10 Books We Can't Wait To Read In 2018

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin, $27
How would you live if you knew when you were going to die? This is the question at the heart of Benjamin’s second novel, which opens in 1969 on the Lower East Side, New York City. Four young siblings visit a psychic and are each — separately — told the exact day of their death. Nine years later, they gather for their father’s funeral and compare notes: All but one are predicted to meet an early end. “I’m sorry we ever went to see her,” says Varya, the eldest. “The only thing she did was lodge the idea in our heads.” Later, the siblings will wonder: Can an idea become fate? Jan. 9

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, by Brittney Cooper, $34

“This is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women.” So begins Cooper’s exploration of anger, Black feminism, and how to change the world. Cooper is an academic — a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey — who writes with verve and openness. She engages the controversy around Beyoncé’s feminism and the importance, in her opinion, of being a “Black girl’s Black girl” (which she thinks Beyoncé is); she shares the story of the time she visited her her grandmother in rural Louisiana before heading off to graduate school, and her grandmother admonished her to “start having sex!” This is the rare book that’s heavy on theory while also being extremely entertaining. Jan. 16

Still Me, by Jojo Moyes, $35

The third book in the Me Before You series sees Lou Clark land in New York to take on a job as a personal assistant to Agnes Gopnik, a Manhattan socialite. Lou is her same charming (and slightly bumbling) self — telling the immigration officer at the airport all about her relationship with Will (the subject of MBY), gradually winning over each of the prickly members of the Gopnik household, and keeping close contact with her loved ones back in England, including paramedic and “all-too-new” boyfriend, Sam. But inevitably something has to give — she can’t live in both places at once. So where does Lou really belong? And with whom? Jan. 30

Brave, by Rose McGowan, $30

When McGowan spoke out this past fall about being abused by Harvey Weinstein, it was but the most recent expression of the depth of her mettle. Born in the ’70s to parents who were members of the Children of God cult, McGowan ran away from home as a young teenager and eventually emancipated herself from her family. Her star rose through the 1990s, when she played Tatum Riley in the iconic slasher film Scream; in 2001, she joined the cast of the Charmed. But also through that time, McGowan says, she was being exploited and sexualized by the Hollywood machine. Her memoir tells the story of how she “fought [her] way out of those cults and reclaimed [her] life.” Jan. 30

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death, by Maggie O’Farrell, $30

Many of us have had a near-miss or two in our lives — maybe it was a close encounter with a scorpion or a truck that swerved out of our way at the last minute. Northern Irish novelist O’Farrell has had fully 17 of them — a plummeting plane, a sudden ocean riptide, acute encephalitis. And most chilling: an encounter with a murderer on a mountain path in rural Scotland, who stepped out from behind a boulder and wrapped his binocular strap around her neck. You will read these stories to find out how she survived, of course, but also for O’Farrell’s lovely writing and keen eye for human whim. Feb. 6

Feel Free: Essays, by Zadie Smith, $32

As she writes in her foreword to this eclectic collection of essays and reviews, Smith is not a philosopher or sociologist or political scientist; she’s not a “real professor” of literature or film, despite teaching creative writing at New York University. And so, she wonders, what qualifies her to write on topics such as Brexit and Facebook, optimism and despair? Her answer — like her writing — is both unexpected and wise. “Essays about one person’s affective experience have, by their very nature, not a leg to stand on. All they have is their freedom.” Reading Smith is a similarly freeing experience, opening up new and nuanced ways of thinking about everything from Justin Bieber to the fluidity of “race” to the difference between pleasure and joy. Freedom may be part of the British novelist’s qualification to write about all these topics, but surely her facility and talent as a writer are equally important. Feb. 6

Surprise Me, by Sophie Kinsella, $35

Sylvie and Dan have been together 10 years. They’re a happy couple, and a healthy one. So healthy, in fact, that the doctor who examines them for an insurance physical predicts they’ll both live well past the age of 100. That means 68 more years of marriage! Already, they can each predict exactly what the other will order off a dinner menu. How much more monotonous will things become between them? And so Sylvie thinks of a way to keep their marriage “sparky”: they will surprise each other — with special gifts and meals, maybe some “boudoir” photos. This enterprise leads to several mishaps, both funny and awkward, but soon things take a turn for the worse. Dan becomes irritable and Sylvie becomes convinced he’s hiding something. Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series, sets the perfect pace for the unravelling of “Project Surprise Me,” and the question of whether life is ever truly boring. Feb. 13

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex and Life, by Peggy Orenstein, $12 (e-book)

Nearly four decades worth of essays are collected here, both political and personal, on topics ranging from princess culture to infertility to Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination back in 2008. Orenstein’s work has often appeared in the New York Times Magazine, including a controversial “retraction” article in 2013, in which she questioned a previous piece she’d written about the life-saving ability of early screening for breast cancer. She is a fluid, often funny, and always smart writer; the essays offer a look back at where we’ve been and fodder for thinking about what needs to happen next. Feb. 27

Heart Berries: A Memoir, by Therese Marie Mailhot, $25

“It’s an Indian condition to be proud of survival but reluctant to call it resilience.” Throughout her memoir, Mailhot writes in poetic prose to tell stories about growing up on Seabird Island Band in B.C.’s interior, about having to fend for herself as a child, about losing her son to child welfare services, and about a tormented love affair with a writing professor. The narrative is by turns lucid and hazy, leaving the reader basking in sharp images, moments of tenderness and anger, and a bone-deep sense of pain. March 13

The Home for Unwanted Girls, by Joanna Goodman, $34

In 1950s Quebec, babies born to unwed mothers frequently wound up in mental institutions — with false diagnoses. Goodman’s new novel tells the story of Elodie, one of these “Duplessis orphans” — named for the premier of the time — and her mother, Maggie, who lives in a small town outside Montreal. This is a story about lost love — between Maggie and Gabriel, the French boy who lives in a shack on the border of her family’s property; between Maggie and her father, who forbade her to date Gabriel; and, of course, between Maggie and Elodie, whose lives somehow constantly seem to orbit one another’s despite their being forced apart. April 17