Best New Books: Week of January 19, 2021

The following books, published this week, received starred reviews in Booklist. Want to read our starred reviews before the books go on sale? Subscribe to Booklist!

Adult Fiction

★ Before She Disappeared, by Lisa Gardner

★ The Forever Sea, by Joshua Phillip Johnson

★ Knock Knock, by Anders Roslund and translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel

★ The Mask of Mirrors, by M. A. Carrick

★ The Rib King, by Ladee Hubbard

★ The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, by Timothy Miller

★ Trio, by William Boyd

★ What’s Worth Keeping, by Kaya McLaren

Adult Nonfiction

★ The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, by Janice P. Nimura

★ The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame, 1968–2011, by William Feaver

★ The Plague Cycle: The Unending War between Humanity and Infectious Disease, by Charles Kenny

★ Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince, by Peter Ames Carlin

Youth Fiction

★ Amari and the Night Brothers, by B. B. Alston

★ A Complicated Love Story Set in Space, by Shaun David Hutchinson

★ Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo

★ The Passover Guest, by Susan Kusel and illustrated by Sean Rubin

★ Seaside Stroll, by Charles Trevino and illustrated by Maribel Lechuga

★ Seeking an Aurora, by Elizabeth Pulford and illustrated by Anne Bannock

★ This Will Be Funny Someday, by Katie Henry

★ We Free the Stars, by Hafsah Faizal

Youth Nonfiction

★ The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, by David F. Walker and illustrated by Marcus Kwame Anderson

★ Seven Voyages: How China’s Treasure Fleet Conquered the Sea, by Laurence Bergreen and Sara Fray

★ She Caught the Light: Williamina Stevens Fleming, Astronomer, by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Julianna Swaney