cover), by Helen Yoon

★ Tales from the Hinterland, by Melissa Albert and illustrated by Jim Tierney

★ Ten Beautiful Things, by Molly Beth Griffin and illustrated by Maribel Lechuga

Youth Nonfiction

★ Ensnared in the Wolf’s Lair: Inside the 1944 Plot to Kill Hitler and the Ghost Children of His Revenge, by Ann Bausum