As the third season of Jack Ryan premieres this month (on Prime Video, Dec. 21), the action-thriller series based on the late Tom Clancy’s indelible character resumes on the page. A prequel of sorts, the latest in the bestselling continuation novels (now written by a retired U.S. Marshal from Alaska) rewinds to the final period of the Cold War with the further youthful adventures of CIA analyst Ryan, who goes behind the Iron Curtain when he’s assigned to help a rookie officer embroiled with a would-be defector. (Dec. 6)

First published in 1944, but  appearing now for the first time in English, this short second novel by the French literary icon (The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour) tracks a woman’s difficult time with a claustrophobic rural family life, and her later disillusionment. It’s a raw and introspective look inside a young woman’s breakdown. (Dec. 6)

The Vermont-raised writer’s critically acclaimed Good Morning, Midnight formed the basis of George Clooney’s 2020 science fiction film The Midnight Sky (on Netflix). Her new literary novel is firmly in the ever-expending genre of climate fiction, and unfolds in four thematic sections: power, water, light, and time. The unique structure mirrors protagonist Wanda’s journey from childhood to adulthood in hurricane-addled Florida, and paints a portrait of humanity’s complicated relationship with nature and the escalating ecological crisis over the course of a generation. (Dec. 6)

The Pulitzer Prize winner (A Thousand Acres) returns with a gripping yarn in the murder-mystery vein, set at a brothel during the 1850s gold rush in California. The amateur sleuths are a pair of savvy young sex workers who, after girls begin to go missing, slyly investigate their working class and elite clientele. It’s as lyrical as the California writer’s previously expansive pastoral works, and rich with historical detail that conjures the grubby living conditions of the lawless era. (Dec. 6)

Boston-based Lazaridis’ historical adventure was inspired by Robert Scott’s ill-fated 1910 expedition to the South Pole. The novel, set in the same year, is about two fictional Antarctic explorers, one of whom is married to Violet, a photographer and suffragette determined to push women’s rights forward in London. When she develops dubious photographs of their polar expedition, questions about boasts, accomplishments and the subjective nature of truth come into play. (Dec. 6)

Enthusiastically endorsed by thriller maestro Lee Child, Haven’s debut is a pulsing caper with a set-up that reads like an Ocean’s movie: an ex-con paroled in upstate New York emerges to find his ex-girlfriend waiting for him in the parking lot. She’s a skilled counterfeit artist and needs help with just one last elaborately planned heist – robbing artwork from a speeding Amtrak train. The Florida-based former art critic has previously written seafaring adventures under a pseudonym; with his first crime novel, Publishers Weekly rightly calls him a “promising new talent.” (Dec. 6)

A famous movie star walks into a funeral for a former nursing-school administrator, and when two estranged sisters get over the shock and question her presence, they discover their mother’s hidden past. Told in alternating points of view and time periods, between a nursing school in the tumultuous late 1960s and near-present day, this novel charts the intensity of a decades-long female friendship. It also explores and honours the nursing profession—inspired by Toronto-based Fader’s mother – and its role as one of the few accessible career paths and opportunities for financial independence available to women at the time. (Dec. 6)

The venerable West Sussex mystery writer, 86, drops detective Peter Diamond into the backstage drama between cast and crew of a beleaguered television production, a hit British show called Swift. Suspicious on-set injuries escalate and members of the production go missing in a fictional composite of familiar murder shows that’s so vividly drawn, I almost expected to find it on BritBox. It’s fresh, wry and enjoyably suspenseful. (Dec. 6)

South African couple Abram and Alisa’s marriage is criminalized in 1927 when the country passes the Immorality Act, prohibiting sexual relations between white Europeans and Black people. Through dreamlike journal entries and ancestral myth, this wrenching novel explores Alisa’s Caribbean heritage as a descendant of slaves and quest for belonging amid segregationist policies. Since its 2020 publication in South Africa, this work by a poet and chemical engineer based in Cape Town has become the most awarded debut in the country’s history. (Dec. 13)

Delhi-based oral historian Malhotra, who also traces family histories through objects, makes a buzzy literary debut with the story of a Hindu perfumer’s apprentice, Samir, and a Muslim calligrapher’s apprentice, Firdaus, who fall in love in Lahore the years leading up to India’s Partition in 1947, then are torn apart. The engrossing saga of longing, pain and partition spans more than a century and covers the entwined fates of two lovers and their families. (Dec. 27)

The San Diego-based author of The Bookseller’s Secret and the New York Times bestseller A Paris Apartment offers a unique vantage point on unsung Second World War heroes, with a protagonist inspired by Barbara Lauwers, a Czech American lawyer who joined the U.S. Army and was recruited by the intelligence agency. The historical novel is set in Rome, among 4,500 women working in the secret morale branch for the Office of Strategic Services — a precursor to the CIA – creating and distributing propaganda to demoralize Hitler’s troops. (Dec. 27)