Welcome to 2024! Let’s embark on another year of stocking our shelves. Each month, Crystal Patriarche, founder of BookSparks, reveals her monthly reading selections, offering insights into the newest releases for your TBR list.

This year we’re introducing a fresh feature to her column. Recognizing that some of the best books either slip through the cracks or require a re-read, we’ve incorporated a section dedicated to the backlist. Additionally, don’t miss out on what Crystal’s bingeing in between books in the She Watches section.

New Books Released January 2024

The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

A Good Morning America Book Club pick, this debut is an unmissable historical fiction title that treads brand new ground in the era of WWII. Cecily’s family is in terrible danger. Her son has disappeared, her youngest daughter is hiding out in the basement and her eldest daughter is angrily working at a tea shop frequented by Japanese soldiers. All of this would seem out of one woman’s control except Cecily is in fact responsible. Her previous life of espionage has led to the Japanese occupation of British-colonized Malaya, and now she’ll have to fight to save her family.

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Illium by Lea Carpenter

The twenty-one year old narrator has spent her unhappy young life in London dreaming of a garden behind lock and key. When on her birthday, she meets the charming new owner of this place who sweeps her off her feet, it seems like her life is destined for perfection. But then, her new husband asks for a favor. This favor whisks her across the globe and drops her into the middle of a CIA-Mossad operation that feels strikingly relevant in these times.

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Come & Get It

Come & Get It by Kiley Reid

From the New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a novel set on the University of Arkansas campus in 2017. An RA, three students and a professor become entangled in a way that exposes the nature of desire and consumption. Millie is simply trying to graduate and start a good life when she finds herself in a swirl of unusual companions and illicit interactions.

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The Fetishist by Katherine Min

In this posthumous release of the author’s final work of fiction, The Fetishist, lands as a staple of Katherine Min’s legacy. In this story, Alma, a famed cellist, Daniel, the white violinist who seduced her, and Kyoko, Alma’s daughter are brought together in a swirl of comic and poignant encounters. Kyoko holds Daniel responsible for her mother’s death and is seeking vengeance, but a rash kidnapping ignites an unplanned chain of events that exposes the human center of the story as it grapples with race, femininity and complicity.

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Where You End by Abbott Kahler

When Kat awakes from a coma remembering nothing other than her twin sister’s name, she believes Jude is telling her everything. Jude, however, has decided to spin the truth of their lives and hand Kat a fresh start filled with memories of a picturesque childhood. Still, this doesn’t explain the flashes of violence or why Kat is being followed. As she untangles the lies from the truth, she’ll have to fight, not only for reality, but for survival.

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Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Behind You Is the Sea masterfully explores Palestinian-American life in Baltimore, intertwining tales of love, loss, and cultural conflict through the vivid experiences of three families. Spanning a spectrum of emotions and societal issues, from generational clashes to class disparities, all while maintaining humor and poignancy. The story culminates in a transformative journey to Palestine, symbolizing hope for reconciliation and understanding within a deeply divided community

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You Only Call When You’re in Trouble by Stephen McCauley

A story about familial dysfunction, this novel follows Tom, a man who has always taken care of other people in spite of himself. His sister and niece came first, but now, he’s set a resolution to focus on his architectural masterpiece. That when he gets a call from his niece, Cecily that she’s in trouble. And back into the mix he goes, hoping this time, he can help the family heal and balance the bonds that both fulfill and smother a person.

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No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall

Three sisters left their family home the night their parents were murdered. Emma has never spoken about the night again. But when financial situations force she and her husband to return to her childhood home, the mystery begins to unfold. As her sisters are drawn in by her return, Emma must question everything she knows about that night and determine if she knows the truth of it at all.

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Mercury by Amy Jo Burns

In the 1990s, Marley was simply looking for a home to call her home when she came to Mercury, Pennsylvania. She spotted the Joseph brothers working on a roof and before she knows it, she’s a party of the family. Married to one, pined after by another and suddenly the matriarch of a family, Marley is the center of a clan she never thought she’d have. Years later when a secret is exposed that threatens to undo the fabric of the family, they must decide to hold together what they have or rebuild something new.

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The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro, desperate and out of options due to a severe drought in Dorado, Mexico, embarks on a perilous journey to rob a train with his brother Hugo, leading to a tragic confrontation that threatens his family and his soul. Fast forward to 1964, celebrated Mexican actor and singer Jaime Sonoro stumbles upon a book chronicling his family’s dark history, including his grandfather’s notorious deeds, propelling him into a quest to confront and possibly redeem his family’s legacy.

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Bring it Back(list)

We are all guilty of getting swept up in the next big, new book and neglecting the incredible reads already resting on our shelves. Whether it’s a classic that demands a re-read or a book that’s been on the TBR far too long, these are a couple backlist titles we recommend you revive from the recesses of your bookshelves.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Perhaps you missed this one in the midst of the 2020 mayhem and confusion. Though it was an instant bestseller, the book demands fresh attention if you’re looking for a deeply affecting novel you won’t soon forget. Franny is fleeing her life to follow what may be the last migration of the Arctic terns. She’s talked herself onto a fishing boat headed for Antarctica, but as the journey begins her history is slowly revealed and readers discover this trip is less about what she is chasing and more about what she is running from.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

Goodbye, Vitamin was dubbed one of the best books of 2017 and for good reason. As we anxiously await the April release of her next novel, Real Americans, make sure you’ve checked this one off your list. Thirty-year-old Ruth, grappling with personal upheavals returns home, only to navigate the complexities of her parents’ eccentricities and her father’s dementia, finding humor and transformation amidst grief.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

She Watches

We all need a book break every now and then, and in those moments, thank goodness for great TV.

True Detective Season 4

Ten years after the launch of the first season, this anthologized series enters its fourth iteration. Starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, the story takes viewers to the wilds of Alaska where bodies frozen in the ice leave behind a chilling mystery for a seasoned detective, reluctantly stepping into the case.

Check out our round up of books to read if you love True Detective >>