The Most Anticipated Books Of March 2021, From Machinehood To Eternal

March 2

Isabel Allende's latest memoir is The Soul of a Woman, an intimate book that examines the author's life through the lens of the late 20th- and early 21st-century women's rights movements.

March 2

In the 1940s, one of Tinsel Town's hottest starlets, Eleanor Hayes, was found dead on the estate of her frequent collaborator, director Theo Langley. He fled the city, but he's back in town now that another body has turned up on the same property. Waiting to meet him is journalist Max Hailey, who has been itching for his chance to prove that Theo killed Eleanor. But will he still believe the director is guilty after he reads his personal diaries?

March 2

Born in Seoul and raised in San Antonio, sisters Jayne and June Baek moved separately to New York City. June has her whole life planned out, while Jayne's wrestling with her demons and trying not to flunk out of art school. But when June steals Jayne's identity in a moment of desperation, the two sisters are drawn back into one another's orbit, in Mary H.K. Choi's Yolk.

March 2

Noelle's mother bristles at the suggestion that her daughters are Latina, even though their father was Latino. Gee's mother is trying to be his anchor in a world that doesn't trust or forgive young Black boys and men. But when their small North Carolina town integrates, Noelle and Gee take part in their school play, putting their mothers on a collision course with one another, in Naima Coster's What's Mine and Yours.

March 2

In a world in which humans rely on medical remedies to common ailments and aging, and use performance-enhancing drugs to keep their jobs from being stolen by AI, a terrorist organization bent on destroying the pharmaceutical industry rises. As pill producers begin to comply with the terrorists' demands, an ex-military bodyguard finds herself poised to take on this new threat.

March 2

In Safia Elhillo's lyrical new novel, Home Is Not a Country, a young Muslim American immigrant struggles to find a place to belong. Too American for her mother's homeland and too Arab for her American neighbors, 14-year-old Nima takes comfort in her friendship with Haitham. But when Haitham is attacked and hospitalized in a hate crime, Nima sets out on a journey to self-discovery.

March 2

A family split between two continents fights to reunite in Patricia Engel's Infinite Country. Talia's father is in Bogotá, she's deep in the Colombian countryside, and her mother and siblings are still living in the United States, where Talia was born. Mauro has a plane ticket to get his daughter back to America, but she'll have to find a way to Bogotá if she wants to go home.

March 2

A pair of siblings make a pact to save one from suicide in Jamie Figueroa's Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer. When their mother dies, Rufina realizes that Rafa has fallen into a self-destructive tailspin. Reunited in the tourist town where they grew up, the siblings agree that, if they can scrape together enough money over the weekend to buy a plane ticket, Rafa must stay alive. But staying in town means reckoning with everything they thought they'd lost and left behind.

March 2

Set on Long Island in 1999, Forsyth Harmon's illustrated novel centers on Ali, a bored teen who finds herself falling increasingly enamored with the eponymous Justine, the cashier at a local convenience store. Praised by The Ballad of Black Tom author Victor LaValle, Justine is a quiet thrill ride you won't want to miss.

Mar. 2

The sequel to the Hugo Award-winning A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace picks up Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass' story right where it left off. The vast Teixcalaanli Empire faces what may be an existential threat: an unbeatable — and unidentified — fleet of ships lurking on its borders. The Empire needs someone to play peacemaker, and it's up to Mahit and Three Seagrass to save the ever-expanding Teixcalaanli from certain destruction.

March 2

Moving between the 18th century and the present, Sarah Penner's The Lost Apothecary examines the circumstances and consequences of a series of murders in London, committed by women who sought out a poisoner's assistance to make their husbands pay.

March 2

While planning a memorial for a celebrated mountain climber, Veronica Speedwell discovers that the woman's death was no accident... but revealing the news to the public could plunge the world into war.

March 9

Twenty-five years after her husband died fighting by her side against a necromantic sorcerer who mobilized dead animals into his personal army, Kreya has a plan to bring back the man she loved. To do it, she'll need to practice the same kind of dark magic their old enemy once used, and perhaps even worse. To resurrect her husband, Kreya will need to use human bones, a line that no one, not even Eklor the bone maker, would cross.

March 9

In the 1980s and '90s, as HIV/AIDS swept through the United States' queer community, men in New York City's gay bars faced a different kind of existential threat. Targeting gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Last Call Killer was able to go largely unnoticed as he hunted for his next victims. Longform editor Elon Green pulls back the curtain on the killer, his victims, and their time and place in the world, in Last Call.

March 9

Eve's family have tolerated her messiness and chaos for her entire life, but when she ruins someone else's big day, her parents decide that enough's enough. After blowing an interview for a chef position at a bed and breakfast, Eve hits the B&B owner with her car, leaving him with a broken arm and no choice but to hire her to help run his struggling business. She's everything straitlaced Jacob isn't, and by all rights he should despise her, but there's something about this whirlwind of a woman that's difficult to ignore.

March 9

Jasmine Mans follows up 2012's Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels with Black Girl, Call Home, an all-new collection of poetry that both celebrates and mourns how young, queer, Black women come of age in the United States.

March 9

From the author of Behold the Dreamers comes this new novel about community and resistance. Set in Kosawa, a village in a tyrannically governed African nation, How Beautiful We Were weaves its way through the villagers' lives, which are threatened every day by Pexton, an American oil company causing widespread environmental damage in the area. As the pipeline owners make empty promises, and the nation's leaders line their pockets and look away, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back against Pexton — with dire consequences.

March 9

Already drawing comparisons to Sally Rooney, Irish author Megan Nolan makes her literary debut in March with Acts of Desperation. The unnamed protagonist falls hard for Ciaran, a charismatic writer, who serves as her passionate lover... until he isn't. Spurned without explanation, Nolan's heroine pursues Ciaran, even as her obsession threatens to consume her.

March 9

The Alice Network author Kate Quinn returns to World War II-era Europe in The Rose Code. Set in the English countryside in 1940, Quinn's new novel centers on the women of Bletchley Park, where England's codebreaking operation worked day and night to defeat the Axis Powers. As three women — Osla, Mab, and Beth — put their cryptanalytical skills to work, something happens that will tear their burgeoning friendship to shreds. Seven years later, the three are reunited and forced to crack a new code... or die trying.

March 9

Twenty years after her father disappeared and she was torn away from her community, a Dakhóta woman returns to her old haunts to reconnect with her roots. Rosalie was raised on stories that connected her with the soil and the rest of the natural world around her, but after spending decades living away from the Dakhóta, she's ready to reclaim her heritage as a Native American woman.

March 16

A Syrian British recluse begins to slowly connect with her community in Layla AlAmmar's Silence Is a Sense. She shuts out the rest of the world, even as she writes an anonymized column about her experiences as an immigrant. But as she begins to journey out of her apartment more and more, she soon finds herself at a crossroads that will determine her place in her community for years to come.

March 16

Two years after the Jigsaw Killer went to prison, a case with the same M.O. lands on Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley's desk. Incensed at the idea of a copycat, the original murderer begins to hunt down the killer he inspired. Now, Henley's caught in a race to find the new murderer before the Jigsaw Killer gets to him.

March 16

A psychic who can sense strong emotions left behind on others' personal effects and a woman who collects those items find themselves working together to prevent their lives from being consumed by those lingering feelings in Kim Neville's poignant new novel, The Memory Collectors.

March 16

In the shadow of a mountain on fire, three women's lives collide on one fateful night in their local theater house. As Samuel Beckett's Happy Days unfolds onstage, a professor, a philanthropist, and a theater major — each dealing with the emotional baggage of her private life — come together in surprising ways, in Claire Thomas' The Performance.

March 23

C.L. Clark's debut novel follows two women caught up in a struggle to destroy an empire. Touraine is a former child soldier, sent back to her childhood home to quell a burgeoning rebellion. Connected by blood to the halls of imperial power, Princess Luca needs someone to help her overthrow the empire's corrupt leader. Together, the two women may be able to pull the revolution together, but they'll have to trust one another first.

March 23

As the world faces more and more strange weather brought about by climate change, we'll all be forced to confront its impact on our lives. Thankfully, Kimberly Nicholas' Under the Sky We Make is here to show all of us how we can save the world, just by making meaningful changes in our own lives.

March 23

The first novel in Norwegian author Siri Pettersen's Raven Rings trilogy, Odin's Child, makes its U.S. debut this March. Set in the world of Ym, where people are born with tails, the story here centers on 15-year-old Hirka, who has been brought up to believe that her tail was eaten by wolves. On the eve of her coming-of-age ritual, Hirka learns the truth: She is a child of Odin, a cursed creature who will bring nothing but trouble to her neighbors. Cast out of her community, Hirka turns to her oldest friend for help, but he's got his own dark dealings to handle.

March 23

Set against the backdrop of Mussolini's rise to power and Hitler's invasion of Italy, Lisa Scottoline's Eternal follows three teenagers — a girl and two young men — caught in an ill-fated love triangle. When the boys find themselves on opposing sides of the fight against fascism, lines are drawn and crossed, and none of them will ever be the same.

March 30

A supercentenarian recalls her life in Chicago's jazz scene in Denny S. Bryce's rollicking debut. Ninety years ago, meeting famous musicians and filmmakers was part of Honoree's life. Now in her final days, she dredges up all her memories of one man, Oscar Micheaux, to help a film student who has made Micheaux the focus of his thesis project. But the trip down memory lane isn't all fun and games for Honoree, and it's about to take her and the inquiring student to places and realizations they never imagined.

March 30

Three women in Miami and Cuba search their personal histories for meaning in Gabriela Garcia's debut novel. When her mother, Carmen, refuses to tell her about her heritage, Jeanette pulls up stakes for Cuba, where Carmen's mother may be more willing to share what she knows of their family's history. Moving between their stories and those of their neighbors and ancestors, Of Women and Salt is a powerful novel from an eye-catching new voice.

March 30

Wills is new to the equestrian world, but there's no better place for a newbie than the Oakwood Riding Academy... at least, not on paper. In reality, Carrie Seim's horseback-riding heroine in Horse Girl is about to gallop head-first into a cutthroat world of mean-girl politics. With her mom on active duty halfway around the world, Wills is forced to navigate Oakwood with only her trusty steed, Clyde, to help her.

March 30

Told with literary flare, Dorothy Wickenden's The Agitators sheds some much-needed light on the lives and passions of a small circle of abolitionists: Harriet Tubman, Martha Wright, and Frances Seward.