This short memoir was born from a piece first published in The New Yorker in 2019. Murakami explores his relationship with his father, who might have been a priest like his own father, but became a soldier in WWII instead. He was then a successful writer of haiku, and later a teacher. You’d think these things would make him close to his son Haruki, but the two end up estranged for 20 years. They only reconnected, really, on his deathbed, hence this memoir, which examines what being a father and a son mean. —Erica Ezeifedi

Morgan Slaughter, a 17-year-old trans boy, is why his father was put into jail years ago for serial killings. Too bad everyone thinks Morgan is following in his dad’s footsteps, including his mom and the documentary crew that follows his family around.

Morgan thinks he might be down that path, too.

Morgan believes if he unravels the mystery of his dad’s last victim–one who was never identified–he’ll be able to prove to himself and others that he’s not like his dad. But then there’s Felicity, a classmate who knows about Morgan’s childhood and believes Morgan was an accomplice to his father. Felicity insists on helping the investigation or they’ll tell everyone the truth about Morgan’s past.

As Morgan and Felicity become more tightly connected, and as both the film crew and Morgan’s mother become more than he can handle, everything Morgan has tried to control about his past may quickly unravel. —Kelly Jensen

The filmmaker of I Saw the TV Glow and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma has a genre-blending, 600-page horror novel out this year! It takes place across timelines—the 1980s, 2000s, and the present—as several point of view characters get pulled into a conspiracy about a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld. In the current timeline, Bethany is a trans content moderator who learns about Public Access Afterworld through a series of videos from a streamer that have her searching for answers. —Danika Ellis

In 1920s Berlin, Hannah revels in the opportunity to escape traditional women’s roles by joining the underground art scene. She has to work as a tailor to make ends meet, but then she gets the opportunity of a lifetime: she’s commissioned to paint a series of nude portraits. When they’re done, though, she finds that they’ve been altered and credited to a male artist. Now, she’s out for revenge. This is a story of art forgery, queer desire, and Jewish resistance that promises to be Portrait of a Lady on Fire meets The Safekeep. —Danika Ellis

The award-winning author of Ninefox Gambit is back with a linguistics-focused space opera. Yoon Ha Lee’s imagination is on another level and this thrilling new romp sounds singular. The ruler of an empire and her oath-sister are at work to destroy foreign texts and languages, but an attempt to control and use the lethal gaze of an imprisoned traitor backfires when she learns he’s impervious to her tools of manipulation. —S. Zainab Williams

Can’t get enough near-future novels? Check out this sapphic cli-fi thriller. Dr. Cassandra Barlowe works on an island of floating trash, studying plastic-dissolving fungi. Cassandra’s work is underfunded thanks to her ex-lover Dr. Yana Gulsvig’s field of expertise, deleria. The new drug has everyone focused on searching different timelines for a solution to climate devastation. When Yana dies with deleria research in an explosion and Cas is accused of terrorism, she throws herself across timelines with the choice of seeking closure in unreality or facing reality and the work of saving humanity. —S. Zainab Williams

After having read Mohamed’s dark fable-esque The Butcher of the Forest not too long ago, I was super excited to see this dark academia release with its promised eldritch flare. Jurgen Leitner’s library houses an eccentric collection of occult books that include everything from a starving cookbook to a book that makes you dig compulsively. Though the books can be dangerous, the library keeps employees safe…or at least it’s supposed to. It’s not yet clear what’s in store for research assistant Hugh Franklin and acquisition specialist Sebastian Everett, who worked at the library at different times, but whose stories readers see unfold beside each other. —Erica Ezeifedi